Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Seminar in Intervention

COURSE LEADERBOARD

Rank	Username	Characters added	Active days
1	IR393.sae211	38882	8
2	IR393davis	23680	5
3	IR393ANDRICA	21259	6
4	IR393TheSituation	14610	3
5	IR393harrisonkatz	14260	3
6	IR393DEME	10943	6
7	IR393.awc211	9589	3
8	IR393Sadar	8556	3
9	IR393DrewGolding	5376	3
10	IR393ldc211	2915	3
11	IR393aes	2486	3
12	1Ridwan	2274	3
13	IR393Anjan	245	3
14	IR393.cfc211	12	1
15	IR393BradenSmith	10	1
16	IR393_will	0	0

"Course leaderboard" accounts for all edits made to the article namespace. This section is updated twice a week. See also the main leaderboard for all students participating in the Public Policy Initiative.

IR 393, Seminar In Intervention, Fall 2010

Course Objective

It has always been common for (usually stronger) states to intervene, by both military and non-military means, in the politics and economics of other (usually weaker) states. In the United Nations era, international legal norms favoring sovereignty have discouraged this practice, although unevenly--the Security Council has power to authorize multilateral interventions and has used it. More recently, the sovereignty norm has been weakened somewhat by the concept of “humanitarian intervention” and emerging supporting legal doctrines such as the “responsibility to protect.” Thus the overall practical impact on the number and scale of interventions is not clear. Since 1945, by far the most frequent intervener—measured either by potential interventions debated or by actual interventions has been the United States. This can be expected to continue for at least the medium-term future, making intervention a prime foreign policy concern for Americans.

This course explores how and why states (and collectivities of states) intervene and what factors influence the success of interventions. Although we will begin by surveying the motives and means that might prompt intervention, we will concentrate most of our effort on two types—counterinsurgency and humanitarian intervention—which have been the most frequent and serious concern for the U.S. and arguably for the world as a whole.

The goals of this course are two provide you with analytic frameworks for understanding both causes of interventions and determinants of success and failure; familiarity with a portion of the recent record, including deeper expertise in one case that you will select; and to help you improve presentation skills

Course Outline

I. Insurgency and Counterinsurgency

II. Humanitarian Intervention

III. Legal, Ethical, and Domestic Political Considerations

IV. Presentation and criticism of Student Work

Prerequisites

IR 10. One or more intermediate-level core courses is desirable.

Requirements

This course has seven requirements:

1. All students are expected to be fully prepared for each seminar session. As our progress may not match the schedule exactly students are responsible for keeping track of our progress in order to be prepared at all times.

   There will be approximately 20 sessions with assigned reading, averaging about 75 pages per session although they will vary widely from day to day. There will be a few sessions for which the main assignment will be a film which you will watch on your own time in the Fairchild Media Center. The last two sessions will likely be devoted to a simulation.

   Contact me at any time—during office hours, by appointment, via e-mail, after class, etc.—about any matter of concern.

2. Since this course is designed as a seminar, your active contribution is part of your responsibility to educate not only yourself but also your colleagues and me. I will not lecture except occasionally for a few minutes at a time when some concept or piece of data seems essential to our progress.
3. Cell phone use, including texting, is not permitted in class.
4. A research tools assignment following on our session with Social Sciences Librarian Roseann Bowerman on September 21. Due to me September 28.
5. A policy-relevant research paper on an intervention case, maximum length 20 pages, produced in five stages over the course of the semester. A separate document under ‘Assignments’ describes this project. Due dates:

   Case selection: September 16.

   The 1st stage of the paper is be a 2-page proposal due to our TRAC Fellow, A.P. Orbeleke, on September 16; submit the revised version to me on September 30.

   The 2nd–the first ‘substantive’ component—will be a survey of the relevant actors, events, and structural conditions. Due to A.P. on October 7; revision to me October 19.

   The 3rd will be the evaluative component, due to me November 4.

   The 4th will be a complete draft submitted to A.P. November 19; revision to your colleagues and me December 2.

   The last will consist of revisions based on feedback that you received on the 5th. plus additional research, due to me December 22

6. A short presentation criticizing the initial complete draft of one of your colleagues. Once we have the initial complete drafts, we will divide into two groups of 6-7 each of which will meet early in exam period (full instructions will be provided).

   You will read approximately 5-6 of your colleagues’ papers; present, criticize verbally, and provide written comments on 1 of these; and offer verbally what help you can on the others. As an author your only role will be to benefit from the experience; you will simply provide clarification as requested--and, likely, will request clarification of some of the critical remarks by others.

7. You will create or edit a Wikipedia page on your case. This is not intended as an additional research project. Rather, you will make use of your gains from your research project to improve the content and presentation compared with what you find. I am currently in negotiation with the Wikipedia administrator in charge of their university outreach project to try to determine how much technical support we can get.

   Each class member will edit or create a Wikipedia page on an intervention that you have selected.

Resources

Public Policy Initiative

Public Policy Initiative page

Public Policy Initiative FAQ

There is also a Wikipedia project page that is used to coordinate Wikipedia users interested in U.S. public policy; implications for us uncertain as yet.

Wikipedia has also initiated a project to evaluate the quality of public policy articles on Wikipedia. This project is run by Amy Roth. Implications for us uncertain as yet.

This is a recommended syllabus (for me to worry about).

Resources for new contributors

The main ‘Welcome to Wikipedia’ page for new contributors.

It is long. Start reading it at your leisure and play around with the various tasks that it invites you to try. See also these videos: Instructional Videos.

See Help:Wiki markup on formatting tricks.

Mentors

As of now we have promises of support from Sage Ross and Annie Lin, two of the directors of the ‘outreach’ section of the Wikipedia Public Policy project (usernames: User:alin (Public Policy) and User:Sross (Public Policy). Lin has promised to intervene for us with ‘online ambassadors’ (experienced users who provide technical help online) to make sure that we get what we need.

Here is the list of “online ambassadors”. All of the online ambassadors listed under "Available Mentors" have volunteered to take on some of us as mentors, including User:Bejinhan, User:Sadads, User:Smallman12q, User:Protonk, and User:GorillaWarfare.

You can find out about these mentors by reading their profiles here. Feel free to contact any of them at their talk pages shown in their profiles to discuss any questions you have about Wikipedia.

Possibly more help available here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Participants. I will investigate.

The list of ongoing Public Policy Initiative outreach courses are found at Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Courses.

More useful links:

Hello, Ck07! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already loving Wikipedia you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! -— Gadget850 (Ed) talk Getting Started The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Course page and instructor

Our course page (this page). From this point (9/14) on we will do as much as possible of our W-related work here. We will use the associated talk page as our main discussion forum.

My Wikipedia talk page Contains an introductory guide. Use also to send me comments and concerns of possible interest to the whole class; or, for purely individual concerns, regular e-mail still works.

My outreach talk page. This is where I initially asked you to post notice of completion of the first assignment. (We probably will not use this page again after this.)

Students

Add your name in ===A THIRD LEVEL HEADER=== alphabetically in the list below. On the second line use the user template ({{user|YOURUSERNAME}}) to add your user account info, your case and the username of your mentor. Later we will ask you to identify the page you expect to work on. Your entry will look like the sample below:

===First Last===
{{user|sample user}}
Case:
Mentor:
Wikipedia article to be worked on:
[Identify the practice edit you have made]

Hello, students. If you read our comments about each other's edits below, you will find some information that is generally applicable to new users. -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:11, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Stephanie Andrica

IR393ANDRICA (talk · contribs)

Case: Kurdish Rebellion 1983

Made minor edits to Peshmerga page

You can view your edit here. Good work on copyediting! Bejinhan talks 03:06, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Mentor: GorillaWarfare (talk · contribs)

Footnote: Al-Anfal Campaign, footnote #10

Good! Perhaps consider using WP:Citation templates, or even better, enabling RefTools in your preferences and using that. — GorillaWarfare ^talk 06:41, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Iraqi Kurdistan

For my final page I plan on taking a subsection of this article, Iran Iraq War and Anfal Campaign, and elaborate on it into its own page. This section is exceptionally short and lacking a wide variety of elements of the conflict. Thus I believe it is important to create a page that goes into further detail and explicitly explains all of the actors involved and the different conflictual events that occurred at this time. Some of the larger elements of this conflict do have their own pages that decently explain what had happened, I think it is important that the page I plan on creating brings all of these different pages together and creates uniformity for others who are interested in learning more about the history and issues of Iraqi Kurdistan.

WikiProject US Public Policy

My assessment of a B-rated article can be found at the bottom of the Talk:Sierra Club.

