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Colgate University

Colgate University is a private college in Hamilton, New York. The liberal arts college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York and operated under that name until 1823, when it was renamed Hamilton Theological and Literary Institution, often called Hamilton College (1823–1846), then Madison College (1846–1890), and its present name since 1890.

Colgate enrolls approximately 3,200 students in 56 undergraduate majors that culminate in a Bachelor of Arts degree. The student body is 54% female and 46% male students who participate in over 200 clubs and organizations. While Colgate offers almost an entirely undergraduate program, it also has a small graduate program in Master of Arts in Teaching. The college competes in NCAA Division I sports and is part of the Patriot League athletic conference and ECAC Hockey.

History
In 1817, the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York was founded by thirteen men (six clergymen and seven laymen). Two years later, in 1819, the state granted the school's charter, and the school opened a year later, in 1820. The first classes were held in a building in the town of Hamilton. Three years later, in 1823, the Baptist Theological Seminary at New York City incorporated with the Baptist Education Society and subsequently changed its name to the Hamilton Literary & Theological Institution. Among the trustees was William Colgate, founder of the Colgate Company.

In 1826, the school's trustees bought farmland that later became the focal point of the campus, known as "The Hill". One year later, the current students and faculty of the school built West Hall, by using stone taken from a quarry found on the land. Originally called West Edifice before being renamed to West Hall, it is the oldest structure on campus. On March 26, 1846, the State of New York granted a college charter to Hamilton's Collegiate Department; in the two years prior to that, at the request of Hamilton trustees, degrees of forty-five Bachelor's students and at least one Master's candidate were awarded by Columbian College in Washington, D.C. (now the George Washington University), a fellow Baptist institution. In 1846, the school changed its name to Madison University. In 1850, the Baptist Education Society planned to move the university to Rochester, but was halted by legal action. Dissenting trustees, faculty, and students founded the University of Rochester. Another group of Baptist dissenters, calling for an end to racial and gender discrimination, had founded New-York Central College in 1849. In 1890, Madison University changed its name to Colgate University in recognition of the family and its gifts to the school. James B. Colgate, one of William Colgate's sons, established a $1 million endowment called the Dodge Memorial Fund. In 1912 Colgate Academy, a preparatory school and high school that had operated in Hamilton since the early 1800s, was closed and its facility became Colgate University's administration building.

During World War II, Colgate University was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.

Beginning with undergraduate students admitted in 2022, Colgate plans to be fully tuition-free for students from families making $80,000 or less, cost between 5 and 10% of income for families making between $80,000 and $150,000, and meet 100% of demonstrated need for students from families making more than $150,000.

Coeducation
At its inception, the institution was an all-male institution but started to see female students attend in a limited capacity as early as the mid-1800s when Emily Taylor, daughter of then-president Stephen W. Taylor (1851–56), attended her father's moral philosophy class.

The institution's first full-time female student was Mabel Dart (later Colegrove), who participated in classes from 1878 to 1882. At the time, university officials deemed it best that a female student not be embarrassed by graduating from an all-male college, and made arrangements for Dart to officially receive her degree from then all-female Vassar College.

In the ensuing years, additional female students participated in courses, including faculty spouses and the wives of enrolled veterans in the post-WWII era. Colgate became fully coeducational in 1970.

President Cutten's controversial legacies
The national monument at Ellis Island displays a statement by Colgate's eighth President, George Barton Cutten, which has been criticized for its jingoistic anti-immigration sentiment. He warned, "The danger [that] the 'melting pot' brings to the nation is the breeding out of the higher divisions of the white race."

While Cutten's legacy has been marred by the espousal of racist beliefs, the contributions he made to developing the prestige and facilities of Colgate were significant. Student protests in 2006 around campus facilities bearing Cutten's name became emblematic of the division surrounding how modern American universities should reconcile their own history with racism, foreshadowing future controversies in the mid-2010s at universities such as Yale University and Harvard University. Colgate removed the Cutten name from a residential complex located between Whitnall Field and Huntington Gym in 2017. Each of the four houses that compose the building—Brigham, Shepardson, Read, and Whitnall—is now known by its existing name and street address, 113 Broad Street.

Campus

Colgate University is located in the rural village of Hamilton Village, Hamilton, New York. The campus is situated on 575 acre of land. The university owns an additional 1100 acre of undeveloped forested lands.

Colgate's first building, West Hall, was built by students and faculty from stones from Colgate's own rock quarry. Nearly all the buildings on campus are built of stone, and newer buildings are built with materials that fit the style. Old Biology Hall was built in 1884 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The principal campus plan was created by Ernest W. Bowditch in 1891–1893, drawing on earlier recommendations by Frederick Law Olmsted.

Probably the most distinctive building on campus is Colgate Memorial Chapel, which was built in 1918 and is used for lectures, performances, concerts, and religious services.

