Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013)

Here is a place to discuss this course in general. To discuss any of the specific pages the students are working on, please use their USER TALK page, or the article's TALK page.

Hbarton
Hey Sandy I was wondering if you had any tips for me on how to get my page back online. I am new to wikipedia which obviously showed in my first draft, but this is for a school project and I need to get my page back into the main space. Any help would be greatly appreciated. HBARTON3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.61.102.18 (talk) 01:58, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi,  When you post to a user talk page, you should start a section at the bottom of the page, and you should sign your posts by entering four tildes ( ~ ) after them.  Please remind your professor that he should be teaching you how to interact on Wikipedia before you move articles into mainspace from your sandbox.  I assume you are posting about Cannabidiol effect on epilepsy?  It is in the mainspace, and unless you contest the deletion, it will be there until Nov 29.   From several other articles I've seen from your class, it appears that your professor designed the course poorly, and you students are left in a lurch.  First, he didn't make sure you had enough sources and were writing on topics that wouldn't end up deleted or merged (that should have been the first step), and second, he has you publishing articles before he has graded them.  He should have been grading your work in your sandbox, and they should not have been published to mainspace until they were ready;  as soon as you publish anything to Wikipedia, you no longer own it and it can change.  Your professor should learn how to go through the diffs to see the history of the article; your original version is still in the article history (and in your sandbox, I imagine). He can grade it there if he didn't set up the course to grade in sandbox.  Perhaps you can talk to your campus or online ambassador and have them educate your professor, so that he can learn where to find your work and how to grade it.  If not, it might be best to tell your parents, your school advisor, your school newspaper, and the chair of your Department that your professor has no clue what he's doing, and he's ruining the college experience.  And you can tell him SandyGeorgia said that.  Please let me know how it goes.  If your professor doesn't know how to read diffs, and doesn't plan to grade you from your sandbox, please tell him to stop by here because I'd love to have a chat with him.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 11:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Going Forward
User:SandyGeorgia, I am hoping to be able to get up to 15,000 bytes in this topic and within the menopause page. As I continue to add things do you mind if I post them here first to be checked, especially sources? Also, do you suggest moving the article back to my sandbox as I continue working? Thank you immensely for your help and if you find that is article may not be fit, please let me know as I may change topics. AllisonMaloney (talk) 03:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Allison; thanks for engaging on talk. I am not an admin, and I'm unclear on the process and even whether one should move an article back to sandbox after it has been moved to mainspace and edited by others. I will ask an admin to look in here for you.  One possibility is that you just continue working in sandbox, and then overwrite this article with your new content, but I'm really not sure.  Also, the biggest problem with the article now, as we discussed earlier, is the lack of secondary reviews.  I would be most willing to help you advance the article if you are using secondary reviews, but working on a draft that is based on primary sources isn't a good use of my time.  Have you seen Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches?  Do you know how to look up a source in the search engine which you can find here from PubMed, see if the source is primary or secondary, and include a PMID in your citation?  If not, our first step is for me to help you learn to do that.  Best regards, Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:57, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * , I just realized that this article has already been moved back and forth from sandbox once, which meant a lot of work for editors here. An admin did the move, deleted the old page (which lost all of my work), and then when you moved it back, I did my work on the article again.  So, no, I don't think a third shot out of sandbox is a good next step. That would mean a lot of work for a lot of volunteers, and is not the way Wikipedia is used. From several other articles I've seen from your class, it appears that your professor designed the course poorly, and you students are left in a lurch.  First, he didn't make sure you had enough sources and were writing on topics that wouldn't end up deleted or merged (that should have been the first step), and second, he has you publishing articles before he has graded them.  He should have been grading your work in your sandbox, and they should not have been published to mainspace until they were ready;  as soon as you publish anything to Wikipedia, you no longer own it and it can change.  Your professor should learn how to go through the diffs to see the history of the article; your original version is still in the article history (and in your sandbox, I imagine). He can grade it there if he didn't set up the course to grade in sandbox.  Can you talk to your campus or online ambassador about this poor course design?  Perhaps suggest that your article be graded in your sandbox.  If you don't get a satisfactory outcome, then you might talk to your school advisor, your school newspaper, your parents, or your department chair to tell them that your professor has designed a course where students are not likely to have a good experience.  If your professor wants to stop by here to chat, I'll be happy to explain these things to him, but I cannot recommend moving the article back to sandbox a second time. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 11:22, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Inappropriate use of article talk pages
As I try to go about my usual editing, I am finding my watchlist overwhelmed by inappropriate talk page edits this course's students. Article talk pages are used for article improvement: Wikipedia is not homework. Your students are entering peer reviews on article talk pages. Those entries have the following problems:
 * 1) They do not engage Wikipedia's standards or content policies and guidelines, nor is there any awareness of Wikipedia's internal assessment processes.  In other words, they have nothing to do with Wikipedia.
 * 2) They are inevitably glowing reports (scores of 15 to 18 out of 20), even when on very poor articles.  Clearly, friends reviewing friends' articles is a COI, and not an appropriately neutral review.  We would not allow such a thing among other editors (where neutrality in review is expected).
 * 3) Every time an article talk page entry triggers a watchlist alert, other editors have to check those pages, which wastes our time.

Please refrain from having students post homework on article talk pages; they can post these to editor talk pages. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 23:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I second that!! --Randykitty (talk) 23:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Can someone put the title back?
I found out a copy for this course. But it seems I do not have the authority to edit the page.

Can someone link it please? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:Georgia_Institute_of_Technology/Introduction_to_Neuroscience_copy_(Fall_2013) Fu Hung Shiu (talk) 07:11, 13 December 2013 (UTC)