User talk:Lee R. Berger

 Where Lee lives it is approximately: 13:53

Re your query

Hi Professor! Which article? Come reply Thanks, and welcome to CZ. Aleta Curry 17:16, 11 August 2007 (CDT)

New Article of the Week

I have nominated the Primate article as a New Article of the Week. John Stephenson 05:56, 20 August 2007 (CDT)

Taking the lead in Anthropology Workgroup

User:Joe Quick and I have probably been the most active anthro authors, apart from Linguistics. I speak for not only myself but I think also for Joe by saying that your taking the lead there is very much appreciated. Shall we hammer away at Anthropology, first? Anyways, have a great 2 weeks in Madagascar.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 02:35, 21 August 2007 (CDT)

Photos

I look forward to your return (and particularly the ensuing photographs!) --Robert W King 12:12, 21 August 2007 (CDT)

help with subpages9 template

Hi Lee, I tweaked the subpages9 template on Prosimian for you to show you how to do it. Check the several edits I made on the talk page and the metadata page. You also don't need to use categories on the article page anymore. Check it and see if it makes sense. Matt Innis (Talk) 07:54, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

Lemurs

Hi Lee, how do the Lemur articles look to you now? Still problematic? I don't see any major problems using a MAC and safari. Chris Day (talk) 14:29, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

Hammering away....

..is an understatement. It's good to see all these articles appearing in the framework of a grand scheme. Hopefully you'll attract more fellow anthropologists when they see what's happening here. Chris Day (talk) 12:54, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

• well next stage is that I am assigning all of my Honours, Masters and Ph.D. students to register and contribute articles for grades so we'll se how that goes.... and at the same time I'm trying to get a Science paper accepted! Hectic here!

Lee R. Berger 12:57, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

Ah, that explains the flurry of edits as semester starts. Have you heard fo the eduzendium program? It is supposed to be inplace to encourage exactly what you are proposing. I'll probably be asking you how it goes since i'd like to do something similar in the future. Chris Day (talk) 13:07, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

• No I hadn't - I'm doing all of these, but I will be setting up my students in two weeks when they get back. I hope it works. What my thoughts are is to assign them a series of articles - say two - and monitor their progress in getting the articles approved. Good training for the peer review process I think? In that line, has there been any progress on getting the authorship credit concept approved? Here in SA if we could get these listed as Encyclopedia articles we can actually get government based research funding for the effort which would increase submission from this side of the pond substantially I would think!

Lee R. Berger 13:13, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

There have been several discussions with respect to this issue and it appears to be still up in the air. Apparently the mediawiki software does have a feature that gives credit to the authors at the bottom of the page (not activated here though). This was discussed here http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1134.30.html and it looks like you participated. I see that Larry is not that keen but there seem to be quite a few good arguments for it too. This is definitely something that should be properly addressed since it could represent a big carrot for many academics. Chris Day (talk) 13:24, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

• As you noted - I certainly agree - if one is to build a truly broad encyclopedia based on interested amatuers and experts then some credit will - I believe - have to be given. Encyclopedias do it and they are really just snail mail Wikis are they not?

Lee R. Berger 13:28, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

Dr. Uner Tan

Hi Lee, I saw that you asked that the author of the article contact you. Dr. Uner Tan is an editor here [1]. You can go to his talk page and then click on the E-mail this user link to the left and I see his email address is available. It would be nice to get that article squared away. Not to mention, I would love to see your outlook on the condition. --Matt Innis (Talk) 23:02, 10 September 2007 (CDT)

I thought you were the right man for the job

(anonymous:) ;-)

ha ha ha

Matt, you're not. Chris Day (talk) 15:32, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

Race article

Thanks for your rapid response. i appreciate your help on this! The article Race (biology) is incomplete and nobody seems able to help with that. I am inclined to want to stick with the title Race, because in sociology vocabulary, Racialism is a specific belief in the idea of races. What we probably need to focus on here is the history of race, with separate articles on Race, Racialism, and Racism. [God help us!]. I linked to the stub article on ethnic group, but we also need an article on ethnicity.

