User talk:Brian P. Long

Welcome!

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. 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! Stephen Ewen 21:40, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Keep the faith

I saw your post on the Ancient Greece talk page and just thought I should tell you your doing a fine job. The trouble is that there are only a few very committed History authors (We lack the numbers the Biology Workgroup can boast, for example) and we tend to work on developing individual articles when we get a chance. Feel free to help out on any of the articles I'm working on, though I haven't been doing much in the Medieval area recently. Regards, Denis Cavanagh 17:56, 9 February 2008 (CST)

If you are short of editors, like the Chemistry workgroup is, you might find it better to make suggestions on the talk page that the other author can consider. That way, you remain able to approve the article later as a single editor. If, however, you help write the article, then you need 3 author/editor approvals. We run into this alot in the chemistry workgroup due to lack of editors. So, we have been getting around this by having one editor act only as an editor and that makes suggestions, while another editor/author does all of the actual writing. For awhile we only had 2 active editors. David E. Volk 15:19, 26 March 2008 (CDT)

Timeline

Do you mean that it's not long enough? If so, you can adjust the height. Do you mean that it sticks out like this: |-? That's on purpose, as I meant to put a block at the top. Does it look entirely wrong all together (for example, the stem is not even next to the lines)? Please take a screenshot; I am unsure what you are describing. --Robert W King 08:24, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Poll regarding suggested change to Naming Convention proposal

There's been a significant suggestion for a change to the proposed policy. Please look at CZ:Proposals/Naming Conventions for Biographies#Poll regarding suggested change and respond there. Anthony Argyriou 14:05, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

Your policy proposal draft

I agree that we need (eventually) to redraft and clarify our family friendliness policy. Your draft, however, shouldn't be in your user namespace. See CZ:User Pages under "User page rules"; user pages are not meant for such proposals. You could put it in CZ:Proposals, however. --Larry Sanger 10:00, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Alright-- sorry about that. I just needed someplace to draw it up before I submitted it as an official proposal. I will take it down shortly, post it on the forums, and in the near future submit it as an official policy proposal. Thanks, Brian P. Long 14:27, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Debate guide

Brian you may be interested that in this debate guide subpage. Chris Day 11:36, 26 March 2008 (CDT)

Article tagged for deletion

Hi Brian, thanks for your help tagging articles for deletion. This article will require an editor to request deletion according to our guidelines. Keep up the good work! --D. Matt Innis 18:04, 11 April 2008 (CDT)

Good question! Keep in mind that we are talking semantics here, but the important thing is that you do not make large deletions without explaining them on the talk page. If you are planning to rewrite the article, then by all means go for it, just be prepared to defend your edits and act courteously and professionally should you have "stepped on someones toes". We would much rather have an original article than one imported. Once you have made enough changes, you can then take off the 'this article contains information from Wikipedia' tag. Does that help? --D. Matt Innis 10:56, 12 April 2008 (CDT)

I think your suggestion to keep the original contents until you're ready with the new version is a good one. May I further suggest that when you do the replacement, you put that observation (about 'I checked, and no Citizen has done anything more than fiddle with individual words') in the article's Talk: page? That might head any complaints off at the pass. J. Noel Chiappa 14:44, 12 April 2008 (CDT)

T S Eliot

Many thanks for you encouragement over my T S Eliot contribution. I hope you'll tell me if anything I do doesn't quite fit with the Citizendium approach: as a newbie I don't want to repeat mistakes in future contributions. I'll almost certainly take up your suggestion of doing some work on the metaphysicals, in whom I have a deep interest. Michael Forde Cayley 11:22, 13 April 2008 (CDT)

Romanization

Hi - this proposal has the support of everyone who contributed to the discussion. As an ad hoc proposal it only needs a mail sent to the Editorial Council mailing list saying that it will become policy unless a member of the EC calls for a vote. I'm not on the list; can you send one instead? Thanks. John Stephenson 23:05, 19 April 2008 (CDT)

Redirects

Umm, just because I create a redirect from [X] to [Y] doesn't mean I think [X] should redirect to [Y] in perpetuity. [X] might turn into an article, it might turn into a disambig, it might get pointed at a disambig... the future is endless. In a more than a few of these cases, I'm just trying to prevent unconsidered creation of a duplicate article. J. Noel Chiappa 20:43, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

Renaming and checklisting

Hi, if an article has a good chance that it's going to be renamed (e.g. Nepal), if it's not checklisted yet, if you could hold off checklisting it, that reduces the amount of work to be done when it's moved... J. Noel Chiappa 21:34, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the heads up, Noel. I didn't know that. Brian P. Long 09:11, 23 April 2008 (CDT)

Novel article

"I will come back to this article in a few years when I have done my homework..."

