Larry: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to participate in a collegial project of knowledge sharing we can all be proud of. Your leadership is an inspiration.
Anthony Sebastian ----- Original Message ----- From: Larry Sanger<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: 'CZ Main'<mailto:[email protected]> ; 'CZ Editors'<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ; 'CZ Tools'<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 10:59 AM Subject: [Citizendium-l] Thanks to many participants & partners All, This is an early Thanksgiving. It occurs to me that I have not thanked people enough, especially the hardest-working people. I thank people all the time, but it is usually for over-and-above stuff, and when people first show up. So, at the risk of embarrassing them, I'm going to thank a whole bunch of people. I hope you don't mind, folks. But I should add something, because I don't want this sort of attention to go to anybody's head, either--I mean, frankly, I think it's a little ridiculous that praise from me would go to anybody's head. Most people aren't that way and they realize that I'm just this guy, so big deal. But, you see, I'm worried and I speak from experience. In listing these people and their useful work, I do not mean, in any way shape or form, to be establishing something like a project aristocracy. I can imagine that some people might be puffed up by this sort of attention, and think that such recognition gives them rights in the project that others do not have. That would be very wrongheaded. In fact, not to malign them unjustly I hope, but certain Wikipedians seem to carry about their titles and achievements and "barnstars" and whatnot as so many bludgeons that they can use to get their way. Damn me if that ever happens on the Citizendium. I have sometimes accused Wikipedia of being egalitarian in a bad, utopian way, but in this regard I would like CZ to be *more* egalitarian than WP. I would like us to settle content disputes by kindly, rational compromise first, by reference to expert knowledge second, and by fair, open, law-governed dispute resolution processes last--but NEVER by a presumption that "I've been here longer, I'm a Big Shot, so you gotta listen to me and my friends, or else!" We should always be a freer, more open, and indeed more equal community than that cliquish, competitive attitude implies. And if you would never dream of being that way--well, clearly, I'm not talking about *you*. That said in preface, here's the rogue's gallery from the Citizendium's first year, in alphabetical order, and what I honor them for. And I'm very sorry if I left anyone out, or if I failed to mention some shining achievement of yours--I'm just going based on what I remember and what I had personal experience with, and the project is already bigger than I can always personally track. But yes, I do actually know all these people and am at least somewhat acquainted with their work for the project! I am sure I must have left out some hard-working people, some may have slipped through the cracks, and I'm sorry that I did... --Larry Anthony Argyriou - for a lot of articles on a variety of topics. Dr. Robert Badgett - for attempts to organize professional conferences to benefit CZ, and for some health science articles. Dr. Martin Baldwin-Edwards - for a wide variety of policy discussions and leadership, as well as quite a bit of excellent work on articles in multiple areas, economics, politics, and sociology. Dr. Lee R. Berger - for his many professional-level articles about topics in paleontology, and for piloting Eduzendium (university student use of CZ) this term--we've welcomed several of his students lately. Denis Cavanagh - for quite a few articles on Irish history. Todd Coles - for quite a few articles on American history. Aleta Curry - for much interesting policy discussion, "Write-a-Thon" participation, and many, many professionally written articles. Dr. Chris Day - for being the most active person in the three months of the summer, primarily by working endlessly on our subpage *system* (it's far beyond a single *template* now), and always being on hand to answer questions about it and add features and make tweaks; also, for helping with other MediaWiki coding challenges (e.g., with tables); and of course substantial work as biology editor. Jérôme Delacroix - for helping with PR in French and with critics. Arne Eickenberg - for a lot of excellent articles about classical topics, and some useful contributions to policy debates. Stephen Ewen - for being ubiquitous and incredibly helpful with all sorts of stuff, for helping to run the Constabulary, for approving many new accounts, for formulating an entire system of image policy and actually putting it into effect, for much work on articles. Eric M. Gearhart - for joining us as a system administrator despite being stationed in the army in Iraq; for helping to solve some computer problems; for some solid articles on computer topics. Dr. Giangiacomo Gerla - for terrific amounts of work about fuzzy logic. Dr. Bernard Haisch - for helping move us toward becoming a fully independent non-profit, and offering and support advice in the early months. Dr. Michael Hardy - for many articles on math and other topics, and for detailed discussions of various policy