User talk:Cecilemckee

Welcome to Wikipedia

Thanks for asking, and I would be delighted to assist as an Online Ambassador for your class. I am on a business trip so my response will be brief now. But you can count on me to help in any way I can. I will also put you in touch with folks at the Wikimedia Foundation who can help as well. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 20:24, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Editing problem

Hi! That seems to be an odd problem that you are getting. Guessing, I suspect it is a problem with the browser you are using and the editing bar, which could possibly cause some odd behaviours. Other than trying a different browser, the quickest thing to try is to go into "My Preferences", select "Editing", and turn off "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)". It's worth a shot, at any rate. :) I'm happy to help with your class as well - it seems that you've wisely asked a couple of people, so maybe given the number of students that you are talking about, it would be worth looking at distributing them a bit between us. With a lot of students, the main risk (based on some recent problems) is copyright violations by students who don't understand the more stringent requirements here, which go a bit beyond the usual fair use permissions. Tracking that means keeping a fairly close eye on edits, which is tricky when student numbers get high.

At any rate, if there's anything I can do to assist, just let me know. :) And I'll happily help with the class - at the moment it is our summer break, so things are well timed. - Bilby (talk) 14:55, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

A recommendation

Hello,

You may find this introductory essay for Wikipedia beginners to be useful: It can be reached by the shortcut WP:PRIMER.

Discussions can take place on lots of pages. Since we are talking between us, it could be your talk page or mine. It will probably be easier for you continue here on your talk page, and I have this page on my watch list. But you or your students can post to my talk page at any time for any reason (within reason). Do you have a course page set up yet? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 20:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Bless you! I do have a course page, but I'm spending an inordinate amount of time (being sans CAs) on syntax (and I love syntax). I'll look at the primer; that should help. When I tried to list my course page though, I ran into a problem. I think it's a "future course," but the deictic term is driving me nuts. In some sense, it's no longer "future" for me. My course website is live and students are already reading materials. My first class meeting is next week. So where do I list it? Got it. Someone updated the list so all the dates in "Current" refer to 2012.

Also, what does one ordinarily do for talking? I've found descriptions of using both one's own and the other's talk page, in addition to individual instructions from some people. What's frowned on? What's favored? I'm looking for good practices more than for what's possible. Till I nail this down, I do appreciate your accommodating my ignorance. Cecilemckee (talk) 20:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I indented each of your paragraphs above and double indented this reply, because that makes things much easier to read and recognize who is speaking. I will offer suggestions in response to your comments, and please don't feel as if I am "teaching" you as you are the professor and I only have a bachelor's degree and have been away from academia (except for the Wikipedia Ambassador program) for 30 years. I am offering informal personal tips based on my behind-the-scenes experience with what I believe to be the world's greatest experiment with shared knowledge. I am referring to this free encyclopedia, to be specific.

I love learning, and I believe it can come from all kinds of directions if one's open to it. So my degrees and your are irrelevant here. I'm grateful to you for teaching me about WP.

When you mention a Wikipedia page (such as your course page), it is customary to link to that page. You can just copy and paste the page name and enclose it in double square brackets. So, right now, I have no easy way to look at your course page, because I don't know where it is. On the other hand, you mentioned that your class will be working on Language acquisition and I was able to take a look and skim that article, and in a couple of minutes visualize the areas where you and your students may want to improve the article. Please be aware that I find language acquisition to be a fascinating topic but have no advanced knowledge whatsoever about the subject. I am sure that I will know much more when your course is finished, but there will be no need to give me a grade. You may want to add a link to your course page to your user page. That would be customary for professors including Wikipedia editing in a course.

I put the link to my course in my user page, but it sure does look clunky to me. The "title" (if I've got that right) is huge. I'll put the link in the course site to my user page another day. What a brilliant idea for one of the members of my teaching team who I'm trying to train up for this (the barely seeing leading the blind).

As far as where to conduct a conversation, the general rule of thumb is to discuss things on the talk page most relevant to the matter at hand. You approached me on my talk page - that is entirely appropriate because I am an ambassador and welcome talk page questions and input. Now that we are discussing your involvement with Wikipedia in more detail, the appropriate place is your talk page. When in-depth discussion of the article Language acquisition begins, the appropriate place for that discussion is on that article's talk page. Once your students are participating, and let's say a particular student has some personal issues, the appropriate place for that discussion would be that student's talk page. Discussions about overall Wikipedia policies or guidelines should be on the associated talk pages for those policies or guidelines. You will find some editors (not me) to be protective of their own pages, and sometimes see comments like "discuss that on the article's talk page, not here". I will discuss anything on my talk page, but may suggest moving the conversation if another venue seems better. As an aside, some Wikipedia editors can be a trifle confrontational. That is their defense mechanism against people who come here to grind axes or promote personal interests such as fringe theories (Einstein was wrong!) or their favorite garage bands (really cool!). Try not to be offended if you get grilled.