Most of the campus's heat is generated from a wood boiler which burns wood chips, a renewable resource. Almost all of Colgate's electricity comes from a hydroelectric dam at Niagara Falls; the rest comes from nuclear sources. The campus also has a Green Bikes program with over two dozen bikes that are loaned out in an effort to encourage students to rely less on cars. Colgate Dining Services currently provides organic rice, beans, and other dry foods, and is working to offer more local foods options. Dining Services take-out containers are also made from natural materials, and are compostable. "On August 13, Colgate received a perfect sustainability score from the Princeton Review. As a result, it was recognized as one of only 24 schools (out of 861 evaluated) to make their Green Honor Roll.

Outreach
Colgate founded the Upstate Institute in 2003. The institute was created to connect the Colgate community to its surrounding region, as well as to give back and help economically and socially sustain the area. Currently, they do research on counties in the area, as well as support outreach and volunteer organizations.

Colgate was an initial sponsor of Partnership for Community Development, a local nonprofit organization which seeks to support the community through the revitalization of buildings and small business development.

Longyear Museum of Anthropology
The Longyear Museum of Anthropology is part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Colgate University. The Longyear Museum exhibition gallery is centrally located in Alumni Hall on campus.

Picker Art Gallery

The Picker Art Gallery is a fine arts museum that is housed in the Dana Arts Center at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. It was named after Evelyn Picker, class of '36 and trustee emeritus, and opened in 1969. The Museum houses 11,000-some art objects in its permanent collections. Highlights include old master paintings from Europe, woodblock prints from China and Japan, and a series of original photographs from famed Soviet wartime photographer Yevgeny Khaldei.

Since 2013, there have been plans to move the Picker collection to a new facility, which Colgate University has named the Center for Art and Culture.

Exhibitions
In 2013, the Picker Art Museum launched an online campaign to display works as a digital exhibition, their first being "Selected Old Masters From the Picker Art Gallery". Other than this online gallery, all exhibition, and educational programs have been temporarily ceased due to the university's thorough assessment of the works in anticipation for the move to the new Center for Arts and Culture.

Academic journal
Colgate University edits and publishes an international academic journal entitled Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England. It was founded in 1984 and publishes academic content related to the study of drama prior to 1642. It is part of the English Department. This journal is also indexed and available on JSTOR.

Academics

Colgate offers 56 undergraduate majors leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree, all of which are registered officially with the New York State Department of Education. The university also has a small Master of Arts in Teaching degree program, which graduates 3–7 students each year. Its most popular undergraduate majors, by 2021 graduates, were:
 * Econometrics and Quantitative Economics (76)
 * Political Science and Government (65)
 * English Language and Literature (44)
 * Research and Experimental Psychology (43)
 * Biology/Biological Sciences (41)
 * Computer Science (35)

In addition to regular campus courses, the university offers 22 semester-long off-campus study groups each year, including programs in Australia, China, Japan, India, several Western European countries, Washington, D.C., and the National Institutes of Health.

Colgate University is among the 100 most selective colleges and universities in the United States, and is considered a Hidden Ivy as well as one of the Little Ivies.

Admissions
For the class of 2026 (entering fall 2022), 21,261 students applied, 2,264 (12%) were admitted, and 841 matriculated. Enrolled students had an average high school GPA of 3.95 out of 4.0, with 72% of students in the top 10% of their class and 91% in top 20%. The middle 50% SAT range was 1460 to 1540, while the ACT composite range was 32 to 35. The university met 100% of the demonstrated need with financial aid. For the admitted students with a total family income of under $125,000, Colgate offers financial aid package that involves no loan.

Reputation and rankings
In 2024, U.S. News & World Report ranked Colgate as the 21st out of 186 best liberal arts colleges in the country, tied with Haverford College and Washington and Lee University.

Administration
On July 1, 2016 Brian Casey began serving as Colgate's 17th president.

Board of trustees
Colgate is governed by a board of trustees composed of 35 members: 31 alumni, three parents of students, and the current president. As of June 30, 2023, Colgate's endowment was $1.20 billion.

Housing and student life facilities

Colgate has ten residence halls located on its central campus, which is often referred to as "up the hill." Located near the academic buildings, freshmen live in six of these halls, whereas sophomores live in the other three, or in townhouses or one house on Broad Street. Juniors and seniors live down the hill in a number of residences, such as theme houses on Broad Street, apartment complexes or in "townhouses" located further away from campus. Themed houses are available for students who want to explore their interests. The Creative Arts house is geared toward creative students; Asia House is for students with interests in Asian culture. Although the university provides housing for students all four years, students can apply for off-campus housing, of which only 250 are granted the privilege through a lottery. Students involved in Greek life have the option of living in their organization's house, though they cannot do so until their junior year.