issues. Derek Harkness - for many excellent articles on Scottish topics and for much policy discussion. Paul Hitchmough - for our logo. Peter Hitchmough - for supplying useful sysadmin help and advice in the first 3 or 4 months of the project. Ruth Ifcher - for engaging in long conversations about hard cases, formulating Constabulary policy, and always having excellent judgment about pretty much everything. Dr. Peter Ingerman - for Constabulary service and honest advice. Dr. Matt Innis - for terrific amounts of terrific work on many aspects of the project, for many articles on chiropractic topics, for excellent work getting many people on board, for being a voice of reason and calm during conflict, and for advice on policy matters. Carl Jantzen - for several very good space-related articles and for discussion. Dr. Richard Jensen - for probably adding more, and more substantial, articles than anyone in the project; for his incredible hard work and consistency; for the unusually high quality of his work; for his invaluable expertise and advice on a variety of issues; for his patience in the face of controversy. Ian Johnson - for huge amounts of useful, practical, highly professional PR advice, and for agreeing to participate in a PR focus group; for a lot of good work on various subjects, especially GBLT issues. Mike Johnson - for helping a lot with PR work, from the beginning, and always offering concise, sensible opinions on a wide variety of issues. Thomas E. Kelly - for a lot of work on medical topics, I think, in the earlier months of the project. Robert W. King - for yeomanly work on a huge number of articles on a wide variety of subjects. Dr. Gareth Leng - for acting as an invaluable moderator in many incendiary disputes, contributing huge amounts of expertly-written content, making many useful policy suggestions, and often offering excellent advice on questions as they arise--and for generally supporting the project, from the beginning, when it greatly needed support from someone with his credibility. Dr. Roger Lohmann - for a huge amount of excellent, professional work on various topics especially related to civil society; for pioneering demonstrations of subpage concepts. David Marshall - for early organizational work, advice, and conversation as managing editor for a short time. Dr. Sorin Matei - for Eduzendium, for advice on issues as they arise, and for getting behind a new proposal (currently private) that might create an institutional home for me and support for CZ. Everyone knows I need institutionalization. Dr. John Moffett - for policy advice and support. Greg Sabino Mullane - for getting us started on a superior database version of MediaWiki (PostgreSQL), and for quickly making many greatly needed small changes to our system when no one else would do them--without Greg, we'd have been lost in the last few months, thanks Greg. Will Nesbitt - for much work on various topics, and for emphasis on an issue I care deeply about, viz. neutrality. Dr. Jitse Niesen - for the subpagination bot (work is ongoing), and for much work and discussion on a wide variety of technical articles and policy topics. Dr. Jaime Nubiola - for moral and PR support and for staying with me from Nupedia! Dr. Hendra I. Nurdin - for much professional work on topics in mathematics and engineering topics. Pat Palmer - for returning to us as an editor, for superb writing and excellent judgment, and for useful contributions to policy debates. Kelly Patterson - for shepherding various fundraising efforts, thanks Kelly. Hayford Peirce - for excellent writerly prose on a wide variety of topics, but especially food and tennis--guess we know his priorities--and for policy contributions. James F. Perry - for excellent interesting (to me) work on Scottish highland culture, articles & pictures. Jason Potkanski - for being CZ's go-to guy on most technical questions, for many months, sometimes with compensation but most often without; installing a zillion useful server services, which I and others use every day, like the wiki, the mail system, the forums, etc., etc. He hasn't had so much time lately since he's overworked with a new job, but we are still *very* grateful for all his work. Russell Potter - for, in the time he was with us, many wonderfully-written articles on a wide variety of topics, several of which were approved or made article of the week, and for helping to shepherd other articles to approval. Dr. Nereo Preto - for help and leadership with the Earth Sciences Workgroup when few others were involved, for many professional articles. Zachary Pruckowski - for identifying and explaining the solution to many various technical problems, for explaining stuff to me, and for tracking various bugs--and generally for caring about essential technical stuff. Joe Quick - for an absolute boatload of article work and policy discussion, for help with the anthro workgroup. Ori Redler - for offering useful opinions on a variety of issues; for some of our first articles. Kjetil Ree - for many good articles on political and geographical topics. Charles Sandberg - for good articles on a wide variety of topics. Louis F. Sander - for a lot of good work, particularly on naval topics. Jason Sanford - for early Constabulary work. Dr. Supten Sarbadhikari - for serving as Secretary of the Editorial