Could you expedite that a little? I need some partners in crime here.Derek Hodges 00:57, 23 April 2008 (CDT)

Galen

Brian: Started Galen. Bare bones. --Anthony.Sebastian 22:16, 7 May 2008 (CDT)

History Workgroup Week

Was nosy and saw your post on Richard Jensen's talk page. Count me in as a participator if needed. What is it all about anyway? Denis Cavanagh 10:44, 9 May 2008 (CDT)

Humanism def.

Actually, the reason I cut the definition of Humanism back to one sentence is that our Editor-in-Chief tells me that defs. should be one sentence. Semi-colons and such are allowed, but I hesitate to do anything that wouldn't get pass Miss Kingsbury (my high school English teacher).-Derek Hodges 16:42, 19 May 2008 (CDT)

Templars

You Wrote: Hey David--

I just wanted to give you and Geoff a brief heads-up that reverting each others' edits on the Knights Templar article is emphatically not the way we do things on Citizendium. If you two are in disagreement about what should go in the main Knights Templar article and what shouldn't, you need to hash this out on the Talk page. Unexplained reverts are disrespectful, but also a potentially bannable offense.

Thanks, Brian P. Long 15:29, 24 May 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the note. For the record though, I only reverted the article once and I've tried discussing this on his talk page. Unexplained reverts are part of the reason that I've tried to get away from Wikipedia, but I suppose that you'll have the problem anywhere. I'll be careful to be sure there is plenty of discussion before I revert again. Thanks again and have a great Memorial Day.--David Boven 19:37, 24 May 2008 (CDT)

CZ EC Resolution 0010

Is the page: CZ:Editorial_Council_Resolution_0010/Draft_Amendment ready ? Supten Sarbadhikari 06:21, 6 June 2008 (CDT)

From your friendly neighbourhood mistress of ceremonies

I signed you in at The August Party Do join us on Wednesday September 2nd for what I hope will be a very active party with music, music, music. Theme: "My Favourite Band" (or, 'ensemble' or 'group' or 'orchestra' or 'singer' or 'recording' or...? Aleta Curry 23:47, 7 August 2008 (CDT)

Oi!

Brian! I spy you online! There's a pardy goin' on! Aleta Curry 23:41, 3 September 2008 (CDT)

Help with Biology Week

Hi Brian, thanks for your offer. I have responded to it here. -- Daniel Mietchen 03:26, 13 September 2008 (CDT)

Religion

I'm afraid my Sanskrit's not all that good. My Pali is a good deal better & I was cetainly planning on doing an article on it at some point.

As regards the Buddhism article, I'd provisionally decided it should be concentrating on present-day Buddhism, as you and David suggest. That's not as simple as might be thought, but I'll get on with that next week unless someone turns up over the weekend with different ideas.

I've done some work on Eastern Orthodox Church & will no doubt do some on other articles semirandomly as I find time. Peter Jackson 09:43, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Ezra Pound's detention

Brian,

I noticed you have been writing on Ezra Pound. Have you, by any chance, studied his WWII and subsequent detention? Having decided to write the needed top-level, broader-scope articles on extrajudicial detention (broadly defined), he may well be a good case study to add to this not being unique to the Bush Administration. I have several sandbox articles in various phases. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, I know very little about Ezra Pound's detention or life-- I just read the poetry. The David Moody biography of Pound is supposedly very good, but it's only up to 1920... Brian P. Long 06:00, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Brian,

You replied to a post I made on the Articles Forum. Since that was the first communication between us, I went to your user page to see what are your specialties. Lo and behold, you are a graduate student in medieval studies. As it turns out I have a long-standing question about the Dark Ages and I don't want to turn down an opportunity to ask it of someone with the appropriate qualifications. I am particularly interested in 6th Century England before the arrival of Augustine. I am interested in the details of daily life during that period. Specifically, what did they wear, what sort of dwellings did they live in, what did they eat, etc.? I have not been able to find a book or paper that discusses this. Do you happen to know of references that might cover this? Dan Nessett 21:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)