User talk:James F. Perry

Welcome

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start, and see Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any user or the editors for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun!

Sarah Tuttle 11:20, 2 January 2007 (CST)

imports from WP

There currently is no "imported from WP template". We're trying to add a checkbox at the bottom of the editing window or something to add or remove that notice. In the meantime, if you do import them, just put a sentence at the bottom, like this: This page is based off of one of the same topic at the English Wikipedia. Also, if you can take only your contributions out of an article, please do so. That way, the article is all-CZ, instead of a mix of WP and CZ content. But if it's not feasible, don't worry about it. --ZachPruckowski 13:57, 25 January 2007 (CST)

Joan of Arc's visions

Hi, James F. Perry -- I'm just posting a note here to see why you feel that Joan of Arc's visions ought to be removed from the main article. I'm puzzled by the change, but open to hearing why you thought it a good idea. Regards,

Russell Potter 20:09, 7 January 2007 (CST)

Not a problem. Glad to help out. Best,--Jason Sanford 08:35, 8 January 2007 (CST)

Joan of Arc

Hi James, thanks for your notes on my talk page.

The things you're doing make sense to me on one level -- you are adding and expanding content on some very important issues relating to Joan of Arc. My only question is why remove them from the main biographical entry? I could imagine a long article on, say, medieval women mystics, with a subsection on Visions which might include some of the things you've been working on, and cross-referencing this to the main entry. But if you take the section on Visions out of the main entry altogether, you render the main entry far less valuable, I fear. Some summary, or shortened version, should remain in any case; if there is to be a separate article on Joan's visions, it should be clearly cross-referenced with the main entry.

Perhaps this question should be talked about in either the History or Religion discussion forums? It might well be a very good article to breathe some life into those forums with!

cheers,

Russell Potter 13:11, 9 January 2007 (CST)

Copyright/Free Use for Pictures

Could you kindly correct my mistake and put whatever language should be there about the pictures on the image bank- thanks, Nancy Nancy Sculerati MD 17:20, 30 January 2007 (CST)

Copyright Question/Intellectual Property Right Protection under the Law

Copyright protection covers not only the original work, but also any works based on the original (called derivative works).

"In addition to the right to make copies, copyright protection also allows the owner to control derivative works. . . " (West Nutshell series on Intellectual Property).

"A copyright owner has the right to exclude all others from creating works based on his own. This right safeguards a copyright owner from what otherwise might be an unduly narrow interpretation of the reproduction right, which could then permit another to vary elements of the work sufficiently to to assert that it is not actually a copy." (also from West Nutshell)

"The statutory definition of a 'derivative work' is extremely comprehensive . . ." (also West)

Your original description (above) is precisely what a derivative work is. I do not know what you mean by an "original trace". It still sounds like a derivative product. IANAL, but you do not want not hear this from a lawyer! James F. Perry 23:53, 24 February 2007 (CST)

I just took a look at the Oldest carbon life photo. It says "based on". That sounds very much like "derivative product". James F. Perry 00:03, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Common Sense vs. Proprietorship - 'dat waskly wabbit

If everyone sued everyone for replicating a concept, idea or fact commerce would come to a virtual halt, educational institutions would shut down, no further books could be published. In fact, this entire site is one big 'derivitive' work. All the articles are derived from printed or electronic material, and those being ideas and concepts that were not originally the authors' own ideas, rather, they are replicating ideas and words that belonged to somebody else. Derivitive work, as in commercial products. e.g., a cartoon character owned by Warner Brothers, -- it would be illegal to create a Bugs Bunny decal, and to sell T-Shirts without Warner Brothers' permission. Warner Brothers owns proprietary rights to Bugs. However, as for the photograph in discussion and the photographer in question, does not and cannot claim ownership over a mass-publicized carbon ball found in a rock. There's a line between absurdity and common sense. That is why there are stipulations such as fair use in Copyright law. The photographer would have to prove beyond reasonable doubt to a court of law they were caused financial harm. They do not own a patent on the carbon ball. *smile*

