User talk:Kmoira/Digital teaching platform

Additions
I justed added 10 more third party sources to the article on Digital teaching platforms. Can you take a look at it and let me hear your feedback? Thanks. Kmoira (talk) 16:59, 4 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Continued at User talk:Kmoira/Digital teaching platform Cheers. --Lexein (talk) 20:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions
--Lexein (talk) 21:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking good so far. I trust you'll be able to tie your citations to each specific claim made.
 * Wikipedia's audience is general, with a few specialists. It's not a marketing or sales tool. It's important to, for a product line like this with such verbose marketspeak attached to it, to tone that way down, so that people can solidly learn what the product is, where it's used, how it's better than (something), what people are behind it, what other teachers, administrators, IT departments think of it.
 * Be specific as possible from the general to the specific, broad to narrow.
 * References:
 * 1) Use page numbers in citation where possible, usually after the publisher's name; p. 243.
 * 2) Format citations in a semi-standard way - the examples I've edited group the url and title so that clicking on the title gets you to the url. :lastname, firstname; 2ndlast, 2ndfirst (date). [url title]. publisher  This is by far the most common reference formatting style used at Wikipedia.  I have NOT cleaned up all of them.
 * 3) When adding name= to a ref, use quotes: name="Press" - using quotes permits spaces in names. Unquoted names with spaces will result in big red errors, as you saw. Names should be short, anyways.
 * 4) The School CIO article doesn't list an author, but you've added "Christine Weiser" - where is she listed in the pubication? And the date was wrong, I adjusted it per the webpage. Or was this a press release? It's important to be brutally truthful with these sources.
 * 5) Citations go after punctuation, with no intervening space, like this.12
 * 6) Bunched up citations should actually be distributed3 to support the matching claim,4 rather than left all till the end and bunched up.1234

I just made a ton of edits to the page. Can you take a look again? I wasn't sure if I should delete the notes you left on it or not. Kmoira (talk) 20:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Discussion from my talk page continues here

 * Sources are good, and good work so far. Much more work to do, but it's getting there.

--Lexein (talk) 21:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Citations should be specific.  Include page numbers, and even paragraph numbers where appropriate to reduce wading through pages of text.
 * 2) Video sources are fine if they are legal, licensed.  They should be relevant to the content, and used as a source - use the Template:Cite media for usage and examples; this template includes the time an event or quote occurs - this is important or citation specificity. If they are NOT required to support the article, but are still relevant, they can go in the External Links section.  YouTube videos can be included if they are hosted in an official channel (verified YouTube user). Examples: AP (Associated Press), CBS.
 * 3) Citation location is important. Each inline reference should be placed close to the claim (sentence or sentences, or paragraph) it supports.  "Studies have shown that books are good,[1] computers have been tested to be more effected at specific learning tasks."  <--- note specific page number - reduces wading through reams of text
 * 4) Citation formatting: I've tidied the references provided in the first few paragraphs - I think you'll be able to conform the rest of them.
 * 5) Where references are used in two places, you can use just the named part for the second, like ref name="JerusPost"/> <-- the ending slash-bracket means this refers to an already existing named references

Suggestions 2 - moved from article to here

 * Be as specific as possible from the general to the specific, broad to narrow
 * Use page numbers where possible, usually after the publisher's name; p. 243.

--Lexein (talk) 02:07, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) when adding name= to a ref, use quotes: name="Press" - using quotes permits spaces in names. Unquoted names with spaces will result in big red errors, as you saw. Names should be short, anyways.
 * 2) The School CIO article doesn't list an author, but you've added "Christine Weiser" - where is she listed in the publication? And the date was wrong, I adjusted it per the webpage. Or was this a press release? It's important to be brutally truthful with these sources.
 * 3) Citations go after punctuation, with no intervening space, like this.12
 * 4) Bunched up citations should actually be distributed3 to support the matching claim,4 rather than left all till the end and bunched up.1234

Suggestions 3
Glad to see the additions: --Lexein (talk) 02:07, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Large quotes. "Time To Know uses a “Web-based infrastructure ..." - such large quotes or paraphrases should be either attributed somehow in the article prose, or broken up into smaller quotes, or simply paraphrased. Attribution example: "As reviewed by some folks, the firm "uses Web-based infrastructure".
 * Problems with the listed books, #21 to #36: There's no source cited which makes the claims in that paragraph about those authors and their books. The listed books aren't sources themselves, so in my opinion, the books don't go in this article.  Sorry to say, listing all those authors sounds a bit like WP:Puffery - it's probably better to list the top two or three, and what major theory of theirs led to Time to Know.  One good rule of thumb about notability: have any of those authors made any reference to Time to Know?  Everybody has influences, and everybody influences somebody, but "influences" are rarely noteworthy within an article.

I saw your comments from yesterday about the article. I have corrected those two additional criticisms. Do you have any further recommendations? (I wasn't sure where I was supposed to respond to your suggestions.) Kmoira (talk) 17:54, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

--Lexein (talk) 19:55, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Just a note: Primary sources are ok if reinforced by a 3rd-party source.  Example: In some random lecture, Dude said, "Piaget's work inspired me to color-code the lesson plans." (cite press release) The Kansas State Schools board, in reviewing the package, gave it a B- for "blind and hearing-impaired accessibility", and an A- for "colorblind preparedness." (cite report)
 * 2) Citations of any long source (longer than 5 pages, in my opinion) should always include a page number. See WP:Citing Sources.  I've indicate with which page?
 * 3) It's helpful to provide ISBN numbers for book citations, if the book isn't available at Google Books
 * 4) I just hauled off and fixed the cite layout to make the cited title into a link with single brackets - Google Home which looks like Google Home.
 * 5) Now start WP:Wikifying.  This is the process of selectively WP:Wikilinking non-trivial words or phrases which have are notable enough for their own articles, which will help elucidate points made in the article.  One example is social constructivism, which I've wikilinked. Only the first instance of a phrase is wikilinked, though exceptions can occur in very long articles, which this is not.

A reception section, just for reviews
A section called ==Reception== would be helpful. That last line in the article - is that an independent review? Put that in the reception section, along with everything else that evaluates the product, packaging, cost, ease of use, support - and include negative criticism too. The article, like all Wikipedia articles, must have a WP:NPOV - neutral point of view. Reviews are the same way. This basically means two things: 1. the Voice of Wikipedia neither likes nor dislikes the subject of the article - it reports what specific, reliable, verifiable sources have said about the subject. And 2. we neither like nor dislike the sources. This doesn't mean articles have to be in passive voice, or humorless: After the explosion, school officials acted "strangely", according to Fire Chief Wiggins, who applied the word "suspicious" to both the blaze and to the "giddy" school staff.[1] See also WP:Writing better articles for more ideas. See also List of animals with fraudulent diplomas for examples of dry humor, which do not push a POV, based strictly on news items. --Lexein (talk) 23:39, 15 October 2010 (UTC)