User talk:Ryan (Wiki Ed)/2015a

This is an archive of past discussions about User:Ryan (Wiki Ed), for the period January 2015 - April 2015.
Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

TRAN2220 message

Hello Ryan,

We're two students from the TRAN2220 class, Stephanie and Joëlle. We think that we were supposed to say hi to you on this page. So hi. :)

Stephanie has purple hair and wears lots of patterns and Joëlle has an extremely monotonous voice. We're glad to meet you.

Agogcalfs (talk) 21:05, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

BC theater History

Hello Ryan - i am new to Wikipedia, so I may be asking for lots of help. I apologize in advance! Head on a frog stick 04:33, 6 February 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nipple head on a frog stick (talk • contribs)

Latin

Hi, Ryan. I'm happy to help if I can. You could suggest that the teacher contacts me directly. I most often use my talk page la:Disputatio Usoris:Andrew Dalby, OK? Andrew Dalby 19:27, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

@Andrew Dalby: If you can think of any relevant help pages, resources, or other links, I'd really appreciate sending them my way so we can have more information handy should another Latin translation assignment come through Wiki Ed. In the meantime, I'll direct the instructor to your talk page there as you suggest. Thanks very much for your help and fast reply. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:38, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

We aren't up to date with resources in this area. It's been hard to know which way to develop, because most teachers don't even try to contact us, they just turn the students loose on article space for better or worse. It's really difficult to help them. That's why I'll be glad to be in touch with this instructor directly. Andrew Dalby 19:56, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Great. Would it be alright if I listed you as an online volunteer on the course page? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:34, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Enrolling in WMST_250

Hi Ryan, I'm an undergrad student in India, and I want t enroll for the course WMST 250: Women, Art, and Culture. The Enrollment page asks for an Enrollment Token which has to provided by a course volunteer or a instructor. So, can you enroll me in the course and provide me with an enrollment token? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hargup (talk • contribs) 17:27, 10 February 2015‎

@Hargup: Hello. Unfortunately the courses involved with WikiEdu are all normal university classes. WMST 250, for example, is at the University of Maryland. For that reason, they cannot admit those who are not enrolled in the course at the university. Sorry.

You may already know about this, but the Wikipedia article on OpenCourseWare has a lot of links and information to free online courses and course systems you may be interested in. In fact if you come across any that have to do with Wikipedia I'd love to check them out. If there's any additional information I can provide to you, please let me know. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:34, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Assistance for adding a course instructor

Hi Ryan, We have a third instructor to add to our BIOG1250 Writing for Wikipedia course. Here is a link to his user page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sensitivsci How can we add him as an instructor and not a student to the course? Thank you for your help. Saguaromelee (talk) 19:47, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Done @Saguaromelee, Sciencelibrarian, and Sensitivsci: Should be all set. When you get a chance could you send me an email so I can make sure your real names and usernames are matched up properly in our records? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:56, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Adding articles on course page

Hi Ryan, One of my students discovered what seems to be a weird bug involving adding a URL to a course page. For some reason, the following URL cannot be added to our list of users and articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano%27s_Pizzeria. My sense is that the apostrophe (and the "%27s" text within the URL) is what's causing this. In any case, we were able to add the page to our list just by typing in the first few letters of the article, and selecting what came up in the auto-fill list. Certainly not a big deal, but I figured this was worth passing along to you... ProfTAH (talk) 18:57, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

@ProfTAH: Yes, please do let me know of any bugs or idiosyncrasies you notice. I think you're likely right about the %27 hex code is probably at fault, but as you found out a URL is not required for adding an article (in fact, I didn't know entering a URL would work at all). If it exists it should appear in the autofill; if not, you can still enter the name of the article and it will turn into a link when the article is created. Thanks for the heads up. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:05, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Pings

For whatever reason, I didn't get this ping - had I not stalked your contribs I wouldn't have seen it. Think it's because it was added after your sig? (I know that just linking to someone's name doesn't generate the notification unless it comes with a sig, but that {{ping}} does work after the fact. Perhaps it's that way with {{u}} as well. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

@Ian (Wiki Ed): Ohh interesting, thanks for pointing that out. I had wondered about the practical difference between the two. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:15, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

SSCI2831 Critical Race Theory

Hi Ryan, A handful of my students are having difficulties with their accounts. 1.) Some students are showing up red instead of blue on the student list. As a result of this, they can't edit Wikipedia whilst on the UOIT (campus). How can I rectify this? Additionally, many of them think that they have completed the interactive training, but it is shown as "incomplete" under their names, on our course dashboard. Much gratitude, Amanda Robinson — Preceding unsigned comment added by DaneAmanda (talk • contribs) 19:14, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

@DaneAmanda: They are showing up as red only because they do not have a user page. Across Wikipedia, any page that has content shows up as blue when linked whereas any page that has not yet been created shows up in red. That's not the same as not having a user account so wouldn't have any bearing on whether and where they can edit. Can you tell me specifically what errors or problems they are encountering?

As for student training, at the end there's a screen with a big blue button and instructions to "Click the 'Certification and Feedback' button to certify that you've completed this training. Otherwise, you may be asked to take it again." Clicking the button adds their username to a list of people who have completed the training, which in turn is reflected on the dashboard. If they're not showing up, they must not have clicked the button or weren't logged in when they did so. You can just suggest to them that they use the "menu" linked on the training pages to skip to the end and click the button.

By the way, on my talk page it doesn't really matter, but I'll just let you know about a couple talk page norms that may help elsewhere: new sections typically go at the bottom of the page, and message should end with a signature (there's a signature button at the top of the text editor, or you could just end with four consecutive tildes). Again, not a big deal, just letting you know :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:08, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Ryan! This is helpful. Sorry for the delayed response! DaneAmanda (talk) 14:10, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Urban Sociology Salem State

Hi Ryan, This is our first time using/teaching Wiki Ed. It was suggested that since you are local you might be able to carve out time to meet with my class and help them with their Wiki. Before we enter the sandbox page I want to make sure they understand the talk pages and feel comfortable. I'm open to online or in person visits/assistance. Feel free to email me tchenault@salemstate.edu (Tiffygc1 (talk) 18:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC))Tiffygc1

@Tiffygc1: Hi. Unfortunately I'm not local to Salem State. I sent an email to you with a couple questions and ideas for ways we might be able to help, though. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:22, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Adding articles on the course page

Hi Ryan, I'm trying to add links to the articles that the students will be working on editing for the course, using a pipe, but even with the right link formatting it reads "Bad title - the requested page title is invalid". Any idea of what I might be doing wrong? Thank you for your help! Morgane Flahault (talk) 18:34, 18 February 2015 (UTC)Morgane Flahault

@Morgane Flahault: The article box is just looking for the name of an article, so you don't need to use any brackets, pipes, etc. If the article already exists, you'll likely see it pop up after you type the first few letters. If it doesn't, or if it will be a new article, just type in the full article title (case-sensitive). The worst thing that happens is you have you change it later, but it shouldn't give you any errors. If you're still having trouble or if perhaps I'm misunderstanding your question, could you give me an example of what you're typing in that's giving you the error? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, I guess I should have been more precise. Here is the link to the course page: [[1]] I don't know what the "article box" is, it looks like I don't have one on the page. As you will see, I just added the links to articles after the course description. That's why I tried to use the brackets to provide the links. One article (Jin) will be created by students so this link does work, but not the others that already exist. Do I need to create an "article box" on the page? Morgane Flahault (talk) 16:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)Morgane Flahault

@Morgane Flahault: Oh I see what you mean, sorry. I thought you were trying to assign particular articles to particular students. The "article box" I was referring to is the space to do that at the very bottom of the course page next to each student's name.