Final Wikipedia Page

The page I have created is Kurdish Rebellion of 1983.

Questions I have: --how do I create the box that appears at the top of many conflict pages, it gives a very brief outline of the conflict with dates, location, results, actors, etc. --how do I insert pictures? I found the coding needed but for the picture, is it ok if I have found the image on google? do I save the image to my computer then upload it? how do I upload it? I don't want to infringe on any copyright issues.

Stephanie, the best way to address the technical issues is through your mentor (although it is probably possible to simply copy such a "box" from another page to get all the formatting codes, then replace the content with yours). I considered an intermediate assignment on graphics but in the end deferred it as work that might not be needed by everyone.

On photo copyrights, I would not worry too much if the photo is from a non-copyrighted source. If from a copyrighted source the photo itself might still be public domain; you check if it is also available free. Finally, you might be O.K. under the Fair Use Doctrine, but that is a question for Roseann.--Ck07 (talk) 17:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but photo copyright is one of the most strictly enforced areas of Wikipedia. If you cannot prove that your photo is public domain, then you must satisfy all of the criteria at WP:NFCC, which is very difficult. You basically cannot use a photo of a living person under Wikipedia's restrictive fair use rules. It is hard to imagine that a 1983 image from google will be accepted, unless the cite explains that the image is public domain or licensed under the creative commons license. As for how to upload photos, you can ask your mentor for help - send him or her a link to the photo you wish to upload, and he/she can advise you as to whether the photo is likely to be OK under the copyright guidelines, and can help you upload it. See also WP:UPLOAD, which is not actually that difficult to figure out. My advice is always, work on the text first and worry about images last. Again, talk them over with your mentor, who should be somewhat familiar with your project. All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:17, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I have added links to the following pages that will take the reader (if he so desires) to my page: Halabja poison gas attack, Iraqi Kurdistan, Al-Anfal Campaign.

Chris Cassidy

IR393.cfc211 (talk · contribs)

Case: Korean Conflict

Mentor: Bejinhan

You can find your changes to the Korean War article here and here. Since the references used for the sentences you changed were book refs, I can't check them, but please make sure the stuff you changed is in them or you'll need to cite the changes. Bejinhan talks 06:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Prof. Kaufmann here is my diff: [1]

Ashley Chase

IR393.awc211 (talk · contribs)

Case: Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia

I made a small adjustment to the Cambodian-Vietnamese War.

Mentor: Sadads

You can see your change here (you can find the chronological list of all edits under the "View History" tab at the top of any article). Your edit was successful, and you gave a good description of your edit under the edit summary, which is good practice. Well done! Just a general tip for more advanced editing in the future: I suggest making edits to an article's introduction last - start out with the body of the article, and see if you can improve it, especially by adding citations to high-quality reliable sources to support the statements made. See also our guideline on verification. Then, when you are satisfied with the body, come back to the introduction. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Ashley add a source to the article, and the edit can be found here.

Ashley, the citation looks alright however, as with any other citation, the title of a work needs to be in Italics. Remember that two apostrophes before and after text creates italics so the code would look like ''TITLE'', Sadads (talk) 23:46, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject US Public Policy

My assessment of a B-rated article, Sierra Club can be found at the bottom of the Talk:Sierra Club.

Cambodian-Vietnamese War

I will attempt to add both information to the above article and add citations. It is rated as a C article across the board, and I agree with the ratings. Its conspicuous lack of sources makes some of what the article presents appear false, or certainly lacking in legitimacy. (However, I was also surprised to find that the article is not as inaccurate as I feared it might be.) I think the article on the whole needs work, not just a particular discussion point, so my corrections will focus less on one particular aspect and instead attempt to improve the overall synopsis provided.

That article looks like a good one to work on and feel free to be bold and remove information that isn't accurate or doesn't fit in with the sources you are finding. So that sounds, good. As I mentioned above to Harrison, I am on vacation right now and may not be extremely responsive to wikipedia stuff (could take a day or more). However for Military History topics, there are always active editors at WP:WikiProject Military History, so feel free to stop in at their talk page and ask questions, also User:The ed17 has written multiple featured article for them and is also an Online ambassador. Also, before you start writing an article on a military campaign , check out the WPMILHIST guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history#GUIDE, especially the Content guide and the Manual of Style for MILHIST articles. Sadads (talk) 18:53, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Final Edits

I had a difficult time attempting to add references because the article appears to have some confusing citation system (that needs to be addressed even more so after my edits). I therefore instead focused on rewording, editing, and reorganizing the article, which suffered from a haphazard sentence structure and repetition. I then added in three background sections, split up the hostilities section into two time periods, added the sections on tactics, China's invasion, the policies of the PRK and the role of external support. Some of the mentioned sections were discussed in the article; but they had no headings and were more along the lines of a couple sentences (at most). Over the next few days I will clean up what I have, and double check some of the original information that I adapted. I also need to insert references, but again, I've been so far a little confused. I tried to look up articles within Wikipedia explaining the different methods of citation, but there happen to be a number of them, many of which with slightly alternative templates. Thus, I'll wait for a little help before I get started citing everything. (I posted on the talk page of the article so that other editors/readers understand what is going on at the moment, because I realize citations are extremely important.) IR393.awc211 (talk) 06.40, 23 December 2010 (UTC) Here is the link to my diff

Lauren Collins

IR393ldc211 (talk · contribs)

Case: United Nations intervention in Bosnia

Made a minor edit to NATO intervention in Bosnia

You can take a look at your edit here. Just for you information, number delimitation for four digit numbers is optional in our Manuel of Style (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Delimiting (grouping of digits), Sadads (talk) 01:49, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Mentor: Sadads

Footnote: Added a footnote to Bosnian War. Note number 60.

Good job Lauren. That change can be found here. The Bosnian War article certainly needs a lot more referencing. I would suggest adding a link to either the OCLC entry or Google books so that anyone looking for the book can find it more easily, but not a necessity Sadads (talk) 23:40, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

My comments on the B-rated article American democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa can be found here Talk:American democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa

United Nations Protection Force

I intend to edit the article United Nations Protection Force. After reading through the article and the talk page, it seems that the article very much resembles the Bosnian War article and does not center enough on UNPROFOR. It is overall lacking a lot of information and is not that well-written. I hope to address many of these issues and also add in a section about the implications of this UN mission for the future of UN peacekeeping. IR393ldc211 (talk) 02:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, feel free to remove information that you find isn't supported by the sources you find. More extensive articles are sometimes hard to edit, because you don't know what to get rid of. Don't be afraid to break away from the current content, Sadads (talk) 02:37, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Final Wikipedia Edits

My main contribution to this page was a major edit of the Mandates section. The whole article is slightly confusing as to whether it is talking about UNPROFOR in Croatia or in Bosnia, so I attempted to rectify that issue in this section. I choose to only edit sections about UNPROFOR in Bosnia, and I am not well-read on their actions in Croatia. I also edited various other sections having to do with safe areas, and edited some information about NATO. I also deleted some information which was blatantly and rewrote poorly worded sections. In addition, I added in citations for most of my contributions as well as some preexisting information. The section previously titled "Achievements", I renamed to "Course of Action" as obviously not everything UNPROFOR did was a success. I ended up not adding in the section I planned about implications, because I though it might be controversial and was unsure if I could maintain NPOV on the subject. At this point I feel like the article could still be a little less about the war and more about UNPROFOR's actions, but it is sometimes difficult to separate the two, as the UN peacekeeping force became an integral part of the conflict.

Here is the link to my diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_Nations_Protection_Force&action=historysubmit&diff=403833165&oldid=403512688 IR393ldc211 (talk) 06:27, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Tim Davis

IR393davis (talk · contribs)

Case: Rwandan Intervention in the Congo

Mentor: Bejinhan

Made a small change on the Second Congo War page

You can see your change here. That was good. Fixing grammar in articles is one of the important aspect of Wikipedia editing. Bejinhan talks 13:56, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Mentor:Sadads (talk · contribs)

Footnote: Second Congo War footnote number 12

Great job in adding that footnote! Most of the book information was there so it was pretty good. We have a set of cite templates that we use when adding footnotes. For this case, your footnote will have to use the cite book template. Using this template will enable the info positions(author's name, book title, etc.) to be placed correctly. I altered the footnote a little bit and you can view my change here. You can see how the footnote looks like here. What I did was add the access date, publishing date, and ISBN number. This makes the footnote more complete. Bejinhan talks 02:45, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

After reviewing a C, B, and GA level article, I posted a comment in the talk page of the B-level article on Terrorism, which can be viewed here: Talk:Terrorism. IR393davis (talk) 19:17, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

First Congo War

I believe that I can make the greatest contribution to the Wikipedia project by expanding the article on the First Congo War. While this does not align perfectly with my case study of Rwandan intervention in the Congo, I do not think an article detailing this intervention can be created when such an important stage in the history of Rwandan intervention in the Congo is lacking a comprehensive article. Furthermore, I do not think that focusing on the First Congo War is much of an abstraction from my topic. Rwanda intervention in the Congo must be understood within the greater framework. There were few if any aspects of the First Congo War that were not influenced by or related to the Rwandan intervention. Therefore, a more complete understanding of the First Congo War would bring about a more complete understanding of Rwandan intervention. I have not chosen to focus on the Second Congo War article because it is much more complete.

