User talk:Anthony.Sebastian: Difference between revisions

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Anything you can do to make it more readable, more interesting, etc. would be appreciated. [[User:Milton Beychok|Milton Beychok]] 04:00, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
Anything you can do to make it more readable, more interesting, etc. would be appreciated. [[User:Milton Beychok|Milton Beychok]] 04:00, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
:Milton, I have a few deadlines related to academic year ending. I took a look at [[Project Apollo]] and will plan to work on it starting sometime in July, though the start of the academic year also puts demands on me.
:Thanks for steering me in the article's direction. The Apollo missions were incredible achievements.  [[User:Anthony.Sebastian|Anthony.Sebastian]] 14:39, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Revision as of 08:39, 22 June 2011

Hourglass drawing.svg Where Anthony lives it is approximately: 18:59

Creating my User Talk Page. --Anthony.Sebastian
Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 13:48, 19 December 2006 (CST)

Current UTC Time: +7 hours
Current UTC Time: 01:59

To Approve articles Diberri citation maker Help Wikiformatting Citizendium Test Wiki CZ:How to use Bugzilla


Biology's next microscope

Hi Tony, I am delighted to see this article transplanted here, since I have myself exchanged microscopes for algorithms recently, and I had enjoyed the paper very much when it came out. I definitely plan to join working on it, though there are a few points to consider (detailed here) on which I would like to invite your feedback. -- Daniel Mietchen 04:53, 5 June 2008 (CDT)

Non-technical intros

I think I like what you did to Epilepsy's introduction. I was hoping nobody would not hammer me too much for starting health articles with a technical perspective for a technical audience. I very much like your anchoring your definition to an existing canonical description such as MedlinePlus. Now the article reaches both audiences (or at least its introduction does).

Thanks, Bob. It always seems best for me at least to try to reach a broad audience (without dumbing down) in the first paragraph, then start advancing from that foundation.

Questions:

1. Do you think a medlineplus introduction followed by MeSH introduction is a good pattern to continue with? I am thinking through whether the MeSH definition contributes now. I still find that MeSH helps me much in naming articles (and will be essential when the day arrives that web resources map to each other).
Yes, if the MeSH definition doesn't get so technical the reader will get little out of it. Epilepsy might be a case in point. We can always 'officialize' after giving nthe reader enoug background for it to make sense.
2. Is it ok to insert a section head labeled "History" prior to "The ancient Greeks recognized epilepsy..."? This would avoid the contents menu being pushed down so far.
Good idea. I went ahead an made the change as you suggested.

--Anthony.Sebastian 12:34, 23 June 2008 (CDT)

Bob - Robert Badgett 12:01, 23 June 2008 (CDT)

If you have a few moments

Anthony, if you have a few moments, please take a look at Ammonia production and let me have any comments you may have on that article's Talk page. Thanks, Milton Beychok 12:15, 23 July 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for your comments on the introduction and I have responded on the article's Talk page. - Milton Beychok 18:38, 23 July 2008 (CDT)

About CZ:Email us an article in word processor format#Nota Bene

The above article section tells newcomers that non-existent articles are in a red font ... which is no longer the case and will lead to confusion. Since you were a major contributor to that article, I thought I would make you aware that it needs to be revised. Regards, Milton Beychok 14:59, 30 July 2008 (CDT)

The color I am currently seeing for blank links is what I would call "light bluish gray" or "light grayish blue". What would you call it? Milton Beychok 20:25, 31 July 2008 (CDT)

About changing the default color for blank articles

Anthony, I believe that you have to contact either Larry Sanger or Greg Sabino Mullane‎ who is one of the technical staff. When I asked Greg to alphabetize the watchlist edit page, he did so very promptly. However, for the changing the default color of the blank links, he may have to get approval from Larry. Milton Beychok 18:51, 3 August 2008 (CDT)

Endorsement Letter

Hey--

I just read over the academic Endorsement Letter. It looks good!

Do you need help putting together a list of biologists to mail the letter to? What's the procedure for mailing these out? (for the academic letter, as well as my letter to bloggers) Should we be mailing these from our personal email addresses, or are we going to send these from some official Citizendium address?

I think we should try to get these letters out as soon as possible. Let me know if there's any way I can help.

Thanks, Brian P. Long 18:53, 12 September 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for your offer to help. I'll ask Supten and Daniel to respond, as they know more than I do. --Anthony.Sebastian 19:00, 12 September 2008 (CDT)
Thanks, Brian. What we need with respect to the letter is getting CZ:Biology_Workgroup/Biology_Week/Academic_recruitment off the ground (it's currently Cornell only) by scanning the web for publicly available email addresses of biologists. The best way perhaps is to do so via listings of editorial boards of major biology journals. For PLoS Biology, the list is here, for PLoS ONE here (xls sheet). The email addresses can then be found via a quick search in Google, Google Scholar or PubMed. As for the sender of the emails, I would prefer to use a Citizendium address but we will have to inquire with Larry about that. -- Daniel Mietchen 03:26, 13 September 2008 (CDT)
Small addendum: The editorial board of Biology Direct is here. -- Daniel Mietchen 03:45, 13 September 2008 (CDT)

user plan

User:Anthony.Sebastian/Userplan What is wrong with it? It looks fine to my eyes. Chris Day 15:02, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

You should probably update this one for biology week.  :) Chris Day 10:29, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

Right note, wrong person?

Please see User_talk:Aleta_Curry#cz-wikiformat - I don't think this was meant for me. Aleta Curry 23:02, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

ATP pools

Image

Hi Tony, the recent picture you uploaded is not that accurate. There is no common pool of ATP. A more accurate drawing would look like the following diagram (excuse the rough draft). All the chloroplast ATP is used to fix carbon dioxide using the Calvin cycle (it also uses the NADPH from photosynthesis too). The ATP for plant cellular function is indirectly generated via the export of the carbohydrate from the chloroplasts, via TCA cycle (orange; and all the NADH from here too), via the electron transport chain. Carbohydrate is made in excess and then exported to non photosynthetic cells. Was your figure from a book? I'm not sure we want to give the false impression of a common pool of ATP. Chris Day 16:38, 2 October 2008 (CDT)

Hi Chris. Thanks for keeping an eye on me as I try to understand photosynthesis by writing about it.
I see from your discussion that the figure I drew gives the impression of a common cellular pool of ATP, and therefore misleads. Your figure much better, and could replace mine and with a clearer caption.
Would you mind if I worked with your figure, make some emendations, let you review before uploading? If okay, will you send me the jpeg, at Anthony_Sebastian@msn.com.
Thanks again for helping with this. --Anthony.Sebastian 17:11, 2 October 2008 (CDT)
Sure you can work with that if you like although it is a very rough draft that only took ten minutes to pile together. I'm not sure how you do your original, which is beautiful, but I thought you might be able to use the concepts in mine to modify your own. Chris Day 17:33, 2 October 2008 (CDT)
After I made my drawing, I regretted not making it more schematic, rather than trying to represent the leaf, the chloroplast and the mitochondrion semi-realistically. I had resolved to draw subsequent figures more cartoony, like yours. I like your figure and would like to elaborate on it somewhat, and let it set the theme for the figures to come in the article. I could start over, but I really like yours. --Anthony.Sebastian 18:27, 2 October 2008 (CDT)

Are you still thinking of drawing a schematic diagram along these lines? I could draw a better version if you'd like something like this. Let me know if there are other additions you'd like to add. Chris Day 03:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

images

I'm not sure I have a solution to your request. The best is one of two options.