Ok so there are two different kinds of links on Wikipedia, the external link and the wikilink.

External links are when you want to link to the school website, google, etc. To make an external link you just use one bracket and a full URL. So [http://www.google.com] makes this: [2]. If you want to change what the link looks like, just add a space after the URL and type what you want it to say before closing the bracket. So [http://www.google.com click here for Google] creates: click here for Google.
Wikilinks take you to another page on Wikipedia. Wikilinks do use two brackets and no URL. So if I want to link to Google I would just type [[Google]], which creates: Google. Or to use one of your examples, Julie Otsuka. If you want to change what a wikilink looks like, that's where a pipe comes in. So to link to Julie Otsuka's page but display just "Otsuka" you would type [[Julie Otsuka|Otsuka]] which creates: Otsuka. Because of this syntax, pipes and certain other characters are not allowed in article titles, which is why you would have been seeing a "bad title" error. Pipes aren't required for external links because URLs, unlike wikipedia pages, cannot have spaces, so a space does the same thing a pipe does with a wikilink.

I hope that helps. If you want more information about linking, check out Help:Link.

By the way, the reason I was able to display brackets above without actually creating a link is thanks to "nowiki". If you ever want to do that to show students how to do something, you just surround a block of text/code with <nowiki>text/code</nowiki> --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:56, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Thank you Ryan! Duh - I hadn't seen the article box next to the students' name. I actually don't want to assign the articles myself, they are choosing it - do they have a way to add it to their box or is this interface only for me to use? I could add the article there once they've picked it. Just not sure if they can do that.

As far as linking is concerned, I'm also an idiot, because I was actually typing the URL and then the pipe, like this {{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Otsuka|Julie Otsuka}} so... I think I got it now, and thanks for the "nowiki" tip! --Morgane Flahault (talk) 03:38, 20 February 2015 (UTC)Morgane Flahault

@Morgane Flahault: Students can articles for themselves. The difference in access is that a student can add/change/remove an article only for him/herself whereas you can modify anybody's.

Glad to get the linking thing cleared up. It's assumed that everybody will make a bunch of linking syntax mistakes, so don't worry :)

One other minor thing: the "ping" template is to generate a notification that you have been mentioned somewhere (i.e. it adds a little number at the top of your screen and may or may not notify you by email depending on your preferences). If you link to someone's name, that does the same thing. But it's not necessary on that person's talk page, as a notification is automatically generated any time someone posts to your talk page. Again, not a big deal at all, and feel free to keep using it if you like -- just letting you know :) Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:48, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Help Editing for Critical Race Theory assignment

Hi Ryan,

This, I'm sure, is going to sound really silly. I have read through the editing Wikipedia booklet provided to our class by our instructor but as I am trying to add 1-2 sentences to an existing article I am unable to successfully cite the information. Can you perhaps try to explain this to me? I must be missing something as I am trying to read through the instructions (which mind are you straight forward).

I am trying to add to article : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown The information I am trying to add: On August 24 2014, St. Louis held their annual Peace Fest, which had a particular focus on on Mike Brown. In attendance was Mike Brown’s father, Mike Brown Sr. as well as the parents of Trayvon Martin (an unarmed teen who was gunned down in Florida in 2012). The information I am trying to cite: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/24/peace-fest-michael-brown/14546371/

Thank you Ayzha ( july.love30) Critical Race Theory student

@July.love30: Hi there. First, just a couple minor technical things: when you add a thread/message to a talk page, remember to add it to the bottom of the page and to sign it using four tildes at the end like this: ~~~~. That will sign your username, link to it, and timestamp your message.

Your question doesn't sound silly at all. Figuring out how to cite sources can be complicated (or, at very least, seem complicated). I need a little more go to on to figure out how to help, though, otherwise I'll end up just repeating what you've already read :)

Is the guide you're using this one: File:Classroom handout - Citing sources on Wikipedia.pdf? It looks like that's linked from your course page, and it talks about the citation toolbar, which will quickly become a good friend. Try it out in your sandbox. At the end of the line of text you want to add, click the "Cite" link at the top of this text editor box. Then select the correct template from the drop-down that appears ("cite web" or "cite news" would both work). Fill in all the information, then "insert". In your sandbox you'll probably have to add a references section, but existing articles will already have one. Create a references section by creating a new section like ==References== Then on another line type {{reflist}}. That's it. Try it in your sandbox before adding to the article. Then when you add it to the article, be sure to "show preview" before saving.

Shooting of Michael Brown is a very high-profile article, edited and watched by a whole lot of editors. That means it's more likely that edits there will result in interactions with other editors. That's not a bad thing (in fact I'd say that's a good thing), but it means you should be prepared to talk about your edits on the article talk page if you get comments or if, for whatever reason, your contributions are removed. That's not an indication that I think there's any problem with what you're trying to add -- just a heads up that you're editing a high-visibility article :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Ethics for a Free World (Spring 2015)

Hi Ryan -- I notice that one of the students in Education Program:California State University, Channel Islands/Ethics for a Free World (Spring 2015), for which you're a volunteer, chose free will as an article to improve. That's likely to be trouble, because it's a former FA for which every edit is likely to generate intense discussion. (I'm also leaving a message for Adam.) Best regards, Looie496 (talk) 21:54, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

@Looie496: Thanks for the heads up. It looks like there are several students working on high-profile articles in that class. We typically discourage editing FAs, but it's unclear the extent to which that advice should apply to GAs and former FAs/GAs. I certainly take your point, though, and agree that the students should know how difficult it can be. I'm going to defer to Adam, as he is the content expert for that class and thus the one who would be providing feedback/advice regarding student work on those articles. Keep us posted if you notice problems. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Help with some Wiki Etiquette

Hi Ryan and thanks for helping my class this semester! We are unfortunately experiencing some extremely not-so-warm comments from Smokefoot on many of my students pages. For example: "When you say "different chemicals that are polymerized" you sound chemically illiterate. It will be difficult for someone with such a weak grasp of our language to contribute useful content? Maybe there are less technical articles worth considering for your class? --Smokefoot (talk) 17:57, 19 February 2015 (UTC)" on this page Talk:Plastic pollution, and many comments such as this: "Those are not very good sources. Please talk to your teacher about how grown-ups do bibliographic searches in the sciences. --Smokefoot (talk) 14:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)" on the Talk:Endrin page. I've communicated with smokefoot several times, and he believes that this is the the only way he can get their attention (he characterizes his comments as 'semi-shrill'). My students, and myself, are feeling bullied by his crass, insulting comments, and he could 'get their attention' much more effectively, and constructively (inspiring action instead of outrage) by being more courteous. Would you mind looking into what he's saying to my students? Here's some of my interaction with him. User:Smokefoot in the "Thanks for help, Smokefoot and welcome to my new semester". His approach to policing the chemistry related pages is antithetical to the collaborative nature of Wikipedia and extremely distressing. And- its taking up very valuable time! Hakeleh (talk) 15:03, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

@Hakeleh and Smokefoot: Hi, and thanks for your message. I'm pinging Smokefoot here as well.

