Dh2olsen31

Your course

Hi Dh2olsen31, I just thought I would drop you a note about some of the students in your GEOG 348 class. It might be helpful to remind the students about what is important to add in articles about tourism. Things that are not important include emergency contacts or the population statistics. In short, Wikipedia is not a phone book our tourist guide, it is an encyclopedia. Courtesy ping to Shalor (Wiki Ed), your course contact, and @JJMC89 and Chrissymad: who have been doing some of the cleanup. Primefac (talk) 18:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks Primefac! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:21, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
• Primefac and Shalor: I will pass on your concerns to my students. I have instructed them to take only the portions of their assignment they feel would be useful and add them to the appropriate Wikipedia tourism pages. Seeing that what I was told my students could post on the tourism pages and what we are now being told at the end of the semester what we cannot post, please be patient with my students and work with them to get something posted to the tourism websites so that they feel this was a successful assignment. In fact, what information can my students post, and what can they not post? I would be happy to pass along the assignment instructions again it if would be helpful.
• Primefac and Shalor: It has also become painfully obvious to me that Wikipedia is the wrong platform for this assignment. Can you please suggest a different platform that might be more conducive for the public dissemination of the information my students are compiling?
• Primefac and Shalor: Further my first comment, what are the things that you would like me to remind my students regarding "what is important to add in articles about tourism"? I have received very little instruction on regarding this outside of no promotional language. Thank you.
• Hi - I emailed you a followup. Essentially a tourism article should only contain information about how tourism impacts a specific area. For example, this will be things like the history of tourism in a given area, how the area's crime or environmental concerns (weather, pollution, etc) impact tourism or how tourism impacts those issues, and how the government has tried to attract - or repel - tourists. General information such as the area's diet, overall history, and government shouldn't be added because they're redundant to the information in the main article. The page I'd linked to about Tourism in China is a good example of what should go in a tourism article and how some issues such as how politics and government impact tourism should be covered.

Basically, think of it like chapters in a book. Since there's already a chapter on the general information, there is no need to cover this information again in the chapter about tourism, as anyone needing this information can go back to the chapter that discusses it. This is one of the main ways that Wikipedia differs from tourism websites, as they typically don't have the general information of an area set up on a different page. They want the page to be a one stop shop for people coming in so it's easier for the consumer to make a decision about travel plans and so they can cover tourism for many different areas in one website. I hope this helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)