Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/Washington University in St. Louis/Behavioral Ecology (Fall 2013)

Discuss your assignment here
Hi, students! This talk page is a great place for you to discuss your assignment with each other and practice some editing skills! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Assignment 1
At the end of assignment 1, there is a link to the course page. However, this link does not actually lead to the course page. Instead of creating a new class page, I have enrolled in this class via the official course page. Note further that the interface seems to think that the page to which I have just linked is an external site; I have been unable to link to it via an internal link.

Gharris7 (talk) 22:19, 27 August 2013 (UTC)Gharris7

Assignment 1
The assignment 1 link does lead back to the actual course page which is here Course page. If you look at the edit section of this post you can see that I was able to create an internal link. Also can you double check to make sure the links on Assignment 1 is taking you back to this particular page? Don't click the courses link at the top but the one I have posted on there saying Get back to course page. I know it is a bit confusing but the courses link will take you back to the Fall 2012 course site.Abenaa07 (talk) 03:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Leads for GA nominations
Hey all, thanks for the many article improvements coming out of this class--the range of your work has been really impressive. I wanted to add a small suggestion for the many GA nominations this class is producing, if that's all right. I notice that while the articles appear to be of good quality generally, a lot of them don't have a proper lead section. Wikipedia's style calls for a short summary to be atop each article; we call it the "lead", but you might also think of it as the abstract of a research paper-- it should summarize the article while presenting no significant new information. This allows readers looking for a short version to get a quick overview. You can see the full policy at WP:LEAD.

Unfortunately, a good chunk of the GA nominations the class is producing may fail for this reason alone. If this isn't a good place to reach the students in this course, could a teacher, TA, ambassador, etc., pass it on to them? Adding a lead section shouldn't be a hard fix to make, and would improve these articles significantly.

Thanks again for all you're doing! If even a third of these articles are promoted to GA as a result of your work, it'll be a major accomplishment. Cheers, Khazar2 (talk) 01:43, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Gharris7 (talk) 22:10, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Gharris7

Objection to part 2 of assignment 9
I think the course is generally doing great work, but I strongly object to the unnecessary additions of links mandated by part 2 of assignment 9. It's forcing students to shoehorn links to ultra-specific articles into extremely general topics such as [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evolution&diff=prev&oldid=581695095 evolution] and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spawn_(biology)&diff=581563370&oldid=572691163 Spawn (biology)], which is a form of spamming; most experienced Wikipedians would never do this. Links should be added based on relevance, not shoehorned in to get extra grades in a Wikipedia assignment. Graham 87 06:11, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I endorse what Graham says. --Epipelagic (talk) 08:01, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody here!
Hey all, I'm not sure how many of you may be watching this page, but I just wanted to say thanks again for all the hard work everyone's doing. I know many of your GA nominations were declined for now, but that's not a judgement on your course's work, simply a reflection of our limited resources as reviewers. While looking at these nominations, however, I've been impressed with the amount of quality, sourced material that's been added, in some cases expanding articles from "stub" class to much more comprehensive coverage. And while the GA project can't take on the course's work as a whole for now, I hope that some of you will consider continuing working here after your course is done, and even renominating your work for GA if your instructor and online ambassador feel it meets the minimum requirements.

Your work is going to serve tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of readers around the globe--thanks for all the effort you're putting into it! Cheers, Khazar2 (talk) 19:22, 16 November 2013 (UTC)


 * We appreciate your feedback. Thanks!  Gharris7 (talk) 03:45, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Gharris7