Thanks to both of you for talking through this issue. I’m confident that we all want the same thing, which is better student contributions to Wikipedia. You've both made it evident that you're invested in that goal despite coming from different perspectives.

Hakeleh, I note that Smokefoot has made a number of constructive comments to the students ([3] [4] [5] [6] [7]), but has indeed also sometimes combined advice with insults ([8] [9] [10]).

Smokefoot, as you rightly point out, "Wikipedia does not exist for homework". Students should not get any special treatment from the community just because they're students. The same rules apply to them as anyone else. But students shouldn't be treated differently in a negative way, either. WP:BITE still applies, and some of the language you've used seems a bit bitey, as Hakeleh and others indicated at Talk:Endrin.

Smokefoot, I know that you have strong opinions about using Wikipedia as a class assignment. I know that in the past you’ve felt that harsh/direct language was necessary to get students' attention. But the issues you're addressing now are coming up on talk pages, where the students post first to work out the issues you raise. We’re seeing students working on talk pages and in sandboxes, gaining from the advice of more experienced users, with a professor who is actively engaged on-wiki.

For the most part I see that your communication has been constructive, which I appreciate as it leads to a better experience and a better Wikipedia. I hate to see that dashed unnecessarily. I don’t believe that you need to go so far this time to get students' attention or to drive a point home. Their professor is actively engaged and both Ian (Wiki Ed) and myself are here for support. I'd be happy to talk with you on wiki or by phone to talk about ways you think we could improve.

I'm only speaking here as a mediator. I think it would go a long way if you could redact certain parts of your responses as a gesture of good faith, in the interest of staying focused on improving Wikipedia and with assurances from Hakeleh that your concerns have been heard. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:33, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ryan: Thanks for the note and understanding that my harshness is aimed at helping Wikipedia and preventing dropping of "essay bombs" of unsupervised poor content. The care of the students is secondary. I have no wish to be offensive aside from grabbing their attention and reminding them that here they work for Wikipedia, not a class. At your recommendation, I will redact some of my language this evening or when I get to a few more minutes. --Smokefoot (talk) 15:18, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Ryan for looking into this and mediating!

Smokefoot: You have added some helpful suggestions on sources, and my students have found that some of them are accessible by the general public. Thank you. We are even going to test access the articles in our final bibliographies from a computer not on the university network, so we can be sure we aren't inadvertently getting access merely because of using the internet from university connected computers. We are trying to find review articles and to steer clear of the primary literature WP:RS, however with some of these topics there are good primary sources, though not much in the way of reviews just yet. When we only have primary sources, I'll be working with the students to maintain WP:NPOV. I'm an Associate Professor, had a federally-funded, independent academic research program for 15 years in signal transduction and molecular mechanism of gene expression (after a successful and productive postdoc position), and have been deeply into the primary literature on potential endocrine disruptors for the past 10 years (a very broad field). Of course none of this means that I know everything, far from it; however I do know how to deeply and critical evaluate the primary scientific literature and do know when I don't understand something and will seek help, so am comfortable and in fact confident that we will be able to assess the experimental validity, approach, publication impact, etc., of any primary literature my students may need to use in their WP contributions. Bottom line: we will be very careful if primary literature needs to be used!

Smokefoot - Its clear that you have gotten very frustrated with teachers dumping this type of assignment onto students and then not helping or participating appropriately with their contributions. The majority of your comments to my students were helpful, however the insulting comments were very upsetting, and generated a level of outrage that made it very difficult for them to assimilate the helpful parts of your message. And- they are in class together and have ALL read the insulting comments, so its not as if just a few students in my course were impacted. I appreciate that you are going to redact your harsh comments, as I don't want them to be continually faced with these words when they go to add information to their topic's talk page.

Ryan and Smokefoot - I've talked with my students about being certain to respond to helpful comments on their talk pages as they work to find good sources and develop the content for their pages within their sandboxes. Getting responses from the WP community is a huge deal for them and I've talked with them about this possibility some but without enough emphasis on responding in a timely and appropriate manner. I can't recall if this component is in WP:Student, perhaps if it isn't this is something that could be emphasized? Seems to be part of the basis for Smokefoot feeling the need to WP:Bite. For my own classes, next time around, I'll have a more explicit conversation with students BEFORE they add the initial proposed bibliography, summary statement and course banner to their topic talk page. I'll instruct them to add a short blurb after their bibliography that this is for a class, they will be following the WP guidelines for sources, they will draft their additions in their sandbox, that the summary and bibliography are preliminary, that we are working with the WikiEducation Program and then they will include the usernames of all students that will be working on the contribution. I will think about this more and likely draft something all students in my class can use.

Ryan- and thanks for the calmness and precision...

Hakeleh has given you a brownie! Brownies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a brownie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. ^†

Hakeleh (talk) 16:41, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

@Hakeleh and Smokefoot: Thanks to both of you for your quick responses and efforts to move forward. (And thanks for the brownie :) ).

I can't recall if this component is in WP:Student, perhaps if it isn't this is something that could be emphasized? - The most relevant training pages are Consensus, BRD, and Discussion. It talks about responding and some best practices for engaging the community, but doesn't emphasize (and perhaps takes for granted) that talk page messages should responded to in a timely manner. @Eryk (Wiki Ed) and Sage (Wiki Ed): what do you think about including something to that effect on one of those slides? Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:58, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The third slide you link to has this bit: "Try to respond quickly, ideally within a few hours." On the one hand, it would certainly be possible to emphasize this more, perhaps by making it a separate slide and explaining more about the culture of talk page discussion and the pace at which Wikipedians often communicate. But on the other hand, I'm not sure how much difference that would make in practice. (One of the things I hope to eventually build into the new course page system is a way to keep track of which messages have or haven't been responsed to, to mitigate some of the complexity of typical patterns of talk page communication.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:46, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I see Eryk just added that line. It did seem a little unfamiliar. :)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:53, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@Eryk (Wiki Ed), Sage (Wiki Ed), and Ryan (Wiki Ed): Thanks all! It also occurs to me that instructions for teachers in ways to coach their students in responding to wikipedians would be useful to have in WP:educators, too. And- the banner that students add is helpful, although with the nature of some of the comments my students have received, I'm also going to put together a short blurb on what they will be DOING as they prepare their pages so it is more clear to the community. The banner helps, but doesn't give specifics (posting initial bib on talk page, posting initial summary on topic talk page, working as team in sandbox) that would clarify the student involvement in the topic right there, instead of requiring WPians to click on the banner and read through the course page when all they really need is the gist of the assignment. You all ROCK. Hakeleh (talk) 15:37, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Can you help this student?