An image of a carbon ball, an article based on the writings of others... intellectual property rights... same thing. --Sharon Mooney 1:49, 25 February 2007 (EST)

question

hello, just wondering here: why isnt the IAA mentioned in the organisations, or the ESA/NASA and all other international organisations - who are contributing to astronomical research. For popularity you might even consider adding a hubble and webb section about observations of the universe. I do think your section is going ahead very very well, thanks for your contributions and enthusiasm. Robert Tito 12:45, 31 January 2007 (CST)

Mr. Perry, it might be useful to get in touch with Todd Trimble. He has an interest in space exploration, you are in the other regime: together it might be very interesting. regards, and keep up the good work. Robert Tito 16:14, 31 January 2007 (CST)

Latin

Mr. Perry,

Indeed not many are able to read Latin, you must have been pleased by the volume, though many, like for instance Principeae, have a very archaic way to tell and show things. Even the math seems strange, but once accustomed to it it is fun to read. Robert Tito 16:04, 2 February 2007 (CST)

Tycho

James, for some reason I can only see your edits on my user talk page if I look at the history. I am not familiar with his death, and will try to read about it. Tell me more about the cats, please. NancyNancy Sculerati MD 15:25, 6 February 2007 (CST)

WP templates

Hi James, I notice in your edit summaries that you say you are adding WP templates. This is not necessary, as long as you check the "Content is from Wikipedia?" checkbox. If this is not working yet, it will be soon. Once we've confirmed that it is working, we will be removing all the WP templates. So, do what you gotta do, but just know that others will be removing the templates probably pretty soon. --Larry Sanger 12:57, 13 February 2007 (CST)

Fermentation & Chorleywood Bread Process articles

Why are these marked for a deletion request?
I could see no explanation, but that may be
because I don't know my way around here, yet.

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Chorleywood_Bread_Process

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Fermentation_(food)--Perry Spiller 16:06, 18 February 2007 (CST)

deleting stubs

Hi James,

I've been waiting for a good excuse to write you -- because I have an old friend named James Perry who's a philosophy professor at a community college in Florida, so whenever I see your name on CZ I smile -- and now I have it. Thanks for the note you put on my talk page about why you're deleting the stubs I'm creating, and now that I know that's not the right way to solve my problem, I hope you'll be kind enough to tell me what I should be doing instead. The problem is that I keep creating articles that have legitimate links to articles that don't exist yet. When I didn't create stubs for those new articles immediately, people came along and removed all the links to them, and I'm for sure not going to go back later and put links in old articles to all the new ones that have been created since, and I doubt anyone else will. So I started creating stubs so they'd be on my contributions list for me to go back and flesh them out later, but now people are deleting those stubs. I don't understand the reasoning (because it seems to me that a short but accurate article is better than none at all, especially when I give it an external link to someplace really helpful), but I'll go along with whatever CZ policy is. So please tell me whether I should (1) just not put in links to anything that doesn't exist yet, (2) create stubs but put something on their talk page to keep them from being deleted, or (3) something else. Again, thanks muchly for telling me. -- k kay shearin 22:52, 19 February 2007 (CST)

" . . . are you telling me that people actually go in and remove the square brackets which create links?"

Yes, and it was really driving me nuts, because sometimes they did it when I had the new linked-to article written in my word-processor, during the time it took me to cut it there and click on the link I had just created to paste it in.

"Oh, and I'm working on the Trial of Joan of Arc page. It is currently in the History Workgroup. I was thinking of moving it to the Law Workgroup where it would go with other famous Trials (Socrates, Scopes, Nuremburg, etc). What do you think?"