You can search by key word:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:NewImages

Or browse by images that indivduals have uploaded:

Example here for Paul Wormer for last 50. Or even the last 500. This latter one might be MORE useful since you can then do a key word search on that search page.

Hope one of these is useful. Chris Day 21:19, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Anthony, my user page at User:Milton Beychok has links to my "Image Gallery1" and "Image Gallery2" which have about 116 image that I've uploaded. I don't know if any of them are what you seek ... but you are welcome to use any of them. Milton Beychok 00:38, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Quotations

None of your proposed code results in right indentation as viewed on my platform and browsers (both of which are CSS compliant browsers).

The reason is because you are adding styling to the P tag within the blockquote tag. The blockquote tag produces a box (which is not right indented on my platform/browser combination) and when a paragraph is placed inside the blockquote box, it fills up the outer box. If the outer box is not indented, the inner box (by itself) won't be. There is no reason to use the P tag anyway. The mediawiki software automatically creates new paragraphs.

We shouldn't even be talking about the code. Any proposal should be made in descriptive terms only ("indented 5 to 10 percent on both right and left", for example).

Actual coding should take place at the global style sheet level. In-line styling should be completely avoided so as to not lock ourselves into a particular style. The only thing the authors would add is:

<BLOCKQUOTE> . . . insert text here . . . </BLOCKQUOTE> 

Nothing could be simpler than to add the unadorned HTML tag (except to use the ":" of course). Do you understand why this should be handled at the global style sheet level? This is not a trivial point. It gets to the whole purpose of style sheets (and wikis, by the way).

Jim Perry

I agree with you, Jim. On the forum, I stressed that I wanted to experiment with different 'appearances' of a blockquote. I think we cannot provide the descriptive terms for that appearance without looking at examples, which necessarily require local coding. Once we reach consensus on an 'appearance', the coders can implement it on the global style sheet.
I'll trying taking out the 'p' tag.
I get left-and-right indents on IE7, FF3, Opera, Safari, and Chrome. OS: Vista Ultimate.
Try Theoretical biology --Anthony.Sebastian 01:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Anthony, thanks for fleshing out the History section of the Meteorology article. Milton Beychok 00:19, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Milton, happy to contribute in a minor way. Didn't want my Italian countrymen (Torricelli, Galileo) to miss their credit — my family name originally 'Sebastiano', and I'm FBI (full-blooded Italian) — and felt John Dalton's pioneering work also creditable. Admire your work and good-humored forum posts. --Anthony.Sebastian 01:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Hippocrates and Paracelsus

Hi Anthony, could I bother you to take a look at this discussion on the Homeopathy article. Your guidance would be greatly appreciated. The article is close to approval (in the next two day hopefully), but this needs some attention. Thanks in advance. D. Matt Innis 23:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Signed Article

I just moved the addendum. As for the table, your idea works well. I did it the long hand way. I wonder if there is a converter for HTML to wiki out there somewhere. I'd be surprised if some young gun at wikipedia has not attacked that problem already. Chris Day 22:13, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

With regard to preventing further edits beyond formatting there is currently no mechanism in place other than courtesy to the original author. I would hope that would be enough but if necessary we could protect all signed articles. Chris Day 15:36, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Good thinking. Doesn't it just seem reasonable that if someone signs an article, it needs to stay in the version that he/she signed it? D. Matt Innis 16:56, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree with you and Matt, to protect all signed articles from editing. However, if I, or another editor, sees a need for formating changes, how does one open a protected article temporarily? Ask a constable? And who would see to it that no content changes crept in? And how re-protect after fixing formats?
Can anyone protect or unprotect an article?
Do signed articles has Talk pages, so that users can discuss as aspects of it? --Anthony.Sebastian 18:30, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Life wordle...

...I just caught a typo, "Inteactions"...thought you'd want to know. --Larry Sanger 19:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, if Anthony wrote it, it probably is a real word, or it is now! D. Matt Innis 19:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to let you know-

I finally got around to Allan Ramsay (1686–1758)....

Sorry I'm an erratic correspondent, life is about splicing time.Gareth Leng 13:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Terrific. Your productivity astounds. Keep on splicing. --Anthony.Sebastian 22:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Approval process for Animal

Mr. Sebastian, I've been working on the Animal article, and I've just finished up its draft. Could read it over and see if you could initiate the approval process for it? I'm pretty proud of it, and I'd love to see it garner approved status. Sincerely, Joshua Choi 02:41, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Re paper submitted by Stanne-ken C.F.M. Buckens via CZ:Wiki-converting

The paper submitted by Stanne-ken about "Human nitric oxide synthesaase" is not in my field of expertise at all. However, I did scan it and it appears to be a very well-written article. It has a problem which will be very difficult to overcome. It has numerous drawings that are an integral part of the paper and are needed to understand the article ... all of which were taken from various published papers by various other people. According to our current rules about images, we are limited in uploading images to those where we contact the original authors and get their written (or emailed) permission to use them. It is going to be very hard and time-consuming to do that ... and the article really needs them.

It might be a good idea if somehow there were a way to make prospective submitters to CZ:Wiki-converting aware that we need either original self-made drawings/photos or they must furnish permission to use drawings/photos copied from sources published by other people. I just wanted to alert you to this problem. Milton Beychok 02:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

an approval

Milton Beychok has nominated the article about drugs banned from the Olympics for approval. He's a chemistry editor, but the article is also in the Sports and Biology Workgroups. The limit for the number of workgroups an article can be listed in is three, but I think Health Sciences would also be appropriate for that article. If you're comfortable with the article, I'd like to ask you to be a co-approver as an editor in the Biology Workgroup who just happens to be an editor in Health Sciences as well. What do you think? --Joe (Approvals Manager) 02:11, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Approval nomination of Drugs banned from the Olympics

Hi, Anthony. Please let me know if you are satisfied with David Volk's revisions of the article in response to your comments/questions so that I may then change the version to be approved (in the MetaData template). Thanks, Milton Beychok 19:53, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Now that you've decided to co-approve: All you have to do is go to the article's Metadata template, scroll down to where you see my name at "TA editor = Milton Beychok" and just beneath that enter your name at "ToA editor 2 = ". That's all that is needed. I will change the Metadata page so that the latest version becomes the version to be approved. Thanks and regards, Milton Beychok 00:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, Anthony! --Joe (Approvals Manager) 02:14, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


steroid

Anthony, I would appreciate any comments about steroid. I think is it very close to approvable, but it may need more medical use coverage. David E. Volk 19:09, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I have been using a freeware program WinDrawChem to draw chemical structures since I no longer have ChemDraw. It crashes sometimes, but I don't want to fork over good money for chemdraw since I rarely need it at work. David E. Volk 14:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

We need feedback

Anthony, please look at This thread in the forums. We need some feedback in that thread. Milton Beychok 06:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Scientific method

We need three editors there anyway, so please sign up if you feel it's ready, and check back shortly before approval to see whether you can OK any of the changes made till then. I will do so too. --Daniel Mietchen 11:49, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Will do. Anthony.Sebastian 19:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Please check back again to approve the latest changes (mainly formatting). Thanks! --Daniel Mietchen 08:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Chemical elements