Hi Ryan, One of my students has somehow made her user page karlee.beavens/sandbox. When you go there you'll see what I mean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Karlee.beavens/sandbox

I don't know how she did this and can't figure out how to fix it. Can you straighten this out? Thanks, Jim J.R. Council (talk) 05:53, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@James Council: If I understand correctly, this looks like we should be able to fix it fairly easily. @Karlee.beavens: Although Wikipedia links people to User:Karlee.beavens for your userpage, that's the only functional difference between it and User:Karlee.beavens/sandbox (or User:Karlee.beavens/anythingyouwant for that matter). What comes after the slash is like a subfolder or subpage of your user page. But you're all set for now. I moved what was in the sandbox to your user page and returned the sandbox to a blank state. Please let me know if I've misunderstood your concern, though. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:09, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Ryan. I'll take a look when I get a chance, but it sounds like you fixed it. J.R. Council (talk) 17:24, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Re: Montclair State

We literally just had our first interactive class today. Students created accounts, which I am adding later tonight. As for support, right now, we have things under control with my help at Wikimedia NYC, being on the board and all. Mitch32^{(I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance)} 22:23, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@Mitchazenia: we have things under control with my help at Wikimedia NYC, being on the board and all - I feel like I may have miscommunicated as I don't understand this part of your response. By bringing up Wikimedia NYC I was only saying that I think I knew before now that you work with Wikipedia in education. I wasn't trying to suggest WikiEdu help the chapter or, worse, that you need help supporting the class. Just the opposite. I'm just saying we have a couple tools and some paid staff with time you can take advantage of if you want it. No problem whatsoever if you'd prefer not to, though. Good luck with the class. If you change your mind, just let me know. Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:22, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, let me give it a few days. We have another big session on March 23, so we'll see how it's going. Mitch32^{(I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance)} 03:03, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Re: Conservation Biology @UW Bothell

My course page is set up to require an enrollment token. What is this and how can I get this to my students? Many thanks!!. Bothell130 (talk) 23:17, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Sage solved my problem, reminding me of the token I'd chosen when he helped me set up the course. Thank you, Sage!!Bothell130 (talk) 23:28, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@Bothell130 and Sage (Wiki Ed): Glad you got it worked out. Thanks Sage. Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:23, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Permission to have students greet you

Hello Ryan. It's me again, this time asking for your permission to have students practice using Talk pages by saying "hello" to you in a couple of weeks. Please let me know if that would be okay. No need to answer back unless you want to. --DrX (talk) 15:40, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

@Doctorxgc: Totally fine with me. As the term moves forward and this talk page gets longer, those comments might wind up being archived. That means there will be a little box at the top of this page linking to an archive page where older messages are moved to after a while. I'm just telling you in case it's a graded part of the assignment that you might want to check at the end of the class. Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:48, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Great. No worries about the archiving. I use their contributions lists to make sure students are checking items on the course's "WP To Do" lists. :-)

SSCI2831 UOIT

Hi Ryan, On our course page many of my students are coded red in their username. Do they need to confirm their account or is this connected to them setting up a user page? Our campus was recently the target of graffiti, so students can only make accounts offline, do they also need their accounts confirmed? Also, we will be working on Wikipedia today in-class. Can I have my students message your talk page for practice? I read the message above and understand that they might be archived. Thank you in advance. DaneAmanda (talk) 15:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@DaneAmanda: Any link to a page that doesn't currently exist on Wikipedia is colored red. For that reason, unregistered users and registered users who have not yet edited their own user page look the same. If you actually visit one of their user pages you'll see a difference though. So, taking the first name off the list, User:Mswhispalyfe does not have a user page, but is registered. If you go to, for example User:Mswhispalyfe123123 instead, you'll see that at the top there's a message saying that the username is not registered. As for confirming their accounts, everybody really should have an email address associated with the account. If not, and they lose/forget their password, there's no way to recover it -- they'll just have to create a new account. Having an email address also means you can set it up to receive notifications when certain pages change or when you receive a message. In general it's a good idea for everybody to add something to their own user page if for no other reason than because to some people there are connotations to a red username. A bluelink suggests a commitment to sticking around and improving Wikipedia whereas a redlink suggests a newbie and/or someone who doesn't intend to become part of the community. It's not nearly as prejudicial as that makes it sound, and it's ultimately probably not a big deal, but for some people there are connotations.

When you say the campus was the target of graffiti, do you mean that students on university computers vandalized Wikipedia and so got the school blocked from editing? Or do you mean that when you had them all sign up in class, it triggered a spam filter of some kind (there's a limit to how many new accounts can be signed up at once, unfortunately, in order to prevent spamming)?

Yes certainly this page is just fine for saying hi :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for all the support today! I find myself more comfortable each week! DaneAmanda (talk) 20:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, everyone from SSCI2831/3023!

@DaneAmanda, HamshaAndrew, Ashton.Ramsingh, Sean.Chris95, ChipsAndChopsticks2, FrenchFriesnKetchup, and ChipsAndChopsticks:

@AndrewHamsha, Nickv25, FrenchFriesnKetchup1, SerrRuss, Duchess lee, ApplesandPotatoes, and Mswhispalyfe:

Hello back! :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 04:00, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ryan, I am having a lot of issues trying to enroll into my course: SSCI-2831. I have enrolled 3 times already and yet i still don't have the option of entering my course page. Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks! HarryBaumeister12 (talk) 16:19, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@HarryBaumeister12: I'm not sure I understand. You are enrolled in this class currently: Education Program:University of Ontario Institute of Technology/Critical Race Theory (Winter 2015). You can access the course page via that link, but it should also appear if you click the "courses" link in the top-right corner of the screen (assuming you're logged in). It will bring you to Special:MyCourses, which should then display a link to the page I linked above. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:06, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, everyone in English 103!

@Japanize myself, ElzeyBurg, Princessmishell, Unconsciouseclecticism, Lagccstudent, Estebanvrgs09, and Divergentforever:

@NeverFall MVR, Purple lover0516, OwenZeph, Dr.Droog, Santuros, X Rush, and NajahLovesPink:

@Beautiful Soul22, Houston Jay, and LajEvelyn:

Hello back! :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:39, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, English 103!

EN103 Spring 2015

I would like to greet you and I am looking forward for your help when needed in the future. Thank you. --Japanize myself (talk) 22:12, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ryan --ElzeyBurg (talk) 03:34, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, how are you? --Princessmishell (talk) 17:34, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for collaborating with the class, have a nice day. Unconsciouseclecticism (talk) 16:22, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ryan! Thank you for offering our class your assistance. We really appreciate it! --Lagccstudent (talk) 21:57, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Greetings Ryan, your help in our ENG 103 is greatly appreciated, thank you very much for your help! Estebanvrgs09 (talk) 11:52, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ryan, I am new to Wikipedia from English 103. My name is Tenzin and I would like to ask for any help from you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Divergentforever (talk • contribs) 15:37, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hey Ryan my name is Marcos, I'm new at Wikipedia, I'm here as a class homework for English 103 NeverFall MVR (talk) 16:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Mr, Ryan, As a class work I'm here to sign your talk. I also want to thank you for helping me with my account. Have a great day Purple lover0516 (talk) 17:20, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Mr.Ryan thank you for offering my class your helpOwenZeph (talk) 17:47, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hey Ryan, I look forward to working on wikipedia this semester. Dr.Droog (talk) 17:51, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello. Thanks for the help! --Santuros (talk) 20:22, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ryan--X Rush (talk) 20:24, 20 March 2015 (UTC) Hey Ryan, :)--NajahLovesPink (talk) 20:27, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ryan Nice meeting you. Hope you have a great weekend. --Beautiful Soul22 (talk) 20:27, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

hey Ryan

I am Tenzin from Eng 103. Have a great evening--Divergentforever (talk) 20:25, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

this is Houston Jay

Hello ryan--Houston Jay (talk) 20:25, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ryan, Nice meeting. Hope you have a great weekend. --Beautiful Soul22 (talk) 20:26, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ryan :)--NajahLovesPink (talk) 20:26, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

saying hi

Hey, wassup?!