I love the idea, because I was planning on marking articles about famous legal cases as Law Workgroup anyhow, but I may be prejudiced. Can an article be in more than one workgroup, as I've assumed it could? If so, why don't you put it in both? If not, why don't you give it to Law, for the very reason you gave? -- k kay shearin 23:29, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Good thinking, but no cigar: Having been mugged by the likes of "Rob Levin" (and worse ones) on WP years ago, I wasn't bothered by him, and that's why I just left him the message I did and waited for him to be taken care of, which he promptly was. No, most of the stubs it happened in have now been deleted, so there's no history for me to point you to, but if you look at the history of West Memphis Three (can you tell that's my magnum opus so far? I've been stranded in a rented room in WM for more than a year now on my way to somewhere else, and this is therapy), beginning with "Gareth Leng" 's 1st edit on 16 February, you'll get the idea. -- k kay shearin 15:10, 20 February 2007 (CST)

famous trials

I've been thinking about your idea about articles on famous trials and your professed lack of legal expertise, and I'd be willing to supply the latter if you'd take the lead on the former, at least until some other folks get on board. I don't have an appropriate point of view to paint the big picture this general-purpose encyclopedia needs. Normal people, for example, don't care that I think the West Memphis 3 and O. J. Simpson trials are the two sides of one coin, or that I think they're in one basket with the Salem Witch trials while Joan of Arc and Scopes and Socrates are in another and the trials of wives and ministers of kings are in another. I also wonder if, with so many philosophers among us, we might get a workgroup of experts to provide the sociological/psychological/political insight to add to the legal analyses the Law Workgroup would provide, because that's the aspect of the trials that gets people so worked up about them, and I'd like to see that laid out in the articles. -- k kay shearin 14:43, 21 February 2007 (CST)

As I said before, I'm too close to the topic to have a good perspective, so I'll defer to your list of what articles about trials are 'high priority' for the Law Workgroup (and, yes, I am a CZ editor, and I suppose I qualify as such in law, because my only doctorate is in that subject, altho I have degrees in several other fields, but not in the ones I'm most interested in writing about, unfortunately), but I can't help exhibiting my lawyerness/attorneyhood by asking if you don't think it would be a good idea to subdivide the (sub)topic into civil trials and criminal trials, because different bodies of law apply to them, and they're based on totally different ideas: Civil law and, therefore, civil trials are about disputes between individual citizens within the society, but criminal law and trials are about disputes between an individual and society as a whole, which is why they can be so outrageously unjust. -- k kay shearin 00:17, 22 February 2007 (CST)

No, I myself don't consider those two trials a priority, but then I've never cared about spectator sports (or pornography, either -- I figure you either play or don't play, but you don't pay to watch someone else play) anway, so you can't judge by me. And I confess to being biased toward U.S. law, because that's all I've practiced, because this is where I've been, but it's not as if there are trials taking place anywhere else (since 1776) that affect U.S. law, and we certainly consider the old cases from Europe important. But here are some U.S. Supreme Court cases I'd give priority to:

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)

New York Times v. U.S., 403 U.S. 713 (1971)

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963)

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)

U.S. v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974)

And what about Jack the Ripper makes him a legal subject at all, much less a priority one? Since we don't even know who he was, so there was never any legal proceeding involving him, why should the Law Workgroup care about him? There's certainly a place in this encyclopedia for the great unsolved crimes (who killed the princes in the Tower?) in history, but I respectfully suggest that it doesn't take a lawyer to approve any article about it, and isn't that the test of what should be in the Law Workgroup? -- k kay shearin 22:19, 22 February 2007 (CST)

I changed the subheadings on civil and criminal trials on the LawWG page because (1) that isn't the distinction in all legal systems -- even in our own (English) legal history people were routinely imprisoned for debt (a civil matter), and prohibiting that was one of the innovations of the Constitution; and (2) that isn't even the distinction in the U.S. -- exceeding the speed limit a little bit will cost you only property (a fine), not life or liberty, but it's still a crime, not a civil matter (and that's why due process explicitly covers the loss of life, liberty, and property interests).

It is my opinion that the trial is not the important factor for situations like the Black Sox and Al Capone -- but instead the scandal and the irony of having to get him for tax evasion instead of gangsterism, respectively -- but that the trial itself is rightfully the subject of a separate article for, say, Joan of Arc and Oscar Wilde (who might well be a law priority) and Sir Thomas More (who probably isn't), because in the latter cases the legal/justice system was twisted to serve a political agenda.

