EstellaGr8

Mentor?

Yes. See my continuation of the conversation you started on my Talk page. Cheers. N2e (talk) 07:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Welcome!

Some cookies to welcome you!

Welcome to Wikipedia, EstellaGr8! I am N2e and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. Thank you in advance for the contributions you will make this term to Wikipedia. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions check out Wikipedia:Questions, or feel free to leave me a message on my talk page or type {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post. Again, welcome!

N2e (talk) 07:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Mentor talk

Hi EstellaGr8. You should pick a place you prefer for dialog between us. We could use your Talk page, or you could create a special sandbox page for it, or you might have a better idea. In any case. Let me know. In the meantime, I will use your Talk page until I hear differently. N2e (talk) 18:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

N2e, I am new enough to wikipedia that I am not sure which is preferable. We can continue to talk here if that works for you. EstellaGr8 (talk) 14:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

That works great for now. You will see that I have mentioned (below) one way you can explicitly invite me to engage on any Talk page in the Wikipedia, whether your sandbox, or on an article Talk page, or your Talk page, etc. At the appropriate time, as you come up to speed, you'll probably find that some discussions fit one place, while others fit in another place, depending on what your doing and want help on. N2e (talk) 16:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Appropriate technology article

The Appropriate technology article is, as you indicated on my Talk page, kind of a "dump" of information. This is not an uncommon result on Wikipedia. The nature of emergent growth in a complex adaptive system is uneven, and sometimes even deleterious to the overall growth of the organism. In this case the emergent outcome is the article. But with the efforts of a diligent and attentive editor—always in "concert" with other Wikipedia editors who may weigh in from time to time of course—any article can be made much better over the course of a few days or few weeks. So don't let the current state of the article bother you. The non-verifiable stuff, or nonsense or bad writing, will get culled over time and the (hopefully) better stuff will remain.

I recommend you just start with fixing little things you see right away, and you will soon find out if other editors are actively watching the article (or editing it from time to time). I think you should start the small edits right away. You will learn much about Wikipedia through this process. And I will commit to begin to watch that article with you, and comment on the Talk page with you, and even tag a few areas that need attention if you ask me to do so.

Wikipedia is improved, using a term we economists use, "at the margin". Your small edits will immediately begin to reshape the article, allow other editors who are interested to react endogenously to your edits, build up your facility in Wikipedia, and not unimportantly, begin to build up your reputation as a Wikipedia editor. Larger changes and reorganization of the article will come along soon enough. Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice. I will start to make little changes to the article as you suggested. Can you offer some advice on what is an appropriate thing to simply change? Spelling, grammar or adding a citation, I assume. At what point should you put something on the talk page before making the change? If you want to rewrite or delete information? Finally, do you have any thoughts on my class assignment? I was thinking of simply extending the current section on developing countries to include more information and let it become a new article later if that seems appropriate. EstellaGr8 (talk) 14:13, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

First off, I'm embarrassed to say that I missed your response and have thus failed to respond for a couple of days. I am sorry for that.

Feel free to add a {{Talkback}} template on my Talk page to invite me to come wherever you've written something you would like me to respond on. I will prefer having the conversations on the article Talk pages, or your Talk page, or on any of your sandbox Talk pages, rather than my Talk page.

As for what small changes you might consider starting out with: Yes, "Spelling, grammar or adding a citation" are great places to start, as is simply requesting a citation by typing a mere six characters ("{{cn}}") after the end of an assertion that is unsourced. This uses the {{citation needed}} template. Typing "{{fact}}" does the same thing, but requires you to type eight characters into your edit. You will find that, in Wikipedia, there are often multiple ways to achieve the same end. In both cases, a bot (robot editor from a specially-designed software program) will find your tag in a few hours and date the tag, as well as possibly put your shorthand into a more standard and spelled-out form. The other thing that is only a little bigger, but still a small effort, is simply rewriting a sentence to make it read better, or perhaps make it better comport with what the source supports.

