User talk:Thotwock

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Your recent edits
Hello, and welcome. I noticed that, in 35 minutes, you've added a very large amount of content to many articles. May I ask, are you copy pasting from some website? Many thanks, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * It appears you're adding automatic translations from the French Wikipedia to those articles. That's a somewhat tricky issue because we need to credit the original authors. The easiest way to fulfill this requirement is by adding a note at the articles' talk pages. You can use the template translated page for that purpose; I've provided an example here. It would also help to manually double-check the translations; the automatic translation gave phrases such as "the south coast of Malmaison Park", and unless Malmaison Park is a water garden, that makes no sense. For another example, the "dragon regiment 6" should be the 6th Dragoon Regiment. Adding the references (if any) along with the text would also help. Huon (talk) 23:47, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I am a high school French teacher. My students were finishing a project in which they translated a French wikipedia article into English.  In order to post the edits, they had to use my account, as they were unable to create their own while at school.  There are definitely some translations that don't quite work in English, but the articles were not automatically translated, nor were they copy/pasted, except from the translations my students had prepared.  We were unsure how to cite the original authors, but I will see what I can do.  Thank you for your help and input. thotwock (talk) 7:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry for assuming automated translation; the speed of your edits tricked me. One word of warning: Wikipedia does not allow shared use of accounts, and only one person may use a given account. If your students can't create accounts of their own at school, they can probably edit without an account; they should not use yours. That would be a copyright and licensing nightmare. (Also, imagine what would happen if one of your students abused your account and vandalized Wikipedia - we would blame you for edits from your account, and "my student did it using my account" would not be considered a valid excuse.) See WP:ROLE for the relevant policy.
 * If you intend to continue using Wikipedia for class projects, the WP:Education program may be worth a look. Huon (talk) 22:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks again Huon. My students could not edit without an account while at school and I was forced to improvise.  I will check closely to make sure no abusive edits were made using my account, and I will take a look at the Education program link you suggested for reference in case I try to do this project again.  I think that this was a great opportunity for the students to learn while adding to the content of a site that many of them use regularly, but I completely understand the concerns around the way this was done and I will take greater care to follow the relevant policies in the future.Thotwock (talk) 15:50, 18 March 2015 (UTC)