User:1013-christi/archive

My Project
Buffalo Ridge is an important windfarm located in the southwest corner of Minnesota. There is a lot of information about Buffalo Ridge, like its history, location, purpose, process, and customers/owners. There is also a lot of information about windmills and windfarms. Many people in Minnesota don't know what Buffalo Ridge is and I would like to write this page to change that. Buffalo Ridge is one of the largest windfarms in the country and of the states surrounding Minnesota, was the first of its kind to be made. There is currently no page that I have found which even mentions Buffalo ridge so I would like to create a page called "Buffalo Ridge Wind farm"

Wiki Models
 * Hydro electricity
 * Fossil fuel power plant
 * Wind farm
 * Renewable energy
 * Wind power

Linking Articles
 * Windmill
 * Wind farms
 * Moraine
 * Lincoln County, Minnesota
 * Hendricks, Minnesota


 * Thoughts from Josh. Christi, this sounds like a good project. Remember, your final article needs to be 1500-2000 words of concise encyclopedic material. The Wiki Model articles you've found are good because they are strong articles, but they may not be useful as models for your page, as they cover much broader topics. Have you found articles that are about specific wind farms? Have other managed to write 1500-2000 articles about sites the size of Buffalo Ridge? What kind of information have they included? Will you be able to find multiple, independent references? If you have any questions about your project proposal, write me a note here, and write "QUESTION FOR JOSH" in the edit summary box when you hit the "save page" button. I'll stop by later to answer. 1013-josh 21:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Note: project changed from Buffalo Ridge wind farm to Buffalo Ridge.

Workshop: Buffalo Ridge
Workshop Guidelines

Hello Christi, I thought that the article was very informative. The concern about the bats and birds is interesting. Also the discussion about the wind farms was intriguing. Especially, the statistic that the energy created by the wind can power up to 110,000 homes. Before this article I thought that wind power wasn't very practical. The article is also well organized.Sometimes the article has quantifiers that need elaboration. For instance the sentence "It was concluded by this same study that 2.45 to 3.21 bats die per turbine which is very low compared to the number of bat deaths by lighthouses, communication towers, tall buildings, power lines, and fences" has the quantifier very low which might be NPOV issue because the reader does not have the information to judge comparison them self. Again the sentence "According to the studies, humans are more dangerous to bird populations than windmills." might be a NPOV issue because the information has already evaluated for the reader. It would be interesting to know how the tornado of 1992 changed the landscape of Buffalo Ridge. Finally, I appreciate the map showing where in Minnesota Buffalo Ridge is, but the area is hard to see. Can you outline or color the image with photoshop to make the region more distinct? Or if you can give me the link I can try to make the region more the distinct.

--1013-Andrew 01:10, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey Christi-

I thought your article was very interesting and I was suprised by many of the facts presented. I can't believe that this is the only wind farm in Minnesota and was curius to know why other projects haven't been started. That is not completly applicable to your article but I am sure you add this subject there if you were looking for more information. I thought the part about the wind farm itself was the most interesting and if you could find any more info that would be great. I think you need to have some footnotes added to your article in this section. After specific facts you should always name the source it came frome. The climate section could also use footnotes. You also mentiong how the bat deaths by turbines is much lower then various other ways and it would good to have numbers for those death tolls. It might be interesting if you could find information on different average wind speeds for the buffalo ridge area so you could compare to other areas in Minnesota, maybe California wind farms other statistics. It would also be good to have information on the driving forces behind creating the wind farm. You could go more in depth on the legislater that you mention and the different companies that are funding the project. Maybe look for stats on the cost of the project and how long it will take the wind turbines to pay for themselves. Just some info on the cost effectiveness of the wind farm and wind energy produced by the farm. Overall it was well written encyclopedic article.

1013-Isaac 02:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I've nominated an article you worked on, Buffalo Ridge, for consideration to appear on the Main Page as part of Did you know. You can see the "hook" for the article at Template talk:Did you know where you can improve it if you see fit. 1013-josh 22:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking good, Christi. Well-organized, well-researched, and engaging to read. I like how you've managed to incorporate the geology of the ridge and the construction of the wind farm in the same article, and I like your inclusion of current studies to help us make sense of the birds and bats controversy. I did find myself wanting to know a little bit more about the geography (not the geology) of the ridge. Are there towns on the ridge, or is it just "near" the towns. Can you give us a sense of how "large" a "large expanse of hills" is? How long is it? Or how many square miles does it cover? Is most of the ridge farmland? Or public land? Or is it all owned by the wind farm? Is it populated? If it's mostly tall-grass prairie, as you say, I would assume that it must be some kind of protected public land, but you never make this point clear. Also, I think you would benefit from using more foonotes throughout. You are sometimes too quick to link to external websites from the body text when a footnote would serve the purpose better. Finally, I think you can do a little work at the level of the sentence to find a cleaner line through the prose. Sometimes you let your clauses get away from you a bit, and if you can pull it back to a cleaner line, you will help the reader through this dense information. Overall, I thought this was an excellent article with high potential to contribute significantly to Wikipedia. You might post at WikiProject Minnesota asking for feedback. 1013-josh 12:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello, Christi,
 * I really like your article so far. It seems like you have a lot of credible information and that you have strong specifics.  It also looks like you are almost finished and I think everything looks pretty good.  I went in and edited a few grammatical errors, but other than that, it looks great.  You may want to check if any of your sentences sound like opinions.  If you're looking for adding more to your article, you might want to talk about like Josh said, the geography, or specifics about the wind turbines.  All in all, I think this is great so far, and I will be adding comments until Friday!  Good luck!