If you would prefer to take the major scientific stuff to the Race (biology) article, and we would just summarise and link to that, it would be fine by me. There was also some thought of completely deleting that article...

Anyway, I await your comments! many thanks. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 07:43, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

Barnardius zonarius

This one is getting ready for approval, maybe you can give Kim (that talented 'author') some 'encouragment' here. --Matt Innis (Talk) 13:32, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

I am doing my very best!

As above!

Lee R. Berger 13:59, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

Thanks! And I hope I did not hurt your feelings with my opinion about what terminology to use..... Kim van der Linde 14:25, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

Not at all! After twenty years in science I have no feelings!

Lee R. Berger 14:39, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

I still have them and every rejected article sucks! Kim van der Linde 14:42, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

Then hold on tight! You are still young!

Lee R. Berger 14:44, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

I am as old as you are! Kim van der Linde 13:30, 12 September 2007 (CDT)

I didn't mean to imply I wasn't young!

(Oh, that was slick ;-)) --Matt Innis (Talk) 13:44, 12 September 2007 (CDT)

Lee R. Berger 13:38, 12 September 2007 (CDT)

LOL, yeah, I know how that goes! Kim van der Linde 13:39, 12 September 2007 (CDT)

Anthropology workgroup homepage

Let me first say that I'm thrilled to see our workgroup finally start to come to life. I hope we can find areas in which we can collaborate. We need to show those biology punks a thing or two about approving articles. ;-)

I'll jump in on the workgroup page soon. I need to tie up a few loose ends in real-life and on the wiki, and then I'll join the party. --Joe Quick (Talk) 15:28, 12 September 2007 (CDT)

students?

Lee, are you familiar with our project CZ:Eduzendium? I see that you have students showing up [2]. --Matt Innis (Talk) 09:39, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Yes - spoke with the coordinator at Purdue and he's all on board.

Thanks for checking!

Lee R. Berger 10:28, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

I should have known you were on it ;-) I will add the anthropology author to their bio. If we miss any, you can add it, too. Let me know whatever else you need to help this work for you. --Matt Innis (Talk) 11:33, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

I did some minor changes to Fossilization, and left a couple of notes in the talk page. There should be the (good) job of one of your students there... is that ok? Or, you rather wish the article to be left alone for a while? Leave a note in my talk page if you want me to act in some particular way about that. Anyways, I am glad some good content was typed about a Earth Science topic! Great! --Nereo Preto 09:49, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Primate photos from flickr

I went looking through my harddrive to see if I had any good shots of the monkeys that live in the jungle around the ruins of Tikal for Primate/Gallery but all I came up with was this beautiful shot that was screwed up by the early morning sun.

There are sure to be some great photos available under Creative Commons licenses on flickr and I'd be happy to collect them, but I'm going to need help with placing them in the right categories in the gallery. I think I'll post them to a page in my user space (will give you url later) and let you and your students sort out where they belong.--Joe Quick (Talk) 13:42, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

stunning - the more the merrier - at this stage I'm grateful for any pics - as impetus grows - we'll get the better photos - (I'm hardly proud of my Woolly lemur pics but you dance with the girl you brought!

Lee R. Berger 13:44, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I've got a few and should have more on the way. Flickr farming can be a time consuming process sometimes because you often need to ask people to release their works under a Creative Commons license or to tell you their names so that you can actually use the photos. I'll post the pictures I find here with links to their photo pages at CZ. Then you and your students can cull them at your leisure. Feel free to delete them from my userspace as you use them elsewhere - this should help to keep things organized. --Joe Quick (Talk) 13:24, 14 September 2007 (CDT)

