User talk:Grant Sparks

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!

You can find some more information about our collaboration groups if you follow this link Citizendium_Pilot:Discipline_Workgroups.You can always ask me on my talk page or others about how to proceed or any other question you might have.

Kind Regards, Robert Tito | Talk 11:57, 14 February 2007 (CST)

A pleasure to be here

Thanks for your kind welcome Robert! Grant Sparks

Hi!

Hi, Grant, I saw your introduction—unfortunately, I had to remove it because you inadvertantly posted it to an archive of old discussions. I suggest that a better place to post this comment would be on the forum for the relgion workgroup. Welcome aboard! Nat Krause 13:18, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks!

Thanks Nat. I'll be sure to come on over to the forums and get involved with the workgroup. Grant Sparks

Learning

Apparently signing our names like this is uber-kewl -> --Grant Sparks 07:29, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Online Identity Verification for Collaborative Communities

Hi Grant. I am a constable here at Citizendium. Thanks for the really interesting information at Online Identity Verification for Collaborative Communities, an issue you are apparently aware we have been pondering to one degree or another here. I hope you got some practice using wiki markup to create the piece. However, since it really is not an encyclopedia article, the content best belongs at the Forums and deleted from here. I will give you a day or two to move it before I delete it. Please don't be off put by this. I hope to see you around authoring articles! Stephen Ewen 14:31, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Hi Stephen. I will of course comply with the decision but I disagree with the choice of media you suggest, as posted here. The information being presented in this article is of interest to the citizens of citizendium so give me a couple of days (or maybe some help?) to re-write it in whatever manner will make you think it looks more like an encyclopedia article, rather than making these arbitrary decisions on what topics we can write articles about. This topic is a good one that will be a useful reference for the upcoming (ongoing) debate on technology solutions for the real-names policy.

I don't doubt that the interest is of interest to CZ. That's not the issue. Either there is a body of research and practice about this topic already in existence, or there isn't. I don't know if there is, but frankly I doubt it. But if there is, then you can draw on that in re-writing the article, as you suggest. But if there is not, then there is not a body of knowledge for you to sum up, and you shouldn't write an encyclopedia article pretending that it does exist; that's called "original research." So what would be nice is if you would address the issue of whether it is possible to write the article without doing original research. If not, then it doesn't belong on the wiki, period. --Larry Sanger 14:55, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Your point is well made. Yes, there is in fact quite a large body of 'research' on this topic (corporate research, whitepapers) from most of the major players, which I'm very surprised that you are unaware of to the point of doubting its existence, Larry. However, I did indeed intend to do some original research as I am actually very well informed on these issues in my professional life.

I wrote the first publically available mailing list community software on the web back in '96, and then I licensed back-end community software to dejanews.com in '97 (which subsequently became owned by google). In the meantime I've been working in the industry at the leading edge producing large-scale corporate ecommerce and B2B, so I think I've got a good background to analyse the issue for the citizendiums of this community.

So now I'm not sure where to move it. Oh well, it would have been a lot of work anyway, but it would have been fun to collaborate with your tech-heads. --Grant Sparks 15:04, 27 February 2007 (CST)

So let's make sure we find a proper outlet for this important material. How about an article without original research, and then a forum post pointing to the article and adding your original research, so we can discuss the matter as a community in that very user-friendly format? Stephen Ewen 16:07, 27 February 2007 (CST)

OK Stephen, I'm willing to give it a go. I'll re-work the article into an overview of the existing research and activities in the area of interest, as per Larry's suggestion, so that others can also contribute to the body of knowledge. Then I'll move the active discussion part into the forum. Thanks for solving the problem for me! --Grant Sparks 02:47, 1 March 2007 (CST)

The question of on-line identity is one of a number of such questions addressed in the book The Psychology of the Internet by Patricia Wallace (published 1999, ISBN 0-521-63294-3). The book covers such topics as Online Personae, Online Masks and Masquerades, Group Dynamics in Cyberspace, Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation, Psychology of Aggression on the Internet (flaming, etc), Gender Issues on the Internet, and other related issues (these are all chapter headings). The book cites and relies upon a wide range of academic research and psychological studies into these subjects. Perhaps the subject of the article under discussion could be broadened accordingly and then firmly based upon the type of research cited in the Wallace book? I'm sure there is a very valuable encyclopedia article in there somewhere. James F. Perry 16:57, 27 February 2007 (CST)