User talk:Koen Demol

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 09:01, 17 June 2008 (CDT)

From my talk page

Hi Koen, you can call me Matt. Everyone is pretty much on a first name basis here. First find the CZ:Workgroups that your article would fit under and make note of the list of editors and authors that work in that area. Keep in mind that not all of them are active, so feel free to contact them by email or on their talk pages. To get yourself ready to start an article, take a look at CZ:How to start a new article and you can choose the way you would like to work. As for getting the article to the approval stage, take a look at how the approval process works here, CZ:Approval Process. If you've already written an article, your are halfway there, but you will need other editors (not just authors) to approve your work (you can't approve your own work). Once you've read the links, it should make more sense. All of these links are to the left of all the pages (plus several more). Most of us use the recent changes link to keep track of what everyone else is doing, but take a look at others user pages and you will see some templates that you canuse to keep track of what you are doing. You have plenty of time for that, though, so take your time and you'll be up to speed in no time. You can always leave a message on my talk page an I'll help with anything I can. By the way - my job is to make sure everyone is treated professionally, so if you have any trouble, let me know. --D. Matt Innis 12:40, 19 June 2008 (CDT)

The Social Capital Foundation

Please see Talk:The Social Capital Foundation. Thanks --Larry Sanger 20:28, 19 June 2008 (CDT)

The Social Capital Foundation

Hi Koen, I see you've been hard at work! Now you need to get a couple of editors involved from the relevant workgroups to give you some direction. These guys are probably the most active; User:Roger Lohmann and User:Martin Baldwin-Edwards. --D. Matt Innis 07:12, 21 June 2008 (CDT)

Hello, Koen: I just added a few internal links (CZ links) to your article, intended as helpful examples. I explained them on the article's Talk page and why they are needed. If you want to see how such links are made, simply look at the article's Edit page. Hope you enjoy partcipating in Citizendium. Regards, - Milton Beychok 10:50, 21 June 2008 (CDT)

Thanks! Koen Demol 12:41, 21 June 2008 (CDT)

Publicizing Citizendium

Hi Koen, google uses complicated mathematical processes to try and determine what people are looking for when they search for something. It has something to do with how many times people click on certain sites and how many other web sites link to that site, etc.. The bottom line is that Citizendium's articles will slowly climb to the top of the list as more and more people find and use Citizendium (and we add links to our articles). If you're really interested in helping them rise to the top... there are some resources that explain it all. There are probably some people here that are in the computer workgroup that understand it better than I do! Hope that helps. D. Matt Innis 16:04, 13 July 2008 (CDT)

Approval

Koen, You are right. I had intended to get the SCDF entry ready for approval, but then I got sidetracked onto another set of approvals and lost sight of it. (So much to do... so little time) It still looks good to me, so I'll try to get that process started up again.

Roger Lohmann 09:40, 3 October 2008 (CDT)

Ready for Approval?

This article may be nearing completion, but there are still a number of things to be attended to. The second paragraph requires some attention to bring it into greater coherence with the Social capital entry. (Since both are unapproved, where the other article is wrong, attention should be on correcting that, but in most cases, this may be a matter of explaining further what is meant by the somewhat maverick SCF conceptions.) We need to make clearer that the SCF approach to "social capital" is quite distinct from other, more socio-economic approaches in which the term "capital" approaches some of its conventional economic meanings.

Attributing Jane Jacobs with a formative role in social capital is somewhat unusual. Is there a source, quotation or other evidence to support that? Also, the present sentence gives Bourdeau a greater role than most authorities on social capital tend to acknowledge. It isn't clear from this what his contributions were. Can those be documented or clarified? (E.g., what exactly, did Jacobs and Bourdeau say about social capital that earns them this listing, and why exactly was Bourdeau's "the first coherent exposition"? (I may not agree with parts of it, but Hanifan's 1916 statement is arguably altogether coherent.)

Finally, the statements about Patrick Hunout's importance in all this also require some further clarity. Perhaps the statement about him in the second paragraph should be included in the next instead, since he seems either to be the source of the SCF conception of social capital, or SCF is his ideological vehicle. Also, the last sentence in this paragraph ends with a phrase that isn't at all clear: "the erosion of the social link in the economically developed countries"? What does that mean? (In general, the notion of "the social link" in Hunout/SCF needs some further clarification.)

It would probably be fair to add that the SCF conception is a far more social psychological (or subjective and mentalistic) conception of social capital than most of the others discussed in paragraph 2 (or any of those discussed in the social capital entry). The statements rejecting a structuralist/network conception of social capital should make that clear.) Hunout appears to stand rather apart from those listed elsewhere in the social capital entry in suggesting the first assumption. (And, in doing so, he seems to preclude much possibility of any possible economic connotation or connection to the "capital" in social capital; such mentalistic (or subjective) conceptions were washed out of most of economics, and in particular, "utility" and capital in the neo-classical revolution of the 19th century.

In fact even though they use the term, Hunout and the SCF might fairly be characterized as more within the sociological communitarian tradition than any social capital theory per se. (Keeping in mind, our role is not to cast judgment on these matters, but to fairly and accurately characterize them.) This seems clear in the "triparte model of social change", for example, which appears not to rely on or relate to social capital at all.

Roger Lohmann 02:43, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Dear Roger,

Thank you for your remarks that were very useful to improve further the article.

I read the Social capital entry. The first paragraph is most strange, and is contradicted by the second. It would need to be corrected and I will perhaps rewrite it in a second stage, time permitting.

Going back to the TSCF article, I made a number of changes, some minor and others more substantial. I rewrote the first paragraph on the history of the concept. There are more precisions on Halifan and on Jacobs who indeed seems to have introduced the concept in an urban and neighbourliness context. Later in text I mentioned that the TSCF conception is a more social psychological or mentalistic conception of social capital than most of the others discussed in paragraph 2 or in the social capital entry. I made a slight rectification to indicate that this definition includes the mental disposition (upstream) and the "capital" aspect (downstream), but suggests that the latter cannot be fully understood without reference to the former.

As for the erosion of the social link I removed this sentence but it means that in the industrial countries the link or bond between people becomes increasingly weaker. The social link or bond has been defined by Hirschi (1969) this way: “elements of social bonding include attachment to families, commitment to social norms and institutions (school, employment), involvement in activities, and the belief that these things are important” (p.16).

Koen Demol 21:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations!

You did it, Koen! Congratulations on the approval of The Social Capital Foundation! (thanks for the reminder on my talk page, too:-) D. Matt Innis 21:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)