User talk:Francis Zaia

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! Aleta Curry 23:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Wikipedia pages

Hi Francis

Apropos of work done for Wikipedia that you wish to edit/improve here, we have a Wikipedia template. WPauthor| - which you would enclose in double curly brackets.

(If you leave it blank and leave out four tildes, you get a form message.)

	NOTICE, please do not remove from top of page.
	Check the history of edits to see who inserted this notice.

or, you can type in any text you want:

	NOTICE, please do not remove from top of page.
	Aleta Curry wrote this article for Wikipedia in 2010 and intends to maintain it here.
	Aleta Curry 00:03, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what do I do? Francis Zaia 00:11, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I think that falls into the 'too-much-too-soon' category. You don't have to do anything yet; if you want to import something from Wikipedia, let me know. Otherwise, just start whenever you're ready! :) Aleta Curry 00:30, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Okay, will do. Thank you very much for your continued help. I do have a lot of photos which I went to great lengths to get permission for at Wikipedia, though. I would like to bring most or all of them here. Francis Zaia 00:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm always delighted to help to the extent that I can. I'm not really familiar with the ins and outs of images. They have to be properly attributed, of course. I think we have (a) policy page(s). When you're ready to upload, if you can't find them with a search, ask at the forums for help Hayford has experience in uploading photos, I know. Aleta Curry 01:12, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Elapidae

Hi!

Reading this with great interest. Beautifully done.

For individual species, there's no need to redirect to scientific name, just put them at the common name.

Aleta Curry 01:20, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. For some species, it's okay to use the common name, but for many others there just isn't one very common English vernacular name. So for species like that it would be best to use their scientific names with a list of "common names" in the article. What do you think? Francis Zaia 01:39, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

This caused major contention a couple of years back. The bottom line was that we went for common names, but it was not a happy time.

My personal feeling is that it should be e.g. German Shepherd (Canis lupus familiaris) also called the Alsation or the GSD - which is already a bad example because of course Canis lupus familiaris covers a whole lotta dogs. Anyway, I noticed because of Black mamba, which is a pretty common common name, which I would write as Black mamba (scientific name) also called blah and blah.

I am not going to revisit the fight, so all I can suggest is that if you feel very strongly about it, you bring it up with the EC (Editorial Council), whose job it is to sort out such things.

Aleta Curry 02:05, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, I certainly will use the common names then. Fortunately, a lot of the elapids, particularly the cobras, mambas, kraits, taipans, and others have at least one very common name that most people know. I can still move the Dendroaspis polylepis article to be titled "Black mamba", correct? Francis Zaia 02:34, 8 May 2012 (UTC)