--LajEvelyn (talk) 20:31, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Mr Grimes

Thanks for your note to Colingrimes - I now know who to come to when I find a project or possible project running wild... Colin now has access to the Mr Grimes page for his class without it being in article space - and can tell the class that it was spotted and deleted pretty quickly... (See my talk page for details.) We do get some hoaxers claiming to be teachers or lecturers, and in most cases, they very obviously are nothing like either. This one was convincing, so I've set things up as a temporary redirect to my userspace that the kids can use, without things getting tagged and deleted in article space. I'm invoking IAR... Peridon (talk) 14:24, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

@Peridon: Hi and yes, please feel free to point people here, leave a message, or ping me. Sounds like a fine solution you wound up with in this case. :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:10, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I've told him I'll set it up again if he wants to use it next year. Feel free to use the idea, or ask me to do it (a CSD working admin's name on something tends to keep patrollers off, although your brackets might work too...). I've asked him to let me know how it went. To set it up for a new one, it needs something a few days in advance so Google will pick up the article space title, then recreate the title as the redirect. That's more fun than using the Wiki search bar. To reset, it's simply undelete user space page and redirect (giving time for Google pickup). Of course, someone may come along and say it's breaking the rules. I think we'd win at AN. Peridon (talk) 16:37, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Helping students

Hallo Ryan

Is there a useful template we can add to user talk pages for cases like User talk:Michael Liao Sax? Something along the lines of

Welcome to Wikipedia
It seems that you are here working on a class project
Please remember that this is an international encyclopedia and not a school workshop, and other editors will edit your work accordingly (and so cannot agree to such requests as "Please leave this until the end of the week for it to be graded")
I notice that you haven't put the [whatever it is] banner on the article talk page, so either: (a) Your professor is unaware of ...., or (b) They have omitted to ask you to add this ... or (c) You have omitted to add it as asked.
Please recommend your professor to read the information at [..] about using Wikipedia for class assignments, to ensure that everything goes smoothly for you and your fellow students and the rest of the editing community which you have joined.
I hope you will enjoy editing Wikipedia and stay on as an editor after this school assignment.

There seems quite a few useful messages we should try to get over to students, and of course it crops up over and over. Is there already such a banner? I notice that no-one had welcomed this poor chap, just responded with varying levels of aggression to his edits. I wasn't sure which was the best place to advise his prof to go and read - is Wikipedia:Education_program/Educators the best starting point? PamD 14:43, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@PamD: Well, there's Template:Welcome student, which is given as an option in WP:Twinkle, but it hasn't been updated in a while and there is no "problem user welcome" equivalent which would include the kinds of things you're talking about. It's a good idea, though. I'll work on a draft in the next couple days and ping you for feedback (or if you would like to, you're welcome to, of course).

The number one priority, to me anyway, is to for me to get in touch with the professor. This doesn't run contrary to anything you're suggesting, of course, but explains why I don't tend to provide a lot of links and information when I contact students in such cases. The more Wikipedians and the professor are saying different things, the more pain there is for everyone, and I think students are receptive to the idea of someone perceived as a Wikipedia "authority" talking to the instructor rather than delivering the "Wikipedia said you shouldn't grade this way" message himself. It also gives me more control over how the information, links, etc. are communicated (in terms of fidelity and context).

As for where to point profs, WP:WEP/Educators is fine for a general purpose link. http://wikiedu.org also has a lot of resources gathered together and might be a little less intimidating if the prof is unfamiliar with Wikipedia. The one I most often link to is the for instructors page. If the class is in the US or Canada, WikiEdu can also provide staff support throughout the term. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:34, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Richmond Nature Park - Help

Hi Ryan,

My name is Laura and I'm coming from the BIOL 345 Wikipedia assignment course group (University of British Columbia). I have a dilemma that I was wondering if you could help me with...I created a sandbox for a page called the Richmond Nature Park and by accident we published the article making it go public. Our TA, Ruth, was able to create a second sandbox from my account and transferred all of our information from the Richmond Nature Park page into this new sandbox. However, we need to get rid of the first published sandbox created, the Nature Park page, in order to make our second sandbox go public. How can we cancel our old sandbox?

Let me know when you can, preferably before April 10th when the final article is due,

Laurasweil (talk) 18:21, 19 March 2015 (UTC)Laura Sierra

@Laurasweil: This sounds like something we can take care of pretty easily, but let me make sure I have this straight:

User:Laurasweil/sandbox2 is a draft of the Richmond Nature Park article
User:Laurasweil/sandbox redirects to User:Laurasweil/sandbox2
Wikipedia:Richmond Nature Park was created accidentally and now redirects to User:laurasweil/sandbox2
Wikipedia:User:Laurasweil/sandbox was created accidentally, too, and now redirects to User:laurasweil/sandbox2

Now you want to publish the article but can't because there's a redirect blocking you at Wikipedia:Richmond Nature Park?

If that's the issue, then all is ok because that's not the right place for the article anyway :) When a page starts with "User:", "Wikipedia:", "Education Program:", "File:", "Talk:", etc. it's something other than an article. Those are called "namespaces" and really just mean that different functions of the website apply a little differently to each one. Articles are considered the default or main namespace, meaning they have no prefix. So the article you actually want to create is Richmond Nature Park. We do want to clean up all those redirects, but I can take care of that.

If I'm misunderstanding, please let me know. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:34, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the speedy reply. I wasn't sure if the initial wiki page I published on The Richmond Nature Park page would impact my chance of publishing my second sandbox which is exactly the same of the first sandbox that was published? The first sandbox wasn't created accidentally but it wasn't supposed to be published until the end so now thats its published I'm not sure if that will affect my ability to publish sandbox2. I need to publish sandbox2 by April 10th so by the sounds of it, this should be ok and I can publish sandbox2 without there being a redirect blocking Wikipedia:Richmond Nature Park? Let mw know if this makes sense. Thanks :)

Laurasweil (talk) 18:52, 19 March 2015 (UTC)Laura

@Laurasweil: So to be clear, Wikipedia:Richmond Nature Park is not an article but a Wikipedia namespace page. Like a help page or a page for information about Wikipedia. It's like if you moved your sandbox to User:Richmond Nature Park. Technically it's possible, but it's not the right place. These are not uncommon mistakes to make, and they won't affect your ability to move content. But remember, Richmond Nature Park is where you want to eventually have your article, not Wikipedia:Richmond Nature Park. Since Richmond Nature Park has never been created, there shouldn't be anything in your way when you're ready. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Ha. I didn't even realize when using that example that you or someone else had moved it to User:Richmond Nature Park, too. :) User: means it's a user page, Wikipedia: means it's about Wikipedia, File: means a file (usually an image), Education Program: means a course page, and no prefix means an article. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:06, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ryan,

So when we changed the title of our sandbox2 page to 'Richmond Nature Park', a heading came up stating the following just above our intro: "This sandbox is in the Wikipedia namespace. Either move this page into your userspace, or remove the {{User sandbox}} template". Any suggestions for what to do about this? were not sure. Let me know when you can!Laurasweil (talk) 18:11, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Laurasweil. Sorry, I was away for a few days. It looks like Ian (Wiki Ed) took care of this though. The page was moved into the Wikipedia namespace rather than the article namespace (Wikipedia:Richmond Nature Park rather than Richmond Nature Park, where it is now) and still had the sandbox template. Looks like everything is sorted now? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:55, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Add Articles Locked?

