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)

Great. Not too long ago, we were able to Approve several articles after I also received Editor status in History and Politics. Roger Lohmann and Russsell Jones and I did a number of three-editor approvals, more in the political area. I would be delighted to have more involvement in the technical area. The cruiser and destroyer articles, for example, are in decent shape, as are a number of specific battles.

There's a substantial amount about current technologies, which sound as if they are a bit outside your area of interest. Would you have any ideas about potential Editors for Military?

Stray question: As I've been revising various things about the Pacific Theater in WWII, I see a need for some articles hierarchically below the theater. Naming is a challenge and I really don't have strong preferences. Would you prefer:

• Philippines campaign (1941-1942), WWII resistance movements in the Philippines, and Phillipines campaign (1944-1945)
• Japanese occupation of the Philippines, WWII resistance movements in the Philippines, and U.S. Philippines counteroffensive

or something else? It's also an interesting question if the WWII resistance movement article should include postwar as well as wartime Hukbalahap activities.

Do let me know about more of your interests. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:04, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Last question first - it would be nice if we had enough material to support an article about postwar resistance, then the WWII resistance movements article would only need a short reference to the postwar period accompanied by a link to the postwar article.

I looked up the Huks, it seems they were named for the fact that they were opposing the Japanese, but the 9 years of their postwar struggle was exclusively against their Western backed leaders, if I read it correctly. I think that at this point their motivation was no longer the same as their wartime motivation, so maybe too much of their postwar activity would be out of scope. I like the second style you present, it seems much more attractive.

I don't mind modern technologies so much, I have Jane's Fighting Ships 2005-2006 and Jane's Military Vehicles and Logistics 2006-2007 as well as a lot of other material about more recent defence procurements and the military balance in the world today, but my real interest is the period 1880-1920, really the golden age of motor vehicles, powered aeroplanes and modern ships and yachts. I am not an expert but I am good at legwork and sourcing - I use the opportunity to educate myself, and it should mean that my contributions are solidly sourced. David Finn 18:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Photo

Thanks for the encouraging words. This is what I posted to my talk page. Lighten up fellas. The name I submitted sure looked like a REAL name to me and let it go at that. It is a lovely photo that I used on my wikiHow account and decided to move over here. The photo came from Flickr and I liked it. Do YOU make time to share anything positive here, or are are you all sitting around waiting to "pounce" on the newbies? I did add the hyperlink showing where the image was found so anyone could search it out. Finally, I did some research and indeed this is a dying wiki. I wonder why... Mary Ash 16:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

My comments to Mary Ash about photos

Hi, David:

We haven't met before this ... and I want to explain to you about my comments to Mary Ash on how to upload images. If you will look at Talk:V-22 Osprey, you will find that about 5-6 days ago, I told Mary about pretty much the same sort of corrections that I had to make on another image she had uploaded. At that time I asked her to study what I had done and said it would be useful the next time she uploaded an image.

If you will also look at User Talk: Mary Ash, you will see that she thanked me for those comments about the photo of the V-22 Osprey.

Then, just a few days later, she evidently forgot or decided to ignore that exchange and made some of the same sort of mistakes again when she uploaded that photo on her user page .... and I then commented again about the corrections.

As Chris Key has pointed out, the upload wizard pages clearly states that we need real names for photos from places like Commons or Flickr. I have sometimes had to spend many hours trying to find real names for the images that I found in Commons and Flickr ... and in some cases had to wait days for responses to emails that I sent asking people to please give me their real names.

The summary that the upload wizard asks us ti fill out also clearly asks that we create a "credit line" and provides a link to the page for doing so. For example, that beautiful windmill picture which you have on your user page also needs to have a credit line and it only takes a few minutes to create.

I don't mean to be sarcastic in any way, but this isn't rocket science ... all it takes on Mary's part is the determination to read and to study a bit.

I hope that this clears the air somewhat. I am really not an ogre. Milton Beychok 18:16, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I get your point, and thanks for the explanation. It seems that this particular user is taking a little longer than might be expected to adapt to new ideas. I must admit that I didn't see anything about a 'credit line' when I uploaded that photo, but then I do not know a lot about image uploading and erred on the side of caution by only using one of my own which I don't mind giving away - however, having been alerted to the fact, I certainly wouldn't make the same mistake twice. I guess not everyone works that way. Cheers. David Finn 23:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Windmill

David, you are living in the Netherlands, you produced a beautiful photo of a windmill and your user page says that you love history .... and we need an article titled Windmill. All we have now is a lemma article (that is a definition only article). Please write one for us. You might refer to the history section of the Wind turbine article for some help. How about it? Milton Beychok 00:02, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I can certainly try!

I have been working on a cluster of articles, all connected to the development of transport around the end of the 19th century. I started with Reliance (yacht) and as you can see, it contains a lot of redlinks. It is my intention to write articles for all of those, but it is taking a lot of research to get the details right.

So Reliance is one extreme, and at the other end there is the 1903 America's Cup draft I have been working on, which I think may be too overly detailed, but that is why I started working on a draft page as I wanted something finished to present.

Because the articles are all linked, researching one provides information on many, and after a bit of a struggle with my first few articles I think the whole cluster will come pretty quick, as I will have a standard format then and be more versed in Citizendium code.

Anyway, my point is that although my only article so far is Reliance (yacht), and that is just a stub, in fact there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes which will make it into the encyclopedia eventually. In the meantime I am more than happy to lend a hand where necessary. Even after 13 years of living in the Netherlands I can't say I know much about windmills, despite living on a piece of Holland that was sea until the windmills drained it, but I am certainly well placed to find out and I expect the investigation shall be interesting. Thanks for the suggestion! David Finn 08:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Your nautical input appreciated!

I've been up to several things, and it occurred to me that you might be a good sounding board. You may or may not be aware we have a fairly informal CZ:Subgroups mechanism that complements workgroups, typically for interdisciplinary subjects. I have been creating quite a few subgroups, with one idea being that their topic will appeal to some group from which we could recruit new Citizens -- an opportune time as the Charter becomes real.

Now, I've started in military areas, including CZ: United States Navy Subgroup and CZ: Royal Navy Subgroup. By no means are they complete, because it's cumbersome to add existing articles to subgroups -- I'm doing it as I can.

I think I've told you I work with marine electronics and computers, principally in commercial fishing although I do have experience with naval things. Some of my clients, as well as LinkedIn and other groups, deal with recreational boating all the way up to the superyachts. Other than navigation and safety, however, I know very little about yacht racing.

Should there be one or more subgroups to deal with the details of the non-naval things? I'm not sure if CZ: Marine navigation would be good, if we need something for water recreation, etc. For that matter, there's commercial shipping, minerals exploration, etc.

Does this give any ideas, either for article organization or for finding new Citizens? --Howard C. Berkowitz 12:31, 13 August 2010 (UTC)