JThandi10

Welcome

Hello, JThandi10, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Yunshui, and as you already know I am your Online Ambassador for the UBC Human Ecology course. My job here is to help you to work within Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, to answer any questions that you have about editing here, and to act as your advocate in the (unlikely) event that you find yourself in a dispute with another user.

You are welcome to contact me at any time by leaving a message on my Wikipedia talkpage or by emailing me. I will usually respond to any messages within 24 hours (though I aim to be faster!), but if you need more immediate help, you can ask questions of experienced editors at The Teahouse or get live help via Wikipedia's IRC channel (connect here).

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Introduction to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• Wikipedia's Simplified Manual of Style
• Basic Wikipedia Markup

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. Once again, if you need help with any aspect of Wikipedia, please just ask; it's what I'm here for. Enjoy your course! Yunshui 雲‍水 21:04, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Yunshui!

Thank you already for the advice on leaving a signature, glad to know you are so helpful right away! JThandi10 (talk) 21:10, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Wiki project

Hey Justin,

I was thinking that because the proposal is due on the Feb 2 (I believe) that we could each come up with one or two ideas for friday and then decide from those. I think we need time to look whether or not our ideas are lacking information on wikipedia already. If there is already enough information on the idea we choose then that won't make for a very good project.

Let me know

Acfredrikson (talk) 19:46, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey Ali,

Thanks for getting the ball rolling here. As per your suggestion, here are a couple topics that I thought seemed either interesting, UBC-related or unique enough to flesh out for our project. I tried my best to practice my Wikipedia formatting to make it easier for you to navigate, figured it was a good time to start :) I also wasn’t sure if I should put this on your Talk page but I figured it’s OK to continue it here until we create our sandbox. Take a look and let me know what you think, I’m looking forward to hearing your suggestions as well. We should take some time to look each other’s over and maybe discuss it here leading up to our next class. Our proposal doesn’t have to be in until midnight on Tuesday, so we can make a final decision in class and work on our proposal that night unless we work something out before. If it’s easier for you to communicate through email, then don’t hesitate to email me since I probably have easier access to that than Wikipedia. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

Cheers,

Justin

UBC Farm Wonders

Farm Wonders is based on a student-driven health initiative tailored to children ages 6-14 with the goal of educating the young about the food they eat and the science of the farm.

I attempted to search for anything related to “FarmWonders” on Wikipedia, plus I combed through the UBC Farm entry and I couldn’t find any information pertaining to this subject. The closest thing I found was the "Vancouver's Native Health Society (VNHS) project” located on the UBC Farm wikipedia page but that appears to be a separate initiative with little information. I also checked the University of British Columbia Faculty of Land and Food Systems page but it didn’t have anything specific to this topic as well. It seems like both of those Wiki pages are pretty bare as well, so it’s possible we could work on expanding one of them as well but that could be a pretty big task.

Stanley Park Ecology Society

The Stanley Park Ecology Society (SPES) is essentially the group that is responsible for maintaining Stanley Park and creating initiatives that promote education and sustainability throughout the park.

I combed through the Stanley Park entry and found nothing to do with the SPES other than that they operate a couple of the buildings and attractions in the park. I figured this option has a ton of objective information that we could reference and it covers a wide variety of topics within it, so it’s a subject that we can create a pretty substantial page on.

JThandi10 (talk) 00:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Farm Wonders

Hey Justin,

I really liked the Farm Wonders idea. I had never heard of it before and it seems really interesting and I also noticed a lack of information about it online other than their own [farmwonders.ca] website. So I think if we just create a wikipedia from scratch that would be a great idea.

Acfredrikson (talk) 00:51, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Hey Ali,

Glad you liked it! It was something I stumbled upon while researching and thought it was an interesting topic that we could make a good Wikipedia page on. I figured that since they are affiliated with UBC, we could contact them to see if they have any more literature or articles that they wouldn't mind lending us to expand their page. I'll create a sandbox with our proposal and let you know when it's done so you can look over it and make changes before we have to submit it tomorrow. We can continue to talk on that page so it's all in one spot.

JThandi10 (talk) 02:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

I created the sandbox for us to work on our proposal and page for FarmWonders. Take a look and feel free to edit what is there as we will submit that as our proposal tomorrow. Let me know if you have any questions, thanks.