The first step to improving this article would be to greatly expand the section explaining the origins of the war. This should involve a discussion of the situation internal to the Congo, a brief overview of the history of violence in Central Africa, and an understanding of the Rwandan genocide. The section on the course of the war can also be expanded and better organized, including a breakdown of each actor and its stakes in the conflict. Finally, a much more extensive discussion of the aftermath of the war is required, including an evaluation of how well each actor achieved its goals and what this meant for the future. Using this very basic outline, I think this article could be greatly expanded and improved.

That's a great article to work on but please be careful on the neutrality and tone of your wording. Such info tend to generate controversy. Keep whatever statements added in an encyclopedic tone and whatever you add in, please, please make sure you have refs. That will help to verify and make sure the info you added is correct. Bejinhan talks 06:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

First Congo War Edits

Here is my diff. Other than a few scattered sentences, I rewrote this article from scratch. I renamed all of the headings and expanded what was a "Course of the War" section into 3 new sections detailing actors and chronology. I also greatly expanded the background section and added to/improved the introductory paragraph and the "Aftermath" section. I added almost all of the references and more than doubled the suggested reading section. Because of the nature of the assignment, I put the most detail into the sections covering Rwandan involvement in the war, as well as the causes and effects of Rwandan intervention. For comparison, here are the before and after views of the article. I was the only person to edit between these two versions. IR393davis (talk) 16:08, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Mentor comments re. edits to article

I was glad to see the refs in place, but if you are up for something better, you can use the cite book template. For references that uses the same book but different pages, we have the Harvard citation template which is quite fun to use once you get the hang of it. =)

The lede paragraph looks much better now, from what it was.

I did some minor cleanup. For example, the second word of a section title should not be capitalized per our manual of style. So, it should be 'Ethnic tensions' and not 'Ethnic Tensions'. I removed some POV words like "greedy policies". For some people, it might be considered greedy while for others it might not. So that's a point of view.

It would also be good if you can use edit summaries for every time you hit 'save page'. This allows us to have an idea of what you edited without clicking preview. [there is an "edit summary" box right above the save button.]

Other than those I mentioned, you did a good job and I was very impressed with the expansion and copy-editing edits. =)

Cheers, Bejinhan talks 03:43, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Further comments

Note: If it is a book, the full book reference goes at the bottom of the page under a heading like "References" or "Sources". "Further reading" should only include books that you do *not* use as references. Once you have the full bibliographic book reference at the bottom, then you can use a very simple short form cite in the text, with just the author's last name and the page number, or if there is more than one book by the same author, then author's last name (year), page no. See WP:CITE. Not everyone likes the citation templates, and I believe that the directors of the Featured Article pages do not like them (although I don't think they mind the cite book one). For anything other than the book refs, I prefer just giving all the bibliographical information in the following order: Name of author (last, first), title of article, page number or url, publisher name, date of publication, access date. -- Ssilvers (talk) 03:53, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Stephen Erbrick

IR393.sae211 (talk · contribs)

Case: Sierra Leone Civil War

I made a very small edit to the Sierra Leone Civil War page.

Good copy editing! You can find the change you made here. As you can imagine, Copy-editing is a very important in large task on Wikipedia, we even have a Guild of Copy Editors who spend much of their time editing articles on Wikipedia, Sadads (talk) 01:24, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

My mentor: Ssilvers (talk · contribs)

Footnote: Sierra Leone Civil War Footnote #2 IR393.sae211 (talk) 22:03, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Well done, Stephen. You successfully added a footnote to what appears to be a WP:Reliable source. This is great, because it helps readers to verify what the WP article says. I made some changes to the footnote, based on our formatting guideline WP:CITE and to make the footnote more complete (among other reasons, this is so that we can find the source again if the url goes dead). Some of these may be helpful to the other students, so I am summarizing them below:

• I put the author's last name first.
• I put the url before the title of the paper like this [url "Name of Paper"]. Bracketed this way, the name of the paper will be highlighted in the footnote, and by clicking on the name of the paper, the reader will be taken to the document.
• I added the publisher's name and city.
• I added the page numbers in the paper where the relevant information is found. This is important for books, but not necessary for, say, an online article that does not have page numbers. Since this is a fairly long paper, I think the page numbers are helpful for anyone looking for the information. Let me know if the page numbers should be modified.
• I added an access date and the ISBN number. -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

After reviewing a C, B, and GA level article, I also posted a comment in the talk page of the B-level article on Terrorism, which can be viewed here. IR393.sae211 (talk) 22:49, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Someone came along and added a rather detailed comment after your assessment of Terrorism. Please take a look. It seems like a very useful comment. Feel free to go ahead and make any changes in the article that you think helpful, as long as you have WP:Reliable sources that support your changes. Best regards! -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:37, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Sierra Leone Civil War

My initial thoughts: the current page is less than satisfactory and could be improved considerably. The existing article in my opinion does an adequate job detailing the history before and after the conflict, but fails to give enough attention to the main focus of the article -- the events of the Sierra Leone Civil War. The current article is missing important actors and events (possibly for brevity?), but at other times, provides an incredible level of detail concerning rather unimportant actors or minor events. Also, I think the article could be improved by introducing several new sections to make the format easier to follow. The Sierra Leone Civil War was fought in several distinct stages - depending on the entrance and exit of the actors and the signing of several peace accords - and therefore it would help to structure the page in this manner instead of just jumbling the entire ten year conflict under "The RUF" and "The Return of the Civilian Government." Plus, this page could be made more credible by increasing the number of citations from the literature on the Sierra Leone Civil War. These additions would be a start on improving this page. --IR393.sae211 (talk) 22:09, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Have at it! Be cautious in deleting material, though. Better to expand what needs expanding and reference the unreferenced assertions, first. Then you should describe on the talk page what you intend to delete (and why) to get a consensus on that before hacking it out. I'd be happy to review and comment on proposed deletions. I suggest that you look at these guidelines: WP:How to write a great article and WP:Good article criteria. All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 06:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Edits to Sierra Leone Civil War

The previous page was cribbed directly from a State Department website (here) - according to Wikipedia, there is nothing wrong with using U.S. government supplied data or pictures. However, in this example, their information was less than correct, chronologically unsatisfying, and plagiarized. Instead of revising the page, I decided that it would be best if I deleted most of the original content and started fresh. Thus, the current page is essentially a reflection of my revisions with help from Ssilvers (talk) (my wiki ambassador).--IR393.sae211 (talk) 01:52, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Great work. The article still needs a few cites. General note to all students: Generally, there should be at least one citation per paragraph to the relevant research source, including page number or url. Basically, each citation should include the name of the author (last, first), the name of the article or book, the page number or url, the name of the publisher, the date of publication and the access date, like this: <ref>Lincoln, Abraham. "How to Be a Good President", ''Journal of Politics'', vol. III, no. 5, pp. 67–69, February 22, 1865, accessed December 18, 2010</ref>. If the cite is to a book referenced under References at the bottom, you can simply give a short in-line reference like this: <ref>Hirsch, pp. 67–69</ref>. See WP:CITE. I understand from our correspondence that sae211 intends to go back to the books to add the remaining refs. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:02, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Other editors familiar with the literature have been improving the article further. The pattern of their edits confirms that both your content and your structure for the article, are excellent and made it easy for other editors to work on. This is great collaborative work. Well done! -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:38, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Link to my diff

Alternatively you can view the page BEFORE my revisions and AFTER my revisions.

