User talk:Ck07

link formatting
Hi Chaim! I responded at the course discussion page about the biased sources issue. As I'm sure you're aware, many articles on Wikipedia are quite bad. Armenian Genocide denial is clearly the site of some heated editing, and on controversial topics like that, the letter of the NPOV and reliable sources policies are the least of the problems that make it hard to forge a good, stable article. Browse the talk page of that article to see what debates on such issues often look like.

That's something to keep in mind as your students choose articles to work on; large, well-argued topics like Armenia Genocide, or even 2008 South Ossetia war, will be major challenges for students to effectively improve&mdash;although it's certainly possible, and success would be a great contribution. In general, granular sub-topics related to such issues might make better projects for the students.

As for link formatting, I reformatted the links on the course discussion page so you can see the wiki markup for links. Any page on English Wikipedia can be linked by enclosing everything after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ in two pairs of brackets. So this: Neutral point of view looks like this: Neutral point of view.

You can change the displayed text of a link by adding a pipe after the page name, followed by the text you want to display. So this: The Wikipedia policy about neutrality looks like this: The Wikipedia policy about neutrality.

You can also link to pages on other Wikimedia sites by using their "interwiki" prefixes. For example, the essay on Meta-Wiki that you pointed to could be linked like this: Borderline case

I'm not sure what was going on with your browser tabs crashing; that's not normal behavior on Wikipedia. I'll ask around, but it's probably one of those things that is particular to your system configuration :( --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:29, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Sage, thanks. I'm still confused by the link issue since some of what (I thought) I did looked just the same as some of your examples.  I'll get a chance to try again soon, when I try to upload the list of assignments.


 * I'm less worried about the students finding something to do. I see that the courses signed up so far come in two flavors--ones where the Wikipedia portion is designed as primary and ones where it is designed as a bonus to a course with a specific substantive focus.  So pages that are already good are no problem from my point of view.  In addition, (nearly) all of the students will be assessing a particular issue, namely the determinants of success or failure of efforts at intervention.  Undoubtedly some will focus on particular sections of pages or will seek to split off new pages.  The South Ossetia page covers a great deal but I see some good openings. --Ck07 (talk) 01:41, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm not worried about your students finding things to do either. I just wanted to give you an idea of what to expect if your students do work on sections of controversial topics... they'll be jumping right in to one of the great challenges of Wikipedia, working with people you disagree with to try to create good content. It's rewarding when it succeeds, but very frustrating when it doesn't.


 * Another formatting issue: it's conventional to create threaded discussions by indenting replies to earlier comments. This is done by adding a colon to the beginning of paragraph (or multiple colons for multiple indents).--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:51, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I was just wondering about how that was done. I read the 100 most recent changes to Armenian Genocide Denial but I confess that I did not understand most.  Many appeared to be technical rather than substantive issues, but there were others less obvious.  I think I'll need to have the students look at change histories both before and after making a change themselves.Ck07 (talk) 02:14, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Hello
Hi Chiam! I noticed that you copied the above welcome template onto your course page and also doubled the sections. If I understand correctly, what you actually meant to do is create only the assignment section. Do you want me to remove the double sections? It looks a little confusing right now. The two lists of ambassadors you posted are not identical. One contains the complete list of ambassadors, both online and campus, while the other contains the online ambassadors listing. The 2nd link would be most relevant since LeHigh does not have a campus ambassador. Bejinhan  talks   13:39, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That was the helpme template. Putting it up on a talk page would generate a help request to helpers in our IRC channel. You can add a tlp after the template so that it would not go 'live'. For example, . Remove the tlp| if you want it to go live. I am one of the online ambassadors and would be glad to help your students.  Bejinhan   talks   13:47, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * First, thanks for the mentor offer. Second, I'm still not sure how I transfer Gagdet850's post to here without losing the links.  Can you explain?--Ck07 (talk) 13:51, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * You can safely copy and paste the whole template over onto the course page without loosing the links. The template is a welcome template. There are other variations of the welcome template here. The links are pretty useful. I did some changes on your course page. Hope you don't mind them. I changed your links into wiki-links. Bejinhan   talks   14:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Linking urls
The easiest way to do it is like this: [url Words that you want to appear in blue]. Example "Here is the Main Page." Here's a great way to cheat and learn: Look at the edit screen of articles that have links like the ones you want to use and copy the formatting. -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:07, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Linking & misc
Hi, do you use other internet browsers? IE does not always work well with certain wikipedia pages, particularly scripts and such. If you have a Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, it would be good to use it for accessing Wikipedia. I'm sorry if my edits caused confusion. Wiki-links are always used instead of the whole link as itself, whether in an article or anywhere here. :) It's more convenient and it's part of the Wiki-markup lessons. Bejinhan   talks   03:02, 16 September 2010 (UTC) Benjinhan,

..This advice is very helpful. Could you post it on the course talk page, rather than here, so that all the students can see it?

