Wikipedia talk:School and university projects/ITESM Campus Toluca/Los Pancakes

Hello, Los Panckaes, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:
 * Be Bold!
 * Meet other new users
 * Learn from others
 * Play nicely with others
 * Contribute, Contribute, Contribute!
 * Tell us about you

If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, please come to the new contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type   on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

Please sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.

We're so glad you're here! Cronholm144 09:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Re:Mentoring
I actually have a group (Appleteam), but I could temporarily coach you guys. First, your usernames, please.  J- stan  Talk Contribs 02:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Adrianalima87 contacted me, and asked me to mentor here. While I would prefer to keep my email to myself (sorry, don't have a dedicated email for Wikipedia yet, only my personal email), if anyone in this team needs help, posting the question to my talk page with a note where you'd like me to respond (on-wiki) is likely to get you some help within 24 hours, and within minutes if I'm already online. Nihiltres ( t .l ) 02:22, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I would be happy to mentor you. You may contact me on my talk page with any questions, or if you would like me to proofread your work on Wikipedia.  Just let me know what you are working on.--Appraiser 22:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I am happy to help also. Please let me know what I can do.  Thanks, Johntex\talk 22:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy to help in general as well. Just drop a line on my talk page if you require any assistance. — BQZip01 —  talk 22:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hello Los Pancakes! I would be more than willing to help you, just like all of the other wikipedians who posted above me.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask on talk page.  Also, please remember to put four tildes ( ~ ) at the end of every message that you put on a talk or user talk page.  Thanks, and happy editing. --דניאל - Dantheman531 22:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I would be glad to help as well, let me know if you need anything. Prodego  talk  22:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I would be happy to help as well. MECU ≈ talk 01:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I would also help mentor you guys. Just make sure that you either have a group account, or you each have your own account. IP edits should be avoided while you guys are doing the project (because all school edits are made on shared computers) If you have any questions, just ask. --HAL talk 12:37, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Same. -Tobi4242 22:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts on the 100 word assignment
Hello, I read your 100 word assignment and I have put some suggestions here. Johntex\talk 00:48, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I read the new section below this one, and it looks like I should make my reply here. Therefore, here is my suggestion:
 * Writing on a place in Mexico sounds like a very good idea, in my opinion, except that the bigger cities probably have articles already. Category:Cities in Mexico and List of cities in Mexico will show you what we have so far.
 * Perhaps a small city, or perhaps a monument or attraction within a city? Or maybe something from history.  For instance, we have an article on Tenochtitlan, and on Cancun, but we do not have an article on Ruinas del Rey or El Meco or Punta Sam.
 * Please be careful when writing about your own experiences. Wikipedia has a policy against original research and we ask that facts be backed up by citations as much as possible.  In practice some of our articles fall short of having references, but all of our Featured articles and Good articles have references.
 * How does referencing work in practice? As an example, let's say you know a fact, like "____ is a popular hotel nearby and they offer daily tours of this site".  Instead of just writing that in, you would first find some other website or magazine or other source that also says this.  Then you would cite that source.
 * If you want to read the policies, they are cite your claims using verifiable, reliable sources. I find that Template:Cite news is very handy for this.  But don't worry too much about the format.  The simple way to cite a source (if it is a web page) is just to put it inside brackets, like this:   Your mentors can help you with formatting the references.
 * Good luck with whatever you choose! Johntex\talk 16:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Reminder to Mentors and Students
Please remember to do all communication concerning work related to the course on this discussion page. It is the only page I can monitor and give students credit for doing their work. Thank you!!! Thelmadatter 14:05, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Userboxes and navigation bar
Hello, thank you for the 2 questions on my Talk page about how to put userboxes and a navigation bar onto your page.

Userboxes
The standard syntax for adding a userbox to your user page (also known as transclusion) is:.

A long list of available userboxes is here, sorted by category.