Anthony, as far as I'm concerned you can put your sandbox version into main space. --Paul Wormer 12:20, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Paul. I hope as time permits, you will continue to collaborate on the article. Anthony.Sebastian 19:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, Anthony, that I did not answer at once - I have been away and offline. The introduction looks quite good to me. (I have not yet read all of the article.) Of course, you do not need my permission to put it on the main article - I have just joined the discussion (and I am no chemist). (And I also think that Milton did not "prohibit" changes of the article -- he was just angry that frequent changes made following the discussion difficult.)
If you allow me, I want to write down a few minor remarks on the new version:
I may be wrong, but I think that it is too strong to have one sense against a second sense (I already said this) because these two senses are closely related. If "narrow" and "wide" is not a good choice, maybe there is another way to express this.
Peter, I used the word 'sense' in its strict lexicographic meaning, viz., "one of the meanings of a word or phrase" (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed.). The phrase 'chemical element' has two meanings, as stated by the IUPAC, i.e., two 'senses'. So I believe the explication of one 'sense' in the first paragraph and that of the second 'sense' in the second paragraph in keeping with strict linguistic standards. Actually the two senses refer to two different ways of 'conceptualizing' chemical element, the first as a species of atoms, the second as a substance composed solely of a single species of atoms. Related, certainly, but conceptually different. Indeed, we ought to use 'elementary substance' instead of 'chemical element' in a second sense, but chemists usually go with 'chemical element'. Anthony.Sebastian 02:46, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I am not a native speaker, but to me "conceptualized" sounds a little artificial in this sentence.
"always appear in nature bound most commonly to oxygen atoms" Would "in nature always are bound to other elements, most commonly to oxygen atoms." be better?
I'll rewrite the sentence along those lines. Anthony.Sebastian 02:46, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
In the section title on history, quotes around "chemical element" would be natural for me.
is "definitional consensus" a good formulation?
I'll go back and re-look at both. Anthony.Sebastian 02:46, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
"one cannot know whether future technology will provide a chemical method to further simplify a presumed 'pure' substance" Is this really a possibility? I am not sure, but - as I said - I am not a chemist.
Who knows what the future will bring in that regard? Anthony.Sebastian 02:46, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
But all this should not stop you from moving the page to the article. Peter Schmitt 23:33, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your challenging thoughts. I hope you will keep them coming. Anthony.Sebastian 02:46, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Archived Talk:Chemical elements

Since Caesar had not yet done it, I did the archiving. Regards, Milton Beychok 17:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Archiving Talk:Chemical elements

  • Use search box in left-hand panel to search for: Talk:Chemical elements/Archive X
  • That takes you to a page that says: There is no page titled "Talk:chemical elements/Archive X". You can create this page.
    • Click on create this page
  • That takes you to the edit page of the new archive page entitled: Talk:Chemical elements/Archive X
    • At the very top of that edit page, enter this template: {{Archive box|auto=long}}
    • Then save this page (but remember the name!).
  • Go to the edit page of: Talk:Chemical elements
    • Select and copy all of the contents that you want to archive
  • Go back to the new archive page: Talk:Chemical elements/Archive X
    • Paste in the contents that you copied from Talk:Chemical elements and then save the new archive page
  • Go back to edit page of: Talk:Chemical elements
    • Delete all of the contents that you copied to the new archive page
    • At the very top of the edit page, enter this template: {{Archive box|auto=long}} and save the page. Your are now finished.

The X in the first line above can be 1, 2, 3, ..... etc.

To archive your own user talk page, start by searching for: User talk:Anthony.Sebastian/Archive X

I hope this is clear. Regards, Milton Beychok 20:23, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Milton, thank you for taking your time to explain the archiving process. Your algorithm seems quite clear to me. I will let you know the results of my trying it out. I would have never figured out the procedure on my own, and I could not find help in the usual places to look. Much obliged. Anthony.Sebastian 21:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
The first time I did it, it took me about 2 hours before I finally figured it out. Milton Beychok 21:43, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

RE: Reference 1 of Chemical elements

Anthony, since you just corrected reference 2, would you also take a look a look at reference 1? As it now stands, the IUPAC link in reference 1 sends us to an IUPAC home page that has nothing about the definition of chemical elements ... nor does it have any pointers or links on where to find such information. I can only assume that at one time it was a pertinent reference ... perhaps the IUPAC website has been re-arranged since then ... but, as of now, reference 1 is not a pertinent reference. Thanks in advance, Milton Beychok 05:32, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Milton, thanks for keeping me honest. Will fix.
BTW: Okay to include not excessively long annotations to the citations, for convenience and/or edification of reader, even though you believe the references speak for themselves? You can always tell me which ones to delete/amend, so you won't have to do the work. Anthony.Sebastian 22:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I think that annotations of no more than about 2-3 lines of text would usually be sufficient ... but I don't think we should set a hard and fast limit. If I see one that I think needs to be shortened, I will let it be known. Milton Beychok 00:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. Anthony.Sebastian 00:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Removed ref #1 & modified ref #2 to accommodate. Anthony.Sebastian 00:54, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Approval, R.E.M. page

Hi, Anthony, I saw a note from May that you were working on the R.E.M. entry I created in the Summer 0f '08. I'd like to check in on the progress of this--I'd love to see it marked as "approved" as soon as possible. Thanks Jeff

Re Talk:Photosynthesis

Hi, Anthony:

Please see my responses to your comments on the subject Talk page. Also, it would be most useful if you read the discussion about excessive annotations on the forums here. It would appear that there is a consensus about excessive annotations. Regards, Milton Beychok 04:03, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Photosynthesis image

Anthony, that image you just added to the Photosynthesis article is excellent! And it would be even better if the white space around the image were reduced ... especially the white space around on the left-hand side. If you wish, I could easily do that for you. Milton Beychok 05:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Milton, thanks for calling the 'whitespace' issue to my attention in the Photosynthesis image, and thanks for offering to fix. I needed to learn for myself how to fix, plus I wanted to make a few minor changes to the image itself, so I decided to give it a try myself. See what you think. Anthony.Sebastian 00:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Anthony, filling in the white space at the top with color adds a nice touch. However, when I suggested reducing the white space, I meant removing it (rather than simply coloring it) so as to reduce the overall size of the drawing. If you will look here on my Sandbox page, I have uploaded a test revised version of your drawing that is exactly the same as yours except that I reduced the size of the uploaded file from your 960x720 to 689x573. That permits the image in the article itself to be reduced from a width of 550px to 450px and still be quite legible.
If you like the test revised version, let me know. I will then speedy delete the one in my sandbox and simply use it to upload a new version of your image retaining your name and your credit line as the originator. It would only take me a few minutes to do that.
Regards, Milton Beychok 03:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Milton, I do like your test revised version, but if I let you do the edit for me, I will not learn how to fix it for the next illustration. Still, I appreciate your effort to help, and you are helping. So I tried another version, this time cropping to eliminate ALL the colored-whitespace in the original, using my image editor. See for yourself here. I resisted resizing the image to ensure good readability. Neverthless, when inserting the image in the text, a narrow rim of whitespace appears in the final. It seems CZ puts it there. I tried it with your test.jpg, same thing, a narrow rim of whitespace. Check it out here, let me know what you think. Anthony.Sebastian
Anthony, what really helped me to reduce the image width from 960px down to 689px was that I shortened the line of text ending in "glyceraldehyde" by moving the word "glyceraldehyde" to the beginning of the next line of text. That then allowed me to move the 4 colored tabs at the top closer together and reduce the width considerably. Take another look at my test image and perhaps you might consider doing the same thing yourself. Meanwhile, I will wait awhile before speedy deleting my test image ... just in case you night want to try emulating it. Milton Beychok 04:42, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Milton, good idea, playing with the line length. I'll try it as soon as I can get back to work. Thanks for your your patient guidance. Anthony.Sebastian 05:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Tony, I just checked the two images and i have two minor points. In the Image Enhanced_overview_ps_01.jpg you call the dark reactions light non-dependent. It's usually referred to as light independent. In the image Overview_ps_09.jpg I think I would say that "excess oxygen is released to the atmosphere". Remember that the oxygen is also used for respiration, hence the carbon and light compensation points where the transition from oxygen consumption to oxygen release is observed. Chris Day 04:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

