[Cz-biology] FW: A note from Tony Sebastian in the Department of Medicine about a project that might interest you and your colleagues as academics who desire to share their knowledge

Sat Sep 13 18:27:51 CDT 2008

All,

I sent letters worded as below to 18 colleagues at my institution.  Some I
don't personally, but all would make excellent CZers, some have many
colleagues in their 'labs'.  

The letter wording and formatting differ slightly from that on the academic
recruitment letter template page.  Also, I started at the final few letters
to appeal to their particular interests by mentioning CZ articles needing
development. I'll try to do as many more as I can as quickly as I can, and
reach out to biologists at other institutions.  

Let's get Richard Dawkins.  He writes a lot, and his job, advance the public
understanding of science, though he said he's retiring that job next years.

I won't edit the template letter to accord with below, as others may want to
word things differently to suit their style and needs.

Note to Larry: 6 million words when article count much fewer than 8000.  How
many words now, 'for to say' in our letters?

Anthony.Sebastian

From: Anthony Sebastian [mailto:Anthony_Sebastian at msn.com] 
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2008 2:45 PM
To: 'A.hunt at ucsf.edu'
Subject: A note from Tony Sebastian in the Department of Medicine about a
project that might interest you and your colleagues as academics who desire
to share their knowledge

Dear Dr. Hunt,

I am writing on behalf of the Citizendium project --
http://en.citizendium.org -- a free, expert-guided collaborative online
encyclopedia project on the World Wide Web. I have a very small favor to ask
of you, but first let me give you a little background. 

Citizendium is an attempt to create a more reliable and authoritative
version of Wikipedia. Unlike that project, we are devoted to achieving
genuine reliability through the contributions of certified experts, and we
require contributors to use their own names. We are young (a little less
than two years old) but we have already created over 6 million words in over
8,000 articles in various stages of development, and we're growing nicely.
The project was founded by Dr. Larry Sanger, a philosopher who co-founded
Wikipedia and who has since become something of a critic of it, his own
brainchild. 

We are now preparing to expand our offerings in Biology, by offering an
"open house" for biologists join Citizendium (free) to participate to any
degree they feel comfortable. From September 22nd to thru the 28th, we will
be holding Biology Week, an event we intend to publicize Citizendium far and
wide in the biology community. During that week, we will recruit as many
biologists as possible to join the project, either as Biology Workgroup
Editors or as Biology Workgroup Authors. We currently have 36 Biology
Workgroup Editors writing, editing, and guiding contributors with lesser
expertise. We hope to greatly expand the group with as many biologists as
would like to participate. No assignments, no deadline, all volunteer
participation.  

This will be an opportunity for biologists to come together to support a
project that we believe will provide a critical resource - a reliable,
authoritative free online non-profit encyclopedia, with referenced articles.
This Biology Week event will help raise the profile of Citizendium among
biologists. It will also help introduce biologists to the brave new world of
online wiki collaboration, and give them an opportunity to widely share
their knowledge. 

To implement this event I have a small request to make from you. I ask for a
sentence or two from you encouraging your colleagues to join the project and
show up online for Biology Week. You could offer it to your colleagues
either in your own name as an individual biologist, or as a representative
of your department, division, institute, or the like. We would use your
endorsement in materials that we are using to announce Biology Week to
biologists. Indeed, if biologists see your further encouragement to support
Citizendium by you yourself showing up online for Biology Week, they will be
more likely to sign up themselves. 

You can learn more about Citizendium's mission at http://en.citizendium.org,
which will take you to the Main Page that has a link to the Biology
Workgroup page, and from there to the articles in progress and to the list
of Core Article for which we need contributors. 

Learn more about the reasons we started the Citizendium project at:

 http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:About and
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Why_Citizendium%3F

Please consider emailing a brief statement to your colleagues, individually
or through a distribution list. If you prefer, you could simply forward this
message to them, saying something like this: 

I have checked out Citizendium and it appears to be a worthwhile educational
project. I would encourage you to check it out for yourself and consider
showing up online during Biology Week and sharing some of your knowledge. 

We feel a small expression of support from you, individually or as the head
of your unit, could help us build our Biology offerings, currently viewable
at

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Biology_Workgroup 

 into a first-rate knowledge resource in biology. 

We could use help with our developing systems biology article:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Systems_biology 

Best regards,

mysig.jpg

Anthony Sebastian MD

P.S. 

.        Sign-up at: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount.
It will take you less than five minutes.

.        If you wish to see my User Page, with links to articles I started
and worked on, as well as articles others started and I provided guidance
and contributed content, see:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Anthony.Sebastian. 

.

-------------------------

Anthony Sebastian, MD

Professor of Medicine

University of California San Francisco

Postal Mail Address:

Anthony Sebastian, MD

40 Crags Court

San Francisco, CA 94131

 <mailto:Anthony_Sebastian at msn.com> Anthony_Sebastian at msn.com [preferred
email address]

415-648-0834 [tel]; 415-358-5953 [fax]

Faculty Affiliations:

Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology

Clinical and Translational Science

   Institute (CTSI)

   --CTSI Strategic Opportunities

     Support Center

University of California San Francisco

 <mailto:sebastia at gcrc.ucsf.edu> sebastia at gcrc.ucsf.edu

Faculty Webpage:

 <http://medicine.ucsf.edu/nephrology/faculty/anthony_sebastian.html>
http://medicine.ucsf.edu/nephrology/faculty/anthony_sebastian.html

View/Download Selected Publications:

 <http://groups.msn.com/Anthony-Sebastian>
http://groups.msn.com/Anthony-Sebastian

Weblogs:

--TonySeb's Commonplace Blog  <http://tonyseb.blogspot.com>
http://tonyseb.blogspot.com

--Science Thoughts  <http://anthony-sebastian.blogspot.com>
http://anthony-sebastian.blogspot.com

Emails written in E-Prime:  <http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/epr1.htm>
http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/epr1.htm

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