A major reason I became a civil rights lawyer is that in law school I studied that subject under Arthur Kinoy, who inter alia, was a lawyer for the Rosenbergs. If you haven't read his first book, Rights on Trial, I commend it to you. I don't have access to my copy now, because it's in storage with my furniture and other stuff, so I can't steer you to specific sections, but coming from your experience with JofA, I think you would appreciate his perspective on the legal system. -- k kay shearin 21:14, 23 February 2007 (CST)

image deletes

I notice the speedydelete requests for several images. Is the author whoo downloaded these aware of this request and are they in copyright violation? -Matt Innis (Talk)

Good job, I was hoping that's what it was! All done? -Matt Innis (Talk) 12:36, 28 February 2007 (CST)

we have received a response from NG, we acted immediately. I do think our action will awaken them to look at these sites as well. Beter prevent than restore judicial suits. Robert Tito | Talk

Classics Workgroup

Sorry, I haven't been keeping as close an eye as I should be on my inbox recently. What kind of help can I offer? --jwisser 12:50, 28 February 2007 (CST)

WP content at Joan of Arc

If you are sure you have removed WP content from the article and this is your original work, you should uncheck the "Content is from Wikipedia" box on your next edit. Cheers. Stephen Ewen 21:15, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Hi! Many thanks for your remarks. I use an experimental script and I do not claim my list is free of mistakes (still working on it!). Actually, I'm going through the list and checking (so far so good). Moreover, the script is quite stupid: it just looks for identical sentences. Indeed, Tycho Brahe credits WP, but in nonstandard way (the relevant box is not checked, there is just a piece of text; I'll fix it). Concerning Timeline of Joan of Arc, unchecking box must be accompanied by a dummy edit of the main text (e.g. adding an empty line at the end before the categories) to have an effect (done).

As for Joan of Arc and WP-credit, there are the following similitudes:

• ...of land and her father supplemented his farming work with a minor position as a village official, collecting taxes and heading the local watch
• Charles VII succeeded in retaining legitimacy as king of France in spite of a rival coronation held for Henry VI in December 1431 on the boy's tenth birthday
• The duke of Bedford died the same year and Henry VI became the youngest king of England to rule without a regent
• That treaty and his weak leadership were probably the most important factors in ending the conflict
• Kelly DeVries argues that Joan of Arc's aggressive use of artillery and frontal assaults influenced French tactics for the rest of the war

I know that it's not too much. But maybe we'd better reword it somehow so that no one can claim we copy material from WP without giving the credit (I'm all for making our texts completely WP-free where reasonable). BTW, Joan of Arc is a great article !

Best, --AlekStos 13:30, 28 March 2007 (CDT) PS. Update: for checking/unchecking the box, an empty line should go before the last line of the text. A.S.

Thanks. I plan to release the script so that anyone could use it. But first it must be integrated and adapted to work in some more general setting (now it relies heavily on some particularities of my machine). --AlekStos 11:13, 29 March 2007 (CDT)

Hi again! After your declaration concerning Timeline of Joan of Arc, I removed WP credits from that article. But during a recent operation massive content check I found again this article with pretty many "similitudes" (26). Formally, WP credit applies and this was the solution when the "viper articles" were on the table with the same question (BigCleanup discussions). I do not know what to do. I'll leave it to you :-) --AlekStos 11:57, 29 March 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the remarks. Well, the script has no problem, at it makes no decisions, it just indicates something not that easy to understand :-) The issue is to decide how we qualify identical contributions made to WP and CZ by the same authors. Once I suggested something like "it does not use Wikipedia content but the knowledge of the author", just like you seem to suggest here, see this diff [1], last but one paragraph. Larry's answer there --indirectly but quite clearly -- seemed to suggest something else: if there was something almost identical on Wikipedia (by the same author), our article is qualified _external_, not even CZ live see this, 3rd para; consequently, we might infer, if there are _some_ considerable identical fragments, the credit should be given, regardless the author(s). After all, it is never sure how many authors contributed to WP content and to what extent. So we act on formal comparison. Well, I'm not sure whether this interpretation is correct. But it looks like we would need to have a clear standard for this type of situation (as this will happen more often). In other word, I think the question could be asked "publicly" on forums (more "fair"), or directly to Larry (perhaps more "efficient"). I'll try the latter. --AlekStos 14:46, 29 March 2007 (CDT)