photosynthesis

I hope you have found my edits useful. Glad to see you're still plugging away at getting this article going. I assume your major goal here is a review of photosynthesis in all organisms. Are you planning to compare and contrast? Chris Day 03:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Chris, very useful, as was Peter's retake on the lede. All types of photosynthesis will need covering, and organism-specific mechanisms, too -- as soon as I fill my knowledge base. Anthony.Sebastian 03:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Wot? Wat!

Sending a quick ‘hello’ out to all of you who wanted a weekend write-a-thon. Also, a nudge, push, and a shove to all those who haven’t made it out in a while. This Sunday, 10th January, is your Big Chance. Party theme is ‘stubs’. Now, what could be easier? Write about anything you want! (At least come on over and say ‘hi’—we’ve all been much too quiet lately and I rather miss everybody.) Aleta Curry 21:20, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Good catch, Anthony

Good catch of the freezing point discussion in the main text of the Water article ... after all of the fuss about including it in the properties table. Milton Beychok 02:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. And your note good about unmeaureability of water's freezing point. A section on 'supercooled water' would be cool. Anthony.Sebastian 03:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
As indicated on the Talk page, Daniel Mietchen is an expert on that subject. Why not approach him about writing a section on supercooled water? Milton Beychok 04:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Will do. Thanks. Anthony.Sebastian 04:21, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for starting Oxidation

Anthony, thanks and see my response to you on my Talk page. Milton Beychok 00:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

About the first two references in Oxidation

Anthony, from what I can see, reference 2 is simply an English translation of a later edition of reference 1. In essence they are both the same book, one in French and one in English. Please consider combining them both in one reference or choosing the English version only. Milton Beychok 03:33, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I'll do that. Anthony.Sebastian 03:41, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


Biological production of Ammonia

Hi, Anthony:

I was not aware that there were any methods for the large-scale biological production of ammonia. If you decide to write Ammonia production (biology), I would be interested in reviewing it. Milton Beychok 23:41, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Just curious about the Life article

Anthony, why is it that the Life article has no mention of the role played by respiration inhaling of air, in humans and all other animals, to obtain the oxygen needed to sustain animal life? I should think the article would benefit by discussion of that. Regards, Milton Beychok 06:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)


Good pick-up, Milton. The reason I did not mention oxygen uptake relates to the primary goal of the article, namely to describe those characteristics of living things that all living things possess in common. From lede:

We take as our theme the definition of life given by Nobel prizewinning cellular/molecular biologist, Christian De Duve: "Life is what is common to all living beings".

More on that in the lede.

The point about excluding oxygen uptake relates to the existence of living things, microorganisms specifically, that do not require oxygen to sustain their living, with some species unable to tolerate oxygen and die of oxygen poisoning. The latter biologists refer to as obligate anaerobes.

Anaerobes still generate energy from energy-rich substrates in a stepwise process through electron transfers along a 'respiratory' chain, but the final electron-acceptor is not oxygen, but some other oxidant, such as sulfate.

Nevertheless, others may raise the same question you did, so Life should anticipate it. I'll work on that.

Thanks for calling the issue to my attention. You may noticed that the draft version of Life has developed the article much beyond the approved version. After a little more exposition and some clean-up work, I'd lke to see it replace the current approved version.

Yours collegially, Anthony. Anthony.Sebastian 16:25, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

EXpansion of the Nitrogen cycle article

Anthony, I just want to acknowledge the good work by Thomas Sulcer and you in expanding the Nitrogen cycle article.Milton Beychok 05:42, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Please join with me in urging Hayford not to resign

Anthony, see my plea to Hayford not to resign as Constable (on his Talk page). Please join me! Milton Beychok 20:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

sans comic sans

The new style of the quoted text in the intro to Life looks better.

I agree. Thanks for the prod. —Anthony.Sebastian 03:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Did you mean to have the three quotes (Morowitz to Sagan) all indented to the right by 60%? Chris Day 02:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I intended the three "quotes" to appear as epigraphs. I thought to indent all epigraphs indented to right 60%; see other sections. Short epigraph texts will not hit right margin. Need better system for epigraphs. —Anthony.Sebastian 03:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Possibly we could have them in a box so that the text would wrap around, thus avoiding the extensive white space? Would that work for you, or is the white space what you had intended? Chris Day 05:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Another approach, I just noticed this on the Gordon Brown page. I think Nik Gardner designed it. Chris Day 06:29, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Tried, looks good, but my selected font, Gill Sans MT, disappears after the first quote. Can you fix code so font stays for all three quotes? Anthony.Sebastian 16:17, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I'll try. Chris Day 16:26, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
OK, I just played around with it and i see that the font style only kicks in for the text that is indented. I added the appropriate colons to get it to work but that then has the disadvantage of being indented a little too far. I assume there is something other than a colon that can be used that precludes the need to indent. I'll look/ask around and see if anything better comes up. Chris Day 16:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Me again! I tried adding three cells, one for each quote and that works better. Chris Day 16:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Day-genius at work! Anthony.Sebastian 04:13, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Illustrations wanted?

Hello! I noticed that you changed the main page to call for illustrators. I am eager to start illustrating for Citzendium, but I find it hard to know where to begin. Is there a central place for illustrations, such as a 'requested' list which you could refer me to? Johan A. Förberg 22:32, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Good question, Johan. I'll start a forum topic for suggestions how to implement the whole process. For now, you could send out announcement on the mailing list indicating your interest: citizendium-l@lists.purdue.edu. Anthony.Sebastian 03:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Some creative formatting?

I've generally been hesitant to get outside standard markup, but, in Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, at least the "Passing of the Armies" quote seems to cry for it, and possibly his decision at Little Round Top. Would you care to take a crack at it? Howard C. Berkowitz 22:29, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Surely, Howard, I'll redo all the blockquotes for your review. May nto get to till Fri., as wife's dragging me to cultural events in S.F. that I cannot escape. If energy permits, might get to it tonight. Interesting article. —Anthony.Sebastian 15:09, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
As to the article, Chamberlain, I think, is among the least known great Americans, truly a Renaissance man.
As to time, I understand -- I'm only going in here as a respite. While herding cats is a classic metaphor, there should be one for herding veterinarians, as I juggle tertiary and secondary care specialists, labs, compounding pharmacies, and drug manufacturers in providing home palliative and, frankly, critical care -- which seems to be effective. Unfortunately, I assume your fluid balance expertise begins once the fluids are in the patient; shall we say a 5 ml tid po dose is more likely to drown?
I'd trade Cape Cod for SF anytime. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:34, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, Cape Cod, a Mecca of cultural activity. Anthony.Sebastian 18:29, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
It's actually not that terrible for culture, but the closest medical library is Boston. Anytime you need a free volunteer that gets at least database access...Howard C. Berkowitz 06:45, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Howard, I finished reformatting the blockquotes in Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain this morning. See if they meet with your approval. If you want a slightly larger font-size, let me know.
The code I use for blockquotes:
<blockquote> <p style="margin-left: 2.0%; margin-right: 6%; font-size: 0.99em; font-family: Gill Sans MT, Trebuchet MS;">quote<ref name=…/></p> </blockquote> The nowiki's in the editor, not part of the code.
Thanks. It looks better; I want to mull it a bit and get some other opinions.

