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Welcome!

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Hello, Handlemk and Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking if shown; this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field with your edits. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Cind.amuse (Cindy) 16:42, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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Hello

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Hi Mary, welcome to the Global Education Program! Annie Lin (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 22:01, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello

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Nice to meet you finally! Sadads (talk) 20:08, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice to meet you! Handlemk (talk) 20:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mary! I'll be one of the online ambassadors for your class this semester. I look forward to working with you and your students! Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Dana boomer (talk) 17:19, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dana! I'm still getting up to speed, so things are a bit rocky yet. Is it OK for students in the class to ask for help too? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Handlemk (talk • contribs)
Yes, of course. They can use my talk page if they'd like, or the talk pages of specific articles once those are chosen, or another place entirely - whatever works best for them and you. How many students are in your class? Dana boomer (talk) 19:23, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are a dozen, with varying degrees of computer skill, academic ability, and motivation. They have some great topic ideas, but we're all kind of stuck right now. I'm meeting them this afternoon and hopefully will scare them into action. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Handlemk (talk • contribs)
OK - a dozen sounds manageable! Just a couple of comments: To sign talk page posts, place four tildes (~~~~) after your post. This is the code that will place links to your user name and talk page and the date/time of your post. Also, threading can be a bit clumsy on Wikipedia, but is done using combinations of ":", "*" and "#" symbols. The first just indents your post one spot for each key - the first poster uses one, the next two, etc. You can see an example of this in the way I have threaded our conversation above. The star symbol will make your post bullet pointed, and the pound sign will make it numbered. Combinations of these can be used, so, for example, ":*" will indent it one space and put a bullet point in front. These two things (how to sign and how to thread) are two things that are vital that your students know, as they are needed whenever communicating on user or article talk pages.
As far as being "stuck" - how so? If there are specific editing questions you have, I'd be happy to help answer them. If it's topic wise, Category:Agriculture and its subcategories might be a good place to start, specifically Category:History of agriculture. I don't know if your students plan to create new articles or if you will allow them to work on existing articles, but there are not a lot of editors working on ag articles right now, and so a lot of them could use help! From reading the questions posed at the top of your class page, it seems that articles like New World crops, Three Sisters (agriculture), Highland Potato Famine and the various subcategories of Category:Crops by country may be a good fit for your students. These are just some thoughts of mine, however, and there are a lot of existing articles out there that need work, and probably a lot of new ones (especially regarding agriculture in Africa and other poorly represented areas) that could be created. Dana boomer (talk) 17:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Mary! I was just checking in to see if there was an update on when students are going to begin choosing articles. On the course page it says that they are to have 3-5 articles picked out for discussion with online ambassadors by Sept 21 (yesterday)... I know you obviously can't force the students to do anything, but I'm a bit nervous that they are all going to wait until you give them an ultimatum and then ask me to analyze and discuss somewhere between 24 and 40 articles (based on the 8 students currently listed on the page) within a few hours or even a day! If the timeline has changed, however, I'll stop worrying and go do something else :) I guess the tl;dr version is: I would appreciate being kept in the loop on changes to the class timeline, at least when they will affect me as the sole online ambassador! Dana boomer (talk) 22:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry Dana. I am meeting with each of them over the next 10 days to discuss their articles. I'll do the initial screening and then you'll only have to look at a dozen. There has been lots of discussion about topics. I'm stressing that their work needs to meet my standards and also fit into Wikipedia norms. As far as timeline goes, I'm very flexible at this stage. I'd rather have it done right than be done on a strict schedule. Handlemk (talk) 12:27, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, sounds great. Flexible is good - I just wasn't sure if we were going to have students rushing to meet a deadline at some point and would like to head that possibility off if at all possible. Let me know when they have something for me to take a look at! Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 00:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Class Project Information

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All of you students in GEOG 430 should be posting outlines of your proposed page and some information about what the page will include. These can be posted on your talk page--they will link back to the course page if you have signed up there. There are some really great ideas out there, and I can't wait to read the final pages!Handlemk (talk) 16:46, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am extemely concerned that most of the articles are for topics that would not survive the WP:AFD process.
User:Campbemp/Domestication of Cannabis seems like it should be redirected to Cannabis cultivation.
User:Paul Layne/The Phytoextraction of Heavy Metals from Groundwater may be redirected to Phytoremediation.
User:Maureen P. A./sandbox seems to belong at Red Rover.
It is unclear that User:Lisbeth498/First Generation Farmers in America has a reason to be a distinct article.
User:Falterdg/strawberry breeding does not document a need for a distinct article.
User:Lmpalmer1/sandbox is not a clear topic.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, see my thoughts below in the "Comments" section - basically, I agree with you that many of the students' chosen topics are either over-specific or duplications of already existing articles. To add on to my comments, below, I agree with Tony that the sandbox of Maureen PA is a duplicate (plus I have no idea what it has to do with agriculture). I'm not sure whether the first generation farmer's article is a good start for an article or not - there is definitely a movement afoot in the United States of young people from non-farming backgrounds going "back to the land": I'm just not sure that "first generation farmers" is the best title for an article on this phenomenon, as FGF encompasses anyone from history who has been a FGF, not just those today. Dana boomer (talk) 17:54, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

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Hi Handlemk!

I have put together a survey for female editors of Wikipedia (and related projects) in order to explore, in greater detail, women's experiences and roles within the Wikimedia movement. It'd be wonderful if you could participate!

