User talk:Skearns4

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Posted automatically via sandbox guided tour. Skearns4 (talk) 15:47, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Thank you for introducing yourself and contributing to Wikipedia! If you have any questions feel free to drop me a line at my talk page. Happy Editing! ~ Anastasia [Missionedit] (talk) 01:08, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Hello, Skearns4, and welcome to Wikipedia! It appears you are a course instructor leading a class project.

New to Wikipedia or want to learn about best practices for Wikipedia assignments?

Go through our online training for educators.

The training includes instructions for setting up a structured course page, with tools for tracking student work and encouraging peer review. Please also see this helpful advice for instructors.

If you run into problems or want some feedback on your Wikipedia assignment plans, try posting to the education noticeboard.

We hope you like it here and encourage you to stay after your assignment is finished! ~ Anastasia [Missionedit] (talk) 01:09, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Assistance with students' draft articles

Hello Skearns4. I have just noticed your 15 Sept request for assistance in the area of human factors articles to be placed on Wikipedia. I’m sorry it has taken so long for someone to acknowledge your request.

I may be able to help you to learn the ropes on Wikipedia, and particularly in the area of aviation accidents and incidents. I have written 7 Wikipedia articles on aircraft accidents in Australia. 1946 Australian National Airways DC-3 crash has been elevated to Good Article status. Interestingly, this accident has a distinct human factors element to it.

The other 6 can be located by searching by aircraft registration: VH-RMQ, VH-RMI, VH-TVC, VH-MME, VH-BAG and VH-UYY. I also undertook a significant expansion of VH-ANA.

I have taken a brief look at some of your students’ work and I can make a couple of minor comments. Titles of articles, and section headings, should only use a capital letter for the first word, proper nouns and acronyms – see WP:MOSCAPS. For example, one of your students has written a draft article titled Threat and Error Management. As an article on Wikipedia it should be Threat and error management. It is a simple matter to adjust the title of an article: Near the top right corner of your page is the search bar, and immediately to the left of the search bar is a tab called “More”. If you select “More” you will see the option “Move”. Selecting “Move” allows you to move the content of the article to the preferred new title – effectively changing the title of the article.

Similarly, section headings should only use a capital letter for the first word, proper nouns and acronyms.

I see some articles that have been drafted in student sandboxes:

Environmental Cause of Aviation Stress (Aviation Environmental Stressor)

Stress in Aviation Industry

Culture and Aviation Safety

Threat and Error Management

Leadership in Aviation

When using this facility, the {{student sandbox}} banner should be at the top of the article so it is the first thing seen by a reader. I have only ever used my personal sandboxes for drafting articles so naturally I prefer this approach, and recommend it over the student sandbox.

One of the draft articles has been given a title beginning Wikipedia.

Wikipedia:Stress Related to Military Pilots by User:Mdunfor

This is inappropriate. Titles beginning Wikipedia are usually pages providing guidance or directions to Users.

Please let me know if you would like some guidance or assistance in one or more particular areas and I will do what I can to help. I have added this Talk page to my Watchlist so you can reply here and I will see it. Dolphin (t) 06:12, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More assistance

I have just moved a number of your students' articles back to user space. I think that without exception, they would have needed a move of some sort because of spurious capitals in their titles. Each article can be traced by looking at the deletion log entry, eg. providing you are logged in, Culture and Aviation Safety shows a "moved page" message. Following the "to" link will eventually lead you to the current resting place of the article. Alternatively, look at the contributions history of each student.

I am concerned that many of these articles will be rejected as essays. I recommend that all new articles from this project should be submitted via the AfC process.

Please look at these changes carefully and apply them to the rest of the list. I note a stern warning at the top of the page: "do not edit this page". Please ensure that these changes get transferred to the proper place.

I am disappointed to see a number of deviations from very basic Wikipedia standards which indicate, I fear, that your students are not receiving the guidance the need on our standards. Eg. spurious capitals in titles, underscores instead of spaces in wikilinks and namespace violations - Wikipedia:Stress Related to Military Pilots, User:Culture and Aviation Safety. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 11:51, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for feedback so far!

Thank you to those who have offered their expertise to help us with this course project. At this point in the course the students were assigned the task of writing a first draft of an article in Wikipedia style, with a minimum of 10 peer-reviewed journal articles sourced, and moving it from their sandbox into the main space. The course is supported with many resources associated with Wikipedia writing style, but this is the student's first attempt at this type of writing.

