User talk:Donald P. Cram

Welcome!

Welcome to Citizendium as a new author! We're very glad you've joined us. We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably also want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at Getting Started for other helpful "startup" pages, and at CZ:Home for a complete listing of help and other community pages. If you wish, just ask me to create a "personal sandbox" for you where you can test out editing and writing articles. If you need help to get going, it is a good idea to join our discussion forums. That's where we discuss policy, proposals or technical problems. You can ask any constable for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and thank you! We appreciate your willingness to share your expertise, and we hope to see you begin actively editing and contributing to Citizendium. Milton Beychok 18:43, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

About "approved" and "unapproved" articles

Donald, all of our articles are assigned a status when created:

• Status 4 = An article imported from WP or elsewhere, which should be completely reviewed/re-written and put into Citizendium (CZ) style as soon as possible if not sooner. In general, we frown upon such articles.
• Status 3 = Stub articles
• Status 2 = Developing articles. This is probably what most of our articles are.
• Status 1 = Developed article ready for nomination to be approved.
• Approved

All of our articles (before achieving "approved" status) include this comment on the main article page: This is a draft article, under development and not meant to be cited; you can help to improve it. These "unapproved" articles are completely available for any Citizen (a registered member of CZ) to edit. improve or to expand.

Once an article achieves "approved status" it is protected (locked). But at the same time a copy is created and designated as a "draft" and that draft is also completely available for any Citizen (a registered member of CZ) to edit or to expand. Subsequently, after the "draft" has been significantly edited/revised, the article may be nominated for "re-approval".

All of our articles (approved or unapproved) are publicly visible to the general public (unregistered members).

At the moment, we have 15,880 articles at different stages of development, of which 156 have achieved "approved" status.

Does this answer your query about the availability of unapproved articles? Milton Beychok 19:05, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thanks! --Donald P. Cram 14:29, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to the Economics Workgroup !

To call it a workgroup is a bit misleading - I believe that it now consists of you and me! I am its general dogsbody - author this last 4 years and editor for a year or so. I am not a wiki expert, but I have found out how to do most things by trial and error, so you may sometimes find it easier to ask me than to wrestle with MediaWiki instructions. My job as editor is not to tell you what to do, but to offer help and encouragement - and hopefully to pilot your completed articles through the approval process. I have never been a businessman, but a 3-month course at the Manchester Business School taught me a bit about the subject (but not enough for an MBA!), so I may be able to discuss business matters with you. I agree with you that CZ has a lot of gaps to fill - so please get stuck in. It also has some woefully inadequate articles, and you might find that improving some of them is the easiest way to get started. Don't be afraid of upsetting the previous author: a CZ article is not anybody's property. Of course it is polite to start by stating your intention on the article's talk page. Enjoy! (I do). Nick Gardner 11:18, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome. --Donald P. Cram 14:29, 27 June 2011 (UTC)