User talk:Globalecon

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[edit] Welcome

Welcome to Wikipedia. To find out how to make useful contributions, take a look at the welcome page. To stay in Wikipedia, an article has to be about something notable, that is, of general interest. Click on Notability for an explanation of what that means. Also, it must give independently verifiable sources. Articles that don't meet these requirements are likely to be deleted. Follow the links below to learn more:

JohnCD (talk) 20:43, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Please do not use the main article space to organise academic projects - it's reserved for articles and only articles. I have moved your page into your userspace at User:Globalecon/Global Economics. Hut 8.5 20:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, please get your students to read Wikipedia:Manual of style, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Citing sources before editing any articles. Otherwise they will create lots of material that needs to be cleaned up by other editors. Hut 8.5 20:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Even with {{underconstruction}} tags you cannot demand that no-one else edits the articles - no editor owns any article in Wikipedia, and they will be subject to normal Wikipedia processes including deletion if they do not meet standards. For student papers there is a real danger that they will not meet Wikipedia's content policy of No Original Research. I have raised the question of what you are trying to do at the Administrators' noticeboard here. JohnCD (talk) 20:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

←All of this shouldn't be taken to mean that we don't encourage students to contribute to Wikipedia. We encourage everyone to contribute, but we do expect contributions to meet our guidelines. You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:School and university projects, which gives some advice, and provides a place to organize these sort of projects. Best of luck, --Bfigura (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Question

How about a project that gives out grades based on which student does the best job on an article from Articles for creation? Enigma message 22:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that may be a good source for topics. However for this assignment I ask students to write about "global economics" (broadly defined) which may not fit many of the suggested topics. Thanks for the idea. Globalecon (talk) 14:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that many of their articles are actually essays which don't really have a place on Wikipedia. There are global economics-related articles they could write, they'd just have to be WP:NPOV, not essay-style, and fit the WP:MOS. Enigma message 15:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
In the welcome notice on your project page I've added a link to an extensive list of missing topics in business and economics (all red links on the list are topics to be created). I've also added a link to the entire category of business and economic stub articles needing expansion. If you haven't already done so, you and your students might want to familiarize yourselves with both the Business and Economics Project and the Business and Economics Portal Voceditenore (talk) 16:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Case study of successful student Wikipedia project

Welcome to Wikipedia. You may find this article to be an interesting read. Bovlb (talk) 22:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

And as the professor behind that project, I should not that I'm currently writing up some Advice on Using Wikipedia in Colleges and Universities. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Useful guidelines

You'll find Wikipedia:School and university projects very helpful in avoiding pitfalls and maximizing your students' performance here. You are also strongly encouraged to register your project on that page. Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 06:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Not that you haven't gotten enough unsolicited advice yet, but...

One thing that might help is to have students work on their article's in their own user namespace. Wikipedia is divided into multiple namespaces (for example, this page is part of the User talk: namespace). Registered users are given a lot of leeway into working in their own namespace. If your students would like to work on "Drafts" of their articles, which may or may not be ready for the main Wikipedia article namespace, they can do so as subpages (see WP:SUBPAGE) of their user namespace. Here's how to do this:

  1. Edit your user page, and put a link on it like this: [[/DRAFT]] or any other name you'd like for your subpage (replace draft with any name, such as the name of the article you hope to create). This creates the page User:Globalecon/DRAFT.
  2. From there, you can edit and craft the article freely, without much interference from admins. Articles there may still be deleted if they are clear violations of certain Wikipedia policies (such as blatant advertising, or copyright violations, or a page designed to attack or defame a person) However, if it is clear the article is a draft copy of what is to be a regular article in the future, it usually does not get messed with.
  3. When you are ready to move it to the article namespace, you can ask for help from an experienced user in doing so, seek help from others inreviewing the article (I would be glad to help you here) or you can move it yourself using the move function.

If you students work on their articles in this manner, they are likely to have more time to craft a compliant Wikipedia article. Some other things to remind them of as well:

  • Make sure that the article does not already exist under another name, or if the information would not more properly belong in a different article. For example, I noticed one of your students created an article about "issues related to Study Abroad programs" or something like that. It may be better to simply edit the existing article on study abroad.
  • Be sure that the article is not original research. Take care not to craft a novel synthesis of ideas. Just because A and B are both true facts does not mean they are related, and making connections that do not already exist in other sources is still original research.
  • You may want to have your students read Guide to creating your first article which contains some tips for creating a good Wikipedia article, and What Wikipedia is Not, which is a guide to some common pitfalls people run into while editing.

Good luck, and if you need anymore help with this class project, let me know. As an educator myself, I appreciate what you are doing, and which you and your class great success with it.--Jayron32.talk.contribs 15:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Concerns: your students' use of copyright images and other files

It is absolutely essential that your students be made aware of and thoroughly understand Wikipedia's copyright policies and how to upload and document images properly. So far, there are only two problems that I've found. However, as this 100 student project gets under way, these problems are liable to crop up more and more – it's a cause for concern.

  1. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Challengesbytype20002005.pdf This pdf file of a graph was uploaded originally to appear in the now deleted article Global censorship of Youth's books. Apart from inadequately documenting the file, and not including a copyright notice, the student claimed that it was "self-made". Actually, it is from this pdf file on the American Library Association web site and is copyright.
  2. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Naftaemployment.jpg This image was uploaded to accompany NAFTA's Impact on US Employment. Note that here the student has claimed to be "the copyright holder of the image" and released it under the GNU Free Documentation License. The student is not the copyright holder and had no right to release it under a free license. The image was taken from this pdf file of a copyright book chapter on the The Peterson Institute for International Economics web site. (The book is Hufbauer, Gary C., and Jeffrey J. Scott (2005) NAFTA Revisited: Achievements and Challenges, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.)

I'm sure these are just instances of the students not understanding that cropping and formatting an image or graph from a copyright work does not make it their own work. But they really must be made to understand this. Making false declarations of ownership and/or copyright status can lead to the editor being blocked from Wikipedia. See: [1]. It can also involve Wikipedia in legal trouble.

Since many of these articles are now being moved to user pages, the students must also be made aware that non-free, i.e. copyright, images and media cannot appear in user pages. See: Wikipedia user page guidance. Many thanks, Voceditenore (talk) 11:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)