--Jessica1013-jessica 16:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, Christi, it's Jessica again. I know you're almost done with your article, but I don't really see a link to Buffalo, Minnesota, the city it's located in(I think that is). If not, then totally ignore this, but there's a Wikipedia article called Buffalo, Minnesota that you could link for interested articles! --Jessica 1013-jessica 02:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC) You're on the Main Page!

Hi Christi, your article is currently featured on the Main Page of Wikipedia in the "Did You Know?" fact box. It will be up there for the 6+ hours. You may get some strangers stopping by your article as a result, so check the page history. 1013-josh 18:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Participation: Christi

 * added internal and external links to Andrew, Isaac, and Jessica's pages also some references to Isaac and Jessica's pages. Also some minor grammatical changes.  1013-christi 21:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * added to my own page about climate and important tornado that struck the area 1013-christi 07:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * added external links section to Andrew's page and added an external link...added external link to Isaacs page and added external links heading as well as external links to jessica's page.1013-christi 19:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)  Wrote workshop critique with suggestions for jessica 1013-christi 19:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)  wrote workshop critique for Andrew and Isaac 1013-christi 03:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * added a paragraph to jessica's page about new exhibits in the museum. also added a heading. 1013-christi 21:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Homework
donezo!1013-christi 20:07, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

done with edit on what dreams may come 1013-christi 07:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Good work. I like that you added a comment to the edit summary box to make it easier for other users to follow your changes. Remember to provide a wiki link to the articles you edit for homework. You may want to add the film page to your watchlist so you can see what becomes of your changes. 1013-josh 07:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Consent I give consent to continue on with this project


 * Okay, great! Let me know at any time if you change your mind and would like to switch to an off-line research assignment. 1013-josh 07:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

100 words Done with introduction 1013-christi 19:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Christi, the assignment was 300-500 words... Remember, you have a full rough draft (1000 words) due Friday, so don't leave it to the last minute. Also, your sources section just has information about the wind farm. I thought you were trying to find information more generally about the ridge (geology, historical use, etc.) Do you have sources for that info. yet? 1013-josh 20:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

300-500 word assignment 4 hours of sleep= a sloppy christi 378 words1013-christi 02:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Looking good. 1013-josh 18:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

assignment? i dont know if we were suppost to do the footnotes and internal/external links for tomorrow but i did em anyways.1013-christi 00:39, 25 April 2007 (UTC)


 * No, but it never hurts to get a head start! Footnotes and references are due on Friday with the rough draft. See my talk page for details on Friday's homework. 1013-josh 17:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

1000 words doneeeee 1013-christi 04:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Good work. I think you're ready to transfer over to the mainspace. I prepped your draft for the move, and tomorrow I'll help you copy it over. 1013-josh 07:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Note to wikipedians about improvements donnnnneeee 1013-christi 18:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

"FINAL Draft" ooo I found a bunch more info about the geography, read over my article a few times and even added two pictures taken by my friend who gave me permission...i hope they are ok. so im done 1013-christi 22:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Notes from Josh & the Class
Hey, I just posted some helpful research links; don't miss them! 1013-josh 21:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Notes from Wikipedians
Wikipedians, if you're commenting specifically about the Buffalo Ridge article, feel free to chime in in the "Workshop" section above.

Welcome!
Hello, 1013-christi, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type   and your question on your user talk page, and someone will show up shortly to answer.

Here are a few good links for newcomers:
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We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --Geniac 02:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Buffalo Ridge
Thanks writing the Buffalo Ridge article. I hope you don't mind that I made some changes; if you have any questions about why I changed what I did, feel free to ask. I like what you've done so far and I hope you continue contributing, once your class is over. The Minnesota Wikipedians have a great time working together - we have even gotten together IRL to meet each other a few times. Happy editing! --Appraiser 13:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your question about Native Americans living in the Buffalo Ridge area: I don't know all the specifics of where Sioux Indians lived in the area, but Pipestone National Monument, in Pipestone, Minnesota, is a very important site to the Dakota. The Dakota War of 1862 wasn't really focused in the area, being a little more centered along the Minnesota River, but the Dakota lost a lot of land after the war and were exiled to reservations. It wasn't too good of a deal for them, really. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 20:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * When you visited Buffalo Ridge last year, did you take any photographs of the wind farms? A good photo would be a good addition to several articles.--Appraiser 21:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

pictures
hello,

''in reference to your question about pictures of buffalo ridge... i didnt take any pictures but i have a friend who did take pictures and gave me permission to use them...how would i go about getting them okayed to put on my page? 1013-christi 18:01, 9 May 2007 (UTC)''


 * The easiest way (due to ownership) is to have your friend upload them and release them to "the public domain". Your friend can just put them in one of your sandboxes (type "User:1013-christi/images" in the search window; click "search"; then click on "start the User:1013-christi/images page" link).  Then put [[Image:uniquename1.jpg]] on the page, selecting a real name instead of uniquename1.  Then click "show preview".  Your image will at first be a red link.  Just click on that link and follow the directions.  You'll be able to browse your hard drive (or flash drive) until you find the picture.  Type in the photographers name, date taken, and location if you want.  Then click on "licensing" and select the GFDL for artist's own work.  Then click "upload file".  And Valla!  The picture will show up there.  Then you can use it in any article you want to.  A typical format is [[Image:windmill666.jpg/thumb/right/Windmills on [[Buffalo Ridge]]]] .  Feel free to ask questions if you get stuck.--Appraiser 18:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)