Nephrology subgroup

Being bold, I've been creating a number of subgroups, including veterinary medicine, the subspecialties of internal medicine, assorted computing topics, etc. By and large, I see each of them as something that could be used to recruit in a focused mailing list, professional group, blog, etc. Feel absolutely free to take CZ: Nephrology subgroup and perhaps put some text on its home page; I'm much more comfortable, say, in pharmacology, ID or cardiology, and, unfortunately, in veterinary oncology. As I tell people, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on clinical computers.

My sense is that the recruiting pitches should take place once the Charter is approved and we at least have the EC/MC elections starting, making a clear differentiation from WP. Nevertheless, I hope that happens soon. I've also not been certain how much the subgroups should be clinical in orientation.

Incidentally, if one were to approach nephrologists, what is the collective noun for groups of them? Flow? Capsule? Tubule? Osmotic balance? Howard C. Berkowitz 06:52, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, Howard. Groups of nephrologists: jokingly, 'nephrons', as in, "Perhaps one of the nephrons in the audience would like to comment." 'Nephrologists' for all, 'dialyzers', 'nephroedocrinologists', etc.
Well, I have been known to ask if any orthopedists were in the audience. If anyone so identified, I promised to speak slowly.
BTW: How do you create subgroups? Anthony.Sebastian 02:17, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
(don't look at this in edit mode)
Read CZ: Subgroups
  • Create Template: XXX Subgroup, with the only contents {{subgroup|subgroup name|[up to four workgroups separated by |]}}
  • Create CZ: XXX subgroup, with {{XXX subgroup}} the only thing in the file. On saving, you'll have a banner. Most are filled automatically, but when you first open "All Articles", for example, you need to put {{XXX subgroup}} in it. The "main article" has to match the name (e.g., nephrology for CZ: Nephrology subgroup.
  • For articles you want in up to 3 subgroups, put the subgroup name under sub1=, etc.
  • Jog the main article. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:57, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

The Image:Water molecule 3D.svg

Anthony, I know that the subject image was obtained from Wikimedia Commons back in 2007 ... probably before Stephen Ewen created the the upload templates, wizards and the requirement that images from Wikimedia Commons and Flickr needed to have: (1) the real name of the original author, (2) to be licensed with same license as in the Commons or Flickr, and a credit line to be created. All of those requirements are lacking in the subject image ... and it may get CZ into trouble some day. Please take a look at the file for the subject image and see if you can somehow find the information needed to satisfy those three requirements. I suspect that (2) and (3) will be easy to do, but (1) may require writing an email to the user name of the author and asking him for his real name. His user name is Dbc334 and he appears to be from Slovenia. He can be emailed by going to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dbc334 and scrolling downward in the left-hand navigation column. Milton Beychok 08:00, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Milton. I'll remove the image from the article, temporally, replace after meeting requirements for its use. Perhaps I'll try drawing an original for us. Anthony.Sebastian 21:55, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
Milton, I found a public domain drawing showing the 3-D water molecule, a drawing that provides more information. See Water.
See Image:Water molecules lg nsf gov.jpg. Better image. Anthony.Sebastian 01:53, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I would appreciate your comments

Anthony, I have just written a new article and the title will be Smog when I upload it into the article namespace. It is currently in my sandbox at User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox.

I know that you are probably not an expert on the subject. However, I would very much appreciate your review of it and giving me any comments, additions, deletions, typo corrections, or revisions you care to offer on my sandbox talk page. I am fairly sure that there must be some parts which could be better written from the viewpoint of clarity and understanding.

Thanks in advance, Milton Beychok 02:25, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The Essential oils article needs a complete review and rework

Anthony, this article is a WP import which has never been brought up to snuff as a CZ article. Please take a look at my comment at Talk:Essential oils and see if this is an article you could undertake to improve and upgrade. Milton Beychok 03:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Anthony, thanks very much for getting started on this chore. Milton Beychok 01:58, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

A suggestion about Essential oils

Anthony, this is merely a suggestion ... please consider it:

(1) Create a subpage (sandbox) of your user page. Then go back in the history of Essential oils before either I or you made any edits, copy all of the article's edit page and paste it into that subpage or sandbox. That then provides you with a copy of the article as it stood before any of our recent edits.

(2) Then, in the current article, completely delete all of the material commented out with <!-- and -->. In that way, the edit page will be much more comprehensible to all of us ... and yet you have a copy of the commented out material in your sandbox for reference if you need it.

What do you think of that approach? Milton Beychok 20:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, Milton. I'll try to accomplish that today or tomorrow. Anthony.Sebastian 20:58, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

CZ Authors

Anthony, by accident I noticed that you changed your "CZ Authors" category entry. You are now listed under "A" in the alphabetical list. --Peter Schmitt 23:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Peter, I didn't 'change' the entry, I tried adding it, to see if I would show up in both the "A" and "S" alphabetical list. Didn't work. Fixed now.
Had thought about Aleta's question re easy way to find someone's user page when, say, she only remembered the first name. But experiment didn't work. Thanks for alerting me. Anthony.Sebastian 23:22, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
In the forum I pointed to the following Special (all pages / prefix) link User:Anthony.
Cool! —Anthony.Sebastian 00:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
By the way, I noted for the first time that you are not "Anthony Sebastian" but "Anthony.Sebastian". --Peter Schmitt 23:32, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Early on, in 2006, when I first joined CZ, some problem arose with "Anthony Sebastian"; the way out, go with "Anthony.Sebastian". I think the system still harbors some confusion, but where I cannot remember; in some stat report, I think. —Anthony.Sebastian 00:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

You've been Nominated!

Someone has nominated you for a position in the new Citizendium. They have noticed you're dedication to the project and like what they see. To be listed on the ballot for the position, it is necessary that you accept the nomination on the [[CZ:Nomination page|Nomination page]. Just place accept next to your name along with the four tildes. The nomination period will close at midnight October 7 (UTC). Article 54 of the new charter details the requirements:

Article 54

  • In conjunction with the Declaration of the Editor-in-Chief regarding the effectivity of this Charter, there shall be a call for nominations for the following offices: Managament Council (five seats), Editorial Council (seven seats), Managing Editor (one), Ombudsman (one). This shall be the effective date of the Charter.
  • Any Citizen may nominate candidates for these positions.
  • Nominations shall be collected and collated by the Chief Constable.
  • Nominations shall be accepted no more than fourteen days after the effective date of the charter; the ballot shall be available starting on the twentieth day after the effective date of the charter; the election shall be completed no more than twenty-eight days after the effective date of the charter; all elected officials shall begin their term of office on the thirtieth day after the effective date of the charter.
  • Only candidates who accept their nomination shall be eligible to appear on the ballot. Nominated candidates can accept nominations for no more than two official functions. Accepting a nomination serves as a declaration of commitment, in the case of being elected, to fulfill this function until the limit of the term.
  • All positions shall be elected by a simple majority of the voting citizenry. In the case of a tie, an immediate run-off election shall be held.
  • In the event that a candidate has been elected for two functions, the candidate shall declare which one he or she accepts within three days of announcement of the election results. In the event that such a declaration has not been made during this period, the candidate shall be considered elected for the position for which the nomination was accepted first. The same procedure applies to a reserve member that becomes elected by a seat being vacated this way.

