Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)/Psychology 220A (Fall, 2014)

from Education Program talk:University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)/Psychology 220A (Fall, 2014)/Timeline

 * Good grief! “Good Article” status takes a considerable amount of effort that is clearly outside of the scope of your class. Please give your students realistic goals. Thanks. Boghog (talk) 22:15, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed! The nominations process typically takes a couple of months as well. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:30, 15 December 2014 (UTC
 * Not to butt in here or anything, but one of the students in our class did, in fact, get Good Article status and I believe the rest of us have refrained from nominating our articles for GA because of the "considerable amount of effort," so I'm not sure why everyone is all of a sudden in such a fuss... Cmiddlebrooks (talk) 20:22, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi and everyone, There has been a kerfuffle by a number of Wikipedia editors who believe my article should have never received GA. There was some talk of it being inappropriate for professors to have students submit for GA status, but I tried to clarify elsewhere that by no means did Dr. Karney expect us to do this. Wikipedia can apparently be a place for a lot of assumptions about student writers. But! I think everyone in this class should continue to consider feedback from reviewers. The point of this project was to meaningfully contribute to Wikipedia, and that extends beyond this class. Just try to not get disheartened by reviewers who are less tactful in their feedback delivery. SandyGeorgia has tried to outline some helpful explanations for how to approach making edits to our articles. Leslierrn (talk) 21:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Some suggestions
, and, could you please direct all of the students in this class to this talk page so I can type this only once? ,, , , , ,

I have reviewed several of the articles, and there is more work to be done to repair several of them than I can take on. Some suggestions that will make the work less daunting for me and anyone who follows me:
 * If the students will please add PMIDs on journal sources, it will be easier to identify primary sources and show students those instances where primary sources are being used incorrectly. Please see WP:PSTS, WP:MEDRS, and information on how to use PubMed to find secondary sources here.  A few of the students have added PMIDs, so you should be able to share that know-how among yourselves.
 * WP:MSH. We don't use all uppercase on wikipedia-- we use sentence case.  And we don't repeat words in sub-heads that are higher up in the section, or in the title.  And we don't use ultra-long section headings.  Section headings should be flexible and brief enough to allow for future additions.
 * Almost none of your articles are using MOS:LINK correctly; there are almost no wikilinks, and that is leading to redundant text, that is ...
 * Articles are duplicating text from other articles that doesn't belong, and should be covered by a link only. As an example, see the posttraumatic stress disorder section of this article. Posttraumatic stress disorder already has an article; we don't need a whole 'nother paragraph about PTSD in this article.  And the Main article hatnote is incorrect-- this article is not a summary of the PTSD article.  That entire first paragraph is off-topic and should be deleted.  The second paragraph should be:
 * In addition to the established diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Frank Ochberg proposed a specific set of victimization symptoms—not formally recognized in diagnostic systems such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD)—that includes shame, self-blame, obsessive hatred of the person who victimized them alongside conflicting positive feelings toward that person, feeling defiled, being sexually inhibited, despair or resignation to the situation, secondary victimization (described below), and risk of revictimization.
 * Note, the DSM is a book, hence should be italicized (WP:ITALICS).  Don't pipe acronyms to articles; link the article and add the acronym in parens after.
 * And next, you'll find that once you've deleted all of the off-topic content and replaced it with a link, there is no need for all of those sub-sections. The structure of most articles is very simple-- we don't need fifteen sub-headings.
 * And going further into the problem there, Ochberg is cited to self. What other sources mention his work?  We need an independent, third-party (not related to him) source to know that his findings/publications are even relevant, valid, given due weight in our article.  So, there is nothing in that entire section, as of now, that is salvageable.  I'm not intending to "pick on" one of you-- I'm finding same everywhere.

All in all, I'm concerned that, between the use of primary sources, and the introduction of text that doesn't belong in articles (rather is covered by a Wikilink), I'm finding the only way to fix many of these articles would be deleting about half of what's in them :( There is a daunting amount of cleanup work needed on the majority of this course's articles, so I hope that by putting your heads together and conversing on this one page, learning from each other, there will be much less cleanup for me and others to do.  In particular, maybe classmates can give guidance on Appeal to emotion and Symptoms of victimization.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 06:04, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not Dr. John Smith, just John Smith.
 * Self-citing: I'm finding frequent citations to self. You can't use John Smith as a source to say that John Smith is the Bee's Knees-- an independent source has to say that.  You can't use John Smith to say John Smith was the first person to do X-- a third-party has to source that statement.  And we can't write entire articles about John Smith's research, based on John Smith's own words.  To say that John Smith proved X, we need an independent source to make that claim.  To know that John Smith's findings are even relevant to anything, we need a third-party source discussing it.  We can't just make claims based on someone's own publications and statements.  I'm finding faulty use of primary and self-cited sources everywhere.
 * The WP:LEAD should summarize the article.
 * Other than the lead, we don't add summarizing conclusions, or summary introductions and lead-ins. I'm finding a lot of redundant text.  When you add your own summary statement at the end of a paragraph, uncited, that's original research.
 * Several of you have problems with your sigs: please see the discussion at User_talk:Gemayelc for how to fix your sig.
 * Overquoting at Appeal to emotion.
 * Tons and tons of redundant text. "Researchers have shown X, Y and Z", should be just "X, Y and Z" (if it's correctly cited to a secondary source, that is).  "In clinical practice, doctors may frequently prescribe antihistamines to individuals with allergies" becomes "Antihistamines are used to treat allergies".  I'm finding three times as many words as are needed everywhere!  Keep it simple-- way too many words-- we don't need to sound smart, it's not a term paper or an essay, it's an encyclopedia.  Simple.  Straightforward.  Minimal words.
 * If any of you want to peruse sample articles, here is a listing of medical, top-importance, Good Articles (GA). Take care that they may have taken on cruft since promotion to GA-- that is, I haven't checked them to see if they are still in good shape, but at least that list will give you some samples.  For a bio sample, you can see my Donald J. Cohen, and for a psych/medical FA, "my"  Tourette syndrome (that is, pls look at how we use sub-headings ... very short and simple!)

Discussion
Also, several of you are starting new talk page sections for every reply-- you don't have to do that :) Just type your questions and replies under my post here, unless you are starting a whole new topic!   Only if you start a new, unrelated talk page discussion do you need to add a new heading. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)