Colgate has three dining facilities on campus that are run by Colgate Dining Services, which in turn is run by Chartwells. There is also a cafe located in Case Library that serves coffee.

The O'Connor Campus Center, commonly referred to as the Coop, serves as the center for student life and programming. Renovations on it were completed in 2004, and it now houses the offices for student organizations, a cafeteria, post office, printing center, a computer facility, as well as the new Blackmore Media Center, home to WRCU, Colgate's radio station.

Fraternities and sororities
Since the first chartered chapter in 1856, fraternities and sororities have been part of a long-standing tradition at Colgate University.

About forty-five percent of sophomores, juniors, and seniors belong to fraternities or sororities at Colgate. Students are not allowed to pledge until the fall semester of their sophomore year. , there are five fraternities (Beta Theta Pi, Delta Upsilon, Theta Chi, Phi Delta Theta, and Phi Kappa Tau) and three sororities (Gamma Phi Beta, Delta Delta Delta, and Kappa Kappa Gamma) that are active on campus.

Following a number of incidents related to fraternities and sororities on campus, in 2005, the university decided to purchase the Greek houses. All but one of them agreed to sell their houses. The hold-out, Delta Kappa Epsilon, was subsequently derecognized.

Student groups
Colgate has close to 200 student groups and organizations.

Media
WRCU is Colgate University's student-operated radio station, broadcasting throughout central New York on 90.1 FM, and the station was re-modeled in 2010. Colgate's student-run TV station, CUTV, broadcasts on the university's local cable system and provides a mix of student-created content and first-run movies 24 hours a day. The Colgate Maroon-News, is the oldest college weekly in America. The first student newspaper was the Hamilton Student, launched on November 2, 1846.

Traditions

The number 13 is considered to be lucky at Colgate. It is said that Colgate was founded by thirteen men with thirteen dollars, thirteen prayers and thirteen articles. This tradition is expressed in many ways. Colgate's address is 13 Oak Drive, and its zip code is 13346, which begins with 13 and ends with three digits that sum to 13. The Tredecim Senior Honor Society (formerly Konosioni) is composed of 13 men and 13 women. Alumni wear Colgate apparel on every Friday the 13th, which is designated as Colgate Day.

In 1936, the Colgate swim team made its first trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for spring break training at the Casino Pool. This became a regular tradition for Colgate that caught on with other schools across the country and proved to be the genesis of the college spring break trip.

Athletics

Approximately 25% of students are involved in a varsity sport, and 80% of students are involved in some form of varsity, club, or intramural athletics. There are 25 varsity teams, over 30 club sports teams, and 18 different intramural sports. Colgate is part of NCAA Division I for all varsity sports.

The football program competes within the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The athletic teams are nicknamed the "Raiders", and the traditional team colors are maroon and white, with a more recent addition of gray in the 1970s. Maroon replaced orange as the school's primary color on March 24, 1900. Colgate is a member of the Patriot League for all varsity sports except for hockey, in which both its men's and women's teams are members of ECAC Hockey.

Starting in 1932, Colgate athletics teams were called the "Red Raiders" in reference to the new maroon uniforms of that season's "undefeated, untied, unscored upon, and uninvited" football team, which was the first to use the moniker. Apocryphal explanations for the name include the team's ability to defeat its much larger rival, the Cornell University Big Red, or that a rainstorm caused one Colgate football team's maroon jerseys to blend into a reddish color. Regardless, after the adoption of a Native American mascot, the school debated changing the name and mascot in the 1970s out of sensitivity to Native Americans. At that time the nickname was retained, but the mascot was changed to a hand holding a torch. In 2001, the administration acknowledged concerns that the adjective "Red" still had a Native American implication, and the school shortened the nickname to the "Raiders" starting in the 2001–02 school year. A new mascot was introduced in 2006.

Colgate University's football team was selected to share the 1932 national championship by Parke H. Davis in 1933 and appeared in the Associated Press top-level polls in 1942 and 1977. The 1932 team was "unbeaten, untied, unscored upon, and uninvited", as it registered shutouts against all nine opponents, but was not invited to the 1933 Rose Bowl. Colgate began playing in NCAA Division I-AA, now known as Division I FCS, in 1982 and made the Division I-AA (now FCS) football playoffs in 1982, 1983, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2015 and, most recently, 2018.

In the 2003 season, the Raiders made it to the NCAA I-AA championship game in football for the first time, where they lost to the University of Delaware. At the end of the season, their record was 15–1. At the time, they had the longest winning streak in all of Division I football, including one win over a Division I-A (now Division I FBS) team, Buffalo.

