Scannell229

Hi. "Everyone potential contributor has to start somewhere," you tell us.

It's rather revealing that this, rather combative, post to the Administrator's Noticeboard, was apparently your first ever contribution to Wikipedia. And in fact, that your sole contributions to date have been in similar vein.

No wonder what guidance you may have given to your students could not prevent the problems that ensued when you let them loose on the encyclopedia.

There clearly is a place for Wikipedia in Education. (In any case, as I have argued, it's already there.) But educators have to learn also from Wikipedia. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:22, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Just to let you know, I have made edits to Wikipedia in the past, only a couple, granted, but not under that user name. The only reason my post was "combative", was because I was shocked by the reaction to the student's contributions. I guess it boils down to what you perceive as a lack of etiquette, and having experienced the fallout from this, if I was to ever to direct a collaboration again in the future, I would absolutely do my best to liase with admin first. At least I can now advise any other "well-meaning" contributor to think twice before delving in. --Scannell229 (talk) 11:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration

I'm the editor who started the discussion about your student's activities. What prompted me to alert admins was a pattern of new editors inserting sections of text (which appear to be excerpts from the course texts or their own essays) into the middle of articles. The problem is twofold - there appeared to be no consideration of the context within the article, and no understanding of the guidelines of WP. This is easily dealt with when a single editor does it, but when a group of editors does it at the same time (and in an uncoordinated fashion) it becomes disruptive.

Collaborative projects rely on the collaborators working together within an agreed-on framework. Responsible contributors would be those who make an effort to understand the context of the project and work within the rules and guidelines. It would be easy to blame the failure of this exercise on an extreme reaction to poor quality writing, but the reality is that like any other online community or collaborative project, WP reacts poorly to newcomers who don't appear to follow the rules.

I'm sorry this turned out to be such a negative experience for you and your students. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:13, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello. Looks like you've gotten off to a rocky start here. I'd like to let you know that this isn't the way things work most of the time and a lot of people seem ruffled because of the "incident"--normally those folks would be very inviting and helpful. I'm sure you have been sent links to wikiversity and other helpful project pages (such as Wikipedia:FAQ/Schools and Wikipedia:School and university projects). These are all helpful and can answer some questions for you and your class. But I want to make sure that someone has told you that you are welcome here on wikipedia and that the contributions of your class are welcome as well. It probably doesn't feel that way right now, but that's the nature of the beast.

If there is anything you need or have a question about, you may respond here (I'll have your page watchlisted) or on my talk page. If you don't want to ask me, you can add the text {{Helpme}} to your page and someone will be along to answer your questions. Protonk (talk) 05:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)