User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/Experiences at Citizendium

Thomas, this article is totally NOT a CZ article. I will let you move it to an appropriate place in the Forums, along with other material from your User Page if warranted, or I will delete it entirely. Hayford Peirce 19:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

You should definitely read this forum thread.

CZ:Areas for reform is quite the similar, by the way. --Peter Schmitt 19:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Thomas is apparently being unresponsive to my request and now says on his own talk page that there is a 90% chance that he will leave Citizendium. Hope that he doesn't, but in the meantime I am going to delete this article, which, when you think about it, is actually the sort of entry one might find in a Blog, not an Encyclopedia. Thomas doesn't seem to understand that it is the Forums where opinions are expressed, not in Citizendium articles. Hayford Peirce 23:56, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

It would have been sufficient to move it back to his user (talk) space (and delete the redirect) where such material is suitable. (Well, it is still there -- hidden in the history -- but nevertheless.)

By the way, the argument that the two pages are not encyclopedic is not conclusive because the CZ namespace is not the encyclopedia. But it does not really fit in there, either, even though it addresses CZ policy. --Peter Schmitt 00:28, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

As Peter suggests, there are not absolute guidelines for the CZ space. Yes, the Forum would be the more conventional space for this, but I also can understand that the Forums are intuitive and comfortable to some, but not others. (Personally, I used that exact Forum software before I ever came to Citizendium, and didn't like it except for moderated support).

I would like to find a mutually satisfactory resolution. Even though I disagree with some of Tom's ideas, I think his enthusiasm and desire to contribute is real -- as opposed to some people that contributed far less and argued/vandalized far more, I'd like to see that enthusiasm challenged. We can't hemorrhage more people that write content, and that's happening.

Of course, the stalled Ch*r*t*r has absolutely nothing to do with our problems of governance, and we have all seen how congenial a place the Forums are to come and reason together.Howard C. Berkowitz 00:48, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I confess, when I deleted these two articles I hadn't thought to look at this whole CZ:Something or Other business. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Now that I *have* glanced through it, though, I think that Thomas's putting these articles in those particular spots was even *more* egregious than what he did in the first place. Taken as a whole, the CZ:Something or Other articles are the actual *Constitution* of CZ. They were written by the Founding Fathers, and tell us what CZ is supposed to be. It's one thing for one of us Members to go into any one of those articles and make changes to it (be bold, right?), it's another thing to add blog-like material to it in the form of new articles.

Having said that, I am willing to consider any reasonable compromise about Thomas's material. BUT, it will NOT be in the form of a CZ article -- that is *clearly* prescribed by the rules of CZ as they presently exist. Right now, until a new Charter is presented, voted upon, and ratified, we are run by our existing rules. And those rules are outlined in the CZ:Something or Other pages, and I will try to enforce them as best I can.

Whether the Forums move us forward in the construction of a new Charter, Howard, is another matter entirely, and has nothing to do with this particular page or discussion. Whether or not you like the Forums, that is where discussions of matters such as the Charter belong, NOT here. Hayford Peirce 02:39, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Hayford, but while you may have the means to enforce Charter discussion where you want it, you do not have the moral authority. CZ is the place where the Charter draft resides, and where there was an official comment page.

I have been trying to make substantive points about the Charter process to the general Citizenry, keeping them informed of my personal viewpoint. You have complained about my positions on the Forum, which is hardly the position of a neutral moderator -- your role should be to deal with personal attacks. Meg, a Committee member, is leaving. Others are talking seriously about leaving. I believe the Charter could be voted upon without the ME and yet leave room for it to happen.

Please decide on your role -- is it neutrality as a Constable, trying to fill a vacuum, or being a partisan? Howard C. Berkowitz 02:51, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The CZ namespace is meant to present the project, describe its purpose, its rules, etc. It is kind of a manual for the site. It is also an archive of its development. (All this will have to be restructured while reviewing CZ's rules.) The place to discuss current practice is CZ talk. Tom might have put most (or even all) of his comments distributed on appropriately chosen talk pages here, but certainly not on an ordinary CZ page. If he wants to keep them together as "his view" then the correct place would be a subpage of his user page, inviting comments on the corresponding talk page.

(In order to clarify: I noticed this article independently and considered it clearly misplaced before Hayford commented on it and thus was not influenced by his opinion.)

Howard: Your reference to Charter discussion is not valid. Citizens had/have only very limited access to this discussion. Most of it was/is closed to us, while -- on the other hand -- official documentation of the discussion became very rare. It might have been carried out on CZ_talk, but this was not wished by the committee and, moreover, obviously most participants seem to prefer the forum.

--Peter Schmitt 09:04, 29 April 2010 (UTC)