User talk:Serguei A. Mokhov/2009

Recent activity

Dear Serguei,

I noticed your recent activity.

• I hope you don't mind my activity too much and don't find it disruptive. --Mokhov 15:56, 27 November 2009 (EST)

No, we appreciate enthusiastic members  :) --Nemri 16:35, 27 November 2009 (EST)

• Thanks :) --Mokhov 17:36, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Unless you were invited by Jimmy Wales or Amy Bruckman, the two authors for the Wikipedia article, you need to remove all the changes you made on that article. Only peer-reviewed articles are available for edits by general users.

• Sorry, this was not obvious and was not restricted, so I went ahead and prompted the modifications I made, and, after that, I actually sent an email message to the Editor-in-Chief asking about that particular article and why was it stale for so long when it is seemingly so easy to create an article about Wikipdia and was wondering why the assigned authors, naturally Jimmy Wales for one, would not still do it. I also come from some relatively large background of editing Wikipedia and other MediaWiki installation sites, so I have acquired some habits from there, like go and fix it if you can in place. Anyways, I will remove the content I added as you suggest. --Mokhov 15:56, 27 November 2009 (EST)
  • Removed. --Mokhov 16:25, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Yes, things move slowly on Scholarpedia because scholars are very busy. Some basic stuff could be written by grad students like you and me, but the main goal of Scholarpedia is to have the best expert write about even the most basic stuff. --Nemri 16:33, 27 November 2009 (EST)

• Also, how about C (programming language), e.g. I added a category, but it has no authors assigned -- can I still edit it? --Mokhov 15:56, 27 November 2009 (EST)

C language has no author for now. Since its creator declined, another prominent expert of C should be invited. Feel free to suggest names. The list of priority is long before a grad student can write an article... In my field, at least a few thousand people would be invited before me to write "Vision" for instance... Things may be different for more specialized articles, or if your supervisor is one of those prominent experts and invites you as a co-author. --Nemri 16:33, 27 November 2009 (EST)

• So, my adding a category to that stub is appropriate or not very much? Where are the guidelines? I can of course think about a bunch of people nominating to edit that article, but I thought some meta-editing is OK. --Mokhov 17:36, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Not very much. This is a major difference between Scholarpedia and Wikipedia. In Scholarpedia, you have first authoring, and then editing. Until the article is peer-reviewed, users are not supposed to contribute much. When they do, they have to be very delicate and diplomatic, since authors have complete control over their articles. Typos and obvious mistakes are fine, more significant edits might necessitate accompanying comments, or contacting the author. --Nemri 20:37, 27 November 2009 (EST)

• I see. OK, I will avoid editing such non-accepted stubs or articles-in-progress in the future. Thanks for the patience to explain :) --Mokhov 16:27, 28 November 2009 (EST)

Also, for the Intentionality article, Scholarpedia uses "Sentence-style capitalization" for sections and subsections.

• Clearly the authors of the Intentionality haven't known that, and only a single header was different from the others, so my edit was making it consistent. I can, of course change all the headings to the Sentence-style capitalization; I just hope the author/curator does not get annoyed with spamming notification of the edits on their article :-) --Mokhov 15:56, 27 November 2009 (EST)
  • Fixed capitalization for the entire article to be "sentence-style"... --Mokhov 16:25, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Yes, the article predates the guidelines, and we haven't yet started copyediting already accepted articles. Thanks for fixing it. --Nemri 16:33, 27 November 2009 (EST)

For the Forensic lucid, if you created it, there is no need for an election. Just contact the Editor-in-Chief to ask for an invitation. He will assess the importance of the article and make a decision.

• Thanks for the pointer :) Will do. I've already emailed twice to the Editor-in-Chief for an unrelated matter. I will ask about this as well. Thanks. --Mokhov 15:56, 27 November 2009 (EST)
  • Emailed :) --Mokhov 16:25, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Good luck! And to give you the perspective from the author's side, if you are invited to write "Forensic lucid", you will get no interference from other users before you decide you are ready for peer-review or you specifically ask for input.

• Thanks! --Mokhov 17:36, 27 November 2009 (EST)

My advice would be for you to take some time to consult the Main page and instructions for authors.

• I actually have read it twice, but most of the information you provided on my talk page is actually not obvious from reading the Main Page! I've also scanned the FAQ and Instructions pages, etc. I will re-read them again, but perhaps what you wrote to me ought to be more explicit and summarized on those pages. --Mokhov 15:56, 27 November 2009 (EST)

I agree that the freedom to edit stubs might be confusing. It is however kind of obvious how the process works (from the introduction to the main page : Each article is written by an expert (elected by the public or invited by Scholarpedia editors).) But I'll think about a more straightforward guide for first users, maybe a FAQ. --Nemri 16:33, 27 November 2009 (EST)

• I understand that, but what is the harm of helping a little bit the experts to get the ball rolling? :) I guess there are limitations to MediaWiki that don't allow such a fine control to disallow edits of stubs to non-authors and non-editors. --Mokhov 17:36, 27 November 2009 (EST)

I do understand your logic. But would you want to help Einstein write about relativity or von Neumann about computers? Also, experts often have a review paper that they just need to update and upload to scholarpedia. As you'll see, it doesn't happen frequently that an article is actually written within Scholarpedia before the peer-review.

• I am starting to see that now -- I also read the instructions somewhere suggesting the authors to write it up first e.g. in Word or Emacs, and then paste it in and wikify if they can. Well, I suppose a completely different culture from Wikipedia. --Mokhov 16:27, 28 November 2009 (EST)

Feel free to erase this message after reading it.

Yours,

Abdellatif

Associate editor of Scholarpedia

abdellatif.nemri@scholarpedia.org

• Thanks for writing to me; I will keep it for now for reference. --Mokhov 15:56, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Second message

%%%%%%%%%%%% Second message %%%%%%%%%%%

This is only loosely related to the discussion above. Indeed, I'm in Montreal, one big hill from Concordia  :)

• Nice to meet you ;-)

Scholarpedia is not a very friendly environment for grad students. It's great when you're looking for information on a precise topic. Assuming the article exists, there is less irrelevant material than in most books/reviews/articles. But the extent to which you can contribute is limited, and it will take time for you to reach a level (scholar index and general expertise) where you can author articles etc. Apparently, you invented a concept, which makes things easier! --Nemri 20:37, 27 November 2009 (EST)

• I hope it is easier. we'll see what the Editor-in-Chief would say. Anyways, as for the Scholar Index, etc. I still have the capacity to copy-edit already accepted articles and nominate a bunch more to be authored, especially in CompSci, etc., so the Index will come I am sure :) E.g. you have still articles like "Intentionality" with wrong caps, sometimes relatively wiki-formatting, or even spelling mistakes -- since fixing those is allowed and so is major improvements, I can get my points there then :) I already get the feeling it'd take awhile -- on the scale of months or even years -- not that this is supposed to kill of enthusiasm :) --Mokhov 16:27, 28 November 2009 (EST)