I will come back an respond on your class assignment question later. Cheers. N2e (talk) 16:13, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Initial set of edits to the AT article

Estella, I think your initial set of edits to the Appropriate technology article was "just right." To my eye, they all improved the article; they were "at the margin" (small) edits which begin to put your stamp on an article but would likely not offend even a very interested editor, or set of editors, who had worked on the article previously; your initial edits focused on an area (or just one or two areas (the lede and a new section on AT in developed countries)) which keeps any sort of initial review from other editors easily contained (not too much work), which is always a good way to "introduce" yourself in the wikiworld when you intend to come in and, over time, substantially improve an article. You are already making a very positive start in building your wikereputation! I thought your taking the idea of "Bias?" to the Talk page was also very appropriate. I think you read that exactly right, and have created an explicit space for other editors/readers to weigh in should they care to. (I have responded to that question of article improvement on the Talk page.) All in all, a very good start. You are going to do great with this assignment in V576, and will be a great addition to the wikieditor community! N2e (talk) 16:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

N2e, Thank you for these comments, I appreciate them. I am sorry I missed the comments when you made them several days ago. I am new to keeping track of what is happening on my Wikipedia pages. EstellaGr8 (talk) 11:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

You are quite welcome. And thank you for the feedback.

I think you may begin to draw some initial conclusions from your early edits to the AT article. Given that no feedback from other interested editors has followed your early edits, it could be that noone is very active in watching the page, or if the page is watched, (somewhat more likely in my opinion given its history), your initial edits were moderate and not objected to by the editors who watch the page. I recommend you continue to make small, at-the-margin improvements to the article from time to time while you are, in parallel, doing your research and getting your citations together for a more substantive addition to the article in future weeks. Cheers. N2e (talk) 12:37, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Creating a new article, or expanding an existing article

Hi again Estella. You've asked a couple of times about Appropriate technology, and the merits of further development (improvement) of this article vs. creating a new article for the information you want to add to Wikipedia. In general, in my view, it is always better to try to improve an existing article first, and only go to creating a new article when indicated by some factor such as article size, or a clearly orthogonal/related topic that doesn't quite fit, or when the community standard is for a new article. (E.g., I created a new article yesterday, because the WikiProjectSpacelight community has determined that each spacecraft that is firmly in the launch pipeline (funded, or under development, or scheduled for launch) is worthy of its own article. These standards vary in various communities across the Wikipedia.)

More importantly, while Wikipedia is amazing, and what the reader can gain from consulting it is a pretty amazing example of self-organizing emergent social phenomena in our time, many articles have many problems (poorly written, or a hodgepodge of info, or poorly sourced, or are on a non-notable topic, etc.) and it is, in my view, always good to try to improve what is there, or even help see that an article gets deleted if it does not belong (we have several processes for this in the wikicommunity and many articles are deleted, renamed, etc. every day). Hope these thoughts are helpful to you in making your decision vis a vis your course assignment. N2e (talk) 17:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

N2e, that information is helpful and I appreciate the advice. I took your advice and made some minor edits to the Appropriate technology article. I also posted a comment to the talk page, which I see you commented on. I will add the tag you recommended and work to improve the lede with the community.

Once again, thank you for your assistance. EstellaGr8 (talk) 13:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, EstellaGr8. You have new messages at N2e's talk page.
Message added 05:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Clarification

I got a Talkback from you that directed me to this page. I don't see any new/recent item here that you want me to comment on. Can you be more specific?

(Background: I'm slammed right now in my work and personal life, so have had MUCH less time for WP the past couple of weeks, and will have a bit less going forward. But I am committed to helping with the mentoring as previously agreed. I'll just need a little help to be more specific on the question(s) so I can do it pretty efficiently).

Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I think I have forgotten what that was too! No worries about being busy, I completely understand. Finals week is fast approaching. EstellaGr8 (talk) 21:48, 23 April 2011 (UTC)