Cornell is a common rival in all sports; hockey games against Cornell are major events on campus, with students lining up for hours before the game in order to secure tickets. Colgate's teams (with the exception of football, golf, and men's hockey) also compete annually against Syracuse University. Cornell and Syracuse are both within two hours of Colgate's campus. Colgate and Syracuse were once bitter rivals in football (there are some old traditions related to their games), but a variety of factors, including the splitting of Division I football into Division I FBS and Division I FCS in the late 1970s, helped end the annual game, with some exceptions (such as 2010) over the years.

Outdoor education
Colgate makes use of its rural location by having a full outdoor education program. A base camp is located on campus and allows students to rent equipment for skiing, camping, and other outdoor events. Each year, twelve to fifteen students are selected to become staffers for Outdoor Education. The training takes more than six months and includes a Wilderness First Responder certification. Incoming first-year students are offered a week-long trip called Wilderness Adventure, where they spend a week backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, tree climbing, caving or rock climbing in the Adirondacks.

Alumni
Colgate has more than 34,000 living alumni. , Colgate alumni have a median starting salary of $53,700 and have a median mid-career salary of $119,000. In 2016, Forbes ranked Colgate 16th in colleges that produce the highest-earning graduates. As of 2009, among small schools, Colgate was the tenth-largest producer of alumni who go onto the Peace Corps.

Some of the most notable alumni from the List of Colgate University people include:

title: Colgate University


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The Dark Angel (Waltari novel)

The Dark Angel (original title Johannes Angelos) is a novel by Finnish author Mika Waltari about a hopeless love affair and the Fall of Constantinople. The Finnish version was originally published in 1952, with an English edition being published in Great Britain in 1953.

Plot
The narrator is Jean Ange, alias John Angelos, born in Avignon. Prior to the events of the novel, he had been a friend of Sultan Murad II and then also of his son, Mehmed II; but once Mehmed had begun his march to Constantinople, Ange fled there.

The novel begins as Jean Ange meets Anna Notaras in Constantinople and they fall instantly in love. At first Ange is unaware of her identity, but later he realises she is the daughter of megas doux Lucas Notaras.

Ange is committed to fight to the death on the side of the Christians against the Islamic Ottoman forces. Nevertheless, his prior relationship with Mehmed earns him constant distrust from both Latin and Greek Christians.

Eventually Jean Ange is revealed as a rightful heir of Byzantine emperors, although he has no interest in power. Constantinople ultimately falls under Mehmed's attack, Anna dies while in the disguise of a soldier, and Jean is tortured to death by Mehmed.

Research and writing
The novel, written in a diary format, was inspired by a real diary by Niccolò Barbaro describing the 1453 siege of Constantinople. The character of Angelos especially had his basis on a marginal note in red ink mentioning a Greek traitor for the Turks by the name of Angelo Zacaria. Scholar Panu Rajala visited Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, which held both a copy and the original, and read from the checkout list that Mika Waltari was the fourth one to be allowed to examine the book, on 7 November 1952.

Waltari abandoned an early draft, closer to his previous novels in structure, which was published posthumously in 1981 as Nuori Johannes.

Reception
Time praised Waltari as an "anything but clumsy" novelist with his portraiture of the battle environment, and likened the fractures forming in Constantinople's walls to the growing division between Christians, leading to irreparable ruination. Daily News foresaw it for many readers as "the most powerful and skillful of the historical novels of Mika Waltari". The New York Times, while regarding The Dark Angel as falling short of Waltari's previous historical fiction and reliant on its subject matter for gaining readership, nevertheless commended the handling of all minor characters and "Mr. Waltari's understanding of the interplay of motives that permit Mohammed II, complete with satellites, to overthrow the ancient capital".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Dark Angel (Waltari novel)


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Tallahassee International Airport

Tallahassee International Airport is a city-owned airport five miles southwest of downtown Tallahassee, in Leon County, Florida, United States. It serves the state capital of Florida, and its surrounding areas; it is one of the major airports in north Florida, the others being Pensacola, Northwest Florida Beaches, and Jacksonville. Despite its name, it does not service any international destinations.

History

The airport began as Tallahassee Municipal Airport with a ceremony on April 23, 1961. The flag of the United States was presented to the City of Tallahassee by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, World War I fighter ace and Chairman of the Board of Eastern Airlines. An aerial demonstration was performed by U.S. Army aircraft from Fort Rucker, Alabama. Tallahassee Municipal replaced the city's first airport, Dale Mabry Field, which closed that year.

Eastern Airlines opened the airport by ferrying city, state and chamber of commerce officials. Aboard the flight were Tallahassee Mayor Joe Cordell, State Comptroller Ray Green, Tallahassee City Commissioners Davis Atkinson, George Taff, Hugh Williams, Tallahassee City Manager Arvah Hopkins, Tallahassee City Clerk-Auditor George White, Airport Manager Flagg Chittenden, and Ernest Menendez, Frank Deller, James Calhoun, John Ward and Jeff Lewis, all of the Tallahassee-Leon County Chamber of Commerce.