By the way, do you know any cultural anthropologists (especially Latin Americanists) who you could bring into the fold? The rest of our anthro editors seem to be either inactive or specialize in other fields, so I haven't been able to make any progress on a couple of articles that I think are ready to move toward approval. Maybe you could even do this yourself, if you feel that you are qualified. The articles are Tecum Umam and El Tío. --Joe Quick (Talk) 18:50, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Subpages

Now you can use subpages instead of subpages9. i just made the switch. Chris Day (talk) 18:53, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

where to find some sci-fi

Hi, great to hear that you're interested! The easiest place is Amazon -- I have a list of my stuff there, with short descriptions:

• http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/24T8V2KW0SB5T/ref=lm_b_1/105-4342665-2490005?ie=UTF8&qid=994444296&sr=5-3

Flickerman has an anthrologist lady in it for a while, who drives the story, so to speak. Phylum Monsters, on the other hand, is about the old wheeze of phylogeny recreating something or other. The first one is pretty serious, the second has some grim moments but is played for laughs.

I gather that purchases from Amazon, if done right, somehow put a penny or so into the CZ coffers, I'm not sure how.... Hayford Peirce 13:31, 14 September 2007 (CDT)

Dunno if CZ gets anything for people who buy books from outside the U.S. The links are on the main page if you want to give it a go anyway... --Joe Quick (Talk) 01:18, 15 September 2007 (CDT)

Areas- Douglas R. White 17:08, 14 September 2007 (CDT)

got your message about adding "to do" headings in my areas of expertise to the anthro workgroup -- will try to do so once I get home from the santa fe institute, this coming week

Thanks!

link colors

See the top section of this page for a possible color scheme for links to articles at various stages of development. Feel free to edit that page and substitute colors from the list of possibilities found here. If you want to give it a try, I'll start making adjustments to the priority list. Then we'll see where it goes from there.

--Joe Quick (Talk) 16:20, 15 September 2007 (CDT)

P.S. Sorry again for the confusion from earlier.

Looking fantastic - the only change I would make is to make the "developed" article a darker yellow as we want no confusion between "developed" and "approved" and I can see someone saying - "green" is "green".

Lee R. Berger 01:19, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

I had a flash of inspiration last night (beer is good for inducing that kind of thing). My notes still made sense this morning, so I tried it and it works! By using Template:pl (named for "priority list") thusly: {{pl|Tecum Umam}}, you get a color-coded link:  Tecum Umam. The only short fall is that it only works for articles with a Metadata page (or for articles that haven't been created - they stay red) but this should be pretty much everything as soon as the Jitse Niesen's bot gets to work.

In the mean time, we'll need to add subpages to all of the anthro articles that have already been created. We can change the colors whenever we want. --Joe Quick (Talk) 10:10, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Please let's discuss this on the forums, Joe. --Larry Sanger 10:15, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Hi Larry - would it be OK it we alpha tested this on the workgroup page so that people could actually see what we mean? If not, we end up getting into a long discourse of exactly what one means by color, etc. I have in fact already posted the concept on the forum but got not reply....

Lee R. Berger 10:18, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Oh, I didn't know. Sure, an alpha test would be fine. --Larry Sanger 10:29, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Just a heads up to be aware of colourblindness issues when picking the colours for the links. I have not given it too much thought but I did do a test on the workgroup colours a while back, see CZ_Talk:Workgroups#colours. Chris Day (talk) 21:09, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

My thoughts on this are not as a replacement of words, symbols etc., but as a reinforcement of the issue - instead of just a blue link, you know you are going "green", or "yellow" - the color blind folks will just have to read! (they are out of luck on a red link anyway - what a pain that must be!

Not completely out of luck. See the simulation I just put on Joe's talk page. User_talk:Joe_Quick#Template:PI.3F we just need to be careful to define six colours that they can distinguish. It's not impossible to get a compatible set for all. Chris Day (talk) 23:33, 16 September 2007 (CDT)

Hey! That's great! I wasn wondering whether we shouldn't reduce it to just three colors rather than define each approval stage - As Joe pointed out to you, the problem is that it builds complexity into the visual signal one gets. Would it be enough to just have not approved, stub, developed and developing, and approved I wonder?

