User talk:Michael Hardy

Welcome!

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start, and see Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any user or the editors for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! See CZ:Discipline Workgroups to add yourself to whichever author workgroups you choose. -- David Tribe 06:14, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

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Welcome, new editor! We're very glad you've joined us. Here are pointers for a quick start. Also, when you get a chance, please read The Editor Role. You can look at Getting Started and our help system for other introductory pages. It is also important, for project-wide matters, to join the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list. Announcements are also available via Twitter. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any administrator for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and thank you! We appreciate your willingness to share your expertise, and we hope to see your edits on Recent changes soon.

Great to see you here, Michael. I've made you an editor. --Larry Sanger 17:43, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

Thank you. Michael Hardy 20:34, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

A few words about workgroups

We are indeed happy to have you in the community. We would also like to introduce you to Citizendium's Workgroups and encourage you to--

1. Join a workgroup if you haven't already
2. Help us add workgroup category tags to articles, especially any articles you create
3. Help us spread the word about workgroups within the CZ community

What are workgroups? To answer that question, I'd like to give you a quick tour.

• Start by checking the various workgroups we have at CZ: List of Workgroups. This link can also be found in the left navigation-bar in the 2nd box (Project Pages), 3rd link in that box (Workgroups). The Workgroup Home(s) can be found in the 2nd column in the List of Workgroups.

• For the purposes of this tour, please take a look at the Biology Workgroup Home: CZ:Biology_Workgroup.
• Now let's take a look at the first table on the Biology Workgroup Home (below).

Workgroups are no longer used for group communications, but they still are used to group articles into fields of interest. Each article is assigned to 1-3 Workgroups via the article's Metadata.

Biology article	All articles (1,623)	To Approve (0)	Editors: active (1) / inactive (46) and Authors: active (441) / inactive (0)	Workgroup Discussion
	Recent changes	Citable Articles (25)
		Subgroups (12.5)

Checklist-generated categories: Underlinked (753) Cat Check (506) Cleanup (0) Subpage categories: Definitions (1,562) Related Articles (1,441 to check 710) Bibliography (400) External Links (446) Gallery (30) Video (33)

Missing subpage categories: Definitions (34) Related Articles (15) Bibliography (32) External Links (33) Article statuses: 104 Developed (status=1) 673 Developing (status=2) 699 Stub (status=3) 105 External (status=4) 128 Advanced (status 0-1) 801 Nonstub (status 0-2) 1,500 Internal (status 0-3)

• In the 2nd column, find the link that says, "all articles," which lists all articles that users have placed [[Category:Biology Workgroup]] at the bottom of their articles.
• Now click on the "recent changes" link underneath the "all articles" in the 2nd column in the top table. This lists all recent changes in articles that have been tagged [[Category:Biology Workgroup]]. In one glance, you can view all the changes that happened while you were away! Feel free to click on all the links to get an idea how the information for your workgroup is organized. All these lists are populated by articles that have the categories properly placed at the bottom of their pages.

This completes your virtual-tour of CZ workgroups. I hope you can see the usefulness of having all articles in Citizendium tagged properly with your Workgroup categories. Make sure to add the Workgroup category labels to your new articles. This is an important part of the Approval process.

Be sure to join a workgroup and take part in this opportunity to collaborate with others who have similar interests as you. You can see what others are working on in the Workgroup recent changes and join in! Remember, we want you to be bold in your contributions at Citizendium.

To add yourself to a workgroup, use the form [[Category:Education Authors|Smith, Bob]], etc., and add it to your user page. Substitute the proper work group for "Education" in the example, and your name-Last, First for the names in the example.

Do not add yourself to the Editors list, only CZ staff add "Editors" to user pages after proper review of applications is completed. To apply to become an editor, please see Editor Application Review Procedure.

To add a workgroup category tag to an article, use the form [[Category:Education Workgroup]] at the bottom of the article. Substitute in the proper workgroup for "Education" in the example.

