User talk:David Finn

Welcome! Feel free to ask any questions. I will answer them where I find them, so I will reply here if you type here - if you are replying to something I wrote on your talkpage or an article talkpage, just reply there as I watchlist everything and it is much easier to hold one conversation in one place! And if your question is about unsourced additions I have made - well, I don't make unsourced edits. If an edit I make has no obvious source it is just that I haven't added the source yet - all my edits are based on verifiable sources which I can produce on request. Happy editing! David Finn 06:46, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Welcome!

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at CZ:Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list (do join!) and the blog. Please also join the workgroup mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forums is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any constable for help, too. Me, for instance! Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! Hayford Peirce 17:12, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Reason for Picatinny renaming

Pain pills, I think. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:32, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Ha! Oops, mustn't laugh at the pain of others. You do a phenomenal amount of article creation I have noticed, well done. David Finn 22:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Class names

I wasn't sure if you would follow the discussion on my user page; we should decide where to discuss which, I'm pleased to say, is a CZ: Military Workgroup matter. Briefly, I have used the hyphen format for ship class names, fairly comfortable that there is no standard, but finding that it's useful to have a clear visual distinction between class and lead ship so it's always unambiguous if we are speaking of Yamato-class or IJN Yamato. (Note: there is a redirect, with a separate short definition, of IJN Yamato to Yamato-class. There's no reason except resources not to have an article on each ship of the class, but redirects with definition are an interim solution.

As you'll see from Destroyer/Related Articles, this applies to many more classes than battleships. There are a tremendous number of class references in many articles, and I've tried to be consistent about the hyphen style. I'm willing to recommend it, as the only active Military Editor, as a CZ style subject to workgroup discussion.

Naming has been a continuing problem, not just for ships. There have been arguments raised "but this is most common in Google", by nonspecialist Citizens, about a variety of naming categories. For example, I created the Hezbollah article believing that transliteration, while not unique, is most common in professional literature. Hezb'Allah, Hezballah, Hizballah, and others are also plausible transliterations, and for which I certainly would have no argument against having redirects to the arbitrary article name. Correctly, in English, the organization is the Party of God, or at most, the Party of Allah. The others become authoritative only if we write and index in Arabic. Nevertheless, names have been a hot argument and often the only ones associated with Military articles.

I would be delighted both to have a Military style guide, and more Military participants both as Authors and Editors. David, I have quite a few articles that may be close to Approval-ready, but can't advance unless there are either three editors (in some cases History or Politics) or there's a non-author Military Editor.

Shall we move this to discussion under CZ: Military Workgroup? Howard C. Berkowitz 11:18, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I am happy with your reasoning and your solution. Without a clear reason to do otherwise it seems best to just go with how things have been done, especially since there seems to be common use of both terms. Standardizing the process via the workgroup would be good, it would prevent any argument arising in the future should another contributor start changing things.

My Military contribution is likely to revolve around ships and vehicles, aircraft and equipment - technical matters, rather than anything controversial like politics, but I can afford to spend some time working on whatever else is necessary, and I am happy to continue discussion wherever it is most appropriate. Thanks for the reply. David Finn 14:39, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Great. Not too long ago, we were able to Approve several articles after I also received Editor status in History and Politics. Roger Lohmann and Russsell Jones and I did a number of three-editor approvals, more in the political area. I would be delighted to have more involvement in the technical area. The cruiser and destroyer articles, for example, are in decent shape, as are a number of specific battles.

There's a substantial amount about current technologies, which sound as if they are a bit outside your area of interest. Would you have any ideas about potential Editors for Military?

Stray question: As I've been revising various things about the Pacific Theater in WWII, I see a need for some articles hierarchically below the theater. Naming is a challenge and I really don't have strong preferences. Would you prefer:

• Philippines campaign (1941-1942), WWII resistance movements in the Philippines, and Phillipines campaign (1944-1945)
• Japanese occupation of the Philippines, WWII resistance movements in the Philippines, and U.S. Philippines counteroffensive

or something else? It's also an interesting question if the WWII resistance movement article should include postwar as well as wartime Hukbalahap activities.

Do let me know about more of your interests. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:04, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Last question first - it would be nice if we had enough material to support an article about postwar resistance, then the WWII resistance movements article would only need a short reference to the postwar period accompanied by a link to the postwar article.

I looked up the Huks, it seems they were named for the fact that they were opposing the Japanese, but the 9 years of their postwar struggle was exclusively against their Western backed leaders, if I read it correctly. I think that at this point their motivation was no longer the same as their wartime motivation, so maybe too much of their postwar activity would be out of scope. I like the second style you present, it seems much more attractive.