Lee R. Berger 00:23, 17 September 2007 (CDT)

You have red whether you like it or not, unapproved=anything with a status of 1-4 and approved is status 0. So your minimum is three colours. Identifying articles on the verge of approval might be a good idea, so you might want to split 1-4 into 1-2 and 3-4. That would be four colours including red.

Another idea might be to have check mark (√ or similar; like an α) after the approved link. Then the status 0 and status 1 articles could be the same colour but distinguished by the check. Status 2-4 could be their own colour and then have red. Now you're down to three colours including red links. Chris Day (talk) 04:53, 17 September 2007 (CDT)

thanks Chris, I think we are getting somewhere with this - by tommorrow, I think we will be in a position to ask forum members to come and look and comment on this alpha test. What do you think? Lee R. Berger 05:11, 17 September 2007 (CDT)

Well I'm convinced, regardless of the colour scheme. Chris Day (talk) 05:39, 17 September 2007 (CDT)

I think having fewer colors is a definite positive. Although I'm getting used to the current scheme already, its hard to tell the difference between the several shades of yellow-brown if you don't see them next to each other. Should I try some of Chris's suggestions? I think I'll experiment a little and then revert if I don't come up with anything very satisfying. --Joe Quick (Talk) 22:27, 18 September 2007 (CDT)

Well, okay. What do we think of the current scheme? Is it too crowded? Do we need more colors after all? Should the images be different somehow? --Joe Quick (Talk) 00:33, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

Nice job with the boxes! I think its time to get the opinion of the forums - I'll put a note on there now and we'll get feedback. Thnaks for all the hard work!

I'm on a lecture tour

I will be on a lecture tour in the Southeast US as of monday - so I won't be on as much unless I can find a way to download "over there" - will be back on after the 12th.

Lee R. Berger 14:40, 29 September 2007 (CDT)

By the time you get home, I should have the bibliography, external links and timeline finished up for Kennewick Man. Whenever you get the chance, I'd appreciate a once over. I’ve left out a lot of minutia in the interest of a compelling read, so please point out areas that need elaboration or explanation. There are also a couple of minor details that I’ve had to infer from the newspaper and magazines articles but I think I’ve been pretty conservative with my conjectures, so we should be safe on that point.

Hope you have a good trip. Maybe next time you can swing through my part of the country. :-) --Joe Quick (Talk) 17:19, 29 September 2007 (CDT)

List of Evolutionary biologists

I noted that you are adding to the list of evolutionary biologists - many thanks - what do you think about splitting them into "living" and "dead" persons?

Lee R. Berger 04:14, 28 September 2007 (CDT)

Lee, a good idea to indicate whether living today. But 'today' ephemeral. How about adding in parentheses birth-year and death-year (or "- blank") for each, then filling in the blanks later as deaths occur? --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 21:37, 29 September 2007 (CDT)

Lee, re your suggestion on my Talk page: see example for added evolutionist, George Gaylord Simpson, whose book, The Meaning of Evolution, incidentally, I read in high school, the result of which set my passion for learning about evolution. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 22:50, 30 September 2007 (CDT)

Template of CZ page

I like the idea for helping people get started. Now you mention it, I used to do a very similar thing when I started editing in wiki's. If I saw something I liked I'd steal it and tweek it. It gets you over the hump of learning the wiki markup quite quickly. How are your students doing? If they have never edited a wiki before they might have some very useful comments too. Chris Day (talk) 09:33, 30 September 2007 (CDT)

Hi Chris, I'm sitting in the airport lounge about to get on a 32 hour flight to the states :-( My students should all have their entires up by this week. You may have seen Natasha's Fossilization and Fossil article - since I gave them this cheat advice, most of them are doing it this way anyway. Talk to you in a few days - plane is boarding in 10 minutes.