Enjoy! -- IR393.sae211 (talk)

Drew Golding

IR393DrewGolding (talk · contribs)

Case: Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

Mentor: GorillaWarfare

I edited Guilford High School's page and put myself under the "notable alumni" section

Yeah, about this edit. I would suggest reading WP:COI and WP:Verifiability. I don't think any publication anywhere will say that you are notable. We college students just ain't very important out of principle. Someone else undid your edit in under a minute (see time stamps at the top of this page Sadads (talk) 04:47, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I am glad that you made this edit, and I hope everyone takes a look. This is an excellent example of how our editing policies work so well. People may make a change that contradicts one or more of the Wikipedia guidelines, but it is easily reversed. As long as the edit is in good faith, no harm! On the flip side of that coin is that editors must assume that the edits of others are made in good faith (unless there are multiple similar edits after a warning). So: What makes someone or something "notable"? See WP:NOTE. A good rule of thumb is: has it received a lot of press in major media? If The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have all done an article about him, her or it, it is probably notable! If the only google hit is someone's blog or a school newspaper, it is almost certainly not notable. All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:08, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

I decided that I will be editing the page "Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia" for the final assignment. I may be tempted to also edit the page on the Prague Spring, as my research has/will have given me a pretty good understanding of that topic as well, and, as the purpose of this project is to better public knowledge, I suppose it might be for the public good to do this as well.

Good! I look forward to seeing your edits. Please feel free to ask me any questions on my talk page if you need any assistance. — GorillaWarfare ^talk 06:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I made a number of minor edits to various sections, but the bulk of the changes were the following: I created a section on Soviet motivations for intervening (loss in military power v. NATO, spread of unrest to WP + non-Russian federations, lack of border security leading to possile infiltration of enemy agents/exodus of defectors, and creation of safe haven for writers who were censored in the Soviet Union), a section on Cz's failure to prepare for a potential invasion, a section on NATO, and some changes to the reaction in Cz section to include existing explanations for the end of protests and talk brieftly about capitulation/co-optation of reformist leaders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia&action=historysubmit&diff=403673299&oldid=403421259

Anjan Gupta

IR393Anjan (talk · contribs)

Case: First Kashmir War (Indo-Pakistan War of 1947)

Added a source to the page of Former Pakistani President Ayub Khan. View the change here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ayub_Khan&diff=prev&oldid=384969062

Hi Anjan! You will only need to add the source after a statement. For example, The Indo-Pakistan War happened in 1947.<ref>{{source goes here}}</ref> But for starters, it's good to see you using the cite template. Bejinhan talks 12:40, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

To piggy back on what Bejinhan is saying, we use Inline Citations so that each and every statement is WP:Verifiable. However, Bibliographies at the end of the articles are useful if their aren't inline citations on the page yet, Sadads (talk) 14:02, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Bejinhan is my mentor. IR393Anjan (talk) 14:29, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Added a footnote to the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_conflict#Indian_view at the time it was footnote #53 and my edit can be viewed over here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kashmir_conflict&oldid=390763683IR393Anjan (talk) 21:38, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I'm glad to see you editing! Per what Ssilvers said on your talk page, it'll be helpful to add more info about the journal. We have a cite journal template that you might find useful. Just add the required info to the relevant parameters. The examples shown here might help you.

Another note, you can view your page revision by:-

1. Click the View history tab in the drop-down list.
2. Click on the top most (prev) of your edits.
3. Copy and paste the link.

Bejinhan talks 10:22, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

For the United States Public Policy Assessment I rated this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access which currently has a B rating on Wikipidea, however the individual criteria in the rubicon were not filled in. I filled them in based on the guidelines provided but my final ratings would not qualify the article for a "B" rating. You can view my change/ratings over here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Broadband_Internet_access&diff=394370099&oldid=393778329 - I have not changed the rating of the article from a B

Oh, also, I forgot to mention, the C article I read was: Monetary policy of the United States however I disagree with the rating of '1' on readability - I think according to their criteria it deserves a 2 and this would push the article up to a B. That said, I have not changed either the 'readability' rating or the 'C' rating of the article.

The GA article I read was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education

I agree with you about Broadband Internet access, and I have changed the rating to C-class. I do not agree about Monetary policy of the United States. Even though it has very good sections, it has totally inadequate sections, and an inadequate WP:LEAD section. It might be able to be improved to B-class fairly easily, but it is, IMO, currently a C-class article. One thing you can see about this assignment, though, is that the ratings are somewhat subjective. Did you read the spirited discussion on the talk page? Often talk page discussions are very helpful in understanding how to improve an article, and what other editors have considered and/or disagreed about. All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, per what Ssilvers said, the Monetary policy of the United States is not yet ready for a B-class rating. A quick glance at the article shows a section that requires expansion. If that section is expanded and the lead worked on, a B-class would be workable. Bejinhan talks 11:57, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Final Project

The page Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir was a complete mess and I completely re-wrote and re-did it to be far more balanced, comprehensive, factual and focused. That said it is slanted more towards recent events. The only things that I've kept the same are:

• I used two paragraphs from what was section 1.2 “Militant groups” under the old version of the article. Under my version those two paragraphs appear in section 4.1 “Identity”. I have made minor changes to those paragraphs.
• I used the Military Conflict Info-box that shows a map of the area and gives an overview of the belligerents etc.
• I used the “Internal Conflicts of India” box
• I used the “Terrorist Organizations Active in India” box
• I used all the same categories

You can view my changes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Insurgency_in_Jammu_and_Kashmir&action=historysubmit&diff=403885844&oldid=400674665

Oh, I should note, my own citations begin with reference number 10. Number 1-9 were created as a result of the info-boxes. Most of them are not credible sources and I wanted to delete them but I didn't have any better sources. So I left them as they were.

Sigh, after more conflicts with the sources that existed prior to mine, and my own sources, I cleaned up some of their sources too...you can now compare it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Insurgency_in_Jammu_and_Kashmir&action=historysubmit&diff=403889605&oldid=400674665

Harrison Katz

IR393harrisonkatz (talk · contribs)

Mentor:Sadads (talk · contribs)

Case: Russian intervention in Afghanistan (see Soviet war in Afghanistan)

Did minor edit to Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs page

Good edit, you can find what you changed here. Wikipedia articles always need careful readers to make sure that the language in an article is unambiguous, Sadads (talk) 01:20, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Added a footnote to Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan page, footnote number 43.

Seems to be an appropriate footnote, good job. However, I had to fix the spacing after the punctuation in your citation, see my change here. Remember, when you publish on Wikipedia, someone is going to have to repair any small typographical errors/oversights you make, and sometimes that requires a lot of extra time on someones elses part. Because we go live immediately and you are writing for the public, we need to make sure that you fix issues as you go, and review your contributions to make sure it looks good, not just has good factual content. Sadads (talk) 23:04, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

My assessment of the B grade article, Drug Abuse Resistance Education can be found here

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

The article on the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan is quite robust and covers most of the topics I have been researching. I did notice though that there is not much discussion of the deliberate civillian casulties caused by the Soviets in a campaign that some described as genocide because of its scale. I am worried though that this may not be a black and white enough issue for a wikipedia article. Thoughts?

I think that would certainly be an important area of examination. The section Soviet_Invasion_of_Afghanistan#Destruction_in_Afghanistan seems to cover the death information, however doesn't treat the deaths as a geonocide as you mention. The only way you could mention if it is a genocide is if some scholar has raised the issue, thus making it a WP:Verifiable statement. I would suggest creating a split off article which goes into more depth, titled something like "Destruction during the Soviet war in Afghanistan"(or perhaps a little more broader article called "Repercussions of the Soviet war in Afghanistan") which explores the various forms of destructive testified to by newspapers and scholarship. And if the issue has been debated whether or not to call the deaths a genocide it would certainly be an appropriate subject for a Wikipedia article. A break away article would not require too much extra work on your part, you could copy the text already available into a new article, and then use that outline to explore the scholarship a little more. Does that help? Sadads (talk) 20:07, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes this does help. Im wondering about the title of this split away article and its relation to the main article on the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. For one thing, will the split away article be a link at the bottom of the main article page or a subsection within the main article? Also "Destruction during the Soviet war in Afghanistan" and "Repercussions of the Soviet war in Afghanistan" seem like very ambiguous titles for a very specific topic, that is genocide in the Soviet-Afghan war. Would it be better to title it something like "Genocide during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan" as a break off article? Or if we put this as a subsection to the main article, we could just call it "Allegations of Genocide" or "Soviet Genocide" or something like that.IR393harrisonkatz (talk) 20:46, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