John Steinback

Hi! Why you're thinking about deletion? I'm just trying to resolve some inconsistencies, doing my best to be accurate, see the forum. Well, yes, there are plans to delete external articles in some future, but before it starts the article may go live (the history of minor technical edits is quite long, BTW) :) --Aleksander Stos 12:23, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

Scottish Enlightenment

Since I saw you edit that article, you might be a good person to ask. I know we have an article entitled Treaty of Union (1707), which from as far as I can tell is either the same thing as, or part of, the Acts of Union. I've noticed there is mention of the Acts of Union in the Enlightenment article, which would be nice to link. What I'm wondering is if you would know whether Acts of Union merits it's own article, or perhaps just a redirect to the treaty? --Todd Coles 08:46, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

The License

Hi James,

Don't know if you've heard yet but CZ had adopted a license. Hope to see you around the History Workgroup! Denis Cavanagh 10:43, 2 January 2008 (CST)

a lot to be said about Scotland

keep up the good work. Richard Jensen 10:28, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Template:Def Canada

Hi, just came across Template:Def Canada. How will this template be used? I've been working on Canada a little and I'm curious. Is there a CZ policy that explains this? Shawn Goldwater 11:42, 5 February 2008 (CST)

"Olympics action icons"

I don't know what else to call them, but we should find out the licensing information for pictographs that represent the various olympic sports. I think it would be an awesome addition to the articlespace. --Robert W King 15:03, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Hundred Years War

I noticed you done a good bit of work on Joan of Arc and was wondering if you would be able to add anything to the France, history article about the War? I have done a little on the Medieval period but its very short altogether. In the spirit of the Write a thon and all that.

Regards, Denis Cavanagh 09:14, 6 February 2008 (CST)

These templates

I'm still unclear on the purpose of these biographical temmplates, say, for the prominent Canadians. Are they called templates because eventually they'll appear in some kind of box? Shawn Goldwater 18:16, 10 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. I don't think I'll fully get the point of the templates until I see them in action, so for now, as you'll suggest, I'll stick to articles, in the limited time I have. Shawn Goldwater 20:44, 10 February 2008 (CST)

help needed

Thanks for the work on 100 years war....can you help on the NASA article. It needs special suppages to relocate stuff now under the heading "Move to subpages" but I do not know how to do it. thanks Richard Jensen 14:07, 16 February 2008 (CST)

Annotation

I think what you're doing at Amish/Bibliography looks pretty good. Better than tables in my view. Chris Day 16:22, 19 May 2008 (CDT)

Definitions

Yeah, we know it's convoluted - sorry! (Sigh, we're lacking a lot of programmer support - it should have been possible to automate this, and not have humans have to bother with it at all, but that's life...)

If you leave out the <noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude> line, the definition will work fine (i.e. just having the text), the only thing is that when you actually go to the /Definition subpage, the subpage tab navigation bar will be missing. (Some other stuff, like putting the /Definition subpage in the right categories, will also not work.) So it's OK to move them without adding that; someone else (a bot?) can come along later and do them. J. Noel Chiappa 07:55, 20 May 2008 (CDT)

James, you can leave those definitions at the Template Def Article name location if you like. There is no urgency to move them as they work there just as well as at the new location. I agree its a pain to move and then have to add the <noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude> code. The todo list is more so we can note where everything is more easily. If you procratinate long enough maybe someone will get a bot to do it. Chris Day 10:01, 20 May 2008 (CDT)

It's really dumb that we have people doing this by hand. A bot would be perfect for this. Let me try and figure out how to run one - it would be really useful for us to have that capability 'on call', from someone who's online a lot (i.e. me :-). J. Noel Chiappa 10:08, 20 May 2008 (CDT)

Disambiguation

I wouldn't worry with disambiguating Anaximander. I too can't think of another one, except the crater named in his honour. I don't know why the link shows up in that colour - Chris has some complicated scheme for link colours which I haven't kept up with.

