Mportolano

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Alice in Wikiland?

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Welcome to Wikipedia, Mportolano! I am Acather96 and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. Thank you for your contributions. 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:

• Introduction
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
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• Help pages
• How to write a great article

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!

Acather96 (talk) 19:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Student Editors

Students, please link your usernames here by signing this talk page.

Jla4890 (talk) 13:21, 29 February 2012 (UTC)- Jenn Albers

Hi ! Emily Greene EmilyRGreene (talk) 22:53, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

--Autumnfireflies (talk) 17:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Samantha Phillips--Sphill9 (talk) 22:49, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Kaitlyn Jones --Kaitlyn,jones (talk) 15:08, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

AuthorizeditorA 22:33, 29 February 2012 (UTC) Mike McC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AuthorizeditorA (talk • contribs)

Hi! Kristen Robbins --Kristen672 (talk) 18:18, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Everyone :) AshBlue (talk) 23:14, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello! Holleigh Graham HolleighGraham (talk) 18:29, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Asia Mouzone--Amouzone (talk) 19:30, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi! Chad CrawfordChadwickcrawford (talk) 12:10, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello! Daniel Rowe Danielthrows (talk) 22:26, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello! Jennifer Phaneuf --Jlphaneuf (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello! Mark Ledford Mledfo1 (talk) 15:25, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi! Rekara Gage --Rgage21 (talk) 16:30, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi!--Jmulle5 (talk) 17:49, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi! Meghan Hanson --MLeigh11 (talk) 18:32, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Jkirchman1 (talk) 23:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello! (Abby4321 (talk) 03:45, 15 March 2012 (UTC))

--Mricht4 (talk) 18:07, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Grad Student Editors

--Kevin Bearden, Grad Student--Kbeard12 (talk) 21:18, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

--Stephanie Osorno, Grad Student----Sosorno (talk) 21:25, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

--Carrie Brown, Grad Student----Cbrown52 (talk) 21:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Table of Contents Automatically Appears

I just learned that a Table of Contents is supposed to automatically appear when there are three sections in an article. However, this is not happening for me here! How come?

I also noticed that there is a tab at the top of the screen for adding a new section. Do I have to use that, or can I just use two equals signs?

Students who are reading this: Notice that the "I'm looking for help" box appeared on my page when I typed {{helpme}} in the Edit frame.

The Table of contents appears when there are more than three sections. I'll add a new section below to answer your other question. JohnCD (talk) 16:22, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Adding a new section to a talk page

You don't have to use "New section", it's just a convenient way of adding the == == and putting the result at the bottom of a talk page. You get exactly the same result by going to the bottom of the page and adding your own header with == == at either side. JohnCD (talk) 16:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Educational project

I gather this is an educational project. Welcome, again, to Wikipedia. Here are some links you may find helpful:

• Wikipedia:School and university projects
• User:Jbmurray/Advice
• Wikipedia:School and university projects/Instructions for teachers and lecturers
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination

Writing a Wikipedia article differs in some important respects from writing a normal student paper. One of Wikipedia's key content policies is that we do not publish original work - everything in a Wikipedia article needs to be verifiable from a reliable published source. Please read the policy WP:No original research carefully, in particular the section headed "Synthesis of published material that advances a position".

Also, no Wikipedia article is owned by its author - see Wikipedia:Ownership of articles - every article may be edited by anyone. You may prefer to create your article in a user sub-page (see WP:UP#Creating user subpages), and move it into the main encyclopedia when it is ready. But all articles must comply with Wikipedia's policies - in particular, subjects must be notable and content must be verifiable from reliable sources. There is good general advice at WP:Your first article.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 16:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help and suggestions, John CD! Mportolano (talk) 14:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Crazy Example of Vandalism on User:Reaper Eternal's talk page

In class I've mentioned vandalism of pages on Wikipedia. Click here for a crazy example!

Mportolano (talk) 22:49, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Experimenting with Adding a Picture

Click HERE for a tutorial on how to add a picture to your article. Just copy the code from the section in the article that applies to you (left-positioning, right-positioning, etc.) and change the file name. It's best to use a file from Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons to be sure it is copyright safe. More to come as we learn, going forward.

The code I used to insert the picture below is:

[[Image:Vanth.jpg|thumb|left|alt=The Etruscan psychopomp|Etruscan painting from Wikimedia Commons]]

Etruscan painting from Wikimedia Commons

Mportolano (talk) 15:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC) Okay, we can not yet figure out why our caption is not showing.

Mportolano (talk) 15:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

It did not contain 'thumb', which is why it was not showing. Hope this helps. :) - SudoGhost (talk) 16:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks SudoGhost, it did help! Mportolano (talk) 18:09, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

From bullets to paragraph

Hey Prof. Is it okay if I begin my page in a bulleted format and then evolve to paragraph form as a acquire more info? Can you check up on what I am adding and let me know if I'm doing anything incorrectly? Should the information be strickly info. on books and other publications, and their life as an author/editor? Thanks! ````ems411 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ems411 (talk • contribs) 18:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Temporary bullets sound fine to me, although someone may stop by and edit them. As for the info, anything factual and referenced should be fine, so long as it is on the editor's basic life, career, and editorial or authored works. Mportolano (talk) 11:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

How to ask for permission to use a photo NOT in Wikimedia Commons

Photos are going to be the sticking point for many of our American editor articles. Of course, you don't HAVE to have an image in your article to do well on the assignment as a whole. Finding one would make it closer to the ideal article, but I think it is going to be hard unless you can find a free, government photo in the National Archives. How far you want to take your search is up to you.