THAT was a more helpful paragraph than anything I've seen in days of reading policies, etc. Thank you! Re grilling, I'm clueless. Everyone so far has been helpful (e.g., Tom Cloyd) or silent (e.g., Jami Mathewson). So I haven't had the pleasure of grilling yet. No idea how I'd respond. But I understood that online ambassadors are here to help protect the newbies from bite wounds. I'm new, I'm new!

How to keep track of all these discussions? That is the purpose of each editor's watch list. Check out this page: Help:Watching pages for more information. There is even a brief video, which I haven't yet seen. Currently, I have over 2000 pages on my watch list, the majority of which are inactive. I could probably remove 1500 and not notice it. But I watch pages that I care about, and few or no other editors watch. I want to make sure that the pages I care about aren't vandalized, or I am curious about new developments in various areas. As a Wikipediholic, I check my list several times a day. You should have all pages associated with your class and all related topics on your watch list, and check it whenever you log in.

The underlying principle regarding discussions is transparency, openness and encouraging collaboration. For example, if you and I had a lengthy discussion about making dramatic changes to Language acquisition on my talk page or yours, that would not be readily accessible to other editors outside your class who may have an active interest in the topic. They may possibly consider that discussion to be a bit underhanded. Discussing it in depth by email would be even worse. I reserve email for rare issues when privacy is involved. The appropriate place for such an in-depth discussion is the talk age for Language acquisition.

This is the only part I'm not so sure about. There are aspects of my course that are best kept to myself (and maybe my teaching team). But maybe that's not course page design. So let's do course page design over there. But this brings up another question. How to organize what will - without some hierarchy - become a very long and hard-to-process list? If we talk a few more times over in the course's discussion page Wikipedia_talk:United_States_Education_Program/Courses/Language_Development_(Cecile_McKee) (HA! How was that?), there could be a huge long text there before students even sign in. I must be missing another essential detail about talking.

As for what you call your "ignorance" please have no hesitation at asking for help or tips. I have over 15,000 edits here, have written about 50 articles and have expanded and referenced many more. I know a fair amount about the most important aspects of editing Wikipedia, but with over 3.8 million English language articles, there are many areas of the project that I know nothing about. So I know just enough to recognize what I don't know. I will be more than happy to help you and your students learn about contributing to this encyclopedia. In a sense, (correct me if I am wrong) the process is all an aspect of linguistics, so I am sure that you will soon be fluent. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:54, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Cullen's advice seems pretty good to me. :) But if I can just add a couple of small things - the course schedule you've developed looks great to me, but the main issue with Wikipedia isn't the editing, but the policies. Thus it is good to see the five pillars being covered early, but from what I've seen of classes the four issues which throw most students (and create the most conflict) are copyright violations, not referencing sufficiently for Wikipedia, not editing from a neutral point of view, and adding original research. The readings you've given them look great on this, but the main conflict arises when they try to balance the original research limitations with the copyright issues - they don't tend to end up with plagiarism, but instead produce overly close paraphrasing, which still runs into trouble. This was a big issue last year, so is worth tackling early. :) You will also find that it is a good chance to talk about what constitutes reliable sources in academia, as the sourcing for Wikipedia is roughly the same as what we teach most students (given standard variations between disciplines), and the main cause for reverting the work of students (other than copyright) is inadequate sourcing.

Other than that, I don't know if it is of any use, but I produced some handouts a while back. They are more aimed at the general public, but may be of some use: http://www.wikimedia.org.au//wiki/Publications - Bilby (talk) 13:56, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Bilby's points

I am in complete agreement with Bilby that the main challenge for your students is unlikely to be the mechanics of the editing process. Rather, it will be in understanding the difference between a really well-done Wikipedia article and various other forms of academic writing. You say you haven't been bitten so far, and that is good. But your students (and you by extension) will get bitten if copyrighted material is misused, if brief quotations aren't referenced properly, or if the article ends up as a polemic in favor of one academic theory rather than describing all prevailing theories in a neutral, even-handed fashion. These are a few examples of how things could go wrong. At least you don't have the problem of students working on non-notable topics, as it seems your efforts will be mostly on a single topic. Howeverr, your students should also consider making some improvements to closely related articles. I see several red-linked people mentioned in the article. Biographies of those people (and others unmentioned) who are prominent in the field would be nice side projects. You need to constantly emphasize that all student work on Wikipedia should be toward the ultimate end of making this a better encyclopedia, in accordance with the policies and guidelines we've developed over the past 11 years. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 16:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Transparency and course page design

When I talked about transparency above, I was referring to discussions directly related to additions or changes to Wikipedia. Those should be open and accessible to any interested editor. All academic and logistical matters related to how you run your course at your university can be handled in any manner you see fit, either through your school's computer system or by mimeographed handouts and writing on the chalkboard. But I date myself.

You can create a heirarchy of subpages if there is too much for a single page. You just type a slash after the page name followed by a subpage name. The main talk page could then become a table of contents to various sub-discussions. I have dozens of sandbox pages for various articles I'm working on. There is no practical limit to the number of subpages you can create. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 16:40, 8 January 2012 (UTC)