User talk:Pleft

August 2009
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. ''I'm sorry, but your blog is not a reliable source. There are a few exceptions in the education world; Curt Bonk, for example, has enough traditionally published material that his blog would meet the criteria. As far as I can tell, you don't; I can't find any references to you in Google Scholar. Your blog should not be included in Wikipedia either as a reference or as an external link.'' WeisheitSuchen (talk) 11:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... so if you've done some thinking and written about something and then find that it fills a gap in a Wikipedia article, you can't contribute it without getting it published somewhere else first? No wonder there are gaps. pleft (talk) 01:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * If you're notable (e.g., you've been published through traditional venues elsewhere), then your self-published content could be considered a reliable source. Going back to the example of Curt Bonk, he has books published, is a professor at a respected university, etc., so his blog could be a reliable source even though it's self-published because he's basically been "vetted" by the traditional publishing industry. The official explanation of that is WP:SPS: "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications."
 * Basically, if you're just Joe Schmoe like you and me, front-line practitioners with blogs, we don't have enough credibility on our own. (And yes, I'm in the same boat; I have a blog, but my subscribers number in the hundreds, not thousands, and I've had exactly one short article published. I'm not notable enough to be cited here and I don't pretend otherwise.) If you've done thinking and writing about something, you can add it here--but you have to cite other sources besides your own self-published material. Wikipedia is not a place for original research. You can disagree with the philosophy, but if original research wasn't restricted, any manner of pseudoscience could be used here without a requirement of verification. No original research is one of the three core policies of Wikipedia. I read enough of your blog to figure out that you do actually know enough to make some valuable contributions, but sometimes it's hard for people who know a topic well to edit successfully on Wikipedia specifically because they have to use sources rather than simply the expertise in their own brains. You certainly can fill in some of those gaps, but you should cite some of the other people you read. WeisheitSuchen (talk) 01:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The policy is much clearer to me now - thank you for the measured and rational explanation. I originally took offence at the comment that I was creating 'linkspam' and the implication that I was after search engine ranking. Neither is correct. I will think again about how I can best contribute - maybe Citizendium's approach is a better one for me as their policy seems to be to flag something as 'unapproved' rather than just delete it as spam. Thanks again for taking the time to provide an insight into Wikipedia's rules. pleft (talk) 03:28, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

PS I see one sentence I added was removed from the Andragogy page ostensibly because it was a redundant sentence when in fact it was making an entirely different point to the statement above it. pleft (talk) 05:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Knol is the other place you might want to look at contributing, as it seems like they are more interested in who is doing the writing than who is being cited (the reverse of the Wikipedia philosophy--that doesn't make it wrong, just a different approach). If you don't link to your own blog, your contributions are more likely to be flagged here than deleted, but it does depend on who sees it and what the actual content is. Honestly, if you made the same content contributions but cited other published sources besides yourself, I expect all or most of your edits would have been retained without flagging. The fact that every single edit you made included a link to your own blog is what made you look like a spammer. Had any of those contributions included citations of others, you would have made it easier for me to leave more of your contributions there.
 * As for the andragogy sentence, your "The term has also been used to distinguish between student-centred (andragogy) and didactic approaches (pedagogy)" seems pretty similar to "Knowles asserted that andragogy (Greek: "man-leading") should be distinguished from the more commonly used pedagogy (Greek: "child-leading")." I agree that they aren't identical, but you're still talking about differences between andragogy and pedagogy, and once the improper citation was removed there wasn't any support for it. You could put that sentence back if you cited someone else though. I admit that once I realized you had put links to your blog in 8 articles that I tended to delete the whole contribution after the first few rather than trying to see what could be salvaged and flagged like I did in Constructivist teaching methods. WeisheitSuchen (talk) 12:13, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Don't know Knol but will check it out - thanks for the tip. These days I do tend to work in short bursts, so if you are able to revisit my edits and treat each on its own merits that'd be good.

Re the difference between andragogy and pedagogy, the point I was trying to make was that pedagogy has become a pejorative term amongst some in adult / higher education as they associate it with 'old-fashioned' approaches to teaching based on a transmission model rather than a more constructivist model. I think this is overly simplistic and not really logical, and distinct from Knowles' differentiation of the concepts. pleft (talk) 20:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to an in-person meetup in Mohua / Golden Bay
Thinking about your summer break? Think about joining other Wikipedians and Wikimedians in Golden Bay / Mohua! Details are on the meetup page. There's heaps of interesting stuff to work on e.g. the oldest extant waka or New Zealand's oldest ongoing legal case. Or you may spend your time taking photos and then upload them.

Golden Bay is hard to get to and the airline flying into Tākaka uses small planes, so we are holding some seats from and to Wellington and we are offering attendees a $200 travel subsidy to help with costs.

Be in touch with Schwede66 if this event interests you and you'd like to discuss logistics.  Schwede 66  09:14, 13 November 2023 (UTC)