If you would like to make a statement to help voters, click the "Statement" link to the right of your name.

Thanks again for the commitment you're making to assure that Citizendium becomes the premier quality online source we all have envisioned.

D. Matt Innis 13:24, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

UN

Thanks a lot for starting to fix those table widths! I had copied the col- codes from another article, and now I can copy your additions as I go. Cheers! David Finn 07:02, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

One question - you changed the headers from subheadings to main. I have kept with that style, but will that cause future problems if more is added to the catalogs page beyond the members A-Z? David Finn 11:50, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
Hadn't considered that. Try going back to ===...=== level, see what happens. I'll check on it tomorrow. ````

My "boilerplate" request for permission to use images

Hi, Anthony:

In the forums, you asked for a copy of my boilerplate request for permission to use images. See Image talk:Burrup Fertilizers' plant.jpg/Permission where my original email is in bold font at the bottom of the page. Above it is a follow-up email I sent them, and above that is their response granting permission to use the photo. If you will look at the image file itself at Image:Burrup Fertilizers' plant.jpg you will note that the license I chose meets their requirements. Also, the note section of the file summary form reiterates their constraint.

I have used this boilerplate request as a starting point over 40 times or so and I have gotten favorable responses about 80% of the time. I say "as a starting point" because sometimes I request more than one photo and sometimes it is a drawing that I request. Also, on a few occasions, I had not as yet written the article the image was be used for and hence could not point them to reading the finished article.

Hope you find my boilerplate useful. Milton Beychok 07:59, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

A List of Image Licensing Templates

Tony, on occasion. I want to change the license I selected for an image ... but our CZ Image Wizard does not provide a way to get back to the drop-down menu of license choices. However, one can click on the image file Edit tab and then scroll down to the section titled as "License" where the licensing template is located and revise it by using one of these templates:

  • {{PD}} or {{PD|author}}     Public Domain granted by creator/author
  • {{PD|old}}     Public Public Domain because copyright has expired
  • {{PD|usgov}}     Public Public Domain because image is a work of the U.S. government
  • {{CC|zero|1.0}}     Public Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License (the image author permanently releases the copyright and all rights to the Public Domain)a
  • {{CC|by|2.0}}     Public Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License
  • {{CC|by-sa|2.0}}     Public Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License
  • {{CC|by-sa|2.5}}     Public Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License
  • {{CC|by-sa|3.0}}     Public Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
  • {{CC|by-nc|2.0}}     Public Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License
  • {{CC|by-nc-nd|2.0}}     Public Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License
  • {{CC|by-nc-sa|2.0}}     Public Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License
  • {{GNU|FDL|2.1|+}}     Public GNU Free Documentation License v2.1 or later
  • {{Bypermission-noreuse}}     Public Copyright by written permission. Copyrighted, all rights reserved, no third party use
  • {{Morguefile}}     Public morgueFile Free License. Attribution not required.
(a) The only site I have seen use this license is Citizendium.

There are very probably even other variations available but the above are those I have found so far. I thought you might be interested. Milton Beychok 20:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Milton, useful information. Perhaps you should make it more generally available. Anthony.Sebastian 03:38, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I have thought of that. When I finish what I am working on at this time, I will ask Chris Key if such an article would be useful as a Help article. Milton Beychok 04:32, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

New Health Science Editor

Anthony, I have just approved a new member, D. Leigh Higgins, as a Health Sciences author and editor. I have strongly urged her to expand her user page biography and, if you have the time, it would be nice if you posted a welcome on her Talk page and also inquire if she wants any advice about expanding her bio or any other kind of help. Thanks, Milton Beychok 07:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Cypherpunk stuff

You asked questions on my talk page abut how the non-technical reader might use some of this stuff.

Number one is install Pretty Good Privacy. There is a commercial version called PGP and a free one called Gnu Privacy Guard or GPG. Last I heard, GPG on Windows had a fairly awful user interface but I have not looked in a couple of years, so it may have improved. PGP gives the ability to encrypt email so that only one or more recipients you designate can read it. It also gives you the ability to put a digital signature on it. I could say a bunch more here, but I should write it in the PGP article instead.

See also the Electronic Frontier Foundation pages on https everywhere and surveillance self defense.

I'm not sure of the current status of cypherpunk anonymous remailers. The best-known one lost a fight with scientology [1] and was taken down. There are still some out here. I'll look for details when I get around to doing a remailer article.

Digital cash definitely needs an article. I'm not sure I know enough to write it and am not likely to even try soon. Sandy Harris 12:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Created a CZ article about how to revised the license selected for an uploaded image

Anthony, see CZ:Revising Image Licenses which I just finished writing. Milton Beychok 06:28, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Beautiful work, time-consuming, important addition. I made a minor edit in lede sentence; check whether correct and/or helpful.
Should link to CZ:Revising Image Licenses in developing new help page.
BTW: Do links to 'CZ:name' require a preceding colon after '[['? Anthony.Sebastian 23:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
It can't hurt to play safe and use the colon after the [[ . Milton Beychok 00:02, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
Why did you remove your revisions to the lede? I thought they were quite helpful. Milton Beychok 00:11, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
I had made the revision only because your reference to the 'Upload Wizard' did not link to it. My edit was an elaborate way for the readers to find the Upload Wizard, if they needed to. Then I figured out how to render 'Upload Wizard' as an active link to the wizard, thus: Upload Wizard. See that in the editor. The elaborate 'how-to-find-it' became unnecessary, and detracted from the flow of your main message.
Question for you: How do I locate the page that lists all the images that have been uploaded? —Anthony.Sebastian 23:27, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

(unindent)Anthony, there is a list somewhere, but I cannot remember where I found it. In any event, it is not categorized in any fashion. We really need to have them categorized by subject in some manner. But, as is the case with many other needs, we just don't have enough active, motivated members as yet. After all, we only had about 50 voters in our recent elections.

If you go to my user page, near the top, you will find links to 4 of my galleries that contain about 300 images that I have uploaded. You will also find a link labeled "Gallery subpages" containing even more images uploaded to gallery subpages for some of the specific articles that I created. Milton Beychok 23:40, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Would appreciate you comments on Acid rain

Anthony, I just finished almost a complete re-write of Acid rain, including a new graphic that I drew. I would appreciate it if you look it over and let me know (on the article's Talk page) if you think it is too long, too short or whatever. I know it is somewhat U.S. centric, but I just could not find any good sources for information about acid rain in other parts of the world. However, I am fairly sure that the formation and effects of acid rain in other countries would be pretty much the same as in the U.S. Milton Beychok 20:03, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Would you cosider nominating Acid rain for approval?