In June 1961, less than two months after it opened, the airport was the site of Freedom Rider protests. The airport restaurant, Savarin, was designated "Whites Only", and closed rather than serve a racially-mixed group of clergy and activists. The protestors were arrested and removed, and later served prison sentences after the Supreme Court rejected their case in Dresner vs City of Tallahassee on a technicality.

From the airport's opening until the early 1980s, the airport's primary runway was Runway 18/36, a 6,076-foot runway with an ILS approach, enabling all-weather approaches, and a USAF certified High TACAN approach for practice by Air Force aircraft based at Tyndall AFB, near Panama City. Runway 09/27 was 4,000 feet long and supported general aviation operations. By the 1970s, the airport had scheduled flights on Eastern Airlines, Delta Air Lines, National Airlines and Southern Airways, mainly on Boeing 727s, Boeing 737s and McDonnell Douglas DC-9s.

By the 1980s the terminal was becoming obsolete, and the 6,100 foot runway was too short for the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 coming into service. Runway 09/27 was converted to a taxiway and a new Runway 09/27, 8,003 feet long with ILS, was built just to the south. A new passenger terminal was built just north of the new runway. Ground was broke on November 2, 1987 and the new terminal prompted officials to rename the airport from Tallahassee Municipal Airport to Tallahassee Regional Airport. On December 3, 1989, the city opened the $33 million terminal, and on February 20, 2000, the terminal was renamed the Ivan Munroe Terminal in honor of Tallahassee aviation pioneer Ivan Munroe. Munroe was the first man in Tallahassee to own a plane.

On July 20, 2002, FedEx Express Flight 1478 crashed a half mile short of the Runway 9 while attempting to land. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the crash was due to a combination of pilot fatigue and pilot error. All three crewmembers survived.

On June 26, 2015, Tallahassee Regional Airport was renamed Tallahassee International Airport. On June 29, 2015 the City of Tallahassee and the FAA announced the name change. International passengers are allowed to exit the airport via Tallahassee International Airport due to the facility's full-service "service port" for U.S. Customs. The change allows international cargo and general aviation flights to directly come to Tallahassee, which is the leading cargo handler in the Panhandle area of Florida. Tallahassee handles 9.5 million pounds of cargo a year, more than the next city, Pensacola, which handles around 6.8 million pounds.

On January 27, 2021, the airport was struck by an EF0 tornado, causing minor damage and temporary closure to assess the damage. A small plane was flipped and minor damage was done to a hangar. No injuries were reported.

Facilities
The airport covers 2,485 acre at an elevation of 81 feet (25 m). It has two runways: 09/27 is 8,000 by 150 feet (2,438 by 46 m) and 18/36 is 7,000 by 150 ft. (2,134 by 46 m). Helicopter operations are generally confined to the Runway 18/36 area, or direct approaches to the Million Air FBO ramp area.

In the year ending April 30, 2023, the airport had 74,363 aircraft operations, average 204 per day: 57% general aviation, 10% air taxi, 21% military and 13% airline. 207 aircraft were then based at this airport: 178 single-engine, 7 multi-engine, 8 jet and 14 helicopter.

The terminal has two concourses, A & B. Delta Air Lines utilizes Gates B1 and B3, American Airlines uses Gates A3 and A5, JetBlue Airways utilizes Gate A1, and Silver Airways utilizes Gate A4. United Airlines utilized Gate B6 when it offered United Express flights to Houston-Bush Intercontinental Airport which was discontinued on October 1, 2021.

The Million Air FBO at the airport provides contracted fuel services to U.S. Military and Department of Defense aircraft. TLH is regularly visited by U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft, Lockheed Martin C-130 family aircraft, as well as Dornier C-146 and T-6 Texan II aircraft on training missions and practice approaches.

Incidents

 * On October 20, 1956, a Lockheed 18-50 Lodestar (N33368) of National Airlines landed too far down the runway while it was wet, ground-looped, and went through a ditch into some trees. The aircraft was damaged beyond repair.
 * On July 26, 2002, a Boeing 727-232F (N497FE) operating as FedEx Express Flight 1478 from Memphis was landing when the plane struck trees 3,650 feet short of the runway and hit the ground 1,000 feet later, slid an additional 1,100 feet through an open field, and came to rest 1,000 feet from the runway after hitting construction vehicles and burned out. The crash was found to be caused by crew fatigue; none of the three on board were killed.

title: Tallahassee International Airport


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User talk:Andrew Bronx

Hello Andrew, welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian.

You don't need to add your name to articles you contribute to. These are listed in the history of the page, so you are acknowledged, just not on the actual page.