There is a special userbox called "babel" (please see Babel) that lets you specify what languages you know. For instance, if you want to say that you speak Spanish as a native-speaker and English at an intermediate level you could use: to make the box that you see to the right:

Navigation bar
The navigation bar on the top of my page I actually stole from someone else and modified it a little. You are welcome to copy the code from my page and modify it. You will find the header at User:Johntex/header. To use it yourself, I hope this helps. Johntex\talk 22:49, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Go to User:Johntex/header, click edit, and copy all the text.
 * 2) Create a new page like Wikipedia talk:School and university projects/ITESM Campus Toluca/Los Pancakes/header School and university projects/ITESM Campus Toluca/Los Pancakes/header and paste the text there.
 * 3) My header contains links to other pages, like User:Johntex/Gallery01 for storing pictures. If you want to have pages like that you will need to create pages like Wikipedia talk:School and university projects/ITESM Campus Toluca/Los Pancakes/Gallery to show your own pictures.
 * About photos, please note that you should not upload too many photos of a personal nature. 1 or 2 or 3 is fine, but mostly photos should be for use in the articles.
 * Also, we encourage for photos to be uploaded to our sister site called Wikimedia Commons. Doing that means they are available for all Wikipedia's such as the Spanish Wikipedia, etc.
 * 1) The link for "My admin log" does not apply since you are not Administrators. You should just delete that one or replace it with something else.
 * 2) More fun pictures for your header can be found at |here at the Wikipedia Commons.


 * I found the problem. I forgot to tell you that you then must put  at the top of this page in order for the header to appear.  Also, it looks like this trick does not work from a "Talk" page, so you can see I had to change the location of the navigation bar slightly. Johntex\talk 21:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Update - it looked odd having my header at the top of your page, so I hid it for now by putting "<!-- " before and after the header, at the top of this page. First, you need to make your changes to School and university projects/ITESM Campus Toluca/Los Pancakes/header.  When you are ready to use the header, just remove those marks and the header will show.  Let me know if you have problems. Johntex\talk 16:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Re: hi
Yes, of course I will mentor you guys. You may wish to go through the Community Portal and the policies there. It would also be a good idea to go through the policies there that you should follow when you're writing an article. If you would like some optional but mind-simulating debate, go to my talk page or I'll provide some links. If any of you want one-on-one training about something, I will be willing to do it. I don't have much else going on around here at the moment, so I'd love to help you all out. I do have to work on some of my tasks, though, so I'll be very busy outside of the class mentoring. Cheers, Laleena  00:47, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * So, let's begin. Your teacher sounds right about the tacos idea, but I was thinking about the user page first. If you want me to organize it like mine, then give the go ahead (that's one of our expressions, here in America) and I will do it. As to the tacos idea (another thing of ours, putting the important stuff at the end), I will be willing to help you. Send the first draft to me and I will look it over, unless your teacher (is it a she or a he?) wants you to look it over. And of course, I'd like to know your majors, either on your user page or on my talk page. If you need anything or want me to stop telling you what expressions I write with, please say so. Cheers, Laleena  23:06, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Your comment on my talk page
Hello, and thank you for your message on my talk page. I'd be more than happy to be your mentor, but please don't type in all caps. It can offend some people as is often read as the equivalent of shouting. If you need help with a specific thing just ask on my talk page. Your last comment was "reverted" by one of the editors who patrols recent changes for vandalism. It was not vandalism, of course, but to a random person it looks like vandalism. Psych less  02:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I have a few basic suggestions with spelling and grammar for your article. Always capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence. Also, sentences should not start with 'but' or 'and'. They're used to link two ideas together, not start a sentence. An example:

The cat is a fuzzy animal that likes to play with yarn. But dolphins are not fuzzy.

That would be incorrect grammar. Correct example:

The cat is a fuzzy animal that likes to play with yarn, but dolphins are not fuzzy.

It is very improbable that you would ever type a sentence like that, of course.

If you are using a contraction make sure you use this kind of apostrophe: ' (big version: ' ). Your instructor should be able to help you find it somehow if it isn't on your keyboard. It would also be proper Wikipedia style to avoid using contractions when you're writing articles. In other situations beyond Wikipedia it is acceptable to use them; just one of those strange Wikipedia things.