We would use {{main}} under one of the subsections, and there would be a summary of the content found at the article in that section. An example can be found atSoviet_Invasion_of_Afghanistan#January_1987-February_1989:_Withdrawal. And you would title it "Genocide during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan", but remember the analysis needs to be based on what sources say exists (see WP:Verifiability). I suggested the more ambiguous and broader topic, because, if the scholarship is not very broad on the nature of the "genocide", it should be really covered as a subtopic of a broader topic. Remember we need to be very careful to avoid original research, so a broad article is safer than a hyperspecific one unless you know you have lots of scholarship which explicitly discusses it. Sadads (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I have spoken with my professor and we think it would be a better idea for me to edit something that I focused on in my paper, namely the Soviet tactics in fighting the Mujahedeen. I think my research would work best in the section Soviet_invasion_of_afghanistan#March_1980-April_1985:_Soviet_offensives as I researched the Panjshir Valley offensives that are mentioned there and could also add to the information on Soviet tactics in general. Any thoughts before I start editing?IR393harrisonkatz (talk) 16:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

If it is a distinct set of campaigns, I would create a new article on the Panjshir Valley Offensives and link it using {{main}} at the beginning of that section you identified (you can also expand the article you identified on the general strategy info). Though I am on vacation right now and may not be extremely responsive to wikipedia stuff (could take a day or more), there are always active editors at WP:WikiProject Military History, so feel free to stop in at their talk page and ask questions, also User:The ed17 has written multiple featured article for them and is also an Online ambassador. Also, before you start writing an article on a military campaign , check out the WPMILHIST guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history#GUIDE, especially the Content guide and the Manual of Style for MILHIST articles. Sadads (talk) 17:40, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Harrison, I did not mean to denigrate the genocide idea. Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell, has one or two chapters which provide clear discussion of the debates about the concept (because of the term's moral dimension and its political uses, almost all arguable cases are in fact argued about). Better, she has clear explanation of the international legal definition in the 1948 Genocide Treaty, which is simple and clear. (Most of the book is about U.S. policy toward particualr genocide cases.) There are probably other equally accessible resources.

My guess is that you can at least:

• Establish what the Soviets did that might be considered genocidal;
• Describe any innovations in the techniques or purposes of mass killing;
• Establish whether what they did qualifies under the treaty; and
• Discuss intelligently how this case compares to other mass killings that have been widely termed genocide. Certain of your classmates may be able to provide useful cites.

Your other ideas, above, are also good. Even better, I would guess, would be some of your findings about the role of changes in Soviet domestic politics and global foreign policy. There is also no reason why you cannot create or greatly expand some sections (or a new page?) while also making smaller contributions to other parts of the existing page.--Ck07 (talk) 01:30, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

FINAL WIKI PROJECT DIFFS

• [2] Panjshir offensives
• [3] Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
• [4] Genocides_in_history#Soviet_invasion_of_Afghanistan

Mike Margherita

IR393TheSituation (talk · contribs)

I will be studying Algeria and made a trivial edit to the Algerian War page simply adding an adjective for emphasis.

Emphasis is great, if you are looking for your edit, you can find it here, Sadads (talk) 01:40, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The footnote I added was on the page for the Organisation de l'armée secrète and is the first footnote on that page.

Hi. Thanks for the cite. When you add a book cite, please always add the page number(s) in the book where the information appears and the publisher information. I moved your cite out of the WP:LEAD section, down to the section where the information is described in more detail. Some people put the cite in both places, but the most important place for the cite is in the body of the article rather than the lead. Please add the page number(s) and name of publisher (it is now footnote 6). Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 03:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The article I left comments on as far as rating was Talk: Drug Abuse Resistance Education

The part of the Algerian War I will be focusing on is the role of women in the conflict. There is currently no section on the page for the Algerian War that discusses the role of women so I am wondering if I should seek to add a new section to the page under the heading "Role of Women", try to create a new page devoted to this topic or go about this in a different fashion.

You could always start it as a section of the current article, and if it becomes very long with lots of references and images, split it off as its own article, leaving just a summary in the main article. Happy editing! -- Ssilvers (talk) 06:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

So, because my paper is argumentative and most of the content is used to further my claim and thus is biased I plan on creating a new section on the Algerian War page under the heading "Role of Women" that will simply explain the variety of different contributions made by women to the war while avoiding any other subjective judgments.

Final Wikipedia Page Creation

I created a new Wikipedia page Women in the Algerian War. There are a few format issues, for example I consulted the page on creating footnotes and couldn't figure out how to to cite an article I already cited but with a different page number using a shortened citation, so all of my footnotes contain the complete original citation but with different page numbers.

I also added a section on the Algerian War page with a very abbreviated version of my article and a link to the main article, my page. Here is the link to the diff

Thanks to all of the people associated with Wikipedia who helped us on this project we really appreciate it!

Will Murawski

IR393_will (talk · contribs)

Case: Russian intervention in Georgia, August 2008 (see 2008 South Ossetia war)

Mentor: My76Strat (talk · contribs)

• Made minor edit to History of Georgia (country) page.
  • Great edit, you can find it here. Sadads (talk) 01:18, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Added a citation to the 2008 South Ossetia war page. Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_South_Ossetia_war#cite_note-368

The footnote looks good, and you included all the bibliographic information, except publisher information. Is this the publisher?: United States Army Combined Arms Center. If so, please add it to the footnote. Please make sure to log in before editing, so we can see easily that you made the edit. Plus, editing while logged in increases your editing permissions over time. Happy editing! -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

My Assessment

My assessment of the B grade article, Drug Abuse Resistance Education can be found here

Article to Work On

Background of the 2008 South Ossetia war

Final Wiki project submission

Here is the "Diff" link summarizing my changes: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Background_of_the_2008_South_Ossetia_War&diff=403416788&oldid=393799102

Alternatively, you can view the BEFORE and AFTER versions of the page I worked on (by consulting the "view history" section of my page, one can see that I am the ONLY person who has contributed to this page in a long time). [User:IR393 will].

LOL! Yes, the public policy articles are challenging, which is why we are encouraging university students to bring their research and writing skills to the project. You all have an opportunity to make a big difference. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

James Mutch

1Ridwan (talk · contribs)

Mentor: user:Bejinhan

Case

The Pashtun National Identity, and their Contributions Towards the Instability in the Af-Pak Border Region

I will be studying the Pashtun national identity within the Af-Pak border region. The rift between the people of the FATA and the Af-Pak governments has grown more pronounced since the U.S invasion in 2001, and I hope to help analyze the instability.

My trivial edit was to the page of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and the last sentence of the Martin Guitar heading.

You can find your edit here. All statements making a claim needs a reference(s). You can read more about references at WP:Reference. Bejinhan talks 14:17, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Note that Bejinhan deleted your added information because you did not cite a WP:Reliable source for the information. This will let other readers know where you got the information. See WP:Verifiability, which is one of our most important policies. -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:02, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Page Intended For Final Edit

Pashtunistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunistan

I have chosen this page, and I hope to make an edit under the heading "the Pashtunistan Debate." I feel that additional information can be provided on the political persuasions of the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

Preliminary Edit

I altered the wording of the article. My edits altered the first two sentences of the Pashtunistan Debate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunistan

Wikipedia Project Article Submission

• Link to the preliminary Diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pashtunistan&diff=prev&oldid=403475274 Pashtunistan
• Final Diff Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pashtunistan&action=historysubmit&diff=403833225&oldid=403475274

Pashtunistan

The historical information leading up to the British influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan was lengthy. However, it did not address the specifics as to why Pashtuns wold want a separate state. It is clear that Afghanistan and Pakistan have experienced rule under various colonizers, but if a Pashtun state was to be created, it would happen as a result of recent developments and military engagements in the region, not because of Pashtun grievances held toward the British-India Company. Essentially, the current article as it stands does not address the current implications for a Pashtunistan policy, but is instead a broad, and unspecific historical analysis.

My edits sought to incorporate Pashtun grievances of centuries previous with grievances held currently. Any effort by an outside power to conquer the people and terrain of the Afghan-Pakistan border has failed over the long-term. The historical accounts should be a segway into positing that the current U.S occupation may not fare any different. The creation of Pashtunistan if it were to happen would surely be a rejection of outside attempts of governance. 1Ridwan (talk) 18:49, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Mentor comments re. edits

Signing with the 4 tildes should never be used in the article itself. I have gone and removed your signatures from the sections.

Per our manual of style, only the first word in a section title should be capitalized. The rest should be in lower-case so, "Historical Underpinnings of Pashtun Self Determination" should be "Historical underpinnings of Pashtun self-determination".

I saw that you were having some trouble with the internal links. If you want to have other words displayed instead of the article title linked, do it like this: [[Tsardom of Russia|Tsar of Russia]]. The words "Tsar of Russia" would be the display words and the article linked would be the "Tsardom of Russia" article.

Citation no. 34 contains a link to the page for downloading the report which is your actual reference. Rather than having an indirect link, I would encourage you to give the link of the PDF which in this case would be http://www.icosgroup.net/documents/Afghanistan_on_the_brink.pdf.