If you are from Wikipedia originally, you may want to check out this article:

• Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians

Article upload

Hi, please see [CZ:CZ4WP#Citizendium_is_not_a_mirror]] and CZ:How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles. Thanks! —–Stephen Ewen 14:56, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

Recently uploaded image(s)

Hi. Thanks for contributing to CZ! I hate to have to tell you this but one or more images you recently uploaded are lacking clear copyright data. Please carefully review the image(s) you uploaded while referencing Images Help—Copyrights. Please fix the problem rapidly, as the image(s) will otherwise have to be deleted. Thanks! — Stephen Ewen 18:56, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

See particularly Help:Images#Images_from_Wikipedia.2C_Wikimedia_Commons.2C_Flickr.2C_etc.. Stephen Ewen 19:40, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

page move

Hi Michael, I saw you were asking about page moves. I can do that for you. Do you need one moved? --Matt Innis (Talk) 19:47, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

I think Earth Sciences, with the capital initial "S", should be moved either to earth sciences, with a lower-case initial, or earth science (which term, I seem to recall, was used in the article).

So is it impossible for most authors and editors to move pages? Michael Hardy 20:16, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

I changed it to earth science for you.

We are discussing the issue of allowing users to make moves currently. We had to prevent page changes due to vandalism early on, but that doesn't seem to be such a high priority anymore, so keep an eye out for any change in that policy. --Matt Innis (Talk) 21:28, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

Complex analysis

I notice you have deleted essentially everything I wrote about complex analysis in the complex number article. That's fine, as I really think it belongs in another article, and put it in there at the request of someone else, anyway. I do wonder, though, if you are still making modifications, or should I just remove the section "What about calculus?" It really serves no purpose there, anyway. Greg Woodhouse 15:12, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

I had not realized I'd done that; I'm now wondering if it's a software glitch. I was attempting to do only the things I mentioned in my edit summary. I'll go back and take another look. Michael Hardy 15:29, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

Ekhem, I noticed that my modest reworking of complex number was reverted too (see talk).. While I am fully open to change (and begging every native speaker for copy editing), I'd like to discuss substantial "logical" changes you propose before application. CZ has 0 unexplained revert rule :-) (but I'm taking into account what you've stated above)--AlekStos 17:30, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

Imaginary number

Hi Michael. It's good to see you here. However, this isn't only a social call. I got a bit confused when reading imaginary number, and it seems that your edit has something to do with it. Could you please reply at talk:imaginary number. Cheers, Jitse Niesen 05:36, 21 April 2007 (CDT)

TeX versus non-TeX mathematical notation

I replied on my talk page. --Catherine Woodgold 08:34, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

A comment here was deleted by The Constabulary on grounds of making complaints about fellow Citizens. If you have a complaint about the behavior of another Citizen, e-mail constables@citizendium.org. It is contrary to Citizendium policy to air your complaints on the wiki. See also CZ:Professionalism.

Approval of prime number page

I see that you made an edit to the prime number page shortly before it was approved, and from your edit summary it seems that you considered it an important edit that should be done before the article would be approved. However, David Tribe acted correctly, in my opinion, acting as constable, in puttnig the approval template on the version which had actually be selected by an editor as to-be-approved. For future reference, here are some ideas for things you might be able to do in such a case to prevent an article you consider faulty from being approved. I'm not sure what the procedures are (and they may not all be determined yet) so I'm not sure which of these things would be proper procedure for you acting as a mathematics editor, but here they are as ideas:

• to delete the "ToApprove" template from the talk page of the article
• to add your name as an approving editor and change the nominated version to point to the version with your edit (maybe only acceptable if you're confident that the other editors would approve the edited version)
• to change the nominated version without adding your name as an approving editor (this seems less likely to be a correct procedure but I don't know)
• to change the nominated version, delete the names of the other nominating editors and put your name as sole nominating editor (if you're not sure whether the others would approve of that version; maybe in this case you should also set the scheduled approve date six days into the future (or whatever the standard number of days is)
• just to change the scheduled approve date a couple of days into the future, to allow time for discussion of your edit

I hope these ideas are helpful for future reference. I also had an edit reverted, at complex number, during the approval process; but I don't mind because I think it's important that proper procedure be followed so that readers can be confident that the version they're seeing has actually been approved by an editor. (In this case, mine was a minor edit, anyway.) --Catherine Woodgold 07:27, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

One more suggestion that I was going to make but forgot: you can try to get a new approved version of the article put up as soon as possible, with the part you objected to fixed. If you, Greg Martin and Jitse Niesen can all agree on a new version, the three of you can put if up immediately, I believe. (Jitse Niesen was one of the two approving editors for the page, I believe, although that isn't shown properly on the template yet.) You can take the first step by putting a ToApprove template on the talk page. --Catherine Woodgold 18:40, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

GDP deflator

Dear Dr. Hardy, would you mind taking a look at GDP deflator. Soso Mamukelashvili 12:23, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

