Wikipedia talk:Training/For students/Citing sources

Semiprotect?

@Sage (Wiki Ed): Semiprotect? Same whoops twice now. Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

User:AKoval (WMF): done.--ragesoss (talk) 22:26, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

@Sage (Wiki Ed): Thanks! Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

That's because the text says "Check that the bottom of the page has a References Section. If not, type: ==References==". I'd have been amazed if some students hadn't done exactly that on this page!

My suggestion would be to replace "Adding an inline reference is easy:" - conceptually, it isn't; and at this stage they may have no example to work from unless they watch the video before reading the text (but the layout discourages that). Something along the lines of "When you have a reference to add to an article - as shown in the video - you should follow these steps:" might give the cue to watch the video where practising in a sandbox is emphasised. I assume that the steps here are meant to be a summary and something the student can refer back to at a later stage. In passing. I should mention that using "Notes" as the heading in the video and "References" on this page is unhelpful to the learner. We should aim to present a consistent message when first introducing a learning topic to the student; variations and alternatives should be presented later, once the initial learning has been accomplished. --RexxS (talk) 12:43, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, RexxS, for this feedback. Students have done exactly that on this page, which is why I asked to semiprotect it. However, in addition to that, we may also want to look at revising the wording of the instructions. We could say, "Check that your sandbox page has a References Section," and that might reduce confusion. And, to your point that adding refs may not in fact be easy for everyone, we could say: "To add a reference to an article - as shown in the video - follow these steps:" I'm not sure what we can be done about the title in the video not syncing up with the title on this page. Pinging @Sage (Wiki Ed): Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 13:28, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

The problem with protecting pages is that it can confuse newcomers when they can't find the edit link - and then you need to explain protection (and its levels) to them. Protection is probably sensible for this page right now, but if you can eliminate the problem by changing the wording, it would make the learner's experience that little bit easier. You should experiment with the sort of wording you suggest.

One possible way to avoid the 'Notes'/'References' heading (not 'title') differences is to use 'Notes' in your instructions here for the section heading to achieve consistency with the video. This would have the added benefit of not using the word 'references' both to describe the sources themselves and for the name of the section where they display. Some learners might find that helpful, others may not, so there's no perfect solution unfortunately. See what Sage thinks. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:55, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

@AKoval (WMF) and RexxS: Thanks. I've reworked a bit of the text along the lines you suggested; hopefully that will make things a little clearer.. I didn't explicitly mention the video, because the intention with the videos is to make them supplemental but not necessary; many users like them, but some strongly prefer to just use text so that they can go at their own pace. (There's also the issue that many users can't watch the videos without going to YouTube.)--ragesoss (talk) 16:17, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Ragesoss, for reworking that text. RexxS, does that resolve that matter satisfactorily? There may still be an issue with regard to which page we're referring to here, i.e. the sandbox and students confusing it for the training page that they're on. Instead of saying "Check that the bottom of the page has a "Notes" or "References" section." should it say "Check that your sandbox page has a a "Notes" or "References" section."? The next page in the training (Wikipedia:Training/For students/Citing sources tutorial) does say "Try making citations in a sandbox" and still a number of students have put citations on the page (see here). So, even if this page were to say "sandbox," there's no guarantee this won't keep happening, but it might be worth a try. Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

It's impossible, of course, to produce text that can't be misread or misinterpreted and you'll always have someone make those sort of mistakes. The best we can ever hope to do is to minimise the rate and it's always worth trying to refine our presentations through experience of what goes wrong. For example, in my humble opinion it's better to say "in your sandbox" implicitly if that's what we want. As an alternative, perhaps tell the audience something like "when you've found an article that you want to add a reference to, ...". The only way to find out what is an improvement is to try it out, of course. Nevertheless, it helps if you're very clear about how students will be using the page: are they coming to it for the first time and trying to learn from it? or is this a resource that they are referring to because they are actually editing an article and need to remind themselves of the detail of a skill they have already partially acquired? In the former case they really need to use the video because most learners learn much better by seeing a demonstration than by reading a description of it. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 23:29, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

artist

i am student in 12 class — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deepak kumar Parjapat (talk • contribs) 02:33, 21 October 2017 (UTC)