I don't mind modern technologies so much, I have Jane's Fighting Ships 2005-2006 and Jane's Military Vehicles and Logistics 2006-2007 as well as a lot of other material about more recent defence procurements and the military balance in the world today, but my real interest is the period 1880-1920, really the golden age of motor vehicles, powered aeroplanes and modern ships and yachts. I am not an expert but I am good at legwork and sourcing - I use the opportunity to educate myself, and it should mean that my contributions are solidly sourced. David Finn 18:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Photo

Thanks for the encouraging words. This is what I posted to my talk page. Lighten up fellas. The name I submitted sure looked like a REAL name to me and let it go at that. It is a lovely photo that I used on my wikiHow account and decided to move over here. The photo came from Flickr and I liked it. Do YOU make time to share anything positive here, or are are you all sitting around waiting to "pounce" on the newbies? I did add the hyperlink showing where the image was found so anyone could search it out. Finally, I did some research and indeed this is a dying wiki. I wonder why... Mary Ash 16:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

My comments to Mary Ash about photos

Hi, David:

We haven't met before this ... and I want to explain to you about my comments to Mary Ash on how to upload images. If you will look at Talk:V-22 Osprey, you will find that about 5-6 days ago, I told Mary about pretty much the same sort of corrections that I had to make on another image she had uploaded. At that time I asked her to study what I had done and said it would be useful the next time she uploaded an image.

If you will also look at User Talk: Mary Ash, you will see that she thanked me for those comments about the photo of the V-22 Osprey.

Then, just a few days later, she evidently forgot or decided to ignore that exchange and made some of the same sort of mistakes again when she uploaded that photo on her user page .... and I then commented again about the corrections.

As Chris Key has pointed out, the upload wizard pages clearly states that we need real names for photos from places like Commons or Flickr. I have sometimes had to spend many hours trying to find real names for the images that I found in Commons and Flickr ... and in some cases had to wait days for responses to emails that I sent asking people to please give me their real names.

The summary that the upload wizard asks us ti fill out also clearly asks that we create a "credit line" and provides a link to the page for doing so. For example, that beautiful windmill picture which you have on your user page also needs to have a credit line and it only takes a few minutes to create.

I don't mean to be sarcastic in any way, but this isn't rocket science ... all it takes on Mary's part is the determination to read and to study a bit.

I hope that this clears the air somewhat. I am really not an ogre. Milton Beychok 18:16, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I get your point, and thanks for the explanation. It seems that this particular user is taking a little longer than might be expected to adapt to new ideas. I must admit that I didn't see anything about a 'credit line' when I uploaded that photo, but then I do not know a lot about image uploading and erred on the side of caution by only using one of my own which I don't mind giving away - however, having been alerted to the fact, I certainly wouldn't make the same mistake twice. I guess not everyone works that way. Cheers. David Finn 23:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Windmill

David, you are living in the Netherlands, you produced a beautiful photo of a windmill and your user page says that you love history .... and we need an article titled Windmill. All we have now is a lemma article (that is a definition only article). Please write one for us. You might refer to the history section of the Wind turbine article for some help. How about it? Milton Beychok 00:02, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I can certainly try!

I have been working on a cluster of articles, all connected to the development of transport around the end of the 19th century. I started with Reliance (yacht) and as you can see, it contains a lot of redlinks. It is my intention to write articles for all of those, but it is taking a lot of research to get the details right.

So Reliance is one extreme, and at the other end there is the 1903 America's Cup draft I have been working on, which I think may be too overly detailed, but that is why I started working on a draft page as I wanted something finished to present.

Because the articles are all linked, researching one provides information on many, and after a bit of a struggle with my first few articles I think the whole cluster will come pretty quick, as I will have a standard format then and be more versed in Citizendium code.

Anyway, my point is that although my only article so far is Reliance (yacht), and that is just a stub, in fact there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes which will make it into the encyclopedia eventually. In the meantime I am more than happy to lend a hand where necessary. Even after 13 years of living in the Netherlands I can't say I know much about windmills, despite living on a piece of Holland that was sea until the windmills drained it, but I am certainly well placed to find out and I expect the investigation shall be interesting. Thanks for the suggestion! David Finn 08:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Your nautical input appreciated!

I've been up to several things, and it occurred to me that you might be a good sounding board. You may or may not be aware we have a fairly informal CZ:Subgroups mechanism that complements workgroups, typically for interdisciplinary subjects. I have been creating quite a few subgroups, with one idea being that their topic will appeal to some group from which we could recruit new Citizens -- an opportune time as the Charter becomes real.

Now, I've started in military areas, including CZ: United States Navy Subgroup and CZ: Royal Navy Subgroup. By no means are they complete, because it's cumbersome to add existing articles to subgroups -- I'm doing it as I can.

I think I've told you I work with marine electronics and computers, principally in commercial fishing although I do have experience with naval things. Some of my clients, as well as LinkedIn and other groups, deal with recreational boating all the way up to the superyachts. Other than navigation and safety, however, I know very little about yacht racing.

Should there be one or more subgroups to deal with the details of the non-naval things? I'm not sure if CZ: Marine navigation would be good, if we need something for water recreation, etc. For that matter, there's commercial shipping, minerals exploration, etc.

Does this give any ideas, either for article organization or for finding new Citizens? --Howard C. Berkowitz 12:31, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Some interesting points there. Trying to recruit Citizens from specific areas of interest would indeed be good, and having a 'home' for them to discuss their ideas might be just what is needed. I have started looking at the sailing subgroup, but I can already see a place for an 'America's Cup' subgroup. 'Commercial shipping' would be useful, a category dealing with cruiseships might also be useful - along with superyachts, as you have pointed out, cruiseships tend to contain the most up to date electronics and shipboard (commercial) systems.