Hey! It was great seeing you this weekend. I am having an issue in my ENG103 class that it *seems* to not be letting me add articles to my students' lists. I am attempting to assign them all 4 new articles each but am being blocked (or nothing happens). Getting them to sign up for their own articles in class would be extremely tedious. And I missing something? Cheers, HullIntegrity^\ talk / 12:50, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Follow up - Now it is just acting real glitchy as in letting me add "hot" (blue) links to articles but not "dead" links (red) which is what I need to do. I will walk off an have some coffee and see if it works in a bit. HullIntegrity^\ talk / 13:01, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

@HullIntegrity: Hello! Great to see you too -- I was pleasantly surprised by how many people involved with the Education Program were there. Regarding adding the articles, when I tried this I was able to add multiple bluelinks, but indeed only one article that doesn't yet exist (as a non-link). @Sage (Wiki Ed): do you know a workaround for this? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:37, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

One idea is to create Draft articles or sandbox pages for the articles beforehand, then link to those as bluelinks. If you used the draftspace you'd probably want to add something to the page indicating its purpose to avoid a blank page deletion. Here's hoping Sage has a simpler solution :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:43, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for looking. I am trying a work around on my end. I may have to have the students do some of the legwork here (maybe they can add non-existent pages). I would like to "assign" non-existent pages on my Wikipedia course page is that is sort of what I do. HullIntegrity^\ talk / 15:13, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

You should be able to add a non-existent page to the list of articles a student is working on. It just won't appear as a link. But from what I can tell there does seem to be a limit of one non-existent page added per student. Of course, I agree this is a problematic limitation. I don't know if you've seen it mentioned, but we're working on a replacement for the MediaWiki course page extension that will likely be in place for the fall. But Sage (Wiki Ed) would know better than I whether that functionality is built into the new system. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:32, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

That may be the most profound use of "a" I have seen in . . . well, like ever. LOL. HullIntegrity^\ talk / 15:54, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

There aren't any simple workarounds to that bug that I know of. The new system won't have that limitation.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:11, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Handled it "old school" by verbally telling them what to do and then posting directions on my Blogger page. The main issue at this point is that I need to very easily keep track of what they are working on and going to every single Sandbox for that is a serious time issue. ;) HullIntegrity^\ talk / 12:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Image deleted by ImageBot (CJ2300)

One of my students added an image to the police corruption page. She went through the process on Wikimedia Commons of adding all of the source and copyright information, but a bot deleted it saying that there wasn't source and copyright information attached to it. Could you take a look and let us know what happened? Thanks! Profmwilliams (talk) Ellen_307 16:03, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

@Profmwilliams and Ellen 307: It looks like the image was uploaded twice: once to Commons and once to Wikipedia (Commons file here and Wikipedia file here. The copyright information was added to the Commons version, but not to the Wikipedia version. It's not a big deal, though, because we don't need the one on Wikipedia. In fact, it's pretty rare you'd ever need to upload to Wikipedia directly.

Before the Commons existed all images were hosted on Wikipedia. Commons exists to centralize all images, make them easier to find, to offer a free licensed image resource beyond the encyclopedia, and to avoid duplication (e.g. the same photo uploaded to the English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and so on). I don't know of any reason to upload to both sites, but there are a few instances when you would upload to Wikipedia and not Commons. The most common is to add something that is copyrighted but which you want to use for a specific fair use purpose (like a screenshot in an article about a computer program or a painting in an article about that painting). It's possible there may be a hiccup in the display of the image when the Wikipedia copy is deleted, but it should be easy to fix at that time. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:18, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response! She had accidentally uploaded it to Wikipedia first, and then corrected that by uploading to the Commons. We fixed the problem on the page, but couldn't find how to delete it from Wikipedia. Profmwilliams (talk) 19:18, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Help requested

Hi Ryan. You're listed here but I'm not sure exactly what your role is. If you can help, please look at this and the editing going on at White privilege. Thanks. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:06, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

@NeilN: Thanks for the heads up. Pinging Adam (Wiki Ed) on this, too. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:38, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Are AOlivar1122, Hcosco or KatelynMarieMeier affiliated with that course? It looks like they are (judging from the contribs, username, etc.) but they aren't listed on the course page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:20, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I think there may be concurrent threads going on. Let's also ping DaneAmanda. She's been pretty active on-wiki, I think, and should be able to tell us if there are students not yet enrolled. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:24, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with these usernames, but I will check my master list again to be sure. DaneAmanda (talk) 17:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

References List Help

Hi Ryan, My PSY327 group is having some trouble with our references list. We followed the editing instructions outlined by Dr. Summerville and when we look at the sandbox the references are there but when we go to edit all it says is {{{reflist}}} and that is it. We aren't sure how to edit or add to our reference list because the references do not show up on the edit page as they are displayed on the normal page. The sandbox that this information is located in is under Robinsr7070 and this is where we are making all of our edits. Please help! Psyeditor (talk) 00:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Psyeditor. {{reflist}} collects the references used inside a page and displays them in one place. Each of the references are there, they are just defined where they are used. This can feel a bit backwards, but the purpose is to allow for someone to move references and content around the page without re-writing the reference list. If you want to edit a particular reference you can edit the section of text where the reference is used. For example, the first reference is visible if you edit this section. If you make changes there, it will change the displayed text in the reference section. I hope this helps a bit. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:27, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks Adam. Yes, Psyeditor, {{reflist}} is a template that looks for all of those instances of <ref> tags throughout the article and lists them. If you want to edit a particular reference, it can help to search for the name of the article or author in the text or you can click on the little links to the left of each reference which will highlight the footnote it's linked to (and thus where the actual reference lives). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:34, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

HELP

Hi, Ryan I'm a student at SSU in urban sociolgy and am working on my draft in my sandbox When I try to preview the saved material not all of it shows up. Everything that is saved in edit view it not shown in saved view. Can you please help me. Thanks Jaime (Jaimev10 (talk) 14:32, 3 April 2015 (UTC))

@Jaimev10: Hello! I see the problem. It's crucial that every time you start a reference by adding a <ref> tag, you also have to be sure to close the tag with </ref>. Basically you're saying everything between those two is the reference that should be cited. I noticed a couple closing ref tags were missing, which means the system got confused because your reference also included paragraphs of text.

