Talk:Aviation Week and Space Technology

Why do we have a list of all the people working at this publication? I checked and none of them seem to have even a Wikipedia article, so individually why are they important? Do other articles on CZ have lists like this? David Finn 17:33, 9 May 2011 (CDT)

There were several very interesting and lively discussions that preceded your entry into the project and spoke to some of the issues you raise. One of the great advantages of the cluster system is that we can include pertinent but supplementary information in the cluster. I have moved the list of key staffers to the catalogue page. CZ Catalogs are designed to contained annotated lists, and Mary has begun these in a respectable manner.

Just to remind you, and other people new to CZ: notability, in the sense that it is used at Wikipedia, is not a criterion at CZ. Whether or not a person, place or entity has a Wikipedia article has no bearing on whether or not they merit a CZ article. Conversely, just because something has a WP article doesn't mean we need one at CZ. 'Gurg' was one of my favourite examples, as were the articles on minor soap opera characters. I could never figure out how those were notable.

Of course this led to other issues, like, what *would* be the criteria for deciding which Little Red Schoolhouses merited CZ clusters? Would it be reasonable to end up with an article on every single human being on the planet? These were left open; so far, so good.

Since we have been lucky enough to have intelligent writers exercising intelligent judgement, it hasn't yet been a problem. There's nothing which compels me to insist that we have to decide anytime soon, or argue in extremes just in case every inhabitant on the planet suddenly decides that CZ would be improved by an article about his grandmother.

Aleta Curry 00:36, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Even before you were contributing to CZ they were discussing the purpose of the subpages, and all they examples the gave were "List of important stuff" and "List of important people". The catalogs page you used is for information you might find in an almanac, but what we have now is "List of current staff".

You say that questions about content were left open, but questions about content are answered regularly by Editors and Authors, often acting together, who move, rename or remove content. They have generally leaned towards what might be considered encyclopedic content, which bring me back to my original question - is this content encyclopedic?

Another question is, do you intend to maintain the "Catalog of current staff" so that it does not become the "Catalog of some current staff, some old ones, and the rest dead"? If content becomes out of date it is then someones responsibility to fix it, or more likely remove it.

I thought this was just a matter of one person adding what may be unencyclopedic content, but it is true that the CZ policy of inclusion is ill-defined. To save other Citizens from adding content that will almost certainly be deleted at some point, it seems that this is an issue that should be best discussed in a wider forum. David Finn 03:05, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

David, it's extremely difficult to carry out any conversations with you when you insist on being antagonistic at every turn.

It's also extremely difficult to know where to begin to answer when you start an argument with an incorrect premise or two or five.

Even before you were contributing to CZ they were discussing the purpose of the subpages, and all they examples the gave were "List of important stuff" and "List of important people".

Incorrect. What is your understanding of subpages, when do you believe the discussion started, and what, specifically, makes you think that that was all that was discussed?

Certainly, information goes out of date, which is one reason why the dynamic nature of a wiki is so useful. Yes, content questions, particularly as they relate to scope, should be discussed.

Aleta Curry 06:04, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Aleta, it is likewise difficult to have a conversation with you when you insist on attacking the contributor rather than evaluating the contribution. If you'd like more information on how CZ handles subpages I suggest you start with the page on subpages which has some handy links. David Finn 07:05, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

(undent) The subject of this conversation has outgrown this talk page since it concerns site policy rather than article or workgroup policy. I'd suggest that further comments regarding subpages and their intended content be moved to the subpages discussion pages where they are more likely to get community input and review of past discussions is available. If there is no response there, and considering that subpage content is something that the EC might want to consider (and have community input with which to guide them), then a forum discussion would be a better place to carry on. D. Matt Innis 07:42, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Without blaming anyone for anything, could we agree on the exact place for discussion? There are several pages dealing with subpages. Should this be CZ Talk: Subpages ? Howard C. Berkowitz 08:38, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

CZ Talk: Subpages looks like a great place to start. If that doesn't work as well as hoped, feel free to work toward something that works even better. Also, rather than falling prey to protracted arguments that needlessly galvanizes positions, feel free to involve the ME or Omb once there seems to be an impasse developing. D. Matt Innis 09:12, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Back on topic?

