Philosophy - strategy issues

[Larry Sanger]

You do at least need to follow the style guidelines that we have established for Citizendium.  I noticed that you have undone all of my adjustments to the article on Comte that were intended to bring it more in line with those guidelines.  At the very least, please leave the subpages template; it places the article into the correct categories and allows for easier navigation within an article's subpages.

While they aren't at the level of formal guidelines, do take a look at the navigation ideas and techniques at CZ Talk: Usability.

By the way, can you please summarize those ideas here on the forums in a form that everyone (or at least I :-) ) can follow?  Another option is of course to use the proposals system (found via the left-hand column links on the wiki).  I can't endorse or help enforce an unclear, or overcomplicated, proposal.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

You do at least need to follow the style guidelines that we have established for Citizendium.  I noticed that you have undone all of my adjustments to the article on Comte that were intended to bring it more in line with those guidelines.  At the very least, please leave the subpages template; it places the article into the correct categories and allows for easier navigation within an article's subpages.

While they aren't at the level of formal guidelines, do take a look at the navigation ideas and techniques at CZ Talk: Usability.

By the way, can you please summarize those ideas here on the forums in a form that everyone (or at least I :-) ) can follow?  Another option is of course to use the proposals system (found via the left-hand column links on the wiki).  I can't endorse or help enforce an unclear, or overcomplicated, proposal.

Not all of them are ready for prime time, but I think the material on avoiding orphaning is a good start. I think they would be more accessible in article than Forum format -- if for no other reason that some of the participants can't get to the Forum (Great Firewall of China) and that it really is much harder to search the Forums and review discussions.

Proposals may well be appropriate, but for a piece at a time. While the orphan guidelines did start with a Wikipedia proposals, they really are transformed by Related Articles -- although I'd propose a limited subset, initially, of what we are finding we can do. Chris is still working with some extensions, such as whether the Related Articles page itself should show links that point to the main article, or other Related Articles pages that point to the current Related Articles page.

There are arguments for both; some of the ideas may not be useful without a certain amount of automation. more bot-like than template-like.

[Larry Sanger]

You do at least need to follow the style guidelines that we have established for Citizendium.  I noticed that you have undone all of my adjustments to the article on Comte that were intended to bring it more in line with those guidelines.  At the very least, please leave the subpages template; it places the article into the correct categories and allows for easier navigation within an article's subpages.

While they aren't at the level of formal guidelines, do take a look at the navigation ideas and techniques at CZ Talk: Usability.

By the way, can you please summarize those ideas here on the forums in a form that everyone (or at least I :-) ) can follow?  Another option is of course to use the proposals system (found via the left-hand column links on the wiki).  I can't endorse or help enforce an unclear, or overcomplicated, proposal.

Not all of them are ready for prime time, but I think the material on avoiding orphaning is a good start. I think they would be more accessible in article than Forum format -- if for no other reason that some of the participants can't get to the Forum (Great Firewall of China) and that it really is much harder to search the Forums and review discussions.

Er...that would be a reason to abandon the forums entirely!  And...who is not able to get to the Forum?  Someone in China?

Proposals may well be appropriate, but for a piece at a time.

Right--I'm hip to that.

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

You do at least need to follow the style guidelines that we have established for Citizendium.  I noticed that you have undone all of my adjustments to the article on Comte that were intended to bring it more in line with those guidelines.  At the very least, please leave the subpages template; it places the article into the correct categories and allows for easier navigation within an article's subpages.

Hey Joe, any 'undoing' is accidental (unless I give a reason for it on the edit summary or talk page)! Please accept my apologies - of course the categories template is useful, and so on.

As a Mac user, I occasionally have 'technical' problems with the pages, for example ALL the special characters, non standard (quotes, hyphens, acute and grave accents etc) get garbled - when that happens I have to revert to old versions. I think that is what may have happened here.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

[Erk...sorry...editor-in-chief accidentally deleted this post and thought he was writing a reply!!!!  Sorry!]

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

Er...that would be a reason to abandon the forums entirely!  And...who is not able to get to the Forum?  Someone in China?

Yes, Sandy Berger, who is a security expert -- if he can't get through, I believe it.

Well, alright - what is supposed to be the problem? I f I can use the forum ( and I can on a system about 5 years old...)

Seriously, discussions in the forums can get very scattered into multiple threads. Perhaps there are search tools I don't know about, but I often can't find an earlier discussion that I know was there. The articles pages do work better for many purposes.

That's true - but the froum is where the 'live' discussion, equivalent to a meeting, takes palce. It's more suitable for exchange of views and er... brainstoming. Then, subject matter wise, it clearly can be monitored by editors and authors with a wide range of interests - better than some novel idea for a page, which owuld have to be notifed to everyone  - repeatedly.

A page is better for 'notices', and 'rules', and article specific issues. I'm not myself convinced shunting the debate off to a page in this case is good policy - it might encourage people to form policy with a minum of oversight by others, mightn't it?

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Well, alright - what is supposed to be the problem? I f I can use the forum ( and I can on a system about 5 years old...)

Most Internet connectivity into the People's Republic of China is very filtered, firewalled, etc. For some reason, a Citizen in China, who is IP-knowledgeable enough that I trust that he can tell that he is being blocked, cannot connect to the Forum but can get to the article pages.  It's not old technology that's the problem, but active blocking.

