User talk:CorporateM/Mentor workspace/Archive 1

BusterD Reading Assignments

• Identifying the difference between internal links and external links(Check)
• WP:CITE (check), see WP:LINKFARM(check)
• Article assessment (see practice recommended below)(In progress)

• WP:5P (check)
• WP:GNG - (check)
• WP:V - (check)
• WP:COI - (check)
• WP:BLP - (check)

Things I learned

• What I already knew as common sense, but didn't realize was policy regarding establishing notability based on sources influenced by the subject.

Read WP:IRS. This will really help you identify the best kinds of sources. GNG is often used to describe a page's suitability for a keep outcome at WP:AFD, but it's important to remember that once a subject meets GNG and various SNGs, the page can make use of connected sources to a limited extent.

• It seems the citing sources guide says to use raw links? This is confusing, because I thought raw links were discouraged. The citation templates use embedded links.

I'd like you to point out exactly what's confusing. We'll definitely need to discuss this further and in more detail. Let's start a link discussion in the threaded discussion section below.

BTW, we really need to discuss the terminology used to describe links. Notice the difference on this page of the appearance of Honeywell Aerospace and Honeywell Aerospace. Note both links go to the same place. An embedded link is one made by [ ] and refers to websites on the internet at large, where an internal link is made by [[ ]] and links to something inside the pedia. Please take this opportunity to fix all the links here, and elsewhere you see you're making this tiny but revealing error. Notice my use of the "stick" in my internal link of "here" in the sentence immediately preceding this one. The stick (a capital \) is used to separate the actual location of the internal target with another word or phrase. In pagespace, we'll RARELY mislink as I've just done. In talk we might frequently use the technique to shortcut and illustrate points in discussion.

Some of the links on that page are to archived versions of the article from after I wrote it. Is there a way to do a Wiki-link in those cases? Working on the other ones now.

• Oh gosh. If companies had the same protections people did against slander, maybe there wouldn't be such a big problem.

When we have a Seigenthaler incident with a company and a potential lawsuit, perhaps Wikipedia will take just as strong a stand in regards to business as we did in regard to BLPs. The BLP course correction has been a huge undertaking, at first thought overwhelming, but several wikipedians developed a strategy for identifying every BLP and drove policy changes designed to protect the pedia. It's a hero story. Some of the players in that correction process I disagree with on many issues, but that group of editors may have actually saved the day for all of us, showing that even the most serious problems could be resolved given adequate time and consensus.

• I feel like verifiability and notability must be often misused, because I've seen notability used to keep content off the article (not regarding creating new ones) and the "likely to be contested" statement in the reliable sources document is often overlooked.

Valid but debatable assertions. Remember we're dealing with human beings here, and we might fall short of the ideal from time to time. Also, others may see the same PPG differently. We solve all disputes by use of consensus and a process of dispute resolution when consensus itself doesn't suffice. Common practice is another source of insight on these matters.

General Discussion

125th Pennsylvania Volunteers

This article looks amazing. The only reason not to B-class it could be "major grammatical errors." It had some run-ons, spelling errors and so on that I fixed. What do I do now that I've reviewed it? King4057 (talk) 08:01, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd disagree that it's amazing. But for a newbie, it's pretty damned good. I appreciate your spending time on it. However, the point of assessment itself isn't improvement, it's classification. Watch my movements on Talk:Hephaestion (a B-class article needing Military History checklist assessment). I broke down my changes into several edits; I'd normally perform assessment in one or two edits but I wanted you to see my thinking. I wasn't sure about task forces, so I went to Alexander the Great, a related article and looked to see what task forces were present in his MilHist project banner. Now the article is assessed, and I'm done. This can be much simpler. Look at Talk:Elsie Janis. I've simply added a start-class assessment, since the page clearly doesn't meet B-class criteria and is larger and better developed than a stub. See in this case, we're not here to edit. We're here to render a simple judgment, which is by nature subjective, but can use criteria to prevent the assessment from being arbitrary. This basic assessment is how pages grow from small acorn to mighty oak. The B-class assessment is as far up as a single editor can without process rate pagespace. A Good Article-class page also only has one reviewer, but the process is more formal. Let's avoid that stuff or now. B-class generally means, "does it meet the basic criteria of the checklist?", not "how well does the page meet the checklist?". Other may quibble about my cavalier judgement, but I'm trying to give you broad strokes on this first pass. Now go back to the 125th PA talk page and insert the checklist into the project banner, a complete copy of which you'll find here. I'll be back at keyboard around lunchtime and we can discuss or I can assess what you write here. Again, we're in no rush with these exercises. BusterD (talk) 13:17, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Got it. Like that? Save should I leave "B2" unchecked for "obvious omissions" based on your comment? King4057 (talk) 20:56, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

If I'm reading your rating edit correctly, it appears you copied the checklist and the task forces directly from Talk:Hephaestion. A Civil War regiment doesn't fall into coverage for either Biography or Classical task forces. As I demonstrated in my demonstration above, a good strategy for finding appropriate task forces is to look at a similar or connected page. Categories such as the one at the bottom of the 125th pagespace are helpful. Look at Talk:71st Pennsylvania Infantry. See how the checklist reads? Click the edit tab and read the checklist as code. Notice the criteria answer on B1=no. Also, notice the two task forces appropriate for that regiment. These should generally be the same from regiment to regiment. 29th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry is a superior example of a regimental page, the space being classified as both Good Article and A-class. Such an article can be a strong influence over what reviewers are looking for. Compare and contrast our target 125th PA with the 29th MA page. Our new editor Donald has done very well indeed. Sorry for dragging you into Military History, but that particular WikiProject is very mature and has long had strong participation and excellent leadership. Not only does this translate into a bunch of fine pages, it also connotes a very strong system of procedure. Remember this, because some of your objective companies will marginally fall under WikiProject Military History scope. Honeywell Aerospace, for example. Reviewers from the MilHist project will be very tough, but extremely useful. BusterD (talk) 22:00, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Hey and there's the shorthand citation format I was reading about. Fixed the task force issue. It's intimidating for an article like that to be "mediocre" when you're use to seeing articles like this. What next? User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 01:51, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I've corrected the assessment as C-class (failing only one criteria). As far as the 125th page is concerned, we're done for now. We'll continue to watch the page for improvement, or we might even go back and do the improvement ourselves later. Let's see how Donald responds to the feedback. Speaking of watching, do you have many pages on your "watchlist"? Roughly how many? BTW, what's next is to switch the links on your paid editor's page from external to internal. I'll do one to demonstrate what I mean. BusterD (talk) 02:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I misunderstood what you were doing on that page. It's clear you were linking to versions, to demonstrate your involvement. I see you're "sticking" just fine. Sorry if that sounded condescending. I wanted to make sure you understood fully, and I saw something I misread. BusterD (talk) 02:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

CITE and Raw Links

Could you explain the source of your confusion above? I can't figure out what you meant... BusterD (talk) 02:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:CITE has a section called Avoid Embedded Links I guess they are referring to citations that are in the article body rather than in a references or notes section. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 20:03, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Correct. That same section says raw links shouldn't be used even inside ref tags. Notice what I was doing on List of model railroad clubs; I was replacing embedded links with citation templates. BusterD (talk) 20:08, 12 March 2012 (UTC)