Another area I am specifically interested in is that of sail powered training vessels held by Navies worldwide so maybe a 'Tall Ships' subsection would be useful as there are many people whose only experience of classic yachting is through witnessing one of the regattas involving similar vessels.

Especially for sailing related matters, I think the biggest barrier right now is that there are not enough articles to work on - a new Citizen, finding themselves inclined to join a sailing related subgroup, would find themselves obliged to write any of the articles that may represent their interest. It would be better if there were a cluster of sailing related articles for them to look at to see how Citizendium approaches the subject - also many people would prefer to work on an existing article at first, incrementaly, rather than diving right in to start their own.

That is basicaly where I came in, and to gauge the required style of content I have been looking all over Citizendium. What I can do is start a load of articles so that any sailing related subgroup has work in evidence - I have been concentrating more on getting a particular aspect of that as comprehensive as I can (example) but at the same time I should also create a lot of smaller articles that I, or others, can work on later. Thanks for the advice! David Finn 08:40, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I have started CZ:Marine electronics Subgroup. CZ: Tall ships Subgroup makes sense as a small but enthusiastic group (History, Engineering and Military workgroups?)

We do need to disambiguate yacht, considering racing yachts and the sport, recreational yachts of medium size (I vaguely recall 28' as the minimum length), superyachts, etc. Rather to my surprise, I'm finding a significant superyacht community on some of my LinkedIn marine groups -- perhaps not surprising, as such people clearly have money.

Your comment about a cluster suggests you think that newbies would rather add to an article than create one? I really don't know, but I myself have been using the new Metadata form and, even though I understand subpages thoroughly, it could easily lower the learning curve.

Related Articles pages, even with red or definition-only entries, could give an idea of articles needed. Presumably, we want to let new users know about subgroups. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:41, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply - the tall ships are especially interesting to me, a lot of countries operate sail training ships to the old style, and many with great history.

Howard, I haven't written an article since leaving school. At 35 it's a steep learning curve, and it can be easier to begin by adding to someone elses work rather than starting from scratch. That also helps with learning the Citizendium style and I imagine that for many people it would be helpful to be able to begin like this.

I think you will have people who join with the idea of building an encyclopedia. We also want to entice people who are interested in specific subjects, so if they find a cluster of good but short Citizendium articles maybe they will be inclined to join, seeing a lot of small changes they can make, and this might lead to them being article creators.

Again I think I can help by starting a few of those articles. The past month or so I have been frightfully busy but I shall gradually have more and more time to contribute over the coming weeks. Thank you for the discussion, and I am interested to know what you think of my comment at the Trident page. David Finn 16:18, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I would appreciate your comments

David, I have just written a new article and the title will be Smog when I upload it into the article namespace. It is currently in my sandbox at User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox.

I know that you are probably not an expert on the subject. However, I would very much appreciate your review of it and giving me any comments, additions, deletions, typo corrections, or revisions you care to offer on my sandbox talk page. I am fairly sure that there must be some parts which could be better written from the viewpoint of clarity and understanding.

Thanks in advance, Milton Beychok 02:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I took a look a few days ago (I check the 'recent changes' when I am at the computer, which alas hasn't been a great deal over the past week) and I will take another look now that it has evolved to see if I have any suggestions. Cheers. David Finn 07:32, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

ABDA command or Battle of the Java Sea?

Would you be interested in taking on either one, especially the latter? There is some material in cruiser. I suspect, however, knowledge of Dutch language and history would help in writing this. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:05, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll take a look just now at what I can dig up. David Finn 06:18, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

One preliminary point - it looks like ABDA is more commonly referred to as the American-British-Dutch-Australian command (we have a few redlinks that have Australia-Britain-Dutch-American) David Finn 06:39, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly the Glossary of US Naval Abbreviations has ABDA as American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (1942) and ABDACOM as either Advanced Base Depot Area Command or American-British-Dutch-Australian Supreme Command (1942), so I am left wondering what the title of the article should be. I will open a working page for the content which can be moved to article space once it is ready and a title decided on. I know little about the subject, but it is interesting to me so I welcome the chance. David Finn 07:01, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

We might want to start Related Articles on the command and the battle; I'll do the latter if you like.

Circumstances may force the article name to be ABDA, if there is no definitive single explanation. You'll find, for example, that I chose to title an article MACV-SOG, because there was both an unclassified cover meaning (Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group), and a classified one (Military Operations Command Vietnam, Special Operations Group) Howard C. Berkowitz 20:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, I will add some text to the draft tomorrow. This is another example of research slowing me down! I found Winston Churchills address to Parliament from January 1942 which helps explain why Britain had not prioritised the defense of South-East Asia, and then I realised I have the minutes of that debate already somewhere in my collection of Parliamentary papers, which started me reading some of the other debates around the same period... It's all leading somewhere! David Finn 21:53, 5 September 2010 (UTC)