The first thing you want to do whenever you start adding references to a page is to make a references section at the bottom and add {{reflist}}. That will make it so all of the refs you create show up there. If you had that, you would see that some of the references look unusually long. :)

The only exception to needing a separate </ref> tag is when you're calling a named reference that has already been defined. That's when you use <ref name=asdf>Cite a reference here</ref> and later can just do <ref name=asdf/> to call "Cite a reference here". The slash at the end of the last tag functions like the /ref tag.

If you look at this edit, you'll see I closed a couple of them for you. There's still an issue further down where the reference citation bleeds into the text you likely want to include, so you'll have to determine where the /ref goes.

Let me know if I'm not being clear about any of this. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:44, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Bobcat 2015 Article Draft

Hi Ryan,

I am in the Women and Writing class at Ohio University. I'm working on my article draft in my sandbox and I was hoping to get your feedback on it. I just want to make sure everything looks okay! Here is the link to my page:User:Bobcat2015/sandbox/SuzanneMBianchi Thanks so much for your time! Bobcat2015 (talk) 21:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Bobcat2015. I'm Adam, the content expert assigned to help with your course. I will review your draft and leave comments on your talk page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 11:53, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Women and Writing Ohio University Butler Softball

Hey Ryan, I'm working on my article for my Women and Writing class for Ohio University. I was hoping you could give me some useful feedback or general suggestions on how I could improve my article. The url to my sandbox is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ben20Nelson/sandbox/butlersoftball The part I inserted is the softball section to the article.

Thanks and have a nice day,

Ben20Nelson (talk) 21:46, 9 April 2015 (UTC)Ben Nelson

Hi, Ben20Nelson. I'm Adam, the content expert assigned to help with your course. I will review your draft and leave comments on your talk page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 11:56, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

IamnotAJ_Women and Writing Draft

Hey.

I'm working on a draft for Mary Ann Doane's Wiki page in my sandbox. I'm a little concerned that I might be adding things just for the sake of adding things. Let me know if there is any fluff that I should cut out or any other thoughts you might have.

Here's a link to my sandbox. User:IamnotAJ/sandbox

Thanks! IamnotAJ (talk) 21:46, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, IamnotAJ. I'm Adam, the content expert assigned to help with your course. I will review your draft and leave comments on your talk page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 11:57, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Eq021111 new article draft

Hi Ryan, I am in the Women and Writing class and I am working on creating a new page draft in my sandbox. I am interested in your feedback on what I have created so far. I am not sure if some of the paragraphs that I have written are either too vague or too lengthy. In addition, if you notice anything that needs to be added or changed could just let me so that I can make this page the best that I can. Here is the link to my sandbox User:Eq021111/sandbox/Women in Nursing. Eq021111 (talk) 21:49, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Eq021111. I'm Adam, the content expert assigned to help with your course. I will review your draft and leave comments on your talk page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 11:57, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Englishstudent24 Feedback

Hi Ryan,

I am a student in the Women and Writing class and I was wondering if you had time to review two of my articles. I am working on the Frozen (Disney film) and want to add a 'female empowerment' section. The thing I am concerned with this article is I am not sure if my writing flows and if the content makes sense. I still have some time to work on it but I would appreciate some outside help. My other section is on Harvey Milk High School and I want to add a 'Controversy and Cultural Impact' section. I am really having trouble with this article because I did not know much about Harvey Milk High School before doing my research. I am most concerned with how many citations I used within the article. My reasoning is that I did not have prior knowledge about the topic before doing research so none of that information is mine. I feel like my article does not flow and it is awkward to read because none of the information is my thoughts or words. I would greatly appreciate your feedback on both of my articles. Here are the links User:Englishstudent24/sandbox/Frozen User:Englishstudent24/sandbox/Controversy

Thank you so much! Englishstudent24 (talk) 21:49, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

im730911

Hey Ryan, I am new to Wikipedia and hopefully I will be able to use your help when I am facing a problem. I am working on a wiki page for Tiffany Bias who is a WNBA playerIm730911 (talk) 21:50, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ryan, I am in the Women and Writing Course taught by Matthew Vetter. I was hoping that you would be able to look over my sandbox on the women's sports additions. If so, that would be awesome! User:Eb691811/sandbox Eb691811 (talk) 21:51, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Eb691811, Im730911, and Englishstudent24: I'm Adam, the content expert assigned to help with your course. I'll review these drafts and get back to you on your talk pages. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 11:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Women & Writing Yoga Pants

User:Apanas13/sandbox/yogapants

Hey Ryan, I'm a student editor in Women and Writing. I made some revisions to the pre-existing Yoga Pants Wikipedia page. My edits in my sandbox include: added 'Controversy' section, added a the sentence "Due to increased popularity, the yoga pants have grown to roughly 116 brands and are sold by 73 stores" under 'Types', deleted the 'Brands' section-- it seemed too promotional and outdated, deleted sentence under 'Types'... "The boot cut and flare style yoga pants are often paired with flip flops, running shoes, flats, or Ugg boots, with hoodies paired with a tank top or shirt tucked inside the hoodie." -- irrelevant, opinionated statement.

I was wondering if you could look over my edits and contributions and let me know what you think. My concern is meeting our class word requirement, so please make any suggestions on more content to include.

Thanks Apanas13 (talk) 21:54, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Apanas13. I'm Adam, the content expert assigned to help with your course. I will review your draft and leave comments on your talk page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 11:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Women and Writing. Mary Miss Edits Draft

Hey Ryan, I am a student in a Women and Writing course and I have created a draft of my article edits on the current Mary Miss page in my sandbox. Would you be available to read through it and provide me with some feedback? I added sections like "Education" and "Personal Life" as well as making a few edits and adding to the "Public Art" section. Here is my link User:Atnal23/sandbox/marymiss Thank you for your time and help! Atnal23 (talk) 14:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Atnal23, I'm Adam, the content expert supporting your course. I'll take a look at your draft and leave feedback on your talk page shortly. Thanks! Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:24, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

MEF International School

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Hello Ryan, I am the teacher of two grade5 classrooms at MEF International school. Thank you for your support and advice. Before students edit the page we spend 4 weeks on student training page and learn about Wikipedia editing rules. Still they have problems about finding more secondary resources because mostly schools are very closed about that kind information. But they have found a few more websites and revised the content to make it encyclopedic way recently. And after some of the discussions we believe, different nationalities numbers of the international school is very unique situation in Istanbul and it should be OK for Notability guidelines. What do you suggest more? Thank you for you time and help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Muratsurmeli (talk • contribs) 06:21, 15 April 2015‎

@Muratsurmeli: Hello there! I'm glad to see that you've incorporated Wikipedia into your teaching curriculum, and that you're seeing the advice of Ryan! I came upon this help request as a helper in the the IRC help channel, located here: #wikipedia-en-help ^connect. While addressed to Ryan, I can answer your question; in the future, you should be aware that placing this tag gets the attention of people such as myself, rather than the user on whose talk page you posted it. Ryan, you're still encouraged to add anything you think is relevant though, of course, especially since the question was originally addressed to you. Muratsurmeli, it seems you're already familiar with the notability of organisations, as determined by the preponderance of independent reliable sources. Since you have a conflict of interest, your can request that the article be written at Requested Articles. Remember, of course, to include those reliable sources when doing so, in order to increase the chance that such a request will be taken up by the community. Since you're an employee of the school, if you choose to edit the article yourself, whether on the mainspace itself or using the Article Wizard, you should put a paid editor notice on your user page, and disclose the conflict of interest as well. But you're still welcome to create the article yourself. Even though you likely have the requisite experience and knowledge of policy to create the article in the mainspace, I'd still encourage you to use the Wizard, so that the AfC reviewers can help assure the quality of the article and do any necessary cleanup or copyediting once the article submission is accepted.