The matter under discussion is dealing specifically with methods of linking pages together, so it's possible to demonstrate the technique being brainstormed right there. That's not possible in the Forum.

A page is better for 'notices', and 'rules', and article specific issues. I'm not myself convinced shunting the debate off to a page in this case is good policy - it might encourage people to form policy with a minum of oversight by others, mightn't it?

Before something can become policy, it has to go through the Proposal process, which is page-based anyway.

Right now, I'm working on a draft of the draft proposal, and hopefully rephrasing the idea more positively. Rather than say "don't create orphans", I'm phrasing it as "create strong articles", and defining "strong" in terms of having an adequate number of certain usable links to it.

[Larry Sanger]

Er...that would be a reason to abandon the forums entirely!  And...who is not able to get to the Forum?  Someone in China?

Yes, Sandy Berger, who is a security expert -- if he can't get through, I believe it.

You mean Sandy Harris, right?    I wonder if anyone else can't get here.

Seriously, discussions in the forums can get very scattered into multiple threads. Perhaps there are search tools I don't know about, but I often can't find an earlier discussion that I know was there. The articles pages do work better for many purposes.

Well, forums are in fact our main mode of free-style discussion, as you know.  You're free to discuss things on the wiki of course, but you should not try to discourage others from contributing their thoughts here on the forums.  If you want to change the habits of everyone in the project, the way to do it is to argue that we should close down the forums, and then maybe we can have a plebescite on the wiki and decide the matter (again, I might point out--we've discussed and voted on this before at least once, maybe twice).

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

You mean Sandy Harris, right?    I wonder if anyone else can't get here.

Right. Sandy Harris could not only just see the discussion, but make technical contributions to our tests there.

Well, forums are in fact our main mode of free-style discussion, as you know.  You're free to discuss things on the wiki of course, but you should not try to discourage others from contributing their thoughts here on the forums.  If you want to change the habits of everyone in the project, the way to do it is to argue that we should close down the forums, and then maybe we can have a plebescite on the wiki and decide the matter (again, I might point out--we've discussed and voted on this before at least once, maybe twice).

No, I am not suggesting shutting down the forums. I am not trying to encourage or discourage, but simply point out some things that can, and cannot, be done with the medium of the forums.

In the specific case of the knowledge navigation discussion, however, there is a very substantial benefit to be able to suggest a template or diagram that needs the article format to demonstrate, and to see it in the context of the discussion.  Chris Day made some on-the-spot template tests.

[Christian Kleineidam]

According to http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html the website is reachable from China.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

According to http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html the website is reachable from China.

I can only say that a technically qualified Citizen, in China, is saying he cannot reach the server from there. Only glancing at the tool, I can't immediately see how it can tell, from outside China, what is or is not happening from behind the firewall in China. Inferences can be made, but the nature of the design of firewalls and filtering tools is that their internal operation is not intended to be visible from outside.

Again, I am not saying "stop using the Forums". I do say, however, that there is a signficant advantage to having pages exploring ways to use the page system, with on-the-spot tests and examples. There is certainly no objection to keeping the Forums informed of the results of these experiments and tests, but there's no way to perform them on the Forums. To perform the tests, and then report every detail on the forum, duplicates work.

I have given a link to my working draft, with open issues, of what I will eventually submit to the Proposals system, which is page, not forum, based. Nothing is being concealed, but that working draft is actively testing how certain links and technique examples would work in a page. What am I missing, if anything, that is not fully acessible from the Forum?

['docmartin' (Dr Martin Cohen)]

According to http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html the website is reachable from China.

I can only say that a technically qualified Citizen, in China, is saying he cannot reach the server from there. Only glancing at the tool, I can't immediately see how it can tell, from outside China, what is or is not happening from behind the firewall in China. Inferences can be made, but the nature of the design of firewalls and filtering tools is that their internal operation is not intended to be visible from outside.

Howard, et 'Al' too, might be interested in my own check on the Great Firewall.
I find a lot of claims made about the censorship in China that really don't match up to my own experiences. China seems to be the scapegoat de choix for all the world's problems, so  I asked the 'China editor' for our Journal, the Philosopher, who is a Professor at a Chinese mainland university, to try out the Forum for us and she replies:

I explored a bit and found it easy to register and login, no blocking, only that the non-citizen are not allowed to register as member but 'guest'.

So, although Howard's strategy of using pages rather than posts, certainly sounds appropriate in this case, I think we should resist any suggestion that 'for technical reasons' CZ pages have to be preferred over CZ forums?

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Howard, et 'Al' too, might be interested in my own check on the Great Firewall.
I find a lot of claims made about the censorship in China that really don't match up to my own experiences. China seems to be the scapegoat de choix for all the world's problems, so  I asked the 'China editor' for our Journal, the Philosopher, who is a Professor at a Chinese mainland university, to try out the Forum for us and she replies:

I explored a bit and found it easy to register and login, no blocking, only that the non-citizen are not allowed to register as member but 'guest'.

So, although Howard's strategy of using pages rather than posts, certainly sounds appropriate in this case, I think we should resist any suggestion that 'for technical reasons' CZ pages have to be preferred over CZ forums?

I'm not trying to address general policy, but for the specific area in which I'm concentrating, "technical" means I need to be in pages because the discussion directly concerns features of pages. I have personal opinions about discussion in general, and neither pages nor forums are ideal -- but I will work within agreements unless there is a very special reason. To me, it seems a little silly to try to have the page navigation discussion in the forums.