User talk:Ryan (Wiki Ed)/Political science

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback on this draft. Please leave comments in a new section below. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:00, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Online encyclopedia considerations sub-subsection

I like this guideline very much. It has the makings of a rubric to grade student projects.

I added the sub-subsection "Online encyclopedia considerations" from my own thoughts on my User page.

I wonder if the students should be encouraged to take the time to acquaint themselves with the wp:cite book and wp:cite web convention for references and bibliography. I have only recently begun to use the notation convention <ref>[[#ref=name|Name year, p.xxx]], in part because it generates a clean Reference list with each footnote linked to its Bibliography citation, --- and in part because so many pages seem to be riddled with HARVREF errors because editors have difficulty mastering the alternative convention. In any case, I believe that using wp:cite book for references is a major hurdle for an article to successfully making GA status. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 15:00, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Online encyclopedia considerations

An online encyclopedia must be accessible online or it cannot achieve its reason for existence. One which aspires to be accessible internationally adopts a style to accommodate a wide variety of browsers and pipelines.

• For most narrative articles, they should be no longer than 10,000 to 12,000 words. The word count for each article is in the screen-left menu under the Wikipedia globe logo. See the article sidebar "Toolbox > Page size". If you find your enthusiasm taking flight, adding sections which inflates the article over that, some of your sections should be spun off into their own daughter articles.
• For illustration of narratives, such as portraits, maps, charts and graphs, the upper limit for images should be an image-to-text ratio of 1 : 350, no more than 1 : 300. Take care to space the images out so that they do not bleed into unrelated sections. See image guidelines for coding. If your enthusiasm over-populates an article, some of your illustrations should be ganged into image galleries for use by other editors in other articles.
• Connect with other articles in the online encyclopedia with inline links explaining terms and describing individuals and places, and use a "See also" subsection above the "References" subsection to link to other related WP articles. Use an "External links" subsection below the references section to link to related articles online.
• Your good work will be modified by subsequent edits. Most will be collaborative edits made by active contributors in the subject area. But editors are diverse. They will also include defensive PhDs with competing scholarship, political hacks with a hobbyhorse Point of View, and drive-by adolescent pranksters. An active editor tries to advance each article of interest on the quality scale from start class as they gain experience by working to achieve consensus on the Talk page, inviting Peer review, and nominating well crafted articles for Good Article status, or even seeking Featured Article status for encyclopedia-wide recognition.

@TheVirginiaHistorian: Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate the suggestion of the additional section. I hope you don't mind that I've moved it here for the time being.

This handout is intended to be specific to editing political science articles, supplementing the other Wiki Ed brochures and training modules. You can see the other materials here. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I've now linked that page from the description. I think that the content you've added touches on some very important aspects of editing (and Wikipedia in general) that we would indeed want students to understand. Right now we include some of this (what to do if you're reverted, working with the community, image use guidelines, using the talk page, etc.) in materials like the interactive training and brochures on editing and illustrating Wikipedia. The beginning and end of this brochure are intended largely as relevant highlights/summaries of parts of those materials, but ideally this is never the only resource a student has. :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:37, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Okay. I'm glad the scope is larger than this alone. Maybe my notes can be incorporated elsewhere. I'm a retired social studies and government school teacher and very much enjoy contributing to wikipedia as a hobby. It is sometimes difficult to frame the nuisance reversions as noise-level distraction, but mostly my experience has been positive here for over five years, and I would hope that some of the participating students would take up the "hobby" if that is a fair characterization of what a scholar does here.

My exemplar for wikipedia contributions and fair minded judgement is User:Rjensen on many pages where I have an interest, a retired college professor and published scholar. It might be useful to note some of the more active political science administrators as resources for the students as well. I know that Rjensen has consulted with me and joined in discussions on Talk pages I have been involved in, mostly to support me, sometimes to make corrections, but always to further the interests of the encyclopedia article at issue with well sourced contributions of his own. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:41, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Notecardforfree

Ryan (Wiki Ed), first and foremost, I want to thank you for taking the time to create this guide. I am sure it will serve as an invaluable resource for many future students, contributors, and teachers. I understand that this guide is meant to cover a broad range of political science articles, including articles about legislation and other articles that generally pertain to law and legal studies. I have a few general comments:

1. Is it possible to tell the readers of this guide that it is absolutely critical that they cite every assertion with an inline citation to a reliable source? I have seen many articles written by students that only include general references at the end of the article, and I think it is important to remind students that Wikipedia guidelines generally require inline citations.
2. You may want to inform readers about relevant sub-sections of the Wikipedia manual of style (e.g. MOS:LAW). Those sections also provide important guidelines for creating appropriate titles for new articles and other formatting conventions.
3. I particularly like the portion of the guide that encourages students to think critically about the sources that they use. I would also encourage students to compare commentary in secondary sources with the text of the primary source (this is particularly important when looking at case law and legislation). Per MOS:LAW, to the extent that a primary source and a secondary source conflict, the primary source should be given priority.

I hope these comments are useful and/or helpful. If I have other thoughts, I'll be sure to share them. Thanks again for your work on this! All the best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 20:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Published

@Notecardforfree and TheVirginiaHistorian: Thanks again for your feedback. I made some copyedits and a couple tweaks based on your suggestions. If you're interested, the published version is available on Commons, Wiki Ed's website, and in print form for our students editing in these areas.

File:Editing Wikipedia articles on Political Science (Wiki Ed).pdf

We do update these from time to time so feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you have feedback about this or other training materials (e.g. dashboard.wikiedu.org/training or the various materials at wikiedu.org/for-instructors) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:28, 28 December 2016 (UTC)