Other than those mentioned above, nice work on the expansion! =)

Cheers, Bejinhan talks 10:24, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

AfPak

The strategy was poorly explained, and did not adequately address why the strategy was implemented. I contributed to a better sourced opening paragraph of the AfPak strategy implemented by the Obama administration.

• Link to the diff: [5] AfPak

Mentor comments re. edits

I removed your signature from the 2nd paragraph. Signatures should not be in article pages.

Can you find a source for this?

This policy decision represents a shift from previous ways of thinking about Afghanistan as an independent problem that required a military solution. The current strategy is an attempt to win the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people, so that they may come to a newfound understanding of the ways in which the Taliban and Al Qaeda are having a negative influence on the Afghan, and Pakistani people and culture.

Bejinhan talks 10:30, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Christine Sadar

IR393Sadar (talk · contribs) Case: Turkish intervention in Cyprus, 1974- Turkish invasion of Cyprus

Mentor: Smallman12q

I made a very small change on the Turkish invasion of Cyprus page.

You can view your edit here. Your edit is what we usually call a copyedit. Good to see your working on this project. Bejinhan talks 03:34, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I added a footnote to the article "Operation Atilla" which you can see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Atilla. I added the only footnote, number 1. I want to edit the article "Turkish Invasion of Cyprus" but the page says it's locked until October 26 for new/unregistered users, so i guess i need to get permission to do it.

Sage has accelerated your permissions, and you should be able to edit Turkish Invasion of Cyprus now. You were just one edit away (10 total) from automatically getting the permission anyhow.  :-) Your footnote looks good. Everyone, please put punctuation *before* each footnote. I deleted the stray period that was after the footnote. I also added the maps from Commons. Are they helpful in the article? All the best, and Happy Editing! -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:21, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for giving me permission to edit the page! -- IR393Sadar (talk)

I commented on the DARE article for the article assessment assignment. My comments (which should be signed) are currently the very last section of the talk page. Here is the link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education -- IR393Sadar (talk) 03:10, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Christine: You placed your comment in exactly the right place (the bottom of the talk page), and you also signed it correctly. Students, there are two ways to add a new comment on a talk page. One is by manually putting it at the bottom of the edit screen. The second is by clicking on the "New section" button that appears at the top of all talk pages. Happy editing! -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Turkish Invasion of Cyprus

I have a few initial thoughts on the page. First, it was considerably longer than I expected and had a lot of background history. However, the sections about the coup and subsequent Turkish intervention are comparatively short, and I think they could use some additional information to give a clearer picture of the case. Some sections might be lengthy enough to make a separate article yet, but I am not yet sure about this. Also, the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot Opinion sections seem really long for the article and contain some opinions that don't really seem pertinent to this article. Because this is still such a contested issue I do not know if I'd actually do anything to these sections as that could just lead to an editing war. Finally, there are a lot of things that still need citations in this article. Some of these statement, I think, should just be removed as they are just statements of blame against one side or the other that are not really backed up. Other things that need citations like population movements would be an easy edit for me. --IR393Sadar (talk) 00:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Edits of 'Turkish Invasion of Cyprus'

I am not sure if I'm done editing the page yet, but I thought I would post on the changes that I have made so far before I forget. You can see the old page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus&oldid=400689068 and my list of contributions here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/IR393Sadar

First, I tried to make the introduction section a little more comprehensive. I moved the opinion section down to after the discussion of 1974 events. I figured I could not delete the opinion section since there has been a lot of controversy about this page, but I did not think it needed to be right at the top. I also reorganized the page to that all of the information about events leading up to 74 are together as well as adding some information about the 63 and 67 conflicts. I also added information to the invasion section. I also took out some of the many citation added by a user about Turkish ethnic cleansing as he simply copied and pasted many of the same citations over and over again. There are still a lot of citations there that should probably be dealt with. I also added a short paragraph about massacres done by Greek forces in that section to take out some of the clear bias. I deleted a lot of biased and uncited information as well. I think the 'Turkish operation' section should be moved, but i wasn't sure what to do with it or if it was part of the overview, so i just edited it and let it be. If i make more changes i will add them here.

IR393Sadar (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I've made more changes to the article, and you can see all of my edits here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus&action=historysubmit&diff=403616186&oldid=400689068 As I didn't study events on Cyprus much before 1963 and after 1974, I refrained from editing those parts of the article.

IR393Sadar (talk) 23:46, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Ariel Skalka

IR393aes (talk · contribs)

Case: Somalia, 1990s

Mentor: Bejinhan

I reworded a sentence about the geography of the state of Maryland.

You can view your edits here. Test edits are okay as long as you remove them later(as you did to Chesapeake). Great sentence re-word. Bejinhan talks 04:00, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The final result is good -- the sentence sounds better now. However, test edits like this one are actually not okay in the articlespace. It's good to refrain from making them, even if you do revert them later. If you want to test something, please use the sandbox instead. It seems like you got the idea, though, great job! — GorillaWarfare ^talk 16:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a comment on that, we are actually giving a certain "leeway" for the students in this project as we want them to practice WP:BOLD and make article edits. I've noticed that the students in this project are not making many article edits and I strongly encourage them to do it. However, please undo your edits once you've made it(that is, if it is a test edit). Bejinhan talks 03:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Added a footnote [6] to the page on Somalia in the section about the Somali Civil War (reference 67).

Good job in adding a PDF-format ref. I edited your change to the cite web template style and added in the access date. You can view my minor edit here. Bejinhan talks 05:03, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I commented on the Food and Drug Administration article for the article assessment assignment. My comments are currently the last section of the talk page. Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Food_and_Drug_Administration_(United_States)#Article_Assessment

Article to Work On

UNOSOM II: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNOSOM_II My initial thought on the UNOSOM II article is that it is lacking an awful lot of information. The article only briefly mentions UNOSOM I, and I think it is necessary to give a bit more information on this first intervention effort so that readers will be able to differentiate between UNOSOM I and UNOSOM II. There are major fundamental differences between UNOSOM II and previous intervention efforts, and I think it is vital that the UNOSOM II article addresses these changes. I think the page should also include a section on the failure of UNOSOM II and the reasons behind it, as well as a section on the implications for future interventions.

I think that'll be fine. It is always better to give both sides of the story; the positive and negative. The reliable sources given will help a lot in that case. Bejinhan talks 05:12, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Edits to UNOSOM II page

The original article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_Nations_Operation_in_Somalia_II&diff=387998118&oldid=386424701 was very thinly sourced with only eight legitimate references. A handful of sentences were missing citations, so I added citations where possible. The original "Background" section which covered UNOSOM I and UNITAF was longer than the "End of UNOSOM II" section, so I thought it needed more information about UNOSOM II itself. Much of the information on the original page was factually incorrect or entirely irrelavent; I corrected the false information and deleted a decent amount of things that were just confusing for readers. The page in general was lacking a lot of the core, background information necessary to understand the progression of the intervention efforts. Specific resolutions were rarely mentioned, so I added those in and described the key events (attack on Pakistani troops, Battle of Mogadishu, etc.) and explained why they were so significant. I added a few additional quick links to make the page more user-friendly for readers interested in the precursors to UNOSOM II. The new page can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Operation_in_Somalia_II.

I think the additions and changes I made to the UNOSOM II page will make it easier for readers who know nothing about the topic to gain a better understanding of this specific step in the intervention process. IR393aes (talk) 05:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)IR393aes

Braden Smith

IR393BradenSmith (talk · contribs)

Case: Panama 1989

Made a change on the United States invasion of Panama page

Good job! You can find your edit here. We always need people to grind and polish the language of articles, a wide variety of writers contribute to pages, and sometimes clarity and style get lost in the mix. Keep it up! Sadads (talk) 00:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

MentorGorillaWarfare (talk · contribs)

US invasion of Panama

I am going to make edits on the US invasion of Panama page in the Background, Justification and Aftermath sections. The sections are all decently long in quantity, but significantly lack quality. They fail to tell a more comprehensive story of any of the subjects, overlook important data and include false information. This creates an explanation that, however commonly held, does not tell the actual story of the invasion. IR393BradenSmith (talk · contribs)

I commented on the Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency Supreme Court case for my assessment. Here's the link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Massachusetts_v._Environmental_Protection_Agency#Needs_Desents_section_added -- Braden 20:29, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Final Wikipedia Project Diff

[7] [US invasion of Panama]

The edits I made were to provide an understanding of the situation in 1989 that is not simply the justifications given by the US government. I made changes to the page toexplain what the relationship between the US and Noriega was before the invasion and how that effected the invasion itself. After the invasion, the situation was more or less forgotten about in the US, but in Panama the act of removing Noriega actually had the effect of increasing the government's volatility, something that the page previously did not mention.