Lee R. Berger 10:02, 30 September 2007 (CDT)

Kennewick Man

Whenever you have a few minutes, could you leave some feedback at Talk:Kennewick_Man? Thanks much. --Joe Quick 22:46, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. I'm really swamped this week but your comments definitely make sense. I'll go back and do some reworking next week. --Joe Quick 17:03, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

I've started to make some adjustments; I should be able to mostly finish up by the beginning of next week. As far as photos go, it looks like everything is copyrighted, which makes sense, since so few people have actually been given access to the bones. It looks like most of the news services have been making still images from the 3d moveable image here and I really like the shot of the scientists leaning over the skeleton here - do you think we could use them under fair use? --Joe Quick 17:51, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

Permission

Hi Lee, regarding Image:''Olea_capensis''_Lee_Berger.gif, kindly click here, make one sentence statement that you give permission, sign it, and click save. Stephen Ewen 00:55, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

done

Lee R. Berger 02:13, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Party! You're invited!

Your friendly neighbourhood Mistress of Ceremonies here, reminding you about the December write-a-thon! Please drop by and add yourself to the list of partiers--or non party-goers--as the case may be. You can leave a comment, question or excuse there, too--or talk to me Aleta Curry 15:55, 5 December 2007 (CST)

Approval

Hey, Lee, and Happy New Year! See my talk page for reply. Stephen Ewen 12:04, 7 January 2008 (CST)

Hehe. I was just headed over to suggest that you might want to take point on that one. I see now that my time away from my computer in class and work put me a step behind. :-) --Joe Quick 21:56, 7 January 2008 (CST)

skype

I'm brand new to skype, so I don't really know what the problem is. The account address that Larry included in his email is correct. Could it be that I didn't have skype open when you tried to find me? I'm headed out the door in a few minutes but I'll quickly see if I can find you on skype and then leave the program open with an away notice while I'm out. --Joe Quick 16:13, 8 January 2008 (CST)

Fossilization, approval.

Dear Lee,

I edited fossilization to the point I feel it is almost set for approval. I'd like you take a look. In particular, I have a problem with "carbonization of refractory tissue", didn't get what is that about. Overall, the text was already very good, though!

Ciao, --Nereo Preto 10:43, 26 January 2008 (CST)

Will do.

Lee R. Berger 13:25, 26 January 2008 (CST)

Hi Lee, two days till Fossilization Approval. If you need any help with finding the new version number, just let me know. --D. Matt Innis 20:06, 29 January 2008 (CST)

Okay, Lee, I reworked the instructions for changing the version date [3]. Give it a whirl and give me some feedback on any "kinks". Don't worry if it doesn't go well, we'll just fix it! --D. Matt Innis 12:18, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Excellent! You got it! I didn't think about the date, so I changed it myself. It comes from the same page (above the Newer Version). Right now I would rather have the correct version than the correct date, but I agree, we need to automate this a little more. I have to stand in line for Chris Day :-), I'm just the neighborhood chiropractor, but who knows I might be able to make a few adjustments! --D. Matt Innis 15:24, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Eduzendium workgroup

Hi Lee, I fixed the names in the Anthro workgroup, but there is still a larger group with the same problem in other workgroups. We fixed yours first ;-) Please join us here. There is a forum link from there that we need you to address. Let's see if we can get this flowing smoothly. --D. Matt Innis 19:53, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Missing photo

The problem was that many references were not closed by a back slash. For example, you had <ref name="blah"> instead of <ref name="blah"/>. Go and look at the edits I made. You might want to check the rest of the article as it causes text as well as pictures to disappear. Chris Day (talk) 12:49, 3 March 2008 (CST)

Another thing i noticed, and I'm not sure which is correct, you put the references before the full stop rather than after and have no space after the reference when it is in mid sentence. For example, you "might formatt references like this when writing ." Where as I "might formatt references like this when writing." So which style is CZ using, I have seen both. Chris Day (talk) 13:11, 3 March 2008 (CST)

Your proposal "Citing CZ article by authors"