You can learn more on the how to edit page. The naming conventions and style guide pages are also useful. There is a sandbox which you can use to experiment in. If you have any questions, see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. Angela 16:59, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Virtustan
For the record, we don't have entries on micronations unless they have real physical territory or some substantial real-world influence. DS 12:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Karaganda
Did you really mean to say that the "stary gorod" in Karaganda is developed and growing? I thought there was nothing there. And why remove the Solzhenitsyn bit? Staecker 18:10, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did, I live here :) Or may be you mean Prishakhtinsk or a private sector of the old city, which are most close to coal mines in between? Anyway, there is a kind of "construction boom" here... I couldn't invent how to place the Solzhenitsyn in the edited piece, and I think it should be in a separate paragraph instead of a casual mentioning. Bronx 11:03, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Btw, exactly the old theater (Concert Hall) and the old fire station doesn't exist now: the Concert Hall is disassembled and its wooden facade now exposed in the Ethnic Park at SouthEast, a square is under reconstruction now; the fire station building is reconstructed and now there is a "Halyk" marketplace in it. Bronx 11:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * UPD: I was wrong about the "Old Town" - indeed, on maps it is only an area (mostly industrial) between Prishakhtinsk and a New Town, though at these days many people call the center of the New Town as an "old town" (due to its old-style buildings). I reverted this part, but existence of the theater and firestation is still questionable. I'll try to claryfy it. Bronx 18:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for looking into this, Andrei- I lived in Karaganda three years ago, and was told there was nothing in the "old town" area. I know it's developing quickly, but I didn't think it was that quick. I can't really say either way about Solzhenitsyn. I know he discussed Karaganda in his books, but I don't know the exact reference. Hope life in the big K-town is still good- Staecker 18:37, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:Andrew Bronx


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User talk:Brucegeller

Hello Bruce, welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. You can learn more on the how to edit page. The naming conventions and style guide pages are also useful. There is a sandbox which you can use to experiment in. If you have any questions, see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. Angela

Thank you for experimenting with the page Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bruce Geller (composer) on Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Tyrenius 03:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on AKIBA, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable, that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Wikipedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert notability may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is notable, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add  on the top of the page (below the existing db tag) and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. RJASE1 Talk  04:32, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Image:Brucegeller01.jpg listed for deletion
An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Brucegeller01.jpg, has been listed at. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. RJASE1 Talk  04:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use Image:AX-1.jpg
Thanks for uploading Image:AX-1.jpg. I noticed the description page specifies that the media is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed media could reasonably be found or created that provides substantially the same information. If you believe this media is not replaceable, please:

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Alternatively, you can also choose to replace the fair use media by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by taking a picture of it yourself.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified how these images fully satisfy our fair use criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on [ this link]. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, fair use media which could be replaced by free-licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if not used in an article), per our Fair Use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Rettetast (talk) 11:50, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Brucegeller


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User:BenKovitz

I'm interested in heuristic, and especially how wikis can facilitate collaborative discovery.

I wrote the "Green Light Wiki", where I host a couple wikis, one on improvisational theater and one where the object is to restate, in your own words, the ideas in a peculiar book by Lenore Thomson.

I had a tiny role in the early history of Wikipedia (see below).

I currently (2013) live in Bloomington, Indiana, where I'm getting a Ph.D in computer science and cognitive science at Indiana University. My favorite city is San Francisco, and I hope to return there.

Email: bkovitz "at" indiana dot edu.

The conversation at the taco stand
There's been a fair amount of talk about the conversation between me and Larry Sanger that led to the creation of Wikipedia. Here is my memory of it.

Background
Larry had been working for a while on Nupedia, a free on-line dictionary written by credentialed experts and following a strict review and certification process to ensure that every article was high quality and, above all, factually reliable. A lot of Larry's thought since I first got to know him back in 1994 had been devoted to how sources of knowledge can be reliable and unbiased. I believe he was always looking for foundational knowledge: something solid to build on, or at least as close to that as we can practically achieve. Nothing much had come of Nupedia, though. There were hardly any articles completed.

The previous several months, I had been participating heavily on two wikis: Ward Cunningham's original wiki and one called "Why Clublet", run by Richard Drake and Keith Braithewaite. I'd become interested in the way wiki pages would grow in directions that none of the contributors had anticipated, and sometimes with writing clearer and better than any one contributor was capable of. I was especially interested in how conflicting ideas could be explored in depth by separating discussion of them to different places. No back-and-forth head-on "debate", just parallel exploration of opposing ideas. I saw it work especially well when people focused on improving the quality of the writing and poorly when people tried to make the wiki officially declare their preferred view as the correct one. I had also been experimenting with Extreme Programming at work, and had discovered amazing synergy in pair programming. I liked how these structures enabled people working together to actually be smarter than people working alone--the exact opposite of "committee"-style collaboration, and also opposite from the kind of collaboration where each person "owns" a sectioned-off piece of the whole.