Over the next few weeks these articles will go through several peer-review cycles to help students identify and fix any errors - with the goal of articles being polished/optimized by early December. The reason we moved into the main space this week was so that students could begin engaging with other editors in the Wikipedia community. We value your expertise and it's a crucial part of the learning process for students - that being said, it would be appreciated if you could keep your criticisms as constructive as possible. The students in this class are good scholars and very intelligent but are new to Wikipedia. Though they know they are to write in an encyclopedia style, they may be unaware when their writing reads more like an essay (because that is the writing style they are more accustomed to). Formatting tips or language edits would be very welcomed - again, they have been exposed to these ideas through learning materials but are still novices.

Overall, I hope by the end of the course we have made valuable contributions to Wikipedia articles and also trained 23 young people in the process and value of contributing to open-source media. I value all of your insights and would be grateful if you would consider adding to the talk pages of students to help them learn the ropes. Thanks again - Dr. Suzanne Kearns Skearns4 (talk) 14:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Acknowledged. Dolphin (t) 21:26, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that this is a course and coursework

I'm sure you also understand that we take a great pride in Wikipedia. I wanted to offer you a thought or two to assist you and your students. There is no leeway for folks learning how to edit here once the article is in the main namespace.

Moving drafts to the main namespace early will not help your students. They will run into editors who, rightly, treat their work as the finished product, and who do many things, including proposing a deletion mechanism.
Ideally please ask them to add links to online versions of the references. This is not compulsory, but we write for ordinary readers who like the instant gratification of being able to see what is written in the reference with ease. IN the case of a paper with, for example, a doi number, the citation process can handle most of this automatically

I hope you and your students find these thoughts helpful. I want them to have a good experience here. Yes, they may run into issues, but I'd rather they ran into ones they cannot avoid. These two areas are avoidable. Fiddle Faddle 16:38, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Very good feedback - thank you very much. I will pass this along to students. Skearns4 (talk) 19:48, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A point that may interest both you and them is that this is what collegiate editing is all about. Ideas and techniques come from all quarters. Some are good, some less so. The key is to listen, to absorb, to question and then, when one understands, to accept or reject with a good heart.

Wikipedia does provide a consensus-based compulsion to "do it our way", but consensus is something that each individual can and should influence. By the amalgam of the opinions of each, the ship is steered. An editor is an editor, is an editor, is an editor. This means that the least of your students has a weight equal to the most prolific editor here. Their opinion is equal to my opinion, to your opinion, to our founder's opinion.

I am by no means an education specialist. I am a generalist editor who happened to trip over an article promoted too early by one of your students. I have met you through that route. I am more than happy to offer you such advice as I am asked for. I "work" in the WP:AFC area as a reviewer of new drafts. These positions are self appointments, as I am sure you are starting to guess. Just ask me on my talk page or use the device {{Ping|Timtrent}} at the start of a message you hope I will see. This stratagem only works if you use the ~~~~ to sign your message at the same time. Fiddle Faddle 21:47, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if you are asking for the support that you need

Now, this is my opinion, and not any sort of official Wikipedia policy. Please consult the guides from Wikipedia who have introduced themselves to you.

My feeling is that your students are going to be upset because of the following aspects:

Their articles, on which they are to be graded, have, some of them, escaped into the main namespace already. Thus the work is not uniquely by each student.
My view and that of at least one other editor is that grading should take place i the user sandbox, certainly not in a submitted draft
The drafts your students are putting forward, those I have seen, show a major misunderstanding of Wikipedia and its requirements. WP:OR is escaping in to main namespace
Look at my talkpage and follow the trail to User:Melbushr's draft. Please consider whether you gave your student sufficient information to mean they could have avoided all the traps in my review of Draft:Aviation automation.
Note, on that students talk page, the virtually useless (from Wikipedia;s viewpoint) by another course member. Great review for a class paper, useless as a review of Wikipedia draft. Compare their comments with more, for example
Go here and consider the problem. We do not, will not, ever give any special treatment to any draft or any accepted article. We are creating an encyclopaedia. Yours is the course, and you need to constrain your students to work within that environment until their work is genuinely ready.

I stress that these are my personal opinions. They may diverge from those of our education specialists and guides. Nonetheless, those specialists and guides are bound by consensus formed by interested editors, and consensus changes dependent upon context.

I am concerned that you have a student that I know about who needs to perform a major rewrite before trying to get 30% of their grade on Wednesday. MY view is that they do not have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving that task. Were I the course leader I would want to work out how to re-frame that. But the problem you have is how to do it with fairness. You are working with factors, such as reviews by experienced editors, that are outside your control.