Deme Yoo

IR393DEME (talk · contribs)

Case: East Timor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehigh_University_Buildings Added a small blurb about the STEPS building. --IR393DEME (talk) 23:33, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

These edits look good, however a source would be great for this information in order to validate the claim. I went ahead and added a reference to http://www3.lehigh.edu/steps/facility/index.html. If you want to take a look, you can see it here Sadads (talk) 01:15, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! --IR393DEME (talk) 01:17, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Mentor: Ssilvers (talk · contribs)

Hainsworth, Paul and McCloskey, Stephen (eds.) "The East Timor Question: The Struggle for Independence from Indonesia". New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2000. [I added the ISBN number for you (Ssilvers)] Added this to the bibliography to the Indonesian occupation of East Timor article. Did I do this right?

Hi, Deme. Yes and no. Yes, you added a great book reference to the bibliography, but you did not add a footnote to the text of the article (what we call an "in-line citation"), which I think was the assignment. For an example of a new footnote, see this one by one of your classmates. Now that you have added the Hainsworth book, however, it is very easy to add footnotes referring to it. All you need to do is put this right after the text that is verified by the book, with an appropriate page, or pages noted: <ref>Hainsworth and McCloskey, p. ?</ref> See, generally, WP:CITE. -- Ssilvers (talk) 03:03, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Ssilvers. I think I added a proper footnote, now. Hopefully! IR393DEME (talk) 02:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the ticket! I changed "pp." to simply "p." since you are only referring to a single page. p=page while pp=pages. I also added "and McCloskey", since there are two editors, right? (Here's what I did). But you've got the concept down. Well done! -- Ssilvers (talk) 03:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Article to Work On

<nowiki>I will be working on the following article: [[Indonesian occupation of East Timor#End of Indonesian control]]. Focusing mainly on the End of Indonesian Control > Transition in Indonesia subsection. [[User:IR393DEME|IR393DEME]] ([[User talk:IR393DEME|talk]]) 20:42, 14 November 2010 (UTC)</nowiki> - IGNORE. I HAVE CHANGED MY MIND. IR393DEME (talk) 06:26, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Assessment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Interstate_Highway_System I commented on the talk page of this B article. I proposed splitting the 'extremes' to a separate page, and said citations needed to verify the 'extreme' data. IR393DEME (talk) 02:01, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

You are correct that references should be added where missing. I moved your comments to the bottom of the talk page there. New comments should generally go at the bottom of talk pages. The old discussion about Extremes was stale, and your comment is not related to the earlier discussion, so it is best to start a new heading at the bottom, since Wikipedia readers are used to looking for new comments at the bottom. I also put in my 2 cents there on the issues that you raised. -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:25, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Article worked on

I have started working on the following article: Indonesian invasion of East Timor#Portuguese withdrawal and civil war. I am changing various sections, but I find that the article is already pretty comprehensive compared to the scholarly work out there. I will focus more on adding footnotes from the readings that I have.

Here is my diff page. I realized there are a lot of similarities with this article and the Indonesian OCCUPATION of East Timor article. Although I added more information, it might be better to actually shorten the invasion article. The OCCUPATION article is actually VERY comprehensive already.

Here is what I did: I added more details on the the Portuguese withdraw and civil war section, and added information on Indonesian tactics during the invasion, and added a few paragraphs about the occupation with a link to the full occupation article. I also added my sources. From what I understand, it is a wikipedia faux pas to delete content unilaterally, so I have kept a lot of information existing as well. However, I put the US, Australian, and UN involvement under a subsection to make the presentation better. I would actually prefer to shorten this article. Not sure. IR393DEME (talk) 01:15, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi. It is not a faux pas to delete, but it is a very good idea to vet the idea on the talk page before doing a major delete. I suggest that you make a proposal on the article's talk page, and wait a couple of days to see if any of the regular editors on the page has an objection or better suggestion. Also, if you do go ahead with any major deletions, make sure that you are not deleting anything helpful in the article. Remember, our readers will likely not have read the other article, so each article needs to present its own context. It is ok if there is overlap, as long as there is not any frankly irrelevant information. Since this is an online encyclopedia, we do not have the same space problems that print publications have. Also, make sure when deleting information, that if you delete any citations to sources, that the source is not used again later in the article and that you don't delete any code that is necessary for a later short-form citation. I can help you with that, if you alert me to it. I'll take a look at the article. All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:34, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Good work, so far. I can tell you right away that the article needs a more complete introduction. See WP:LEAD, which explains that the introduction needs to give an overview of the article, hitting the highlights. It should be at least a couple of good size paragraphs for a substantial article like this. Just to give you an idea of an appropriate length, another of my mentees did this introduction at Sierra Leone Civil War (with a little help from yours truly). -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Other comments on your talk page. -- Ssilvers (talk) 03:33, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

FINAL ARTICLE EDIT FOR CK

Prof. CK - Here is my [[8]] and [[9]], along with my diff page. I am having quite fun editing and would prefer to take an incomplete.. However, that isn't possible since I need to graduate this semester! I have added a new LEAD paragraph. I significantly altered the layout of the article in order to make the page more readable and better organized for future editors. I have also added many details, especially under 'Portuguese withdrawal and civil war' and 'Invasion' sections. IR393DEME (talk) 07:38, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Deme, Great job! The article has now been assessed at B-class, although it still needs a few more refs. Wikipedia will still be here after the article is submitted to your professor. Come back any time and continue to improve the article(s)! It has been a pleasure to assist you. Happy holidays, and happy editing! -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:46, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Assignments

September 3, 2010/overdue as of September 14

Please create an account (this is section 4.4 of the welcome page): http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Wikipedia_(Bookshelf)#Create_a_Wikipedia_account Please choose an ID that begins with the characters “IR393.” That way we can easily recognize each other and be recognized by online ambassadors supporting us. If you remain active in Wikipedia after our course, you can change it (I think that it is also possible to have more than one user name). Then please learn to navigate to your user page and talk page (section 4.7): http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Wikipedia_(Bookshelf)#User_page_and_My_talk_page Write something if you wish. Finally, go to my talk page and leave me a note. If you have not done this before 9/14, do it on the course page instead.

September 14, 2010/due ASAP

On our course page under ‘Students,’ create a new subsection for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup#Sections and list your name, ID, and case you intend to work on. Then check the ‘watch this page’ boxes on both the course page and its associated talk page (aka ‘discussion’ page).

September 14, 2010/due ASAP

View the change history of a Wikipedia page and make a trivial change (naturally, not one that anyone could object to; if necessary, make the change, save it, view the altered page, then change it back). Details of how to do this can be found on the welcome to Wikipedia page; they take up much of section 5. Then report—after your name on our Wikipedia course page—that you have done these things (this time we’ll skip how you provide evidence of your changes, although we’ll need to work that out for future).

September 14, 2010/due September 21

Review Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and the discussion among Sage Ross, Annie Lin, others, and myself on our talk page.

(There is also video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa0Nmv9qsd8, but it is very elementary.)

Then post (at least one) comment on our course's talk page (not here) on an issue raised by what you read or any issue related to Wikipedia standards. Either add to a thread already there or create a new thread (if you start a new thread, create a new subsection).

September 21, 2010/due September 28

Choose a mentor.

If anyone volunteered on your talk page, you can ask them. If not there are six names on our page above at Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Courses/Seminar_in_Intervention#Mentors; all but the most recent volunteer are the same people who have been adding helpful hints to this page and to our talk page. (If you see that 5 people have chosen the same person, please choose another so that we do not overburden anyone). You can also simply go to the online ambassadors page.

Once you get a reply, edit your section of this page to show your mentor.

Take (or create) an opportunity to ask your mentor a question (to see how rapid and how helpful a response you get).

Don't forget to check the "watch this page" box for this page, the course talk page, and your own talk page (since mentors will probably respond to you there).

Ambassador suggestion: Make a few little edits to Wikipedia each day to gain fluency with the software. A good way to start is by copyediting existing articles. The articles listed here have all requested copyediting/proofreading assistance: Category:All articles needing copy edit. Note that our style guide is here: WP:MOS. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Another suggestion: Editing everyday or a couple times a week is a great way to figure out how the software works. The Did You Know articles on the Main page under the Featured Article of the day are all relatively new articles or have been recently expanded to a large degree, so will likely have typos, unclear style and formatting errors. These are good places to start as well, and will likely have not as many major style problems as will the ones that need copy edits. Sadads (talk) 18:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

October 1, 2010/due October 14

Choose the article that you will work on and add a footnote to it. See Wikipedia: Citing Sources for instructions on content and formatting of footnotes. The standards are basically the same as Turabian's. It should contain all the normal bibliographical information: Author, title, publisher name/city, publication date, and page number if available. If a web reference, url and retrieval date if retrieved from the internet.