I certainly have no problem with a catalog listing staff. Let me go a little beyond that: I would, at the very least, create lemmas for all these people, with no more than the employment status Mary has given.

Especially for the editorial staff, they may well show up in articles; I am thinking that I and others need to be more attentive to putting author names in square brackets, even if they turn red. Once the lemma is created, do a "what links here", and that may immediately give more content. You might find, for example, that the person is on the board of another organization.

I try to have links for every politician, and often lobbyist, as well as professional society member I encounter, never knowing what associations I discover. Often, I find enough to motivate me to make a full article and make the black link turn blue.

So, in this case, I might make the Catalog entries R-templates, and move the job description (e.g., Executive VP at Aviation Week and Space Technology) into the gray Definition field.

I started to do this only as a lemma for Graham Warwick, but, after I read about the sheep, I couldn't resist a brief article. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:24, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Forum comments

For reasons of which Matt is aware, I cannot contribute to this discussion if it moves to the EC Community Input forum. That is causing a conflict with my responsibilities as an elected member of the EC.

Howard C. Berkowitz 08:30, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Ideally, discussions should work their way through the wiki with only side discussions on the forum. We can still use CZ Talk:Editorial Council. D. Matt Innis 09:12, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Business story

I wrote this as a straight up business story meaning you include the organizational contacts. Most business articles do include this information along with the ranking, advertising sales and readership. I was working to find independent sources to give this information. BTW Aviation Week is informally known as Aviation Leak. While the magazine tends to be somewhat accurate, based on its ability to gather accurate news information, it is considered one of the first places to look for defense news especially US defense news as the US is its primary audience. Mary Ash 10:10, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Thorough agreement about Aviation Leak. When I was more directly in defense work, many was the time I looked at the magazine at my desk, and a recent classified publication, both saying the same thing. There were a few cases where we could get away with suggesting someone look at the magazine but we couldn't tell them anything. One of these, I remember, were the first air-to-air combat tests with the Harrier. F-4 pilots refused to close with it, and just wanted to engage it at long range with missiles. I vaguely remember one F-8 driver could just cope with it in a dogfight. The US classified the whole thing, and the British manufacture had to suggest people read AW&ST. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:50, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

References

The reference maker suggested by Matt has gone down and has been down for several days. I found an alternate reference tool maker which I used today. As to the references reference coding: What little HTML coding I know is that when you open a tag you close the tag as I did.. Example: <blah, blah></blah,blan> And as no one else has shown me how to do this at Citizendium I had to wing it with what I knew. Of course I could have gotten my kids to do this and since they taught me what little I know they would have done the same. Before you comment on my kids lack of knowledge my oldest daughter can write Basic, HTML, CSS and is learning C Program language. The youngest daughter can write HTML and some CSS. According to my oldest daughter you need to close tags too, to prevent page flooding. I am not sure how this applies with the reference tag.Mary Ash 20:37, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

But only if you need to type something immediately after. Here: * the asterisk is still an asterisk, because I put in a line space. Same after refs. Ro Thorpe 20:47, 10 May 2011 (CDT) (Curiously, I had to put in a "/nowiki" to get my signature to work, but that's beside the point.)

