Greycounty

The articles by your class

Hello,

I see you are the course instructor for this course. I read this comment of yours. To me, the knee-jerk reaction by the community was quite predictable.. the thing to understand is that editors are faced with deletion decisions for a surprisingly large number of articles everyday (for example, over 75 articles were put up for deletion today). So it's not surprising that some of your class' articles got swept up in that process, since some had unencyclopedic names like "Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay".

Hopefully you were able to brush off the negative comments you and your students had to face.. the deletion process is probably the most unfriendly first-encounter new users can have (not to mention a trip to the Administrators' noticeboard, also known as "Drama central"!), but unfortunately it's also one of the most common first-encounters new users have.

I hope you consider trying again with another class; there have been many good suggestions made as to how you could modify the project.. the main problem being that Wikipedia articles are not "essays", and therefore should not be written like them. On the other hand, several of your students wrote in a manner more appropriate for Wikipedia, and therefore they will likely be kept.

In the end, the contributions of your class to Wikipedia are very much appreciated - thank you! Being a Wikipedia editor can be a thankless, and sometimes downright nasty job.. but hopefully you and your class will be able to see past the rough exterior, and realize that you are contributing something substantial and lasting to the encyclopedia (and therefore to mankind!). Mlm42 (talk) 23:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Mlm42, I appreciate your constructive, thoughtful and sensitive response. I haven't enjoyed the past two days. I teach in a 50,000-student university in what is probably the most multicultural city in the world. I have students from about 20 countries in my course, maybe 10 of whom are ESL. I have thoroughly culturally sophisticated students and students who have only very limited understanding of Canadian culture. I want all of them to have the same classroom experience, I don't want people left behind or excluded. So I told everyone to move her -- and 90 per cent of my students are women -- and his work to main space (I also told them to make sure they had "encyclopedic" titles on their work; the fault is mine for not checking each article to make sure that instruction was understood).

I want to emphasize how much enjoyment my students have derived from doing their work on Wikipedia. As for their reception once they moved their work to main space, I had an idea that the Wikipedia community was collaborative and truly collective and that my students would receive a positive welcome. They didn't and that has angered me, along with the ad hominem attacks. In any event, before reading your note I had concluded that I was not going to try to use Wikipedia in next term's course, but you may have persuaded me to give it a second thought. Would you be available for mentoring help? Greycounty (talk) 00:27, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I would be available to do some mentoring. I haven't been particularly active in Wikipedia in the last year or so, but efforts like yours are certainly ones I would like to encourage. And it's great to hear your students enjoyed working on Wikipedia.

This entire process of having classrooms contribute to Wikipedia is fairly new, so it's a learning experience for everyone involved. If you do decide to try again (and I hope you do), one thing to keep in mind is that in some cases it might be better to add content to existing articles, rather than to create a new article written entirely by the student. On the other hand, I understand it would be more difficult to evaluate a student's contributions, if other Wikipedia editors modify their work.

I could point out that even if other editors start modifying your students' work, it is still possible to determine what exactly is due to your student, and what is not. I don't know how familiar you are with Wikipedia, but this is the "User contributions" link. For example, Special:Contributions/Greycounty is the list of all the edits your account has ever made.

It's unfortunate the situation has upset you.. as much as the regular editors are told not to bite the newcomers (see the behavioural guideline: Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers), they still sometimes do. But they don't mean to do harm; on the contrary, editors believe they are trying to improve Wikipedia (another guideline: Wikipedia:Assume good faith). As I said, it's a learning process for everyone involved. Mlm42 (talk) 01:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like to echo Mlm42s comments, one unfortunately has to have a thick skin sometimes to edit here, and I am still learning all the regulations. If you are brave enough to try it again I would encourage you to engage the Wikiproject under which your students pages fall. It is also important as a prof to learn how things work to some extent before bringing others. A prof from UBC User:Jbmurray has probably had the greatest success introducing his classes to Wikipedia and he has provided some excellent advice here [1] and [2] Cheers Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:19, 16 December 2011 (UTC)