As an aside, unrelated to your question, I wonder if you've heard about The Wikipedia Adventure? It might be a useful tutorial to incorporate into your curriculum, to give a "crash course" to your students in the basics of editing. Seems like it would be ideal for the venue of a classroom.

Once again, I'm glad to see you're participating in Wikipedia this way! I hope my answer helped. Ryan, please feel free to amend or add anything. I was tempted to just leave the question to you, but since I could actually help, I thought I'd chime in. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 07:28, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Quinto Simmaco for all of this information. For context, the page Muratsurmeli is referring to is MEF International School Istanbul, where another editor, Melcous, had noticed some editing behavior that looked like class activity and brought it up at WP:ENB.

Hi, Muratsurmeli, and thanks for your message. I'm glad you had your students work through the Wikipedia training. Secondary sources can be a challenge. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it has certain standards for the subjects it covers. One of those standards is called "notability" and you can find more information about what that means here: Wikipedia:Notability. Basically it means that something is "notable" if it has been the subject of significant coverage in secondary sources. Because Wikipedia also has a policy of neutral point of view, primary sources are generally not considered reliable in this context except for the most basic information like how many students are enrolled, where the school is located, and who the principal is. The reason everything else should come from secondary sources is to cover aspects of a subject only when other people have considered those aspects important enough to write about.

For example, I could write anything I want about myself on my own website, but I am not a neutral source about myself, and thus not reliable. I would be likely to say good things about myself and hide bad things, of course. So in an article about me, Wikipedia would want newspaper articles, magazine articles, reliable websites, journal articles, books, and so on. If something about me is not in any of those sources, it shouldn't be included.

One thing to keep in mind is that while the language of the article has to be in English, the sources do not. So if you know of, say, Turkish sources you could use, cite those too.

@Melcous: do you have any specific advice for Muratsurmeli? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:07, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Marquette University?

Hi Ryan (Wiki Ed)
I think this has already been mentioned at WP:AN/I, but do you know about any courses being run out of Marquette University? I've had a look over the wp:Education noticeboard but couldn't find anything. A pile of newish editors who all seem to be from Marquette (accounts created around late January) are making multiple reviews on a number of article talk pages:

for example. Just bringing it to your attention.220 of ^Borg 14:34, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

@220 of Borg: Thanks. There is indeed a class at Marquette: Education Program:Marquette University/Neurobiology (Spring 2015). There are a few ways to track down this sort of thing. When students start working on an article they're given instructions to add the course assignment template to its talk page. You can see one in the header for Talk:Pre-Bötzinger complex for example. Starting next semester it will be automated, but for now it is the case that they sometimes forget to add the template. So another way to check is to look at the contribution history of users you suspect to be students. If they're enrolled in a class, it will show up at the top. Finally, there's Special:Courses, where you can see a list of all courses. Of course, all of these assume it's a class that has a course page -- if not, there's no way to tell students/instructors from any other editor aside from assumptions made about editing behavior. I still appreciate a heads up about those, however, since sometimes I can figure out who the professor is and reach out to get them on board.

Are you mentioning these because you've noticed particular problems with the content they've added? I'm going to ping Ian (Wiki Ed) here, too, as I know he's been involved with this class in the past but I don't know if he's seen the content you're talking about yet. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:54, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeh, I just popped back to AN/I and someone had linked the course page. The thread there is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Odd "Secondary Review" comments in a few talk pages if it's of any interest now.
Now that you've mentioned it I can see that the talkpage of the first student I dropped a messge on has "BMRmed1392 is a student in Neurobiology (course talk)." at the top!

Needs a bit of colour added perhaps?

No I didn't see any particular problem with the edits, just that it was mentioned at AN/I, so I had a stickybeak and noted that there were a lot of reviews. And I missed all the 'assignment' templates, course page etc! 220 of ^Borg 15:09, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Though, if you have quick way of reminding all the students to use edit summaries, it might help. 220 of ^Borg 15:27, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up and the ping. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:30, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
user:220 of Borg - I left them a note on their talk pages, did my best imitation of a bot. Since they should know who I am, I'm hoping that it will be noticed, or at least prompt a further question from them. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:47, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, just yesterday I did the 'bot' thing ≈32 times with Education Program:Nanyang Technological University/ Information Technology (Spring 2015). Probably why I 'jumped' on this one a bit 220 of ^Borg 21:06, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

But I won't complain, Ian (Wiki Ed) I think you did double that! 220 of ^Borg 21:19, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Women and Writing feedback

Hi Ryan,

My name is Kent and I'm a student in the Women and Writing course. I'd like to leave you with the draft of the article that I am currently editing on African American Women in Photography and receive feedback from you. Here's a link to my sandbox [[11]]

Thank you so much for your help! Keca100 (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Biological Clocks message

Hello - We're students in the Biological Clocks class at Wash U. Two of my classmates and I created a Wiki page for the White Collar-1 gene/protein two weeks ago called "White Collar-1." We made significant edits and updates to the page between 1900 CST and 0200 CST last night after doing more research. However, we double checked this morning and saw that all of those edits have been removed. Is there any way to recover those edits?? The page is published online currently.

Please let me know!!

AYRhodes (talk) 18:22, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@AYRhodes: Hi there. Sorry to hear you're encountering some issues. Just a minor thing first: remember to add new messages to the bottom of talk pages rather than the top. As for the article... @Ian (Wiki Ed): could you take a look at this to see what happened at White Collar-1? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:54, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Reference question

Hello Ryan,

I am currently a student in Bio4030 at Washington University. I was planning on adding a protein structure picture from the PDB database to the ARNTL page, but I do not know if these pictures are copyrighted, since I can access the protein structures on my modeling software, such as Spartan. Thank you for your time

--Sseehra4261 (talk) 13:59, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

@Sseehra4261: Hi there. There's some information about uploading images in our Illustrating Wikipedia handout and detailed information about licensing is available at Commons:Licensing. In general that the licensing of the content you want to upload is compatible with Wikipedia has to be stated clearly by the copyright owner. Otherwise we have to default to not using it. In very few cases is it ok to use non-free content. I don't think this qualifies, but you're welcome to explore Wikipedia:Non-free content and judge for yourself. I can't say I'm very familiar with the subject area you're working in, but I do see this talk page thread at the PDB article concerning copyright of its materials. One link it points to is this one, which does seem to make clear that, at very least, there's no blanket compatible license it grants. Ian (Wiki Ed), is there anything you would add? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:05, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

@Sseehra4261: Much of the images (but not the text) in the PDB is compatible with Wikipedia, and it's a great resource for things like this. But, as Ryan says, it's very much a determination that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:49, 26 April 2015 (UTC)