User talk:Cassidy (Wiki Ed)/Art history

Feedback on this draft

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on this draft. Please leave your feedback in a new section below. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:41, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Image advise

Back in 2009 I wrote some advise for Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who ran a project on the sculptures at the university. Many of the editors were unfamiliar with our image policy regarding sculptures and even now I see some images were never properly dealt with so were deleted leaving some articles unillustrated. You can review that advise here. Most if not all of it applies to other artworks though this did feature freedom of panorama issues. I think the current draft is too scant and misses essential points that inexperienced editors may be unaware of. If you want to rewrite it or review any additions, just ping me. BTW, I also have an image copyright information page that might be useful or some of which could be copied. Good luck. ww2censor (talk) 22:10, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

ww2censor, Thank you for these excellent resources. I'll work on incorporating this information into our next draft. Just as an aside, students receiving this brochure will have taken an online training detailing image uploading to Wikipedia and Commons, as well. Hopefully the combination of these resources will prepare them well to make meaningful and valid contributions. Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback. I very much appreciate it. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:28, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Direct edits?

It would be a lot easier for me to make edits to this draft than to describe the edits here. If I edited the draft, you'd be welcome to revert all my changes. How about it? -- Hoary (talk) 01:11, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Hoary, That sounds fine to me. Thanks! Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:14, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Done.

I confess that as I was going through it, I was thinking "This is strange: instructions on editing by somebody who seems curiously unfamiliar with editing." (Why else have these rather perverse instructions to type this or that in the browser address bar or Wikipedia search box? Simply provide [[links]].) But then I encountered "small-print text for the bottom of the back cover". But you know, this could be harder to use than a web page, where anything can be easily clickable. Now I see that above, too, it's described as a "brochure". Guess I should revert some of my changes.

Rather like Johnbod (below), I am alarmed by "Also look for topics on Wikipedia that are missing [...]". I looked at Gustave Le Gray; surprisingly, all it says about Le Gray's remarkable pioneering of multiple exposures is "Combination printing, creating seascapes by using one negative for the water and one negative for the sky at a time where it was impossible to have at the same time the sky and the sea on a picture due to the too extreme luminosity range.", which is OK as far as it goes, but as a bare mention is inadequate. Also, the article "Combination printing" doesn't mention Le Gray. So I think I'll create a new article, "Gustave Le Gray and combination printing". Or, hmm, perhaps I'll "be bold" and title it "Gustave Le Gray, photoshopper without Photoshop". What say?

I read "Include the infobox: {{Infobox Artist}}". Oh, please, no. Biographical infoboxes may be suitable for boxers, golfers and so on -- people whose achievements are straightforwardly identifiable and perhaps quantifiable -- but for artists they just repeat birth/death date/place (the precision of which is virtually never significant, for who cares if an artist was born on 7 April or 12 April?), nationality (singular), style (singular), movement (singular); they provide a dumbed down pastiche of the article. The only plus is the opportunity it gives for the laughable euphemism "resting place".

"Don't be scared. Be bold!", your draft says. For over a decade, since I started editing, I've always thought that "Be bold!" is the worst advice to give to newcomers: it's sure to lead them to mistakes, criticism, and frustration. I'd have them do humdrum tasks like adding/improving sources. This way they'd be demonstrably improving articles, winning themselves credibility, familiarizing themselves with markup, etc -- all handy for later, when they can be bold, and competently so.

The plethora of articles such as The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic (earnest, very likely accurate, but almost totally unsourced) makes me think it would be a good idea to write something akin to "Do what we say, not what we (sometimes) do", conceding that en:WP has and probably will always continue to have a high percentage of seriously defective articles (hagiographies, autohagiographies, etc), but that students should ignore this. OTOH good examples are not merely inspirational but useful; you could usefully point readers to the lists of art-related featured/good articles. -- Hoary (talk) 00:02, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

PS now delinked. -- Hoary (talk) 00:30, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Johnbod, in your recent series of edits, you seem to have overlooked what I overlooked earlier: that this isn't intended to be a WP page. Instead, it's for reading off paper. [[Links]] won't work. -- Hoary (talk) 08:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Thoughts

So far this has very little specific to art. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that, as though art is a popular subject for courses, it is clear WikiEd have little or no expertise in the area. I'm away on holiday at the moment, but will be back at the week-end & able to comment in much more detail. You should point to WP:VAMOS which covers some points. I think students should generally be discouraged from starting new biographies of artists, but certainly encouraged to expand the many two-line stubs we have. There shouldn't be any notability issue, and this is something students can do well. There are many historic artist bios that are almost entirely sourced to stuff over a century old. Johnbod (talk) 23:28, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks

Hoary and Johnbod, Thank you both for your detailed feedback in the draft space. I very much appreciate you taking the time. Apologies that I was not more clear that this will be a print brochure for students to consult alongside digital resources.

I’ll be incorporating your notes into a final draft over the next two weeks, at which time I’ll update this page to reflect any changes. I can ping you both if you’d be interested in taking another look at that point.

Just to give you an idea of what I plan to do for this next draft: Due to space limitations in the print brochures, I will be condensing the existing text slightly. I will make sure to retain any essential information and plan to condense the text in terms of volume, not quality or content.

Thanks again for taking a look. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:09, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

As this is intended to be used as a print handout, I'd suggest, rather than saying "type "foo" into the the Wikipedia search box" at intervals, giving at the top a single quick shortcut link to an online version of the page, with/or a list of links, so they can then just click on links in the normal way. Johnbod (talk) 02:36, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Updates to the draft

Hi Hoary, Johnbod, and ww2censor,

Thank you all again for your feedback on Wiki Education's upcoming art history editing brochure for students. I've made changes to the original draft if you're interested in taking another look. If you do have some time, I would appreciate any feedback by September 5th.

Please note that this will not be the only resource students consult as they edit. We have a number of detailed online trainings that cover basic editing, uploading images to Commons, plagiarism and copyright, and more.

Thanks again for your detailed notes and feedback. I'm excited to get this into the hands of students so that they may make effective, meaningful contributions to art history-related articles. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:29, 29 August 2018 (UTC)