Welcome to Wikipedia Talk

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I got your message Phil: thanks for practicing. I will be contacting everyone who participated in the Hangout to talk about what is next. --Greentina (talk) 20:18, 4 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi Phil, our group from ENVOR HIST 396 with Tina Loo, is working on the Columbia River Treaty. Since the Columbia River is one of your specifications we were wondering if you could look at our rough outline for the wiki page "Columbia River Treaty"? If you can here it is: "History of the River": we were going to discuss the background of the river in a physical sense. Our sub headings were going to include Pre-contact, and During Early settlement. In these heading we were going to discuss why the river is important in both these times, and what the landscape was like. "Treaty Process": We were going to discuss W.A.C Bennetts vision of the dams, the negotiation of the treaty process, and finally the content of the treaty (over-all terms, and the Canadian entitlement) "Implementation": We were going to include a table of all of the dams that will link to their individual pages. However what we were going to focus on was the controversy and re-location of Indigenous communities along the river where these dams were built. "Looking Forward": We will talk about the current situation of the dams, and the up-coming renegotiation of the treaty.

Does this seem like a well rounded outline? Do you have any suggestions? Thanks so much Cayleym (talk) 20:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)cayleymReply

Columbia Treaty Group

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Hi Phil, I wanted to thank-you for your comment on our proposed outline for our wiki Columbia River Treaty page. I am focusing on the local impacts that the treaty dams had and I am finding it hard to sound neutral. I was wondering if you could let me know if this paragraph sounds too biased or not. And if so what can I do to say the facts, but not sound one-sidded? Here is the paragraph: "BC Hydro looked at the value of peoples land in only an economic sense and disregarded the fact that many people living along the river were self-sufficient, and could not live that way in a city or a more urban area[5]. In addition, from an outsiders perspective it seemed as though BC Hydro was being fair with the residents settlement prices for their land and homes. However many people felt that the settlement prices from BC Hydro were unfair, but felt too intimidated and powerless to challenge them in court, so they accepted the prices begrudgingly[6]. BC Hydro took a stance at looking at peoples land only in an economic sense and disregarding the emotional attachment, and the non capitalist wealth that people had on their land(7). This kind of wealth included agriculture, livestock, tourism, lumbar, all of which enabled a self-sufficient lifestyle with little cost. The residents questioned what benefits the dam would have to them if they were just going to be relocated, and lose money in the long run[7]." Thanks. Cayleym (talk) 02:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC)cayleymReply

Thanks Phil. That is a great suggestion, and I did catch my double phrasing so I edited it out. Thanks for your help Cayleym (talk) 05:53, 17 March 2012 (UTC)cayleymReply

Wikipedia Ambassadors update

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Hi! You're getting this message because you are or have been a Wikipedia Ambassador. A new term is beginning for the United States and Canada Education Programs, and I wanted to give you an update on some important new information if you're interested in continuing your work this term as a Wikipedia Ambassador.

You may have heard a reference to a transition the education program is going through. This is the last term that the Wikimedia Foundation will directly run the U.S. and Canada programs; beginning in June, a proposed thematic organization is likely to take over organizing the program. You can read more about the proposal here.

Another major change in the program will take effect immediately. Beginning this term, a new MediaWiki education extension will replace all course pages and Ambassador lists. (See Wikipedia:Course pages and Help:Education Program extension for more details.) Included in the extension are online volunteer and campus volunteer user rights, which let you create and edit course pages and sign up as an ambassador for a particular course.

If you would like to continue serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador — even if you do not support a class this term — you must create an ambassador profile. If you're no longer interested in being a Wikipedia Ambassador, you don't need to do anything.

Please do these steps as soon as possible

First, you need the relevant user rights for Online and/or Campus Ambassadors. (If you are an admin, you can grant the rights yourself, for you as well as other ambassadors.) Just post your rights request here, and we'll get you set up as quickly as possible.

Once you've got the ambassador rights, please set up at a Campus and/or Online Ambassador profile. You can do so at:

Going forward, the lists of Ambassadors at Special:CampusAmbassadors and Special:OnlineAmbassadors will be the official roster of who is an active Ambassador. If you would like to be an Ambassador but not ready to serve this term, you can un-check the option in your profile to publicly list it (which will remove your profile from the list).

After that, you can sign on to support courses. The list of courses will be at Special:Courses. (By default, this lists "Current" courses, but you can change the Status filter to "Planned" to see courses for this term that haven't reached their listed start date yet.)

As this is the first term we have used the extension, we know there will be some bugs, and we know the feature set is not as rich as it could be. (A big wave of improvements is already in the pipeline. And if you know MediaWiki and could help with code review, we'd love to have your help!) Please reach out to me (Sage Ross) with any complaints, bug reports, and feature suggestions. The basic features of the extension are documented at Wikipedia:Course pages, and you can see a tutorial for setting up and using them here.

Communication and keeping up to date

In the past, the Education Program has had a pretty fragmented set of communication channels. We're trying to fix that. These are the recommended places to discuss and stay up-to-date on the education program:

  1. The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
  2. The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address.
  3. If you use IRC regularly, or need to try to reach someone immediately, the #wikipedia-en-ambassadors connect IRC channel is the place to find me and fellow Ambassadors.
Ambassador training and resources

We now have an online training for Ambassadors, which is intended to be both an orientation about the Wikipedia Ambassador role for newcomers and the manual for how to do the role. (There are parallel trainings for students and for educators as well.)

Please go through the training if you feel like you need a refresher on how a typical class is supposed to go and where the Ambassadors fit in, or if you want to review and help improve it. If there's something you'd like to see added, or other suggestions you have for it, feel free to edit the training and/or leave feedback. A primer on setting up and using course pages is included in the educators' training.

The Resources page of the training is the main place for Ambassador-related resources. If there's something you think is important as a resource that's not on there, please add it.

Finally, whether or not you work with any classes this term, I encourage you to post entries to the Trophy Case whenever you see excellent work from students or if you have great examples from past semesters. And, as always, let students (and other editors!) know when they do things well; a little WikiLove goes a long way!

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)Reply