Pythagorean Theorem

Yes, speaking about the squares OF the sides is the way that it is taught in high school. As a math major, I was not introduced to the proof by the Ancient Greeks. In addressing a common layman that is reading the article, the explanation was confusing. The illustration helps greatly in showing the concept you are talking about. However, what you refer to as the "modern trendy" definition of the theorem, is a valid and widely used definition and application of the theorem when using numbers. If you were to ask 10 people what the Pythagorean theorem was, 9 would probably say "A squared plus B squared equals C squared" I think that it has value in the article. David Martin 22:34, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

If you ask a class of thirty students what the Pythagorean theorem says, a chorus in unison will say "A squared plus B squared equals C squared." Then you can ask them this: If someone had no idea what the Pythagorean theorem is about, and you tell them it says "A squared plus B squared equals C squared", will they then understand what it's about? If you further interrogate the class you might find someone admitting to knowning that it's about triangles. "Any triangles?", you might then ask them. Eventually someont might say: No: right triangles. This article should try to bring the reader beyond that point. Michael Hardy 22:42, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

I agree completely. I don't disagree that the formal definition and proof should be included or that the scope of the article should go beyond the "high school" definition. In fact, I admitted that I was in error due to not having the illustration to back up what you were trying to demonstrate. However, this article would be incomplete in my eyes, if it did not address the derivation from the proof that, when using real number lengths in a right triangle, the sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. David Martin 22:52, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Alphabet Soup

Great job Michael with the A, B, C index navigation - works really well, and thanks for following through and letting me know. --Ian Johnson 07:43, 31 July 2007 (CDT)

Prime number

Hi Michael. I was wondering whether you would update the url in the ToApprove template on Talk:Prime number/Draft so that the latest edits will appear in the approved version. I'd like to have the addition of positive in the first sentence in Prime number/Draft included; the other changes are not that important. If you do update the url, feel free to add me as an approving editor. Cheers, Jitse Niesen 08:22, 5 August 2007 (CDT)

"which" vs. "that"

Nice to see that there is at least one other person in the world who shares my concern about this, hehe! Keep up the good work! (I just changed one in the lead sentence of Boxing.) Hayford Peirce 13:36, 5 August 2007 (CDT)

Euclid's lemma

Hi Michael, I've just put a proposed update for the proof of Euclid's lemma on its talk page. Let me know what you think. Michael Underwood 13:58, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

22/7 (umm...) "controversy"

I thought the elementary proof that 22/7 > $\pi$ was fascinating, and well worthy of an article or place in an article. But that's not why I'm writing here. The almost reflexive comments from people about whether proofs belong in Citizendium articles, often making absurd claims about proof implying bias or "original research" is the sort of thing that has effectively deterred me from even trying to write mathematics articles. Maybe I shouldn't even be saying this, but when I looked at the talk page on your 22/7 article, it reminded me of the problem all over again.

A thought: Why not have an article about 22/7 that includes both the elementary proof and the fact that 22/7 is the second(?) approximant of the continued fraction expansion? Greg Woodhouse 13:01, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

TeX question

Dear Michael, I'm new to Citizendium (started yesterday) and ran into a LaTeX problem. Since I saw your name on a LaTeX help page I turn to you. But if there are proper channels to turn to please tell me and I won't bother you again. It seems to me that the CZ LaTeX does not recognize \begin{align} (and maybe other \begin{string}'s neither?). Do I see this correctly? Am I supposed to work around it (which is doable)?--Paul Wormer 05:44, 18 August 2007 (CDT)

I'm not sure there is an proper channel, unless you mean for a bug report. I think at some point I'll report the unavailablity of "align" as a bug. I think that's something like bugs@citizendium.org or the like. On Wikipedia I usually worked around it until "align" became avaiable. Some people use the "matrix" environment, which always used center-alignment where left-alignment was appropriate and smashed fractions into something smaller than they should be. So getting "align" certainly helped. Michael Hardy 17:46, 23 August 2007 (CDT)

Subpage names

I moved the civil societies subpages back to their original names since the subpage template will not function correctly if the names are not exact. You should discuss the use of capitalised second word (such as "External Links" vs "External links") with Larry Sanger, since this is a style issue he initiated. It could also be brought up in the forums. It can be changed but there needs to be a discussion about this since if the change is made many other pages need to be moved too. Chris Day (talk) 01:04, 4 September 2007 (CDT)