It's an independent survey, done by me, as a fellow volunteer Wikimedian. It is not being done on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation. I hope you'll participate!

Just click this link to participate in this survey, via Google!

Any questions or concerns, feel free to email me or stop by my user talk page. Also, feel free to share this any other female Wikimedians you may know. It is in English, but any language Wikimedia participants are encouraged to participate. I appreciate your contributions - to the survey and to Wikipedia! Thank you! SarahStierch (talk) 23:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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Hi Mary, and thanks for the note on my talk page. I've only had two students come to me to ask about my thoughts on their topics, and I hadn't seen the sandboxes popping up on the course page, so I just started looking at them. I have a few concerns - not sure if I should raise them here or with the individual students:

Basically, I think a lot of your students are trying to reinvent the wheel. Are you requiring them to begin their own articles? Because if so, this seems to be forcing them to create content that already exists, which will most likely result it in being merged with other articles, which could be very discouraging for someone who is just learning how to use WP and doing this for a grade besides. YMMV. Dana boomer (talk) 16:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Dana, having talked to them, I am very confident on Falterdg's, Paul Layne's and Lisbeth's articles, though I agree that a rethinking of title may have to happen as they simplify and rethink titles for Lisbeth's and Paul's or future Wikipedians may have to think about how their content ought to be organized/merged into other parts of the encyclopedia. The Breeding of Strawberries definitely seems to have its own sense of content which will be very different then what is available on Wikipedia now.
With Campbemp and Rhoadeka, they both assured me that the direction which they were taking was distinct and available in scholarship. Doing a quick google search of Cannibis domestication, this seems to be a much more historical approach to the topic then we have even approached on the articles mentioned above, see [1]. As for Rhoadeka, he assured me that the propagation of christmas trees has a bunch of discussion that is different then the information we cover in the above mentioned articles (he had seen both so I am trusting him on this one), though I am still not clear on what exactly is different, and may need some mentoring as you move along in shaping the content.
As far as I can tell, they are all focusing on a fairly specific segment of the scholarship for each topic that we lack severely in depth, and that many of their articles are going to become the main article for small sections of these articles you have already pointed to. If we monitor their work and continue to engage with them about the topics, and making sure they are focused/titled correctly I think most of them should work out just fine! Sadads (talk) 18:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"or future Wikipedians may have to think about how their content ought to be organized/merged into other parts of the encyclopedia." - We should not be encouraging the students to create articles which we know have a good chance of being merged or seriously reorganized. While there are plenty of "Cultivation of xyz" and "xyz cultivation" articles, and so structuring Falterdg's article along these lines might work, I think that Paul Layne's topic is much too detailed, based on my arguments above. I simply think that we should be steering students towards working on articles that have a good chance of remaining on Wikipedia. These educational assignments are geared towards teaching students how to use and contribute to Wikipedia and towards improving the wiki. While students should also be learning and honing community interaction, writing and research skills, etc., during this assignment, we should not be encouraging them to contribute information that we feel has a good chance of being merged or deleted as soon as we are not looking at it. When it comes to articles such as the Christmas tree one, we should make sure that this is actually a viable article before the student goes through all of the work of writing it - if you don't understand the different after discussion then more discussion is needed. We also need to make sure that the articles don't turn into how-to's (which it could quite easily when talking about "the series of procedures carried out to reproduce trees"). Basically, I'm still not convinced that all of these subjects as currently laid out need articles or constitute valid premises for articles. I'm also not sure why students are apparently being forced (?) to start new articles, despite the fact that this is causing them to veer into rather questionably-notable subjects, rather than working on the thousands of agriculture-related stub/start class articles that already exist on WP. Again, YMMV. If the students are reading this, I want to make it clear that I am not criticizing them personally - I am merely questioning the method through which articles are chosen and the suitability of some of these topics for inclusion on Wikipedia. Dana boomer (talk) 00:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A few more thoughts. Based on User talk:Diverdw, this student appears to be interested in creating Agriculture in Costa Rica, a very valid article with a basis for existence of all of the other "Agriculture in ..." articles - I like it. User:Ashleysmith129, based on her edits to the article and her talk page, appears to be interested in working on the existing article Farm-to-table - again, a solid choice. Unfortunately, I have to be critical of User:Marcucmr/sandbox, as his proposed article (Farming systems in India) is really a duplicate of information that appears or should appear in the Agriculture in India article (which needs significant help, btw, and so I would encourage Marcucmr to place his efforts there). User:Mccullaj/sandbox is another one that I like; as I said on my talk page, I believe that Rice cultivation in Arkansas is a valid topic because it is where the majority of US rice is produced. Although I really think that Rice cultivation in the United States is a broader topic that should be created first and could really use the TLC, Mccullaj's chosen topic will be quite useful to have. Again, it is frustrating to have some of the students picking topics that are likely to be deleted or merged, when in reality there are hundreds of articles that need to be written on broader topics (many countries are missing "Agriculture in..." articles, for example), and thousands of stubs that needs to be re-written, sourced and expanded. Dana boomer (talk) 02:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO most of the student's articles are on topics that have a reasonable body of scholarship behind them, which I am going to make sure they capture. They are not how-to articles. When I signed on to this adventure I was strongly encouraged to make them create new articles rather than expanding an existing article. If this advice was incorrect, I'll do it differently the next time I use Wikipedia in a class. If these articles end up being merged with existing articles, so what? The information will still be there, and Wikipedia will be better for it. Handlemk (talk) 13:33, 25 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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