U.S. in article titles

[RJensen]

Hardly anyone uses "United States of America" except for a formal legal document. The style manuals all approve of "U.S." and it widely used in most reference books published in English. I did a check and discovered that for university presses, the book title or subtitle contained "U.S. Foreign Policy" 100 times more often than "United States Foreign Policy."  So I think we should go with the overwhelming consensus of experts, editors and scholars and use U.S. in our CZ history titles.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Really, I am bored with this assertion of "experts, editors and scholars" that you keep making, Richard. Apart from anything else, it shows a degree of arrogance which is insulting. The actual discussion is on another thread,

http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1743.0/topicseen.html

and this posting should not be here anyway.

[RJensen]

This is the forum for history discussions. (I made the same point on the other forum).  Encycvlopedias can follow unwittingly the personal notions of people ill-informed on a topic, or they can follow the experts and editors and scholars who seriously worry about what to title their serious books, and it is the latter course I propose to follow for history policy.

[Denis Cavanagh]

I don't see how mentioning experts, editors and scholars could possibly be insulting... That is what this project is all about. An encyclopedia should be guided by experts, thats just how it should be done.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I don't see how mentioning experts, editors and scholars could possibly be insulting... That is what this project is all about. An encyclopedia should be guided by experts, thats just how it should be done.

It's because a few people here think that you can define reality by a search of Google Book. That is not the same as expert opinion at all, and they know perfectly well that expert opinion is a sleight of hand meaning "my personal opinion".

[RJensen]

there really is expertise in the world, and at CZ. It can most easily be found in journals and university press books--where else? Google has made an online index of tens of thousands of university press books, which means we can do usage studies that were utterly impossible a few years ago. We can, and do, ask how the best informed people handle these problems in books that make or break their careers.  (Thanks to JSTOR we can do similar searches through the main journals.)

[Michael A. Dorosh]

Really, I am bored with this assertion of "experts, editors and scholars" that you keep making, Richard. Apart from anything else, it shows a degree of arrogance which is insulting. The actual discussion is on another thread,

http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1743.0/topicseen.html

and this posting should not be here anyway.

Just a quick note; I was initially very excited about Citizendium and the potential for an improved version of Wikipedia with the vandalism and "populist" overtones removed. After a couple of pointless arguments with Mr. Jensen in which he simply whipped out his penis, placed his Ph.D on the end of it, and waggled it in my face, I feel compelled to conclude Citizendium is not going to be the be-all end-all I had envisioned. What's worse, the articles we had discussed, and that I had acquiesced on and retreated from, content to let him prosecute his vision towards - now simply lay abandoned; having gotten his views to prevail, he apparently has lost interest in doing any of the actual work involved in writing them. I suspect he is here simply to create policy rather than actual articles. Sort of a "credentialled troll", if you will. It's a shame the project has to suffer like that. I just read the comments on the History work group page; he has a history of being contentious - notably with Mr. Sanger himself. No surprise the page count here is under 10,000 while Wikipedia just celebrated its 2,500,000th English language page. Head start and trivia pieces notwithstanding, I don't see that changing anytime soon as long as obstructionist policy makers will continue to prosecute their views but then not get their hands dirty down in the trenches, at the same time as driving away others who might not be so prissy.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

]

Just a quick note; I was initially very excited about Citizendium and the potential for an improved version of Wikipedia with the vandalism and "populist" overtones removed. After a couple of pointless arguments with Mr. Jensen in which he simply whipped out his penis, placed his Ph.D on the end of it, and waggled it in my face, I feel compelled to conclude Citizendium is not going to be the be-all end-all I had envisioned. What's worse, the articles we had discussed, and that I had acquiesced on and retreated from, content to let him prosecute his vision towards - now simply lay abandoned; having gotten his views to prevail, he apparently has lost interest in doing any of the actual work involved in writing them. I suspect he is here simply to create policy rather than actual articles. Sort of a "credentialled troll", if you will. It's a shame the project has to suffer like that. I just read the comments on the History work group page; he has a history of being contentious - notably with Mr. Sanger himself. No surprise the page count here is under 10,000 while Wikipedia just celebrated its 2,500,000th English language page. Head start and trivia pieces notwithstanding, I don't see that changing anytime soon as long as obstructionist policy makers will continue to prosecute their views but then not get their hands dirty down in the trenches, at the same time as driving away others who might not be so prissy.

While phallic comparisons do not add to the quality of this discussion (ind it easy enough to use standard English in my disputes with Dr. Jensen) would you mind elaborating on your post to other than Larry? Now, my interest in history is primary military and technological. I had substantial arguments with Dr. Jensen, but found it quite practical to go off and write new history articles, as well as taking empty subsets (e.g., the Battle of Britain within WWII), that, in turn, requiring me to write a technical article on radar.

Is there a problem you wish to share? There may, indeed, be other people who have had relevant experience. I am unclear if your friction is with Sanger, Jensen or both, but I'd be inclined to ask "what is the problem you want solved" and see if I help?  I'm involved, as a Military editor, in a somewhat contentious issue, which I think is resolving, and Larry helped.

Howard

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Michael: I don't retract a single word that I said in this debate. However, you should be aware that I am also an expert and (I hope) scholar: the difference is that I don't assert that my opinions are correct by virtue of these attributes. One of the leading characteristics of science (which I mean in the broadest possible sense) is that it is open to challenges, that it should not be perpetuated through tradition, self- or group-interest, and that its conclusions should be reproducible. This does not mean that we have to engage in pointless arguments tantamount to reinventing the wheel, as happens  on WP. It does mean that expert opinion provides guidance rather than absolute truth -- expecially, since we do not know what is true anyway.

