User talk:Mkomboti

Student editors

Hi @Mkomboti. According to Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Riverside City College/4A Wikipedia Assignment (Spring 2024) you are the instructor (with User:Ian (Wiki Ed) as a "Wikipedia expert" helper) for a course in which students are supposed to contribute to Wikipedia pages about math and science. This seems like a great idea, and I would welcome student contributions: Wikipedia technical articles definitely need a ton of help.

However, I'm a bit confused about what the students are supposed to be doing / how they are supposed to be engaging, and on what timeline. Most of the students seem to only put boilerplate templates on talk page and make various test edits to their user pages, but aren't making other visible changes. I don't see any attempts to ask for help, make lists of reliable sources, write drafts of articles or sections, make new diagrams, etc. When I have tried to directly engage in talk page discussions with the students a few times, they don't ever reply. Some of the pages chosen for the project seem like they might be a bit of a big bite for a first Wikipedia editing project for students who aren't already experienced, but it's not entirely clear how pages are chosen.

Are there any ways that existing Wikipedians could help engage students to make this project more engaging, interesting, and productive for the students / more successful at improving Wikipedia? Or should I just ignore the student editors until such a time as they start making article edits?

All the best, –jacobolus (t) 03:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Jacobolus Thanks for reaching out. The students are usually swamped with work but there are some who make changes to pages. I would be glad to hear of ways you can help out my students. Much appreciated Mkomboti (talk) 13:34, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If students engage in discussion, other Wikipedians can try to suggest articles or article sections to work on, recommend good sources to read and help students figure out how to access them, give feedback about drafts, help students with wikimarkup or LaTeX, and so on. –jacobolus (t) 14:15, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]