..As for Wiki-links, I'm asking you to treat the course main page differently, keeping in mind that it is not an encyclopedia article but a pedagogical communication device. I or a student might intentionally leave a full URL visible to help each other judge whether or why it might be useful. I'll bet that if you routinely consider that possibility you'll often be able to guess when. Thanks.--Ck07 (talk) 12:32, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, I have also left some important notes on the course's talk page.


 * Ah, ok, I understand. Thanks for informing me. :) Bejinhan   talks   13:38, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Benjinhan, thanks for your willingness to consider the special needs of different kinds of contributors. It is not a small thing.--Ck07 (talk) 21:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. It is required. :) Bejinhan   talks   03:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Available mentors
Hi. Just a quick note to reiterate that all of the "Available mentors" on the ambassadors page have specifically volunteered to mentor your students. We all specifically declared to Sage Ross, before being added to that page, that we wanted to do this, and we all volunteered to undertake the time commitment. We are eager for your students to send us questions and/or select us to mentor them. In my experience, btw, new Wikipedia users ought to make a few edits a day to gain fluency with the Wikipedia software, so you may want to suggest to your students that they make a few edits just to practice. There are always lots of articles that need copy editing (see this list), which is a fairly straightforward way to begin learning the software. I'll leave it to you as to whether you want to copy this suggestion to the project page, because I don't want to clutter up your project page or overwhelm your students with stuff that you don't want them to worry about yet. :-)    All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 13:52, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Re-ordering sections on a page
The only way to re-order sections on a page is to edit the whole page (using the edit button at the top rather than the one for a particular section) and then cut-and-paste the sections into the order you want them. Cheers --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * For your course talk page (in case that's what you were thinking of), you should also feel free to simply delete any sections that aren't useful, or create new subpages and cut-and-paste some of the content there.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sage is right, there is no other way of moving sections except copy and paste. If you have any questions feel free to ask,Sadads (talk) 01:38, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks.--Ck07 (talk) 14:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Linking to other Wikiprojects
Hi, professor. You asked: I don't seem to have got the formmating right; could you explain?

Yes, you were very close! You tried to link it like this [url|reader-friendly name]. The main thing that prevented this from working is that the article is not on Wikipedia. Had it been on Wikipedia, you could have linked it this way, as you know: reader-friendly name. However, that won't work for projects outside Wikipedia. You can always link any link outside of Wikipedia like this: [url reader-friendly name]. So, you were almost there; you just needed a space instead of a pipe. There is a more sophisticated way to link to other wikiprojects, but I recommend this way, because it always works. Sage can probably tell you about the more sophisticated options. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Watchlists and Preferences

 * You then asked: I have "watch this page" checked for both the course and discussion pages, I do not seem to actually get notices of changes. Any idea why?


 * Ha! I have a THEORY:  Perhaps you are not watching the page in your main user account?  Make sure you watchlist them when you are logged in correctly.  Hmmm.  What else could it be?  Are you checking your watchlist by clicking on "My watchlist" at the top of every page?  This will only appear if you are logged in.  Let me know if either of these work....  Happy editing!  -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Another possibility is that your "preferences" are not set correctly. Click on "My Preferences" at the top and set all your preferences just the way you want them. Let me know if any of them are boggling. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:28, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * One preference that you might want to change from the default, in the "watchlist" section of the preferences, is the toggle for "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent". By default, only the most recent change to each page will appear in your watchlist.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Sage: Thanks. What I have now done is set "expand watchlist to show all changes" and "watch all pages that I edit."

Ssilvers: I understood the part about having to be logged in, but not the rest of your advice--do you mean that I could have more than one account and not know it?


 * Well, I wondered about it, since you have often edited from your IP address without logging in, but I guess it is very unlikely. How is the watchlist working now?  My basic advice is to play around and experiment.  Do you have a local campus ambassador who can come by and see what's happening on your screen?  I'll let Sage advise you on the questions below.  -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:07, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Could either of you suggest a set of preference settings for a student in a Public Policy Outreach course on the assumption that they want to know about everything related to:


 * their own activity;
 * course page activity; and
 * activity on the page(s) they intend to work on;

but nothing else?

Thanks.--Ck07 (talk) 13:20, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, I'll give it a shot.
 * In the "watchlist" tab of the preferences, select "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent", change "Days to show in watchlist" to 7 (the max), and select "Add pages I edit to my watchlist".
 * All the other default settings are good ones for new editors, I think. The "Add a clock in the personal toolbar..." option in the "User interface gadgets" section of the "gadgets" tab is handy, and it might be less confusing if students adjust the "date and time" preferences according to whatever they are most comfortable with.  But those are pretty minor things.  There are some powerful advanced features that can be enabled through preferences, but for newcomers they are more likely to confuse than help.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:58, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

ISBN numbers
As you say, the guidelines say that ISBN numbers are optional, however most GA and FA reviewers require them, and an article is unlikely to be promoted to GA without them. So, it is best practice to add them from the beginning, so you don't have to scramble around later when you nominate your article for GA or FA. All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)