User:Louise Valmoria
The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.
Louise Valmoria is a student of Bachelor of Sciences and Arts at the University of Melbourne. She is also now studying an LLB with the University of London with a focus on EU and international law, and human rights. She has a strong interest in public health policy and medical law.
She has performed some field work and analysis, research as well as administration activities to support the work of the IEEE SC3 committee (investigating the effects of Extremely Low Frequency electromagnetic waves on the human body), under the supervision of one of the SC3 co-chairs. As a result she now continues to conduct public-health related research on electromagnetic fields and radio frequencies. She has also worked with the International Public Health section of a non-profit organisation, in the Monitoring and Evaluation team that is developing health education plans for children and young adults in developing countries. She has worked various operational support roles in recruitment, infrastructure (toll roads, electrical transmission and distribution), industrial real estate, logistics and transport, and global financial services. Whilst completing her studies she is also working in an operational support managerial role within the area of toll road infrastructure and management.
Louise is currently also the Citizendium's Mailing List Manager and co-coordinator of the Wikiconverting group with Anthony Sebastian. This role requires the creation and maintenance of workgroup mailing lists, which support the writing and organisational efforts of our authors and editors.
Interests and Hobbies
I thoroughly enjoy research, and one of the best ways I learn is to write about it (CZ:Article mechanics). Encouraged to write by the CZ:Monthly Write-a-Thon, right now I am trying to focus on supporting the CZ:Core Articles initiative as well as kicking off collaborative articles where I can.
My hobbies and interests include literature, poetry, art history, architecture, travelling to far-flung places and coming up with rather off-the-wall life projects. After a study course in Germany, one such life project is analysing and translating the Nuremberg Chronicle. I am proficient in several languages other than English; my strongest languages would be French, Czech and Spanish. I have particular interests in modern and medieval art history, media history, intellectual history, history and philosophy of science, and Central European history. At heart I am passionate about science, particularly involving neurobiology, materials chemistry, theoretical physics; however my life path seems to be taking me in a direction where I communicate the exciting developments in research rather than actually being deeply involved in it.
I also play the violin. Although I began lessons later in life it turns out I'm actually not that bad at it, and this has deepened my interest in music, its mechanics and its history in a way that learning the piano as a child somehow didn't. I learned a mixture of French and Russian styles from a really excellent Romanian violin teacher, but have not performed recently aside from examination settings.
All this aside, I am not an 'expert' in any one field. Just a supportive contributor and a wide reader, in effect one of the 'general public'. I feel that right now I can best work with Citizendium through a support role and kicking off articles where I can--may as well put my massive library to good use.
Current projects
Spring Cleaning! - Chemical elements: Some of our Most Wanted
Louise's Userplan - things I intend to do.
My Sandbox - stuff I am tinkering around with, mostly in keeping with 'international' theme days and because I really need to work on my finer wikicoding skills
Louise's Gallery - eventually when I get around to uploading images for CZ use I will put a thumbnail gallery here
Internationalisation
As 2008 is the UN International Year of Languages, it's a good time to raise awareness of the benefits that our international contributors can give to a growing site like Citizendium.
With four months left until the close of IYL 2008, and talks of an International Decade of Languages initiative, it's time to get moving on this one muchacha <-- note to self
On a personal note, I learn languages like they're going out of fashion (and, if you look at statistics of endangered and extinct languages, they probably are). My main languages other than English are French, Czech, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian; and I have some facility in other languages (Scandavian based, Hungarian, Slavic languages, regional dialects). Travel and curiosity has me learning Thai, Cambodian and Quechua.
There is now discussion about CZ International in the Proposals Queue: see discussion in the Proposals: Internationalisation Sandbox.
Mailing Lists
As Mailing List Manager my current role involves setting up and administering an increasingly large amount of mailing lists, which means I need to keep an eye on Citizendium Workgroups as well as other initiatives which may require extra support.
- CZ:Workgroups
- Mailing Lists - Workgroups section for reference when updating the mailing lists record
- Workgroup Mailing Lists (Mailman page for my reference)
I have a couple of statistics regarding Mailing List usage and growth--nothing on the par of the CZ:Statistics page, however--but it provides an interesting baseline on the growth and development of Citizendium in its first year of organisation.
Sandbox - Mailing List Statistics
Wikiconversion
Wikitext may seem daunting to the new user, but for budding contributors there is a way to help. The Wikiconversion team is a group of volunteers who are able and willing to convert documents from .txt or .doc files into the required format for Citizendium. This is a service that we are offering to those who would like to contribute, but are unsure of how to deal with wikicode. Currently, this initiative is in the process of being set up.
If you are familiar with wikicode and willing to help, interested volunteers can sign up here. The initiative is led by Anthony.Sebastian.
Update: The Wikiconversion initiative has kicked off! Thanks to Anthony Sebastian for leading the charge and for Citizendium's excellent volunteers.
How is it done? CZ:Email us an article in word processor format
This project has been officially launched!
General Administration
CZ:Unchecklisted Articles--assist where I can with clearing the backlog
No approval page--quick way of assisting with unchecklisted articles; these are the ones that just haven't had their approval page saved
Unexpected template errors - a good way to fix articles and also learn more about the subpage process
Infomation About CZ and Copyright
Archive:Media Assets Workgroup
Pages for my Reference
How to add optional subpages (i.e. works pages): Additional Subpages Instructions
Exactly when and where a 'stub' article can be graduated to a 'developing' article: All about the Article Checklist.
CZ:How to make tables - because no matter how much practice I try to put in, I keep forgetting
Special:NewPages - newly created articles
{{rpl|the grand poobah speaks}} - how to get those nifty status indicators