User:Larry Sanger
Hi there! Larry Sanger here. I'm the Editor-in-Chief of the Citizendium. I am also currently, and temporarily, serving as Chair of the Editorial Council. If you have a question, I'll try to answer, but you might want to try the Forums first if I don't answer instantly. I'm happy to report that I'm extremely busy! You can join my shameful backlog of e-mail at sanger <at> citizendium <dot> org.
You can read more about me at my personal home page. I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Ohio State and a passion for Irish traditional music. I was born in the Seattle area and grew up in Anchorage, Alaska.
I do not claim any sort of editorship other than being Editor-in-Chief, I'm afraid, not even in philosophy or the Internet. I am too long out of doing any serious research. (Although this is changing!)
I've worked on many articles, but I wrote significant parts (or all) of: John Doherty (fiddler), philosophy, Ship of Theseus problem, and epistemology. None are done yet!
There's a CZ article about me which I have not edited. ;-)
<-- you can use this if you want
|
|
| Sanger's Dashboard | |||
| |||
| |||
Principles for our organizers' group
I've convened a small (six person) group of people have committed to helping to organize various initiatives and generally "get stuff done." Call them organizers. We're going to talk on a regular basis and together drive a lot of new stuff forward in 2008. For my future reference (and theirs), here are some principles I have proposed for this group.
(1) Above all, what we need is maximum creativity, to achieve two goals: (a) precisely identify specific practical problems that need solving, and (b) propose specific practical solutions to those problems. No project I've ever been involved in has ever made headway without the principals constantly thinking up better practical solutions to practical problems.
(2) More specifically, our job is to organize activity. If we execute everything ourselves (individually or collectively), we are not doing our jobs. Our job is to organize and motivate others to do stuff. No doubt we will have to lead the way, and sometimes work hard in doing so. But we have to feel bold enough to call on others to help. This can be specific other known individuals, but more importantly is the power of "crowdsourcing" that is at the heart of wiki projects like CZ. We prioritize community initiatives and labor: what are the most important problems CZ faces, and needs to solve? I also welcome your help in prioritizing my own work.
(3) Our job is not to debate. Debate is great. Debate is necessary. But it is not our job. Our job is to do. Therefore, if we debate, we should debate only concerning what the best course of practical action should be. But even this debate should be kept to a minimum.
(4) Big important new initiatives do need discussion and approval. But once they're approved, go to town. Steve Ewen was given the green light to organize our image policies and resources, and he went to town--that is a perfect example of what I mean.
(5) We are not the Grand Overseers of the Citizendium. We are not The Cabal. So we do not make policy and we do not pass judgment on individuals. We are doers and organizers. If new policy is required for us to take some action, we consult the community and drive it through the proper bodies (if possible!).
(6) Our proceedings need not be particularly secret, except perhaps in very small cases...we could, if we wanted to, set up a mailing list for our group and make it open to read.
(7) We will report on our work to each other once or twice a week (we can decide later), and give each other advice and encouragement. If you stop acting for a time, you'll be dropped from the group. If some other person particularly distinguishes him or herself and would seem to fit in as a co-organizer, let's get that person into the group.
A plan for activity tracking
I have been bothered that there isn't a good way to make sure that our various proposals and plans don't fall through the cracks. This happens all too often: we make many good proposals and just don't follow through. This is as much my fault as anyone's, because as project leader, I should be keeping track of people's various proposals and encouraging them to follow through. Then, I need to improve my own follow-through as well.
Well, here is a plan to address that problem. I think we should create a template, similar to but more structured than my "status" box above. We each fill out the template, and the information is intelligently displayable in one spot, in a few tables. I'll explain further (and demonstrate) in a little bit.
In short, while I can't explain briefly, I think this is going to help us tremendously in getting organized. Possibly like nothing we've done before: we can include our activity boxes on workgroup pages, for example.
Main "requirements":
- The box will have several categories of information.
- The categories might include: top accomplishments (past week); top accomplishments (past month); plans for today; plans/to do list for this week; accomplishments and plans for workgroup1-3; main roles in the system; special ongoing commitments or projects; main articles I'm working on these days (general); main articles (workgroup1-3); motto; public notes; personal notes (to display only on user page).
- The same data can be used to create several different boxes, or even table rows. It can be displayed in workgroups (which I am very interested in), on project pages, etc. It can be very extensible.
- The "master display" (which lists everyone's infoboxes on a single set of pages) might be linked from CZ:Personnel.
To fulfill these requirements, we will have to do some template "magic." Let me give an example. Suppose my data is at {{User/Larry Sanger}}. I use a different template on my personal home page, say, {{userplan-all}}, which basically feeds back all the data from {{User/Larry Sanger}} in a pretty form. Once I've filled out {{User/Larry Sanger}}, all I'll have to do is put {{userplan-all}} on my user page, and voila.
But when it comes to aggregating info, for example on a Philosophy Workgroup personnel page, or on a Recruitment initiative page, it would work differently. You can imagine a {{}} template; people can add their usernames to it, if they're active in the Philosophy Workgroup. Then we put a {{}} template on CZ:Philosophy Workgroup (or a subpage thereof); that template goes through {{}}, grabs the names, then grabs the info about each user, crunches it all together, and displays the data relevant to the philosophy workgroup (not all of it!) on the philosophy users' page. Pretty cool huh?
I want this to be the method whereby we keep track of who is doing what where. It might be difficult to motivate people to get started, but it's the sort of thing where the info is useful even if it isn't complete, and the results will be so cool that everybody will eventually want to have their own userplan boxes.
UPDATE: OK, I've started in. My test data is on {{User/Larry Sanger}}. The display template is at {{Userplan-all}}, and you can view that template's output at /Userplan.
It works basically like this: {{User/Larry Sanger}} consists (will consist) of a bunch of variables/value pairs. You access the value, within {{Userplan-all}}, via a variable, calling it like this: {{User/{{{1}}}|data=VARIABLE}}. Note that {{{1}}} is required by {{Userplan-all}} and should be someone's username (so, you can call use my template like this: {{Userplan-all|Larry Sanger}}
What I cannot for the life of me figure out is why I can't use the following code:
{{#ifexist:{{User/{{{1}}}|data=topacc1}}|
<tr><td>1. {{User/{{{1}}}|data=topacc1}}</td></tr>}}
{{#ifexist:{{User/{{{1}}}|data=topacc2}}|
<tr><td>2. {{User/{{{1}}}|data=topacc2}}</td></tr>}}
This is supposed to to display a line only if a certain bit of data is filled out in the template. What's weird is that the data does display in the template, so it does exist, but the "ifexist" condition isn't showing up as true. Why the *#$(!@ not?
If anyone understands what I'm doing, and wants to go ahead and keep working on it, I would be extremely happy. I would also be extremely happy if you were to create a better design for the table. Bear in mind that, as I said, there will eventually be several different categories of data. --Larry Sanger 22:16, 12 January 2008 (CST)
| Citizendium Organization | ||
|---|---|---|
| CZ:Home | Workgroups | Personnel | Governance | Proposals | Recruitment | Contact | Donate | FAQ | Sitemap |
|width=10% align=center style="background:#F5F5F5"| |}