I've also seen that one of your assignments is to find an article to improve. I've compiled a list of stub categories for you:
 * Category:Mexico broadcasting stubs
 * Category:Mexican company stubs
 * Category:Mexican cuisine stubs
 * Category:Mexico education stubs
 * Category:Mexico geography stubs
 * Category:Mexican musical group stubs
 * Category:Mexican people stubs
 * Category:Mexican actor stubs
 * Category:Mexican football biography stubs
 * Category:Mexican musician stubs
 * Category:Mexican politician stubs
 * Category:Mexican sportspeople stubs
 * Category:Mexican writer stubs
 * Category:Mexican sports venue stubs

I hope I helped in some way. Psych less  23:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

A little note
I understand that Wikipedia is a wondrous strange place for you guys, but don't treat it like those idiots. I would like to be a mentor to those who really need it, and not some prankster.

In fact, since I would like to stem the number of vandalizers, I would love to be your mentor. So, how about it? I'll just add my name on the main page first, and give me a call on my talk page. No all-caps this time! None of you are little kids! ;-B --Jw21 /PenaltyKillah (discuss•edits) 04:59, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion for discussion
The three contributions that students need to do next partial (~October) is to significantly edit an article, create a stub and translate an article from English Wikipedia for Spanish Wikipedia. Mentors, if you would be so kind as to look over the WikiProject_Mexico, WikiProject_Mexico and Category:Mexico_stubs pages to help students discuss and select projects to do in October. For more information, see the School_and_university_projects/ITESM_Campus_Toluca/Syllabus page. Thank you! Thelmadatter 14:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ideas for subjects
Hello, thanks for the message on my Talk page. I mentioned above some suggestions for stub topics:
 * Writing on a place in Mexico sounds like a very good idea, in my opinion, except that the bigger cities probably have articles already. Category:Cities in Mexico and List of cities in Mexico will show you what we have so far.
 * Perhaps a small city, or perhaps a monument or attraction within a city? Or maybe something from history.  For instance, we have an article on Tenochtitlan, and on Cancun, but we do not have an article on Ruinas del Rey or El Meco or Punta Sam.

Other ideas would be an important leader, artist, football player, author, etc. There are many articles in Category:Mexico, but if you look through those articles, I am sure you will get ideas for some that are missing. You can look for "red links" also. Another place for ideas is Requested articles. This is a place where people can list articles that they hope will be written by others. Another idea is to follow your interests. You have a lot of userboxes on your group page. Probably some of those topics are not well covered yet. You could look through those topics for ideas. Johntex\talk 01:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I was asked about subjects too, and I think that, in particular, something from Mexican history would be most valuable to the project. That being said, I'm not quite familiar with Mexico. I think that JohnTex's idea of looking through articles about Mexico for red links sounds ideal - I can't give you a topic, but hopefully, knowing where to look will help. Nihiltres ( t .l ) 15:21, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Ideas for improving stubs
Since you have a user box that says that you drink beer, perhaps you should look at some of the stubs in Category:Beer and breweries in Mexico and find one to improve.--Appraiser 19:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Interested?
Seems like you guys have been invited to work on stubs of Mexican-related stuff. So, for a change, I'd like to invite you to WikiProject Spam! Basically, your job is to remove spam from articles (not create them), especially those which aren't that obvious at first sight. It should be a simple task and is greatly appreciated by admins and tired bots (as if there's such a thing!) Also, you get to participate in discussions and debates related to spam and spam-related issues in Wikipedia. (I would if I wasn't that busy!) Remember to add your name at the bottom of this list! --Jw21 /<font face="Old English Text MT">PenaltyKillah (discuss•edits) 11:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I am glad to mentor you.
Sorry for the slow response and I would be more than happy to help you in the Wikipedia world. <font face="Trebuchet MS"> The Mystery Editor  OK, fine. I'm Jonathan!   17:05, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Business letter
Dearest Ingrid,

