Elizabeth I

[Michael Cayley]

I am a new Citizendium author and I have just substantially expanded the very brief article on Elizabeth I of England. I'd welcome any feedback. The article has the title simply "Elizabeth I". There was at least one other ruler with that title - Elizabeth I of Bohemia. I am not sure what Citizendium policy on the names of kings & queens is, but should the article title be changed to "Elizabeth I of England" and if so, how is this achieved? Apologies if this is a dunce's question! Michael

[Hayford Peirce]

Hi Michael, welcome aboard! To save a lot of people from reinventing the wheel here in this forum, why don't you go to:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Proposals/Naming_Conventions_for_Biographies

particularly to the very end of that article, to the section called "another deterministic method", where an on-going discussion, even argument, has been going on for some time now with no firm decision yet being reached.  Why don't you review what has been said there, then add your own thoughts -- the more the merrier!

Best,

Hayford

[Hayford Peirce]

PS -- It would be appreciated also if you would click on your Profile, then at the bottom, at Signatures, add your CZ user page info, so that it shows up at the bottom of your messages here in the Forum. Thanks!

[RJensen]

It's a good article and I added a bibliography.

It's a good title too, and approprioate for a major person

the minor other queen can get the article title of Elizabeth I of Bohemia 

[Michael Cayley]

Thanks for the bibliography. I have added a signature to my profile, so I hope it shows up at the end of this - I am just learning the ropes on how to operate in a Forum.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

There was at least one other ruler with that title - Elizabeth I of Bohemia. I am not sure what Citizendium policy on the names of kings & queens is, but should the article title be changed to "Elizabeth I of England"

Under our current rough theory on naming monarchs, the first lady would be [[Elizabeth I (Bohemia)]]. The second is currently at [[Elizabeth I]], but if we decide to not let her monopolize that name, she would be moved to [[Elizabeth I (England)]]. Please discuss that suggestion at [[Talk:Elizabeth I]].

and if so, how is this achieved?

See [CZ:Howto]]; there's a section on how to rename a page. But for most pages you probably want to check first to make sure everyone's OK with it.

Apologies if this is a dunce's question!

Hey, we were all beginners once.

Noel

[Denis Cavanagh]

Good work; I made a micro stub way back in January for it. See, Stubs work! 

[J. Noel Chiappa]

See, Stubs work! 

That was Wikipedia's experience too. Still, in light of Citizendium's goal, I must admit being biased more towards trying to start with a non-stub.

Maybe we should be more open to having people start with the Wikipedia text, and bang on it to produce an a) reliable, and b) readable article, as opposed to starting from a stub, and rewriting everything from scratch? That's going to take a long time, and even more effort.

Noel

[Aleta Curry]

snip!
Maybe we should be more open to having people start with the Wikipedia text,

As I understand it, this did not work, which was why the policy was changed.

[Robert_W_King]

snip!
Maybe we should be more open to having people start with the Wikipedia text,

As I understand it, this did not work, which was why the policy was changed.

A lot of people, including myself, are outspoken against this idea.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Maybe we should be more open to having people start with the Wikipedia text,

As I understand it, this did not work, which was why the policy was changed.

Umm, are you referring to the period when we copied the entire Wikipedia article database into Citizendium? That's not what I was suggesting; I was simply saying 'we ought not to discourage people who are going to do an article on X from starting with the Wikipedia text for X, and improving it, instead of writing all our text from scratch' - which is what currently seems to be happening a lot.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

A lot of people, including myself, are outspoken against this idea.

Sorry, which idea is this you are referring to? Are you saying we should eschew using Wikiepedia text altogether, and write everything from scratch?

Noel

[Hayford Peirce]

When I first joined CZ I brought in a ton of stuff that I had done in years past in WP, mostly in the tennis area. In most cases (maybe all, I forget) it was original material that I had written, up until, oh, let's say, June 2006, in any particular article, before it began to get corrupted by imbeciles, so that I could honestly say that 99% of the material was mine. I brought it into CZ, edited it, revised it, in many cases added to it.

It would be one thing if dozens, hundreds, or thousands of CZ authors were vying to write and improve an article about http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Pancho_Gonzales or http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Pancho_Seguara, but such, I fear, is not the case. No one else at all, as far as I can tell, is writing substantive articles about old-time tennis players.  If I hadn't done it this way, there is no way in the world that I would ever sit down again and recreate these articles from scratch for CZ. Maybe if Larry were paying me $1 per word -- but even then, I dunno. So, whatever you may think of these articles, and of a couple of dozen others that I ported over and edited, they *do* exist. And without articles, there wouldn't be any CZ, would there?

[Denis Cavanagh]

Making our own articles from scratch is a better idea. WP and CZ articles should have a different style when they are finished.

[Derek Harkness]

Maybe we should be more open to having people start with the Wikipedia text, and bang on it to produce an a) reliable, and b) readable article, as opposed to starting from a stub, and rewriting everything from scratch? That's going to take a long time, and even more effort.

There's no rule against starting an article using wikipedia and then working on it and posting it here. However, we need to discourage people copying articles over here with the "good intention" of working on them which they often then do not do.

Starting form scratch does take longer, but you end up with something that isn't just better than wikipedia - its different form wikipedia. Being different is essential for marketing the site. It's also valuable to the end user to have a second article for the topic rather than simply an improved edition of the same article.