JThandi10 (talk) 03:17, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys. I have no wish to rain on your parade, but it's probably best to bring this up before it becomes a problem. Having done some cursory websearches, I have serious doubts that the UBC FarmWonders program is actually notable enough for a Wikipedia article to survive. As you say, there is a lack of information about it online - but Wikipedia isn't here to rectify that; we aim to report on things that have already been written about. As such, you might find the SPES a better choice (there isn't much on that either, but I did at least find this and this, which is enough to make a start). Check out Wikipedia's answer to everything to get an idea of what you need. Yunshui 雲‍水 12:51, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice, Yunshui. In the end, you have probably saved us from a ton of issues we might have had down the road.

Ali, unfortunately I'm not feeling well enough to come to class today and I apologize for that. I will still be able to help brainstorm for new ideas and work on our proposal tonight. If we wanted to work with my second suggestion, the Stanley Park Ecology Society, then I can submit the proposal for that. I will also start looking into other suitable topics this afternoon.

If you had any other really good ideas for topics that have objective information on them, please suggest them here and I will look them over. Thanks

JThandi10 (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Stanley Park Ecological Society

Hi Justin, Sorry to hear you are unwell. That sucks we can't do farm wonders, I was really excited for it because I had never heard of it before. But I like spes too. I organized a group before to volunteer at as ivy busters. I have class til 7 and won't get home til around 8. If you are still interested in this maybe you could start the proposal and then tonight I'll add to it or alter it if I think it needs it. She said we both have to submit the same proposal but I guess on connect so she can give us both marks. Acfredrikson (talk) 21:02, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Ali. I'm still interested in this topic as long as we have enough information to turn this into a proper Wikipedia page. Based on Yunshui's links and my research, it could be tough to make a substantial page but it is possible to do. Unless you have another topic in mind that we can source a lot of information for, then I guess this is our best choice. In the mean time, I will keep researching to see if SPES is suitable or if I come across any better choices. JThandi10 (talk) 23:15, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

By the way, did Rosie talk specifically about how many sources we need or roughly how big our page needs to be? Did we cover anything else important in class today? JThandi10 (talk) 23:17, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Hey Ali,

I’ve done some more research on SPES and attached links to each subject that either Yunshui found for us or I was able to dig up. If you are able to find a couple more reliable sources, then I think we can create a fairly substantial page. Maybe you can find some more info on your time with Ivy Busters? That could possibly have been apart of the $50,000 revitalization project. Click on the links for more info on each subject. I have also updated our sandbox with our new proposal on the SPES, take a look when you get the chance and let me know what you think.

Introduction and History

• Canada Helps description

Animal Conservation

• Co-existing with Coyotes
• Adopt a Blue Heron

Sustainability Efforts

• Beaver Lake Dredging
• $50,000 revitalization project
• Public Art: Corn Stalks

JThandi10 (talk) 02:55, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Proposal Extension

I talked to rosie after class and she said she would give us an extension because we had to change our topic last minute. I think we should take her up on it because we don't have a set guideline on what we want to do other than add spes to the stanley park page and update it. She also said that we shouldn't be too ambitious so our proposal should be small and focussed in order for us to get it all completed and then if we have time to expand on it. Acfredrikson (talk) 05:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

OK that's good to hear that Rosie understands our situation, thanks for talking to her. It makes sense that our proposal shouldn't be too ambitious but my goal with the info in the sandbox was to see if we had enough info to go on to make a SPES Wikipedia page and create a basic framework for us to work with. I get it if we have to alter the proposal and I think we have enough information without making our page too ambitious but I'm open to suggestions. That leaves me with a couple of questions:

1) What is Rosie extending our deadline to? 2) Are we going to continue with SPES as our topic or are we going in a different direction?

JThandi10 (talk) 05:15, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Page Progress

Hey Justin, I've updated the introduction section of the sandbox. If you want to change or edit it feel free I just thought we should start adding information and then work on the fine details later on. I was thinking it might be a good idea to add SPES's mission statement but I wanted to run it by you first. Also I think maybe we should just label that introduction and not 'introduction and history' because I can't find much on the history. Unless you can we should re-label the heading.

Maybe we should divide up the programs we have listed and each write something about said program. Acfredrikson (talk) 18:16, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Good job so far. I did a bit of editing on the formatting of our page plus I updated the Co-existing with Coyotes section. I will work on the Beaver Lake dredging and the revitalization project sections too. We will need to be sure to have citations and references to our material as well. Have we gone over how to properly cite yet? JThandi10 (talk) 23:56, 9 March 2014 (UTC)