Note my response to the points you raised at Talk:Acid rain ... I have added an image of the pH scale and a photo of the effect of acid rain on Red Spruce trees. I think the article is now ready for approval. Since you praised it, would you consider nominating it for approval since you are a biology editor? Regards, Milt

Milton, will nominate for approval, excellent article. Have to look up how to nominate, as I haven't done one in a while. Anthony.Sebastian 03:06, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, and you did it correctly. Regards, Milton Beychok 03:50, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
And do you think you could look to see if Oxytocin might be OK? It was developed by me and Scott Young.Gareth Leng 15:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Many thanks Anthony, as you so rightly advised, I've added a significant number of review references, and added the Caldwell chapter (Scott Young was an author of that, so he hadn't added it directly himself). Made a few other tweaks, but I think it's now ready. Am hunting for other candidates for swift approval. What do you think of Pseudoscience? I think it's good and stable - I've made some changes to the Astrology section that present a more coherent message there.Gareth Leng 13:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

We have started our campaign for donations

Anthony, I just wanted to let you know that we started our drive for donations a few hours ago and we already have $372. Regards, Milton Beychok 05:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

More about Acid rain and the nominated version number of the article

Anthony, Peter Schmitt made a very minor copy edit and I have added a photo. The version number of the nominated article (on the Metadata Template) was then changed by me to the latest version. There will very probably be other edits as well, and it was my intent to keep updating the nominated version when that occurred.

Peter Schmitt seems to think that I did something incorrect by updating the version number and he reverted my change of the metadata template. I don't know why my updating the version number bothers Peter.

If you would prefer that I not update the version again, please let me know. In any event, it is a good idea on the last moment, before the Approval is implemented by a Constable on November 16th, that the version date be upgraded at that time.

Thanks once more for the nomination. Milton Beychok 18:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Peter thought that the nominating editors should vet the edits before changing the version number, my guess. I see no need to change the version number with each edit session, anyway, since the vetting can occur after the last upgrade if you make that last upgrade to allow time for the editors to consider all okay. Even so, we can always advance the automatic approval date. Speaking for myself, your track record would predict the upgrades only improve the article, so just taking a final admiring look at the end, then upgrading the version number, okay with me. I'll let Peter know my thinking.
We should get all your developed articles approved, as long as they cover the essentials; that will motivate you to work on the draft version until you reach that ever-rising summit the Charter refers to as comprehensive, as if they welcomed long articles. The more prolific your output the better for CZ.
As an aside, sometimes when I think I'm writing an article from scratch I remember Carl Sagan say that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch you first have to create the universe. Without the atoms we wouldn't have brains, or CZ articles like yours. Anthony.Sebastian 20:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
As a result of some additions by Peter Schmitt and Johan Forberg, plus a few by myself, the article is now ready for final approval in my opinion. The nominated version should be updated and then Matt Innis reminded that it is due for Approval tomorrow. My thanks to you and to Gareth Leng.Milton Beychok 01:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

New editor

We have a new Biology editor named Dorian Q. Fuller. Perhaps you may wish to put a welcome message on his Talk page. Milton Beychok 16:47, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Free space

I wonder if you would have an interest in contributing to the new article Free space (electromagnetism)? John R. Brews 20:30, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

It would interest me, John, but after reading it through, I would have to give some thought to what I could possibly contribute. I thought it was nicely done. As the article seems aimed at a graduate-level readership, a 'student version' subpage might constitute a contribution. I will give it further thought. —Anthony.Sebastian 21:00, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

articles to have a look at

You'll be able to see for yourself as soon as the MC releases the first report from our new Google Analytics installation, but I thought I'd mention that two articles, Micrococcus luteus and Proteus vulgaris, have been getting a lot of traffic. I tried to figure out why that would be, but can't find a solution. In any case, it might be worth looking over those articles to make sure they are in good shape. I'm leaving the same message for Gareth Leng. --Joe Quick 21:28, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I see you've been at work. Thanks for that. --Joe Quick 21:42, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The Knowledge article need to be looked at

On our Welcome page, visitors are pointed to the Knowledge article. With that in mind, it is critical that the article be well written and impress them.

Recently, Dmitrii Kouznetsov added a major amount of material to the article which increased the article length fifteen-fold (from 1,565 bytes to 23, 990 bytes). Unfortunately, Dmitrii's command of the English language is not too good. Also, although I am not philosopher, it seems to me that some of his additional material may not be too relevant. I also wonder if some of his references are valid or appropriate.

Since the article is classified as in the Philosophy workgroup .... and there are no active Philosophy editors ... I am asking you (and others who may be interested) to take a good look at Dmitrii's additional material and to revise it as appropriate. If nothing else, some of the formatting leaves much to be desired. Milton Beychok 22:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Please read Talk:Knowledge

Anthony, I think you should read Talk:knowledge to get caught up with what others of us think should be done about that article. Milton Beychok 04:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

New Chemistry editor, Joel M. Williams

Anthony, we have a new Chemistry editor. You may wish to post a welcome message on his Talk page. Milton Beychok 03:04, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Adiponutrin

Anthony, would you care to write about Adiponutrin for the Adipocyte article? I don't think it should be approved until this topic is covered. It has only been known for maybe 10 years. You can find recent work by H. H. Hobbs and references listed therein. David E. Volk 00:15, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey, I just asked the same question of you, on the Adipocyte Talk page. [grin icon here] Anthony.Sebastian 00:51, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

New Health Sciences author

There's a new Health Sciences author, Jessica Kelly, whom you might want to welcome. Bruce M. Tindall 16:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Financial Report as of March 15, 2011. Please read it!

Please read our Financial Report as of March 15, 2001 for complete details on our financial history and our current financial situation. If you have any questions, please ask them on CZ Talk:Donate. Milton Beychok 00:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

New Biology author

User:James Parker is a new Biology author, a student at Edinburgh interested in molecular genetics. Bruce M. Tindall 17:28, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Say hello to new editor in the Classics, Literature and Philosophy workgroups

Hi, Anthony:

We have a new editor, Maria Cuervo, in the Classics, Literature and Philosophy workgroups. Please post a welcome on her Talk page. Thanks, - Milton Beychok 05:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)


Hi Anthony, I'm excited to be here and to learn from you and others. I hope over time I can read your philosophical contributions here. I've already begun to 'scratch the surface' and have created some articles. I'm afraid though that there is so much missing. For example, I could not find a page for sensibility! By now a scientist or Kantian philosopher will have made such a page?! I have started on the ancients but I could as well work on Kant, Hegel and anything else. I had a former career writing computer programs so unfortunately my interests are so broad that I could literally work on Citizendium FULL TIME and still feel I had only scratched the surface! Now that would be a fun job but I'd never catch up with everything there was to do. One is never bored in such a scenario. My mother was a topologist and I've always wondered how I would have turned out if I had pursued science instead of the humanities. Perhaps this is good that this path was cut off. It would have meant even more work to do for which there is little time and for which others are so much wiser than myself. Thank you for the warm welcome! I'll do what I can here while I also teach and work on my doctorate. This site allows me to clarify my own thinking and later on I may send my students here as well. I think that at critical junctures the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics or the sciences really do overlap in amazing ways. --Maria Cuervo 17:45, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

And, I am glad to see that we share an interest in the works of Italo Calvino!--Maria Cuervo 19:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Anthony, we also just got a new Classics author: User:Christopher Digby-Rogers. Bruce M. Tindall 18:41, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

About the individual chemical element articles

Hi, Anthony: As you may have noticed, I have been going through all of the individual chemical element articles in order to have all of them using the same Infobox and also to see that they have at least a one or two paragraph lede. I just finished atomic number 55, Caesium.