There seems to be a potential problem even with using thumbnails of books.

If you do find a photo of your editor by someone else, you might want to check out Wikipedia's guidelines [for requesting copyright permission]. It's a very clear, step-by-step process.

As for me, I think I'm going to take the easy way out and eliminate the photo step! Maybe later I will write to my editor about the face shot on his web page, using the guidelines above.

Mportolano 's work on Lou Aronica article

I just wanted to point out the article on Lou Aronica that I've been editing. It's not a model article, by any means, but it's an example of what our class is doing with American editor stubs. A few notes on how I've been doing it:

Instead of writing the article all at one time in Word, I've just been adding to it little by little in spare moments here and there. This seems to work as well as doing it the other way, especially since anybody else can come in and edit it or add to it. A couple of times other Wikipedians have dropped in and added a detail or a source that has helped build the article incrementally.

Also, I did email Lou Aronica himself to ask who the photographer was for one of his photos online. He gave me the photographer's name (Kim Anderson, for this photo: http://www.goodreads.com/photo/author/195467.Lou_Aronica)), but I still am unsure which photographer it is (there are more than one by that name). The photo still may not be worth the time I'd have to put in it. And yet, it's out there if I wanted to follow up with permissions (see note above for instructions on how to write photographers for permission and upload a photo to Wikipedia).

What's remaining on the article that I'd like to do is: a fuller list of books he edited, more complete bibliographic details such as dates and publishers of his novels, and hyperlinks to names and items in the article itself.

Mportolano (talk)

The Perfect Article

The perfect Wikipedia article does not exist, but there are voluminous helps to get you close.

Click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_perfect_article

Mportolano (talk)

References

Hey Prof Portolano, How do I make a reference appear under the reference section as a link? Thanks!

Gfiora2 (talk) 22:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Gfiora2! To make a reference appear, insert your cursor next to the text to reference and click the book icon at the top of the editing window. Enter the info, click Submit, and the rest is done for you. :-) Mportolano (talk) 13:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC) Thanks very much!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gfiora2 (talk • contribs) 15:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

How to Avoid Plagiarism

Here is a Wikipedia newsletter (The Signpost) dedicated to avoiding plagiarism (as opposed to copyright violations). I suggest everyone take a look at it.

Removing the Stub Categorization

When you are done editing a stub, and you think it's expanded enough to be considered a regular Wikipedia article, you can remove the stub designation yourself. It's usually the last thing in the article text in the Edit tab. It's the little code that has "Stub:American editors" in it. Please feel free to remove stub designations for your group members' work, too, if you think it's good. This is our last step in this project, besides our feedback on Blackboard and the final!Mportolano (talk) 14:58, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Tables

Here is a table I created with the table button in the menu above.
Alice in Wikiland
This image is linked from Wikimedia Commons, a repository of images that are copyright free and ready for use in your Wikipedia article.

I am in class adding a question or a new section...--Mportolano (talk) 17:01, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

More advice

I don't really have a lot to add to what I wrote last year, but a few more thoughts:

• There are "WikiProjects" - groups of users interested in particular subjects. If there is a WikiProject covering an area where any of your students are editing, a message on the project's talk page might bring comments or help. The directory of WikiProjects is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.
• User Rob Schnautz (WMF) (talk) has recently been appointed as Education Program community liaison. I'm not too sure just what that means, but see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-12/Interview.
• If you haven't already, make a note of your project at WP:SUP.
• Read Wikipedia:Copy-paste and make sure that all your students do. A traumatic experience with another student program has made student copyright violations a very sensitive area. (If you want to see how wrong things can go, look at the beginning of Wikipedia talk:India Education Program/Archive 1).
• Wikipedia:A Primer for newcomers is a recently-written attempt at a one-stop Rough Guide to Wikipedia.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 23:21, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks!--Mportolano (talk) 19:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Article on Reliability of Wikipedia

According to several statistical studies, the reliability of Wikipedia is comparable to many other, more specialized sources. This is true despite the vandalism discussed above. Click here for the full story.--Mportolano (talk) 19:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Getting started with the USEP

Hi there, and thanks for the note. Rob Pongsajapan is the regional ambassador for the Greater Chesapeake region. He'll be your primary contact for joining the program in the coming semester. I don't think there are campus ambassadors already at Towson, so he'd probably appreciate if you could recommend a few students who are technologically inclined and good at teaching peers in a classroom setting-- they'd essentially take on the task of teaching your students the Wikipedia interface and cultural aspects. You can reach the other Rob at Special:EmailUser/Pongr. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:38, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!--Mportolano (talk) 17:09, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank You

Dr. Portolano,

I just wanted to say thank you for pushing me out of my comfort zone. I usually hate technology, but you make a valid point that editing is happening more and more online. I'm glad that I was able to learn new skills. Also, I'm really glad we covered proofreader's marks because they came in handy with my internship at BrickHouse Books, Inc. when I had to edit manuscripts. Thanks again for a great semester. --Mricht4 (talk) 15:49, 15 May 2012 (UTC)