So I come back to my heading. Are you asking for and are you receiving the support that you need?

No-one wants a good student to have a challenging experience here. Writing for Wikipedia alone is hard enough. Fiddle Faddle 23:52, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your guidance and input. It is clear you have invested your personal time and energy into reviewing student work, which I appreciate. However, I want to stress that I am a University professor without previous experience in Wikipedia. The Wiki Ed Foundation is trying to increase academic content on Wikipedia and are approaching professors to have their students contribute. Thus, I have been carefully following the course guidelines recommended by the Wiki Ed Foundation - which encourages students to publish to the main space early in the learning process (before the final article is graded) so that they can learn from the Wikipedia community. Students are encouraged to engage with the community and we expect the final article to have been influenced by other editors - that's part of the learning process. I don't expect perfection from students, I expect them to try their best to write in a different style and contribute strong academic sources to relevant wiki articles. The grade is based on the work they have put into their assignment and is considerate of issues outside of their control (like making it through the AFC process). Happy to answer any other questions you have but request that you direct any issues associated with the process the course uses (ex. moving to main space while article is in draft version) to the Wiki Ed foundation. Skearns4 (talk) 13:26, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is a great deal to learn, isn't there. Have our people been forthcoming with guidance and do you feel you have had sufficient guidance whether requested from them or not? Fiddle Faddle 13:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a lot to learn! From what I have gathered I think that becoming an expert editor will take far longer than a single semester. My hope is that this type of assignment will help students build some foundational skills that they can build upon after the course concludes. The value of this type of assignment is that their work can actually contribute to the global conversation around their chosen topic rather than wind up collecting dust in a drawer somewhere. I just hope the community of exper editors can continue having patience with us as we build our skills. Skearns4 (talk) 13:53, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In a semester one can move a novice towards simple competence, in my view. That is a good thing to move them too, but they do need to have a desire to become competent as well. Wikipedia is a very difficult place to edit well, especially a very difficult place to create a new article from scratch. It is often vicious and people take no prisoners. A timid student can receive a baptism of fire and run away screaming.

One of the challenges the course leader faces is over-ambition by the students. It is a far better thing, if creating an article rather than what I might term a student piece, to create the shortest possible article that will stick. Once it has stuck it can be improved, and by us all. I hope one of the goals of any course is to learn how to be a colleague here. That is probably the hardest lesson.

Becoming an expert is, I think, something that never happens. We get better, by degrees, and we still make mistakes. The thing we each learn very fast is to work in this order:

Look for references that meet WP:42
Consider what they say and marshall that into some sort of order
Write, in one's own words, what they say
Use the reference as a citation for the facts you have asserted
Check that one has drawn precisely no conclusions one's self

With good referencing, even if the tone is disjointed, there is a strong probability that an article will not only be accepted, but will stand the test of time. If there is an expertise it is in knowing that short list of tasks and the order to perform them.

May I give you an example? Look at Keith White (disabled yachtsman), something I drafted very quickly, as you will see from the history tab. Follow the history through and you will see, broadly, how I followed my own advice, though I also took the shortcuts that experience granted me. It;s not a particularly special article, though Keith is a pretty special man, but it is a competent article. That competence one can teach and learn in a semester, I believe.

Of course the volunteers will be patient. We absolutely want your students to succeed. That means we want you to be a huge success here, too. Some of us will be brittle, others not. That is because we are all individuals. The great thing is that there are also dedicated paid staff whose job is to seek to ensure your success. Make unmerciful use of them! Fiddle Faddle 18:05, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I realised that I have forgotten to let you know about a discussion you may wish to contribute to at the Education Noticeboard. Please feel completely welcome to join the discussion. Your view is important, and it was remiss of me not to have told you about it earlier. Please accept my apologies.

This noticeboard has many purposes. This is a general discussion about things between Wikipedia editors, of which you are one. Your voice has the same weight as my voice, and as the paid staff members' voices. I think your perspective as the recipient of guidance is an essential perspective to bring to the discussion. As you will see, t has been fluid, with different opinions received and given. We may or may not reach a conclusion.

One reason for asking you to view it at least is so you can help your students understand how we do things. Wikipedia is really a huge social experiment that has also built a thing of worth and beauty. It shows how folk from hugely diverse backgrounds can and do work together to produce something quite wonderful. Fiddle Faddle 21:51, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]