I have been utterly amazed to see how many of them (well over 50%) have so little content ... and have been that way for quite some time!! So I am very pleased that you have started to contribute content to at least one of them. Thanks much. Milton Beychok 03:14, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Milton: I do hope to continue fleshing out the content on the individual chemical elements, though, with just the two of us, that may take many months. Hopefully others will chime in.
What you are doing is nothing short of amazing. What do eat for breakfast? I need to get some of your victuals, for energy, perseverance, and competence.
Right now I'm reviewing the principles of the transition metals, not a walk in the park. I love Paul's outstanding article on Transition elements, but I find that one needs a pretty advanced background in chemistry to understand it. A "student version" might be called for. (I know Paul thinks I write as if for a child's encyclopedia, but at nearly 73 years, I consider myself still a child.)
Also, I think we need to incorporate somewhere a greater emphasis on the role of the transition elements in biology/physiology. They play a key role in electron transport and maintaining the energy cycles of the cell, among other biological functions. So far I've found few sources dedicated to the bioinorganic chemistry of the transition elements, but I'm still looking. If you know of any good sources, please let me know. Anthony.Sebastian 21:15, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Is "Email us an article in word processor format" still available?

Hi, Anthony. I asked this on the technical forum, and Martin Baldwin-Edwards said he thought you had been active in this part of the project. If that's true, do you know whether it's still possible for an author to email a .doc file and have it converted to wiki format and posted to Citizendium? A new user, Soleiman Abdollahee, wrote to tell me that he's sent in 4 articles but that they don't seem to have shown up on CZ. Do you know what I should tell him? (Or would you like to contact him yourself, if you prefer?) Thanks. Bruce M. Tindall 10:46, 27 April 2011 (CDT)

Bruce, the project was my idea and, with Louise Valmoria's help, initiated a procedure. After shepherding it, with Louise, for about two years, I asked Larry to be relieved. We had a volunteer group doing the wiki-conversions, and I did a number of them. The system was complicated and generated a lot of spam.
We need to reconsider how to do this. Ask Soleiman to resend as attachments his four articles to me, at Anthony_Sebastian@msn.com. I'll look them over, communicate with him as needed, do the wiki-conversions myself, or ask for help. Ask him to write in subject line: Article(s) for CZ.
In the meantime, I'll review the old system, try to simplify it. Anthony.Sebastian 21:53, 27 April 2011 (CDT)
I was one of the volunteers for that project, but I must back out now. I am too busy with other CZ matters. Milton Beychok 22:21, 27 April 2011 (CDT)
Thanks, Anthony. I will send him that information. Meanwhile, in the forum thread where I had asked about this, Mary Ash volunteered to join the group monitoring the email address; Dan Nesset was going to set her up as an additional moderator. But I put a note on her talk page explaining that you had already volunteered to handle Soleiman's articles so that she will not duplicate your efforts. Is that OK? Thanks. Bruce M. Tindall 09:42, 28 April 2011 (CDT)


That's okay. I'll work with Soleiman through my email address, then work on revitalizing the procedure. Would mind if I pass some thoughts by you? Anthony.Sebastian 10:11, 28 April 2011 (CDT)
Sure, that would be fine. You may need to explain to me how the old system worked, because I never had any part in it. Did any articles ever arrive via email before now? Bruce M. Tindall 10:21, 28 April 2011 (CDT)

(unindent)

Bruce, it's been a few years since I was co-administering the project with User:Louise Valmoria, and I was mostly lost even then. See: CZ:Wiki-converting.

How did you receive Soleiman's doc files? Anthony.Sebastian 19:27, 28 April 2011 (CDT)

I didn't; I haven't seen them. He emailed me to say that he had sent some articles to the official CZ "email us an article" address but that nothing had happened with them. I don't even know what the articles are about. He was using me as his point of contact because I was the constable who dealt with the approval of his application to become an author; there were various problems with different transliterations of his name and whatnot, and so we had several back-and-forth emails straightening that out. Bruce M. Tindall 20:09, 28 April 2011 (CDT)
Oh, also, thanks for the "Wiki-converting" article you pointed to. In this case, I expect there may be some issues involving non-idiomatic English by an English-language learner, which is something I deal with professionally all the time (as I'm sure you do too), so I'd be happy to take on some or all of these articles as well, if you like. Bruce M. Tindall 20:32, 28 April 2011 (CDT)
Great. When he sends me his articles, I'll forward them to you, we can both evaluate them, then we can decide how to handle them. Anthony.Sebastian 21:52, 28 April 2011 (CDT)

Life

Hi Anthony, I was wondering why you deleted the student-level page on life? It seems like a lot of work went into it. Your edit summary reads that it is out of date - how did it become out of date? David Finn 06:35, 7 May 2011 (CDT)

David, I re-read the student-level section and concluded that the main article (draft) was essentially written at student level. Alternatively I was thinking I might transfer the main article/draft to the student level subpage, edit out some of the material to shorten it, then edit the remaining text to ensure coherence and student-level comprehensibility.
The reason, the student-level subpage was originally based on an earlier approved version of the main article, but that was long ago, and the draft version has been much reworked. Anthony.Sebastian 15:09, 7 May 2011 (CDT)

About the references in Paleolithic diet

Anthony, the List-defined references template has been fixed by Peter Schmitt and all appears to be working well now. However, one of your references in Paleolithic diet was wrong and still caused an error message. You had named a reference as <ref name=eatonkonner1985/> but listed it in the references list as <ref name=eaton&konner1985/> ... so I deleted the ampersand (&) and that solved the problem. Milton Beychok 17:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Milton, for the typo/neuro fix, and Peter, for fixing the template, and John, for interceding and working on {{reflist}}. Anthony.Sebastian 00:00, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Diacritics are not accepted in reference names for list-defined references.

Anthony, I just found out that diacritics (such as ö) are not accepted within a reference name for list-defined references ... in fact, they generate error messages. I thought you should be made aware of that quirk. Milton Beychok 16:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Milton. I appreciate having the information and your effort to inform me. Anthony.Sebastian 22:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Please review Los Alamos National Laboratory for spelling, grammar, and whatever

Anthony, I would very much appreciate it if you would review Los Alamos National Laboratory for spelling, grammar, and whatever else you think may be needed. Let me have your comments on the article's Talk page. Thanks, Milton Beychok 20:33, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Anthony

Back after a holiday - I take it I'm not still needed for Alcmeion?Gareth Leng 08:39, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Gareth. Alcmaeon (a.k.a., Alkmaion): Approved. Hope you enjoyed your vacation, though you may have meant 'vacation from CZ'. OMBs need such. Anthony.Sebastian 22:31, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Asking for your help again

Anthony, the Project Apollo article needs a critical review by a History author like yourself. See here the documentation of my recent extensive edits to that article.

Anything you can do to make it more readable, more interesting, etc. would be appreciated. Milton Beychok 04:00, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Milton, I have a few deadlines related to academic year ending. I took a look at Project Apollo and will plan to work on it starting sometime in July, though the start of the academic year also puts demands on me.
Thanks for steering me in the article's direction. The Apollo missions were incredible achievements. Anthony.Sebastian 14:39, 22 June 2011 (UTC)