My daughter found this information while I was doing dishes. According to the CZ page the reference section ("In Citizendium and many other Wikis, the Wiki markup coding of embedded inline references on the edit page of an article always begins with the tag <ref>and ends with the tag </ref> . For that reason, the Wiki markup coding of embedded inline references is often referred to as the <ref> </ref> method."}See: [[1]] The reference tags are written as I did which was <ref></ref> are correct. My daughter also found at W3.org and found the HTML5 coding which supports the reference tag as suggested at CZ and also what I wrote. In other words the way I wrote the reference tags was as correct as the person who tried to tell me otherwise.Mary Ash 21:19, 10 May 2011 (CDT)

Mary, that article your daughter found while you were doing the dishes was written by me (look at the History of that article). All that is needed in the References sections is either <references/> or {{reflist}}. You do not need to write <references><references/> to "prevent flooding". Flooding by what??? The proof of the pudding is to look around at other articles that use <ref></ref> references and see that they use only either <references/> or {{reflist}} ... or you could take the time to read slowly and carefully all of the article that your daughter found. - Milton Beychok 01:09, 11 May 2011 (CDT)

The initial error was in using < instead of { to surround the word "reflist". The references page has a section about reflist where its use is explained very clearly. I have again restored the correct formatting. David Finn 02:16, 11 May 2011 (CDT)

Milt the nowiki text was used to discuss this on the discussion page not the article itself. Using nowiki mark up allows you to write HTML without affecting a page. You use this to give an example. Correct HTML states you open a tag and then you close the tag. As to not confuse this issue I will not give an example as the nowiki example was perhaps misunderstood. I know a smidgen of HTML and I do know tags need to be closed prevent "page flooding" as my daughter calls it. I also gave the W3 page which explains (and is the absolute authority) HTML mark up. I hope this clarifies it. For me I will write the reference tags that both open and close. Mary Ash 23:59, 11 May 2011 (CDT)

David I was not using reflist. I chose to use HTML mark up. You can use either according to Citizenium guidelines. I'd suggest reading the guidelines before commenting. Mary Ash 23:59, 11 May 2011 (CDT)

Mary, once again you simply haven't read the words that were written correctly.

Mary: "I was not using reflist"

At 00:29, 10 May, Mary Ash added the term "<reflist>" to the references section of the article, which produced a cite error in red at the bottom of the screen.

(Using reflist, as anyone who actually read the policy page concerned would know, requires surrounding the word "reflist" with "{{ }}" and not "< >"

Not two minutes later Mary Ash changes "<reflist>" to "<references></references>".

David: "The initial error was in using < instead of { to surround the word "reflist"."

Mary: "I didn't use reflist, try reading the rules before commenting on what I did"

You say I didn't read the guidelines, but I did. You didn't read what I wrote. You didn't even read what you wrote. You have had Editors, Authors - even the guy who wrote the policy page - tell you that you are wrong. They have done you the courtesy of showing you why you were wrong and tried to help. You still insist you know best, and have gone for another edit war. You have reverted Milton, and you have reverted me. Maybe you should try reading CZ rules, and not try to justify your failure to do so by claiming you have understood HTML better than the rest of us. David Finn 02:52, 12 May 2011 (CDT)

{unindent}Here's a link to a Citizendium article on HTML mark up. In this article it explains the usage of tags including opening and closing. See: [[2]] Mary Ash 00:19, 12 May 2011 (CDT)

Readership

I spent some time surfing around in Aviation Week's website before finding this sentence "Serving over 1.2 million professionals in 185 countries, Aviation Week is the largest information ...." located here.

First of all, Aviation Week is not a magazine or a publication. It is a division of the McGraw-Hill companies and that division publishes 4 or more magazines. This article is about the "Aviation Week and Space Technology" magazine which is only one of those 4 or more magazines. "Serving over 1.2 million professionals ..." simply means that someone has "guesstimated" that there are 1.2 million professionals in the worldwide aviation and space flight industries and that the Aviation Week division of McGraw-Hill publishes magazines that cater to them. The primary purpose of the Aviation Week website is to advertise their magazines and sell subscriptions to the magazines as well as advertisements in the magazines.