Workgroup, and keeping resolutions moving when I didn't have the time; for articles on medical topics. Jason Scott - for the "Cold Storage" idea. Aaron Schulz - for, out of the blue, offering to create our brand new "request account" extension--about which, more tomorrow probably, when we announce it--and for helping to test and install it. Dr. Nancy Sculerati - for being the single most prolific and overall useful member of the project in its first six months; for crafting many, many highly readable and interesting articles on biology, health sciences, and pet-related topics, including our first showcase article, "Biology"; for pushing many articles toward approval; for many insightful discussions of many different policy matters. We are still grateful, Nancy. Dr. Anthony Sebastian - for much excellent work on health sciences topics, for crafting one of our best articles ("life"), for his remarkable patience and unflappable calmness, for sound advice on many policy issues. Dr. David Shapinsky - for work developing a new CZ project; and for patience in waiting until we are ready to launch it! John Stephenson - for enormous amounts of high-quality work on linguistics and other topics, for good service as a constable when we needed people to pick up the slack. Dr. Aleksander Stos - for a superb job of keeping track of CZ statistics (really useful stuff), for excellent constable work, for excellent and provocative advice and insight on a wide variety of policy issues, for help with various MediaWiki technical issues, and of course for a lot of work on various technical topics. Dr. Andrew Su - for ongoing consideration of a new program to create a full complement of articles about genes. Anton Sweeney - for excellent constable work, for PR and beer in Dublin, and for a lot of great work on various but especially Irish subjects. Dr. Robert Tito - for enormous numbers of approved applications and other constable work, and for much expert work on scientific topics. Dr. David Tribe - for large amounts of excellent work on biological topics, for much advice and leadership on Constabulary and other issues, for many approved applications. Sarah Tuttle - for helping to keep the Constabulary running smoothly by, among other things, for several months routing applications to different people; for being a voice of moderation and good cheer and common sense on a wide range of Constabulary issues. Louise Valmoria - for setting up and managing CZ's many workgroup mailing lists. Dr. Kim van der Linde - for professional work on biological topics, for returning, and for a frequent critical voice in policy discussions. Phil Wardle - for early (pioneering?) constable and moderator work. Jaap Winius - for snakes--lots of them. Greg Woodhouse - for much good work on math and technical topics, for advice on policy issues. Dr. Paul Wormer - for much high-level, expert work on chemical topics after joining just a few months ago. Yi Zhe Wu - for a lot of solid work on many topics, particularly politics, and for MediaWiki help. THANKS ALSO to our institutional supporters, partners, etc.: Purdue University Department of Communications - for being our first institutional partner and hosting our first mailing lists; for ongoing consideration of further major support. Steadfast Networks - for our first server and for ongoing funding of two servers and bandwidth, all free of charge. Revson Foundation/Lisa Goldberg - for a $20,000 startup grant that helped get us through 2007! Sadly, our sponsor, Ms. Lisa Goldberg, passed away before she could see her support of us come to fruition, but we are still in contact with the foundation and they seem to have our back. Craig Caviezel/Hemingway Foundation - for our first major grant, of $15,000, at a crucial time. Thanks Craig! Community Foundation of NW Mississippi/Charles Boone - for a recent $1,000 grant and consideration of other support. MacArthur Foundation - for several and ongoing conversations and encouragement. 43PR (Gary Byrd and Maggie Quale) - for professional PR services, donated free of charge, up to our launch. Maggie is great. Gary was extremely generous to let her work on CZ without compensation from us. Working with 43PR was truly a pleasure. Tides Center - for (compensated) support of business matters (bill paying, etc.). Nico Sico/Polimetrica - for agreeing to include "The Language of Science" in CZ, and thereby in part inspiring "signed articles." Peter Magnusson & his startup - for management advice, for commitment to certain software enhancements. Andrew Keen - for interesting conversations and for making CZ the first "solution" in his now-infamous book. Thanks to the many people who have invited me to speak or write, thereby supporting my work on CZ. Thanks also to the many journalists from around the world who have written about us even when the youth of the project perhaps didn't merit the attention. Having finished composing this list, let me say that doing so was a most enjoyable experience and one that fills me with pride at our accomplishments but also deep humility in view of the fact of how totally dependent I am on all of you for our success. --LMS _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l<https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l>
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