Bejinhan posted these helpful links on footnotes: cite journal template; examples shown here. See also cite web template and cite book template. These templates are optional, and not all editors prefer them. You can use them if you find them helpful.

As you know, our course's standard requires--for web-only sources--an annotation about the owner/publisher/sponsor of any site whose ownership is not common knowledge. Try this and see whether other editors let it stand.

I see also that some of our ambassadors have been adding ISBN information to cites. Apparently this is required for the top article quality rating (GA). Feel free to ignore this.--Ck07 (talk) 13:16, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Note, per my discussion with your professor: He is right that ISBN numbers after book cites are optional. However, most GA (Good Article) and FA (Featured Article) reviewers require them, and so an article is unlikely to be promoted to GA or FA without them. It is helpful to add them from the beginning, so that editors won't have to scramble around later when you or they nominate the article for promotion to Good Article or Featured Article class. -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

October 1, 2010/due October 26

Assess some Wikipedia pages related to public policy: Go to Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Assessment to see the grading scheme and the summary table. Click on cells in the right hand column to choose one each:

• Start or C (low quality) article;
• B (higher quality) article;
• GA or FA article (highest quality).

Post a comment on the talk page of the 'B' article assessing its strengths and weaknesses and a link to your comments in your section of this page.--Ck07 (talk) 16:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

October 7, 2010/no due date

Read the 'Concerns of first-time contributors' section of our talk page.

There is also good stuff on how to insert links and on setting your preferences at the bottom of my talk page (I have requested advice on optimal settings for someone participating in a course like ours).--Ck07 (talk) 13:41, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

October 21, 2010/due November 18

Optional XC assignment worth up to 5% of course grade (A=5, A-=4, etc.).

Add to the U.S. Public Policy article evaluation project by evaluating your target article using the standards mentioned above. (I have confirmed with Annie Lin that we don't need any special permissions and that it is OK that some of your targets are not strictly on U.S. Public Policy.)

The instructions begin just under the summary table on Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Assessment. The technical details are at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Assessment#Overview and the assessment rubric just below that at . Simply go to the discussion page at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Assessment#Rubric.

Introduce yourself at the talk page, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Assessment#Assessment Team Introduction to introduce yourself. You probably don't need to read the whole page, but there is good advice in certain sections. You can also ask questions there (or, perhaps, find that your question has already been asked and answered).--Ck07 (talk) 13:29, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

October 21, 2010/due November 11

Decide, in consultation with your mentor and me, whether you will improve an existing article or create a new one. Create an ====Article to Work On==== subsection in your student section, write your initial thoughts, and alert your mentor and me.

If there is no article squarely on your question, e.g. Stephanie's project on the 1983 Kurdish rebellion, your call will be easy. If there are articles into which your work could possibly fit--e.g., Tim's on the Rwandan role in Congo into the pages on First Congo War and Second Congo War--but you judge that it would be an awkward or distoring fit, or simply that your question is important enough to deserve its own page, go ahead.

If you think your work will fit neatly into an existing page by altering/expanding certain sections or by adding sections, do that.--Ck07 (talk) 13:29, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

October 21, 2010/due November 16

Create your new article as a stub; or begin work on your target existing article. In either case, include at least some new or renamed section headings plus at least some content, with documentation.

If your article is new, you may find it useful to begin in a sandbox. Sandboxes are just holding zones where students can work out things like formatting and get a bit of help from their mentor before moving into Wikipedia proper. See this sandbox tutorial.

If you are expanding an article, you could begin with a sandbox although Sage Ross recommends simply piling in to the article (I think I agree). You could also make a request for a peer reviewer to look at your work; it can take a while to find an interested reviewer, but you can get valuable feedback. Your mentor can help with this.

Sage Ross also recommended getting some exposure for your work through the "Did you know" process, where tidbits from new articles appear on the Wikipedia main page for a short time (not sure I see this as critically important). Mentors can help with this.--Ck07 (talk) 14:23, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Make sure to provide "edit summaries" for your changes in the edit summary box at the bottom (just above the "save page" button) every time you make an edit. The edit summary should describe the rationale for your edit(s). In this assignment you may be providing only a small part of what you ultimately intend, so it will be useful to explain the larger project of which the edit(s) so far are part.

Edit summaries will be equally important in the next assignment, especially for those bringing a 'sandbox' article into Wikipedia proper.--Ck07 (talk) 19:51, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

October 29, 2010/due November 23

Add more content. If you have been working in a sandbox so far, bring your article 'online.'

If yours is a new article, add links that point to yours in articles that should have them (e.g., if Tim does create a new page, he will likely link to it from First Congo War, second Congo War, and from an article about Rwandan foreign policy or Rwandan genocide and the articles of people who are important to the conflict, as well as the articles of people central to the topic).

This may also come up if working on an existing article, as might the need to insert links in your work to other articles.--Ck07 (talk) 14:25, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Final assignment/due December 23, 2010, 7:30 A.M.

(Per syllabus, all class members have the right to take an incomplete if desired. I will grade later submitted work at my convenience. You would be responsible for compliance with any College or University rules.)

Send me (e-mail is OK for this) a list of your changes--new sections, new paras, and changed paras. Also new or changed footnotes if not in a new para. A short summary of the content is optional. Include a link to a 'diff' between the page as it appeared before you began editing and as it appeared when you finished. (That way you can deal with later changes/reversals by others, or not, as you choose, but your reporting of what you did won't be altered.)

How to create a diff

This page provides instructions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Diff. Note that the first thing to do is to record the ID of the page in its 'before' state.

New pages

For those of you who are creating a new page (or massively expanding a stub, as in Will's case), the list of changes can be skipped. Your 'diff' will be between the empty page right after you created it and your final version.

If you create a new page, don't forget to put links to it on existing pages that you think should have them, and report that.

How to report

Report your work in a new subsection of your student section on this page. This is a CHANGE from the instruction I gave earlier. Contributions already received have shown me that the e-mail approach is flawed; some of you may, for various good reasons, wind up sending two or more, create a risk that I might read your work out of order or just plain miss some of it. My apologies for the late change

Technical issues

Contact me promptly if you need technical help and cannot get it from your mentor or one of the other ambassadors who volunteered for our course.--Ck07 (talk) 16:42, 20 December 2010 (UTC)--Ck07 (talk) 00:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Note - the ambassadors are ready to help with any questions, large or small. -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

General suggestions

Hello, students. I have been reading your excellent new content, and have a few little suggestions that may help many of you: The readership of an encyclopedia is the general public, so you need to make sure that people who are not familiar with your topic at all can understand what you are writing. These topics are complex, so define your abbreviations: for example, if you want to use the term RAF, you first need to say Royal Air Force (RAF). Try to stay away from jargon - write using plain words that do not require any specialized background. Also, don't make the reader click on blue links to figure out what a sentence means. The blue links are there so that readers can find more information while following them. In this vein, only use a blue link once in the WP:LEAD and once again in the body of the article - you don't need to keep linking terms and names that you have previously linked. See WP:OVERLINK. I hope this is helpful. All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:14, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Resources for Instructor

The following is a schedule for another course. I am leaving it here for my own reference. Don't worry about it--it is for a course where editing Wikipedia is the main activity.

• 9 September (week 1) - Create account, create a user page, and add your name to this page
• 14 September (week 2) - Request a mentor who will be available to offer advice and assistance as you start editing. List 3-5 articles you will consider working on as your main project.
• 16 September (week 2) - Review an existing article.
• 21 September (week 3) - List the article you will work on. Begin compiling a bibliography and studying the sources.
• 28 September (week 4) - Bibliography draft due.
• 5 October (week 5) - Outline draft due. Begin writing 3-4 paragraph summary version of your article (with citations).
• 7 October (week 5) - Seek feedback from mentor on whether your summary article meets Wikipedia's requirements
• 12 October (week 6) - Move your summary article into main space, compose one-sentence "hook", and nominate it for Did you know.
• 26 October (week 8) - Initial version of complete article due. Offer feedback and suggestions to classmates, request peer review.
• 2 November (week 9) - Recommended deadline to nominate articles for Good Article status.
• 16 November (week 11) - In-class presentations about project.
• 2 December (week 13) - Final version due.