As of 2010, the qualified readership of the "Aviation Week and Space Technology" magazine was 86,250 as verified by the "Audit Bureau of Circulation" as verified here. On that basis, I revised the 1.2 million readership statement in this article to the correct figure of 86,250. - Milton Beychok 00:52, 11 May 2011 (CDT)

Aviation Week or Leak depending on the wag is how the magazine is referred too. The space part usually gets dropped off. The article has the correct and formal name and that's all that counts. BTW I used to read Aviation Leak to look for story leads.Mary Ash 23:48, 11 May 2011 (CDT)

Milt thanks so much for finding the updated readership numbers. I suspected the Aviation Week numbers were high, I don't blame them as they are trying to sell ads, and you found the right source. Thank you! Much appreciated. Mary Ash 00:01, 12 May 2011 (CDT)

Mary, you are most welcome. Please, just take my word for it ... all you need in the References section is <references/> and David Finn is right about that. You do not have to worry about "closing tags" or about "flooding". When you read about closing tags like <ref></ref> or <s></s> or <u></u>, etc., note that the forward slash in the closing tag is in front of the text ( /ref or /s or or /u ). Also note that in <references/>, the forward slash is at the end of the text ( references/> ). That signals to the Mediawiki software that it is not a "closing tag" and that the Mediawiki software should to do its thing and list the references in the References section. So, please, let us not turn this trivial matter into a controversy. Thanks in advance, Milton Beychok 16:50, 12 May 2011 (CDT)

Milt thank you for your polite and professional response. What little HTML I know was taught to me by my kids. My oldest daughter, who hand coded this page: [3] knows a fair amount of HTML, CSS and Basic languages. If she tells me to close the tags I believe her. I've added the div tags instead so now the ref tag is gone. That should clear up any confusion and make me feel better about writing tidy code. I will pass along the Mediawiki software information so she can learn more about it. Thanks again. Mary Ash 21:28, 13 May 2011 (CDT)

Do not like the smaller reference tag

I do not like the smaller reference tag as it's very hard for my eyes to read. Is this the new standard and Citizendium has gone away from the old ref tags without community input? I would like the old ref tags I put in returned, if possible. They were easier to read and I prefer using them for that reason. Thanks! Mary Ash 03:58, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I made the references the same size as the main article text now. If you eyes can read the main article, they can now read the references as well. Mary, I don't know what size monitor you have nor do I know what browser you are using. But you can get a great variety of font sizes by:

(1) Changing the font size that your browser is using. All browsers have a place where you set the font size.

(2) Changing the screen resolution of your monitor. Most operating systems have a place for doing that as well.

(3) Also, some fonts are smaller than other fonts. All browsers have a place where you can select which font to use.

(4) A combination of (1), (2), and (3)

For example, I have a 19 inch monitor, set for a screen resolution of 1280 by 960 pixels. I am using the Firefox browser and it is set for using Arial font at size 18.

Each one of us sees an article somewhat differently because we have different fonts, different font sizes, and different screen resolutions. It is virtually impossible for all of us to see an article the same way. It just takes some playing around until you find what you like best. - Milton Beychok 07:38, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I am using a 17-inch monitor and I can read the text copy just fine. It's the references that are difficult to read since they were shrunk. I'd prefer the larger reference tag and will use it unless this is a new untold rule being implemented. Is it?? ...said Mary Ash (talk) 15:36, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Milt for bringing the old reference tag back. Much appreciated. ...said Mary Ash (talk) 17:00, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Mary, if you will recall, on May 13th (see the article History), you revised the reference coding to read as follows so as to give you the small font size:

<div class='references-small'>

<references/>

</div>

Evidently you forgot that you first coded for the small font size. In the future, please remember that <references/> is all that you need to get full-size fonts and {{reflist}} is all you need to get small-size fonts. Also please remember to sign your name on Talk pages. - Milton Beychok 18:34, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Milt I am sorry I forgot to add my name. If you would like my deaf ear caused by severe allergies I'll swap. I am not writing much now due to the medications I am on for said allergy. The decongestant is keeping wired all night and day and I am sleeping fitfully. If I forgot, I am sorry, but it's taking everything I have to do just write coherently. Mary Ash 19:06, 21 May 2011 (UTC)