Lpetrillo
Welcome, Lpetrillo!
Hello, Lpetrillo, and welcome to Wikipedia! I'm Mr. Stradivarius, one of the thousands of editors here at Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:
The five pillars of Wikipedia
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Fun stuff...
{{helpme}} here on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! University Courses Using Wikipedia
editI think there is a special place where you can notify the project that you are using wikipedia as part of a university course, but I am not sure where the page is.Curb Chain (talk) 20:22, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Explanations and tips
edit- I'm the mediator/clerk who closed your Dispute Resolution Noticeboard (DRN) listing. It was closed because the guidelines of that noticeboard require disputes to be discussed on the talk page of the article in question before seeking dispute resolution. Your request would have been better added to the Editor Assistance Noticeboard, but let me say a few words about it.
- While you may have considerable experience at academic writing, unless you - and I mean you, individually, as their instructor - have a great deal of experience in editing Wikipedia this could be a very frustrating experiment for you and your students. Unless you have edited without logging in or done so under a different login, that would not appear to be the case and I would strongly recommend that you abandon the experiment until you have that experience. An alternative might be to participate in the Wikipedia Ambassadors Program which might be able to pair you with an experienced Wikipedia user at your institution. The learning curve on becoming able to edit Wikipedia confidently is very steep, indeed.
- Writing for Wikipedia is very different than academic writing or writing just about anywhere else and the content of Wikipedia articles is judged on standards which are quite different from those used elsewhere. I won't try to explain them, but the links provided above by Mr. Stradivarius are a very good place to start, especially the Tutorial.
- I can't provide you with any statistics on how long the average edit survives and even if I could they probably wouldn't be of much help to you. Some articles are watched by individuals or groups very, very closely and every edit is scrutinized very quickly, others have no one watching (other than automated vandal hunters) and edits, even horribly bad edits, can remain in place for months or years.
- One problem that you are facing is that Wikipedia is built around an ideal of collaboration by ordinary people. That ideal calls for edits which are removed - reverted in Wiki-speak - to be discussed on the article talk page. Either the removing editor or the adding editor can begin that conversation, but ordinarily it's the person who wants to make the edit who will need to get the discussion started. Coming to a place like DRN without discussing an edit first generally will not get you very far. See the Consensus Policy for the rules on how it is supposed to work and see Bold, revert, discuss for the ideal (but let me note that the ideal is not a binding rule).
- I could say a great deal more, but this is probably already too much. Let me note that Wikipedia can be a particularly frustrating place for academics and individuals who are experts in particular areas. I've hinted at the reasons above, but they're fairly complicated. Let me point you to the Expert Retention Essay - which is only an opinion by the editors who have worked on that essay, but is fairly insightful - for treatment in depth.
- Let me conclude by saying that if you want to try to continue this experiment, the next step is for your students to discuss the edits that they want to make with Maunus by opening a discussion on the talk page of the article or articles where the edits are to be made saying why they believe that those edits are appropriate under Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Please do not try to do that for them; each editor is responsible for their own edits and editing on behalf of a group of people is forbidden by policy. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) | DR goes to Wikimania! 20:40, 5 April 2012 (UTC) Supplement: On reading the foregoing, it came across more negatively than I intended. We would encourage you and your students to stick around and lend your excellent talents to improving Wikipedia. We need strong, skilled editors. What I was trying to communicate, and did so poorly, was that if you do not have strong Wikipedia editing skills already that the steep learning curve needed to be able to obtain the skills needed to edit Wikipedia confidently is probably going to profoundly interfere with your primary purpose of teaching and your students' primary purpose of learning (at least teaching and learning anything other than how to edit Wikipedia). I'm sorry that I may have been unclear in that regard. TM — 20:57, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Anthropology
editI have resaponded to your comments the talkpage of Talk:Anthropology. Generally if you have an issue with my editing it works well if you approach me personally on my talkpage and ask me to justify what I have done. I will always be happy to. In the case of your students I approached them on their talkpage and explained why I was removing the long essay on Archaeology that they had inserted into the overview of subdisciplines in Anthropology. I never received an answer or even a note of disagreement. I am always open to discussion which is the core part of wikipedia - I also have experience in using wikipedia as a learning tool for my own students and would be happy to exchange tips and suggestions. Any student who is encouraged to edit should be informed that anything they contribute can and will be changed, edited, reworked or deleted by any stranger who feels liek it. That is part of the way it works. They need to be given the skills and motivation to engage in discussions to justify and motivate their proposed changes. Wikipedia is an encylopedia that anyone can edit - but that doesn't mean that everything you write will be accepted by others for inclusion in the article. That is done by discussion, compromising and working to achieve consensus. Best regards, ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:58, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
- Looking at your post at dispute resolution I am furthermore a little dismayed at how you immediately assume that I am acting in bad faith or to further some personal agenda (which would that be exactly)? It is also incorrect when you state that your students tried to address the issue on the talkpage no one ever did as is apparent from the talkpage and its history. Furthermore the only other discussion in which I am involved on the talkpage (which you refer to as "issues") is exactly about not overdoing the US bias in the article and the editor is arguing that the four field approach is particular to America and should not be given undue weight - i ended up agreeing with him and it was exactly on that basis that i removed the long essay on archaeology which is not considered a part of anthropology outside of the US. That your student would consider my trying to explain my actions on their talkpage[1] "intimidation tactics" is difficult for me to understand. I did that exactly because I was aware that this was likely to be a student with no prior experience who might need someone to explain how wikipedia works. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:25, 12 April 2012 (UTC)