User talk:David Finn

Welcome! Feel free to ask any questions. I will answer them where I find them, so I will reply here if you type here - if you are replying to something I wrote on your talkpage or an article talkpage, just reply there as I watchlist everything and it is much easier to hold one conversation in one place! And if your question is about unsourced additions I have made - well, I don't make unsourced edits. If an edit I make has no obvious source it is just that I haven't added the source yet - all my edits are based on verifiable sources which I can produce on request. Happy editing! David Finn 06:46, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Welcome!

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at CZ:Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list (do join!) and the blog. Please also join the workgroup mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forums is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any constable for help, too. Me, for instance! Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! Hayford Peirce 17:12, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Reason for Picatinny renaming

Pain pills, I think. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:32, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Ha! Oops, mustn't laugh at the pain of others. You do a phenomenal amount of article creation I have noticed, well done. David Finn 22:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Class names

I wasn't sure if you would follow the discussion on my user page; we should decide where to discuss which, I'm pleased to say, is a CZ: Military Workgroup matter. Briefly, I have used the hyphen format for ship class names, fairly comfortable that there is no standard, but finding that it's useful to have a clear visual distinction between class and lead ship so it's always unambiguous if we are speaking of Yamato-class or IJN Yamato. (Note: there is a redirect, with a separate short definition, of IJN Yamato to Yamato-class. There's no reason except resources not to have an article on each ship of the class, but redirects with definition are an interim solution.

As you'll see from Destroyer/Related Articles, this applies to many more classes than battleships. There are a tremendous number of class references in many articles, and I've tried to be consistent about the hyphen style. I'm willing to recommend it, as the only active Military Editor, as a CZ style subject to workgroup discussion.

Naming has been a continuing problem, not just for ships. There have been arguments raised "but this is most common in Google", by nonspecialist Citizens, about a variety of naming categories. For example, I created the Hezbollah article believing that transliteration, while not unique, is most common in professional literature. Hezb'Allah, Hezballah, Hizballah, and others are also plausible transliterations, and for which I certainly would have no argument against having redirects to the arbitrary article name. Correctly, in English, the organization is the Party of God, or at most, the Party of Allah. The others become authoritative only if we write and index in Arabic. Nevertheless, names have been a hot argument and often the only ones associated with Military articles.

I would be delighted both to have a Military style guide, and more Military participants both as Authors and Editors. David, I have quite a few articles that may be close to Approval-ready, but can't advance unless there are either three editors (in some cases History or Politics) or there's a non-author Military Editor.

Shall we move this to discussion under CZ: Military Workgroup? Howard C. Berkowitz 11:18, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I am happy with your reasoning and your solution. Without a clear reason to do otherwise it seems best to just go with how things have been done, especially since there seems to be common use of both terms. Standardizing the process via the workgroup would be good, it would prevent any argument arising in the future should another contributor start changing things.

My Military contribution is likely to revolve around ships and vehicles, aircraft and equipment - technical matters, rather than anything controversial like politics, but I can afford to spend some time working on whatever else is necessary, and I am happy to continue discussion wherever it is most appropriate. Thanks for the reply. David Finn 14:39, 16 July 2010 (UTC)