Hello. Could you please add a summary to the proposal record for "Citing CZ article by authors" on CZ:Proposals/New? While you're at it, please also change the next step (it currently reads "create proposal page" which you already did) and the deadline for it. Once the record is updated, I'll move the proposal to CZ:Proposals/Editorial Council. -- The Proposals Manager, Jitse Niesen 12:52, 8 March 2008 (CST)

I wrote a summary myself and moved the proposal to CZ:Proposals/Editorial Council. However, the prposal record on that page still has 5 March as a deadline for the current step (to create proposal page, which you already did). As far as I can see, you haven't update the proposal record or showed any sign of activity on the proposal page. If nothing happens within a week, I'll have to assume that you are no longer interested in the proposal and thus remove you as its driver, which will render the proposal inactive. -- The Proposals Manager, Jitse Niesen 09:42, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

You may not have noticed it, but I replied to your enquiries at User talk:Jitse Niesen. Could you please decide what to do with your proposal? Thanks, Jitse Niesen 17:39, 26 March 2008 (CDT)

And I didn't reply to your question of 28 March. Naughty me! You can always pawn the proposal off to other people, if you can find any takers. And I understand people can be busy (I am often busy myself, or at least I think I am), so it's okay with me if you don't work for a couple of weeks.

However, it's now a month later. So please decide soon what you want to do with CZ:Proposals/Citing CZ article by authors and update the proposal record at CZ:Proposals/Editorial Council accordingly. Cheers, Jitse Niesen 10:55, 20 April 2008 (CDT)

Deletion of Shore-Based Scenario

Hello Dr. Berger, I wasn't sure how to go about this, but I would like to delete the page I started because I am finishing writing on it in my other article Survival of the Fattest. I don't really have time to reiterate it on another page. Im not sure if you are the person to ask. If you are not in charge of this sort of thing I appologize. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction?? --Brian R. Head 12:47, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Yes, he reached me first. Thanks anyway --Brian R. Head 13:28, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Restart of proposal system

Hello. Due to a lack of activity and attention on my part, the Proposal System has ground to a halt and discussion on all proposals has stopped. I decided to clean out the system by marking all proposals as inactive and removing their drivers. This also happened to your proposal "Citing CZ article by authors". I would be delighted if you decide that you want to take the proposal up again. You can do this by updating the proposal record, which can now be found at CZ:Proposals/Driverless. Please do not hesitate to ask if anything is unclear. Yours, Jitse Niesen 22:37, 23 February 2009 (UTC) (Proposals Manager)

Eduzendium - what next?

Hello Lee, we have not interacted yet but I would like to tell you that, in my eyes, the CZ:Eduzendium initiative was one of the greatest ideas for Citizendium. I thus regret to see that both you and Sorin Matei (I left a similar note on his page) have not continued on this path and that very few others have tried it since. Do you have any plans for further EZ courses or any suggestions on how to improve or scale up the current system (the only course we currently have is at CZ:Biol 201: General Microbiology)? Thanks a lot! --Daniel Mietchen 16:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

For want of a better place to do this, I'd like to make a suggestion. While I understand that the students are expected to do their own work, I'm reminded of the role of a faculty "assistant" in surgery. The assistant is actually the more experienced surgeon than the operator, but simply makes sure the student can focus on the primary learning experience. If an appendectomy is being taught, the assistant makes sure the intervening muscles are properly exposed and retracted.

In like manner, without making significant content changes, I wonder if we might be able to assign volunteer, experienced "assistants" to Eduzendium students. At a minimum, they would set up metadata and formatting conventions, and also help with linking to existing content. On a more aggressive level, they might discourage sourcing to Wikipedia, and perhaps, if their expertise permits, point to more appropriate sources. They might do copy editing to the point that it helps make the writing CZ-style. They would not, however, write substantial content. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:21, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Isn't that (or shouldn't that be) part of the instructor's responsibility in designing and implementing the assignment? Shamira Gelbman 18:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)