That night
On January 2, 2001, Larry and I ate dinner at the taco stand at 1932 Grand in Pacific Beach, San Diego. I believe this taco stand had no name, just the words "MEXICAN FOOD" written on a window. (I have a picture of it.)

The conversation started with Larry telling me about Nupedia's progress since the last time we'd talked. Not many articles had been completed, but he was optimistic about Nupedia's future. He wanted to speed it up, though, and said he'd been looking at technological ways to speed up editing. I said that I knew of a really neat tool for fast collaborative editing: a wiki. Larry hadn't heard of wikis, so I told him all about them at great length.

I suggested that instead of just using the wiki with Nupedia's approved staff, he open it up to the general public and let each edit appear on the site immediately, with no review process. Instead of preventing error and bias, I said to openly invite error and bias and make it very easy for people to correct them. My exact words were to allow "any fool in the world with Internet access" to freely modify any page on the site. Also, I said that on wikis, there are no "completed" articles, there is just endless chaos and conflict. I suggested that this might actually lead to better reliability and richer content than the careful, circumspect approach.

Larry raised some objections and we debated a bit. Couldn't people just vandalize the site? I said yes, and other people could then repair the vandalism. Couldn't total idiots put up blatantly false or biased descriptions of things, to advance their ideological agendas? I said yes, and other idiots could delete those changes or edit them into something better.

I told Larry about some of the conventions on Ward's Wiki, like running words together to indicate a page name. I mentioned that this required me to give the Ward's Wiki page about Aristotle the name "MrAristotle." Larry cringed at that.

Larry was not completely convinced by my answers to his objections about quality, but he definitely liked the way the wiki concept enabled a great increase in editing speed, and he was eager to try it. We went over to his apartment, and he tried to call his boss at Bomis, Jimbo Wales. Jimbo didn't answer, so Larry left voicemail. Larry and I talked about philosophy for a while, and roughly half an hour later Jimbo called back. They talked for ten or fifteen minutes. After the conversation, Larry had a big smile on his face. Larry said that he felt very optimistic that the idea would proceed, and that Jimbo was quite open to it.

Afterward
Within a couple weeks, Wikipedia had gone live, and Larry had posted the WikiPedia page on Ward's Wiki, inviting people to come contribute.

It's a rare thing to tell someone to do something exactly the opposite of what he's been doing and get a fair hearing. It almost never happens that someone actually takes the suggestion. But Larry listened to what I had to say, let his imagination engage, and ran with it. Back then, wikis were a very hard concept to "get", but Larry's mind began percolating immediately, and he got things started that very night.

It was extraordinarily fortunate that Larry was working for Jimbo. Jimbo had both the means and the vision to get Wikipedia moving. Jimbo had stoked my interest in the power of collective knowledge years earlier in a post to the MDOP discussion list about sports betting and how it sets the "line" more reliably and accurately than any individual bettors.

I'm not one of the founders
Some folks, aiming to criticize or belittle Jimmy Wales, have taken to calling me one of the founders of Wikipedia, or even "the true founder". I suggested the idea, but I was not one of the founders. I was only the bumblebee. I had buzzed around the wiki flower for a while, and then pollinated the free-encyclopedia flower. I have talked with many others who had the same idea, just not in times or places where it could take root.

In my opinion, Larry Sanger most certainly is a co-founder of Wikipedia. Larry came up with the perfect name and got the word out. He found people who were eager to contribute and got them writing articles in a matter of weeks. Larry crafted the policies that converted Wikipedia from a cool idea into a practical success: Neutral Point of View, No Original Research, and Verifiable Sources. He wrote most of the original help and policy files, showing people how to get started and what the project was all about. He did the day-to-day political work of persuading people to participate in accord with those policies, both in letter and in spirit (and took a lot of abuse for it). Without these and much more, Wikipedia might have ended up a chaotic jumble of people shouting each other down, like many pages on Ward's Wiki. It is the only case I know of where a philosopher applied his knowledge of philosophy to a practical problem to get great results, benefiting millions of people.

You have Larry to thank for "Be Bold". You have Larry to thank for getting Wikipedia started, no less than Jimmy Wales. The only people you have to thank more are the tens of thousands of people who actually wrote Wikipedia and are still writing it every day.

Response from Larry
Hi Ben, I hope you don't mind if I respond on your page; we can move it to mine, if you prefer.

You have certainly remembered some more of the details than I do, and there is one point where your memory diverges significantly from mine. You say, "I suggested to Larry that he make Nupedia into a wiki." But I don't actually recall any such actual suggestion. What I do recall is that you talked on for quite a while about wikis. I then said something like, "Wow, that's really interesting--that sounds like a piece of cheap (free), available software we could use to solve this problem with Nupedia." And then, I think, I described the problems we were having with Nupedia. And then I am very sure we talked at great length about how a wiki could be used to build an encyclopedia. I also remember that you explained and defended the idea of a wiki very well!