I hope that you will reconsider CZ as an area where knowledge can be debated, contested and notated: this is what most of us actually believe in.

[David H. Barrett]

... the articles we had discussed, and that I had acquiesced on and retreated from, content to let him prosecute his vision towards - now simply lay abandoned; having gotten his views to prevail, he apparently has lost interest in doing any of the actual work involved in writing them.

If this is the case, then now might be a wonderful time to return to them and give your input.

I'm not long here myself, Michael, and I can empathise with you. But please, don't give up because one person has been obstructive and bull-headed. Keep talking, keep working and CZ will reward not only you, but the rest of us who benefit from what you do.

PS: It's a convention nigh on law in these forums that we all put the URL of our user page into your forum signature (click on "Profile" at the top of the page, and go into "Modify Profile | Forum Profile Information".

[Hayford Peirce]

It is 100% wrong to say that Prof. Jensen simply argued, imposed his point of view on people and articles, and then bugged off.  Like nearly everyone else here, I had my share of arguments wih him, and he frankly infuriated me at times with his dogmatic and intractable assertions of fact that were apparently handed down to him on tablets of stone.  But up until the time he vanished six weeks ago, he was also an incredibly prolific and incredibly valuable contributor to CZ.  If Howard Berkowitz continues at his present pace, he will probably one day take over the title from Prof. Jensen as the person who has contributed the most words to CZ, but for the moment the crown is clearly on the professor's head.

[David H. Barrett]

... up until the time he vanished six weeks ago ...

I say, Holmes! Surely you don't think he's ...

 

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

It is 100% wrong to say that Prof. Jensen simply argued, imposed his point of view on people and articles, and then bugged off.  Like nearly everyone else here, I had my share of arguments wih him, and he frankly infuriated me at times with his dogmatic and intractable assertions of fact that were apparently handed down to him on tablets of stone.  But up until the time he vanished six weeks ago, he was also an incredibly prolific and incredibly valuable contributor to CZ.  If Howard Berkowitz continues at his present pace, he will probably one day take over the title from Prof. Jensen as the person who has contributed the most words to CZ, but for the moment the crown is clearly on the professor's head.

Pace? Heyford, we are of an age. Do you remember that fifties ditty about the "little Nash Rambler" that kept trying to catch the Cadillac, and, eventually drawing alongside, yelled over "Hey Buddy, how do you get this thing out of second gear?" I will have to confess that the current thread here encouraged me to fill some gaps in Prof. Jensen's work, such as writing the nonexistent introduction to the WWII air war. He and I finally agreed that I was stronger in the technical aspects -- and he had access to knowledge, and especially resources, I did not.

David, even if you have no technical experience with air warfare, for example, you are apt to have a much better intuitive grasp of the geography of the southwest Pacific than I do.  The campaigns there have yet to be written.

Relations between Douglas MacArthur and Australia -- you'll note I didn't say the United States and Australia; the U.S. had its own problems with him as an autonomous something -- need writing. I don't know iif you have computing background, but an Australian colleague and I have agreed that anyone who grows up accepting the platypus has an unfair advantage in building multivendor computer networks.  Nevertheless, I read a comment by William Manchester, generally considered MacArthur's best biographer, where he said he still is of mixed emotion to the man.

In like manner, I have a number of magenta null links to Robert McNamara and Dick Cheney, people I so detest that I really don't want to write about them -- and keep hoping someone will.

In the last while, I have been more filling in; for example, he had left only an empty header for "Battle of Britain". Before I touched that, I wrote more technical articles both on radar and integrated air defense systems, and only then took on the Battle of Britain. Frankly, my interests are more in the technological and recent aspects, but he often introduced a topic. Airmobile operations didn't quite work, in Vietnam, as described, but, again, I started with an article that still needs much work and spawning more subarticles, "air assault".  With that as a base, rather than lengthening the already cumbersome length of "Vietnam War", but wrote independent, more detailed articles on Ia Drang and Bong Son, as well as Operation BOLO. In the signals intelligence series of articles, it may well be useful to break out more of Vietnam; there have been some very recent, substantial and major declassifications by NSA and the USAF.

Where I hope I would differ, in some of the more stressful aspects, is I prefer to write collaboratively, especially when the authors can assess their interests and skills, have individuals or small teams work on what are drafts, and then discuss rather than massively rewrite. As you may know, I'm also a Computers editor, and there are areas, such as software-defined radio, that I haven't had time to address in any real depth. While we are seeing these initially in military contexts, they are apt to have a massive and positive effect on all manner of civilization.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

... up until the time he vanished six weeks ago ...

I say, Holmes! Surely you don't think he's ...

 

I have been known to answer to Professor. Moriarty, though, not Jensen.

[David H. Barrett]

The relationship between Macarthur and Australia is actually quite fascinating to me, although I don't for one minute pretend to be an expert in this area. There's a great deal of feeling here that our troops were sidelined by Macarthur, and effectively lost their lives in sideshow operations such as Bougainville and Borneo (mopping up far behind the real front in the Pacific theatre) because Macarthur didn't want to share the glory of defeating Japan.

I could probably come up with an extended stub.

Before the US troops moved north and east, they were also involved in combined operations in New Guinea (turned up late to the Battle of Kokoda because the map gave no idea of what the terrain was really like, and also took part in the operations on the north coast that eventually pushed the Japanese off the island).

Trouble is, though, that the whole thing opens up a genuine can of worms. There are the various aspects of hundreds of thousands of US troops being based in Brisbane, and even open fighting between US and Australian troops in that city (the "Battle of Brisbane"). There are the combined operations, the units that fought in them, the individual battles ...

But it's all stuff I'm interested in and teach, so I'm willing to at least chip in at a basic level. When I have some time!