I have some suggestions for you in your business letter. When writing such a formal letter, it isn't common practice to use "dear". You should probably say "To whom it may concern", "Dear Sir", or something of the like. I also wouldn't use contractions, as it is not as formal. I think some of it got cut off, continuous whats? Also, I think you should reword one of the sentences to say "Enclosed is an admissions form; you can find more information on the colloquium at the page: micampus.itesm.mx ." Also, "Thank you for your time, it is appreciated" is more formal than "we appreciate it". "Everyday" should be "every day", but that may be an American thing, I'm not quite sure. Some of the wording is a bit awkward in the sales letter, for example "Your home is selling luxurious homes and you may have one" is a bit awkward. Also, the excessive use of exclamation points may make people think you are running a scam. Also, at the end, it sounds better to say "...you are a very important person, and we want you and your family to have the best!" I also don't quite understand the "we are looking forward to your wellbeing", maybe you could reword that; "well-being" is the generally accepted spelling. Also, at the end, it should be "Ingrid Muniz, Sales Manager". Hope this is helpful! (By the way, do you guys need a mentor?) Love, Ne ra n e i   (talk) 01:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello Ingrid and Arturo, here are my suggestions for the two letters you drafted. On the first one, I'd just add to Neranei above that if you are sending a letter abroad, you should probably specify in the body of the letter that ITESM University is in Mexico. In the UK if you start with "Dear Sir" (or Madam) you end with "Yours faithfully", but I don't know if this distinction is used across the Atlantic!

On the second letter: no capital letter after a colon (first sentence). The sentence 'Also we have the most different models' is odd-sounding. Maybe 'Also we have the widest range of models' is better? Not sure what a 'portatil' TV is. Do you mean portable? The letter does sound rather like a scam rather than a serious letter. You have chosen a rather unrealistic product and client, so this is perhaps unavoidable!

Hope this feedback helps. PS: Dont forget to sign posts on other people's pages with ~ which translates into your signature, like this one: <font face="century gothic" color="#339922">Kim Dent-Brown  <font face="century gothic" size="1" color="#339922">(Talk to me)  20:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

First Contribution Discussion
You have the inofrmation, you have the sources, and here's the, well, "funnest" part of Wikipedia: EXPERIMENT! Check the section and see what part can be expanded or minimized, add your information between the "cracks" of the section, make sure to preview to see if it sounds alright when narrated, and 'Save' it! Now, it may take more than an edit or day, so have patience on it. Please reply for any enquiries. --<font face="Eras Ultra ITC">Jw21 /<font face="Old English Text MT">PenaltyKillah (discuss•edits) 01:35, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Jw21, you need to do spellcheck. You should remember that Los Pancakes are Spanish and not English or American. Los Pancakes probably don't know American spelling mistakes. Laleena  23:10, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * You mean the business letter? --<font face="Eras Ultra ITC">Jw21 /<font face="Old English Text MT">PenaltyKillah (discuss•edits)'NUCKS:4-6-0 19:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Geography work
It looks good, although I would recommend going to one of the related WikiProjects and asking for special proofreading. Bill could do this, I think, but it doesn't matter. I, myself, have a lot of work to do nearly everywhere. Laleena 22:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

California wildfires of October 2007
Would anyone hear like to add to California wildfires of October 2007 some information on the related fires in Baja California? Johntex\talk 04:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
 * If anyone needs some help adding any particular information of the wildfires, I'd be happy to guide you through, step-by-step. Contact me on my talk page. --<font face="Eras Ultra ITC">Jw21 /<font face="Old English Text MT">PenaltyKillah (discuss•edits)'NUCKS:4-6-0 19:01, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

2007 Tabasco flood
Hello, I started 2007 Tabasco flood today. There is a much longer article in Spanish at Inundación de Tabasco y Chiapas de 2007. If anyone wishes to translate/contribute information into the English article it would be appreciated. Johntex\talk 18:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Good work!
I see the edits are paying off... Thanks to Karenpoket and others who did such fine contribs! --<font face="Eras Light ITC,News Gothic MT">Jw21 /<font face="Old English MT,Onyx" size="+1">PenaltyKillah VANucks 19:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Ft
Template:Ft has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — pete 14:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)