The best way to find existing articles when you're about to start an article is to use 'Search', and see if anyone has already started the article (perhaps under a different name). I wouldn't worry with the /Definition stuff until later, after the article is well under way. One thing I would start out by doing is creating a lot of redirects from other possible names (starting with case and hyphenation variants) to the name you've picked - again, you may discover someone's already started the article as you do that.

As to whether you need to disambuiguate a term - well, do you know any other things of the same name? If not, you could try looking on WP, and see if they had to disambiguate the term. If there are some other things of the same name, best to start out with disambiguation, so we don't have to move stuff around later. Just put the article you're writing at some suitably disambiguated name ("Foo of Bar", or "Foo (bar)", or something like that), and make a disambiguation page - look at an existing one (e.g. Draco (disambiguation) and copy it.

As to whether the base name should redirect to the disambiguation page, or to one particular meaning - we don't have a set policy on that. In general, if one meaning is much more common than the others, I'd set the base name to redirect to that meaning, but if not, set it to redirect to the disambiguation page. Deciding whether one meaning is much more common is, of course, a case-by-case thing.

Hope that answers many of your questions? J. Noel Chiappa 05:53, 6 June 2008 (CDT)

It's a party, and you're invited!

Hi ! Your CZ Write-a-Thon MC here. Please head over to the Party Room and add yourself to the list of revelers in whatever category you think appropriate. Thanks for contributing! Aleta Curry 18:53, 6 August 2008 (CDT)

Hydrogen bond

When I started at CZ, I noticed that the CZ hydrogen bond article was exactly the same as at WP. Over at WP I had removed some nonsense about "metric-dependent electrostatic scalar fields" (which in the mean time is back at WP), and the very first thing I did at CZ was asking William Weaver whether I could change the article, which I could. So, the article is not mine, except for the short theory section + its 3 references. I suspect that its major part still coincides with WP, but that's something you can easily check. --Paul Wormer 06:54, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

links from "McGuffey Readers"

Odd... I've intermittently been able to duplicate the same problem. It seems O.K. right now. I'm not really one of the local techies. I've a vague idea that Chris Day would be someone who knows about this kind of thing. -Derek Hodges 04:16, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Upper-case Readers

Thanks for your note: answer on my talk page. Ro Thorpe 20:00, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Double redirects

Hello James, do you plan to create Matsuo Bashō and Yosa Buson? Redirects to empty pages are irritating to the reader, so please try to avoid them. --Daniel Mietchen 14:02, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Restructuring U.S. state articles

I'd ask you not to use bolded headings rather than subheadings, as it breaks the ability to wikilink to them. Also, at least in Massachusetts, a "town" is a specific kind of government entity. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Examples of use include linking to the entire congressional delegation under the government section of the main article, or to geographic regions (e.g., Cape Cod vs. Western Mass). Howard C. Berkowitz 18:07, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Great on the cities!

That gives us a lot of plan for work, and it's also an obvious starting point for new citizens from those cities.

Incidentally, one of the reasons I like the subheads is that it lets me jump, via the table of contents, to the appropriate section, and begin editing there. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:55, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

South Dakota template

It looks good to me. The only thing that came off as a little awkward was the organization of states/provinces into regions and then the contiguous states/provinces. I'm not sure how to fix it because I don't actually know exactly what it was that bothered me, but it seemed like some sort of tweak was in order... We should also include Mexican states, by the way.

The Minnesota related links were mostly off the top of my head; I'm sure there are many other links that should be included. --Joe Quick 14:44, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for John Thune contribution

As you can probably see, I'm trying for broad coverage of Congress, and very much appreciate depth. If you don't mind, I might do some reformatting so the main page is more similar to the other basic Senate articles (e.g., sections for committees and caucuses). Howard C. Berkowitz 20:16, 28 November 2009 (UTC)