Also, you say, "Larry was skeptical at first." This is probably true, because I am skeptical of everything at first, even my own ideas. But you did not have to persuade me to think about it; what I distinctly recall is that the realization that "a website anyone could write on" could be applied to the encyclopedia problem was nearly instantaneous, and I was nearly instantly excited by the idea. So I might have been skeptical at first, but I was very excited, and you didn't need to persuade me to think it through.

I remember laughing at "MrAristotle." I still do!

Now, you say that I called Jimmy Wales when I got home, but to be perfectly honest, I don't recall you stopping by my apartment, and I don't recall calling Jimmy Wales, either. But if you have a clear recollection of that, then it must have happened. Perhaps I do have some vague inkling of that. Anyway, what I do very distinctly recall is that I wrote a document, one or two pages long (I think it was just one page long), describing how a wiki encyclopedia would work. I believe I sent it to Wales that very night, and he had a wiki set up for me to play with either Jan. 3 (the next day) or Jan. 4. I forget; might have been two days. I was never told who actually set up the wiki software. There was a sysop who could have done it, but Jimmy has claimed responsibility for it--whatever. It was very easy to set up UseModWiki, I understand.

Finally, let me comment on this:

 * It's a rare thing to tell someone to do something exactly the opposite of what he's been doing, indeed the exact opposite of how he's been thinking and investing mentally for most of his life, and get a fair hearing. It almost never happens that someone actually takes the suggestion. But Larry listened to what I had to say, let his imagination engage, and ran with it.

This is disappointing, Ben, because there is apparently a few things about me that you do not understand, even though we have talked so much. :-) First, I had hoped that Nupedia would be more efficient.  In fact, that was one of the aims I set myself with it; when it turned out not to be efficient, I again set myself to fix the problem.  So, while Wikipedia was much more efficient than Nupedia, it was always part of the plan to create a truly efficient, productive system.  Second, as anyone who observes me working knows, I am constantly trying to think of ways to make things work better.  I "let [my] imagination engage"?  Good lord, I have to restrain my imagination.  In that regard, I am what people call (loosely) a "pragmatist": I am always thinking up and trying out new things.  Moreover, I don't think that that is in any contradiction, or even any interesting tension, with my desire for a solid foundation for knowledge.  Having reliable knowledge is one value; having lots and lots of knowledge is another important value, one that I have always held up. Besides, I think that imagination is one of the most important keys to knowledge, both theoretical and practical: that is the faculty we use to generate hypotheses and solve problems. With the Citizendium, I have retained what worked with Wikipedia, and gotten rid of some of what didn't work. In the long run, I expect that we will have more articles than Wikipedia, more content, and better content. If I didn't believe that was possible, I wouldn't have started the project.

And as far as this goes--"It was extraordinarily fortunate that Larry was working for Jimbo. Jimbo had both the means and the vision to get Wikipedia moving"--this does me a disservice, I think, Ben. You weren't actually present when it happened, but as those who were generally attest, I was the one who got Wikipedia moving in its first year. At the time, Wales was (as far as I know) working full-time as CEO as Bomis, and had relatively little to do with Wikipedia's actual origins. He was pretty hard to get a hold of, and didn't do that much work on or off the wiki. He, with his partners, had the means to get it going: Bomis could pay me and could pay for the servers and technical support. But Wales' "vision" was sketchy at best, limited to a very few, and vague, guidelines. The basic principles of the project were articulated by me, and I pushed them, day in and day out. Of course, many of the regulars also reinforced these principles very well--many of them rather more than Wales himself did. Of course, again, I don't mean to criticize you, Ben--I'm just tired of Wales getting so much credit for work, and "vision," he did not do or have.

Anyway, interesting write-up, Ben, and mostly true! --Larry Sanger (talk) 05:55, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Articles started

 * liminality
 * Naugles
 * Harold Butler
 * categorical proposition
 * American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges
 * Ed Colligan
 * Leo Zeff
 * Dora Kent
 * Hubert's Brain
 * explanation-based learning
 * definitions of mathematics
 * Barlow's law
 * Richard Bromfield
 * Ishi Press
 * TD-Gammon
 * Neurogammon
 * competitive learning
 * zerknüllt
 * Ortega hypothesis
 * Taliaferro Preston Shaffner
 * Liberian exodus
 * miniKanren
 * Soylent (food substitute)
 * Senior Medicare Patrols
 * Medicare Fraud Strike Force

Extensively edited or poured passion into
Heuristic SBML Pair programming Sudbury school demagogue

Want to write (or see someone else write)
Rank-1 update

Other
I now serve as General Secretary of the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are In Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They are Deletionist.

la:Usor:BenKovitz

title: User:BenKovitz