Dr.renMueller

Nice work!

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Posted automatically via sandbox guided tour. Dr.renMueller (talk) 18:45, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Some suggestions...

Hello Dr. Mueller. I just wanted to make a few suggestions re your class assignment this semester. Much of the students' work has been very good indeed. However, there have been a few problems.

• Creating articles on topics which already exist rather than expanding the pre-existing article
  • Prelude in C Minor (BWV 999) duplicated Prelude in C minor, BWV 999 (now merged and redirected)
  • Circe, an opera by Desmarets duplicated Circé (Desmarets) (now merged and redirected)
  • Aure soavi e lieti duplicated Aure soavi e lieti (Handel) (now merged and redirected)
  • Bach Prelude and Fugue No. 16 may duplicate the topic of Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 846 (this one still needs to be sorted out and I'm going to ask the members of WikiProject Classical Music for help.

Duplicate articles like these require a lot of work from other editors to carefully merge the material into the existing article, redirect the duplicate, and add the necessary attribution templates. I'm not sure if this is because the students didn't know how to paste their work into the existing article and created a new article instead, or if they were completely unaware of the existing article. If it's the latter, before they start their drafts, they need to do a thorough search on Wikipedia (using the search box and relevant Category pages) to find out if their topic already has an article, albeit with a slightly different name.

• Overwriting existing articles

The students need to take care that when expanding an existing article, they do not simply do a blanket overwrite. They need to integrate their work carefully and preferably gradually. Quite a few of the overwrite articles resulted in the loss of valuable information, references, templates, categories, and formatting, all of which had to be restored by other editors. Sometimes they simply replaced the existing text with their own version of it which unfortunately was not an improvement—introducing grammar errors, confusing phrasing, misspellings, unencyclopedic style, etc.

• Adding inappropriate external links

I suggest pointing your students to the guidelines at Wikipedia:External links. YouTube videos are very problematic as many of them are copyright violations and will be removed from the article. The only acceptable ones are those on the official YouTube channels of the recording companies or the artists involved.

• Using inappropriate references

Related to the above, YouTube videos are not a reference and should not be used as such. Ditto links to Amazon and other commercial retailers. If the students wish to discuss a recording in depth, i.e. at least listing the artists, record company, ensemble, conductor and date, then they should reference it to a published review in the mainstream press, music journals, or books (not blogs or self-published websites) and/or minimally provide the OCLC number. If they just want to link to to a YouTube recording of a work (providing it is copyright compliant), then it belongs in an External links section, not the body of the article. Likewise, Wikipedia articles can never be used as references. The students should all become familiar with the guidelines and policies at Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources.

In future, you might also want to direct your students to the WikiProjects related to their topics. WikiProject Classical Music, WikiProject Opera, and WikiProject Composers all have very useful and valuable guides on how to title, write, reference, and format articles in those areas. This can save all your students a lot of valuable time trying to reinvent the wheel, especially for those creating completely new articles.

Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 19:01, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Additional suggestions:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music#Student articles
  • Archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 64#Student articles. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
• [1]
• Wikipedia talk:Wiki Ed/University of North Carolina School of the Arts/History of Musical Styles I and II (Fall 2015, Spring 2016)

--Francis Schonken (talk) 11:56, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Warning

This is your only warning; if you vandalize Wikipedia again, as you did at Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of North Carolina School of the Arts/History of Musical Styles I and II (Fall 2015, Spring 2016), you may be blocked from editing without further notice. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:39, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• @Francis Schonken: How is a templated vandalism warning even remotely appropriate for the edit in question? Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:47, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Some time ago we really gave it a lot of effort to come in contact with the editor, needed something to draw attention as this editor is as unresponsive as hell, and keeps deleting work of others. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:49, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
    • I don't think the way to get ahold of someone is to give them a last warning for vandalism on a page they didn't vandalize. I'm happy to get in touch with the professor for you, but that's a pretty obvious misuse of the warning, IMO. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:54, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Really, nothing else is working to set up communication thus far. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:56, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
      • this is the vandalizing edit. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:58, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
        • I knew which edit you were referring to when I posted here. That's not vandalism. Your content was over-written because when anyone makes an edit to the course dashboard, the mirror on Wikipedia is updated, blowing away manual changes in the intervening time. They likely had no idea you made those changes and had no idea their edits to the dashboard removed them. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
          • Sorry, vandalism. Don't care what "caused" it – the effect was vandalism, and the vandalising edit was performed by this account, so this is the account that should be blocked when the account does it again. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:18, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
            • @Francis Schonken: First, please read WP:NOTVAND. It's completely uncivil and incorrect to accuse someone of vandalism when they're not vandalizing an article. But I don't think I've been clear enough. The page you edited on Wikipedia had a very clear notice to not edit it, since it is automatically generated. You read this notice, because you replied to it on the talk page, but I think you've confused the intent of the notice. It's not a normative statement that the page ought not to be edited. It's a technical statement noting that if you edit the page, your edit will (with certainty) be overwritten when someone edits the corresponding page on the dashboard. That professor never saw your changes to the course page and never made a change on the dashboard with any intent to change them. They could've been updated a student assignment or adding content to their timeline. It wouldn't matter. Your changes on the page would be replaced with the new version from the dashboard, just as the warning at the top of the page notes. It is not the fault of the professor that you edited a page with an edit warning and choose to ignore than warning. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:10, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
        • @Francis Schonken: I've sent an email to the instructor pointing them to the detailed and very helpful feedback offered by Voceditenore above. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:25, 28 January 2016 (UTC)