User talk:Ryan (Wiki Ed)/History

Feedback on the draft

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback on this draft. Please leave your feedback in a new section below. Please remember that we will be unable to factor in feedback received after Sunday, September 3rd. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:02, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Suggested links to include

G'day, in the section about picking a topic to work on, I wonder if it might help to provide some links (url addresses potentially) to lists of requested articles. For example: Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social sciences/Military and military history (or its parent Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social sciences). Additionally, the Military History project maintains several lists of requested articles, or articles that need improvement: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Open tasks. Anyway, all the best. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 02:29, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, AustralianRupert. Those are indeed good resources. Since there are a number of ways of finding articles, and the best practices for which of those resources to use vary a bit depending on the individual assignment and specific subject focus, we tend to make these recommendations/links to classes directly (it's easier to follow a link in an email than in a printed handout). That said, I'll ping Shalor (Wiki Ed), the person who most often engages with history classes, to get her thoughts. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:24, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with Ryan - it's usually easier to link to these via e-mail but these are awesome links to pass along to history educators, so I'm going to bookmark/watchlist these so I'll have something to pull from when teachers ask. Thanks! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:30, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Comments by Wehwalt

• In the "engaging with editors" section, I might stress the importance of looking at the talk page for recent discussions before making significant changes. That might prevent the students from walking into a minefield. I might also stress that if they wait until the last minute, their edit may not stick and it would be embarrassing to be left with nothing by the time the instructor reviews the contribution, as there may be other reasons for removing the text even if they've complied with Ryan's guidelines.
• Another possible source of an idea for an article is seeing a redlink.
• I might mention the need that the article is to be written in formal language, avoiding use of contractions and slang.
• I'll think about it and give the draft a second look in a day or so (keeping in mind the deadline :) ).--Wehwalt (talk) 23:40, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Wehwalt. These are all good points. Students learn about using the talk page and writing style in the training and, to some extent, in other brochures like "Editing Wikipedia," but are there particular ways these processes would apply to history-related subjects that might not make sense to include in the more general training materials?

Regarding potential minefields in general, though, we've been talking an awful lot over the last few months about working with classes and/or individual students contributing to controversial subject areas. It's important enough (and potentially problematic enough) that we're trying to improve the way we train students and instructors with regard to topic selection and navigating potentially difficult subjects. We're also creating more opportunities for us to intervene with guidance and developing means of detecting potential red flags. That's sort of a tangent, but to say that concerns about students and minefields is something we hear frequently from the community, and even if there's not a whole lot about it here, it's something we're working on on many levels.

Ah, the redlink! :) So easy to forget how useful that fundamental wiki feature can be. I'll have to double-check to make sure we mention that somewhere in the general training or resources. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:49, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. If they're learning it elsewhere, there's no special application to history.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:43, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Some suggestions

Here are some observations I would make from my own experiences in starting out as a new editor.

• WP is an international resource and there are different national variations of English. When editing an existing article, edits should conform to the national variation in which it was first written. Look for clues in spelling such as colour/color, defence/defense and word endings "ise"/"ize". See also, the appropriate WP shortcut. Also that some articles may have a tag near the start of the article indicating the national variation used but that can only be seen in the edit box.

• Primary units of measure reported should also be consistent too.

• Primary sources may be used for matters of "fact" such as dates or times associated with an event or the citation associated with an honour being conferred but not for analysis. Perhaps an example. There is an example in Kokoda Track campaign where an event has been misreported in an early secondary source and this error has been perpetuated by subsequent authors.

• It can be very difficult for a writer not to "synthesise" and balance this requirement with the almost conflicting requirements of summarising sources (which is inherently an act of synthesis) and avoiding close plagiarism. I might refer to Battle of Buna–Gona: Japanese forces and order of battle#Japanese strength, where I had to walk a very fine line to reconcile the various reports of strength.

• It might be appropriate to mention the Wiki conundrum of "truth" versus "verifiability".

• Academic writers (and students) have a tendency to write long sentences with complex structures. Keep sentences short and simple for readability. Avoid things like "peacock" words and other phrasings that are frowned on here. There are various WP links on this.

• You talk about WP:BOLD process. Perhaps it could be linked. I think that there is scope for including more links into the text - particularly given the linked nature of WP.

• You may wish to note a caution about the use of capitals and the common tendency to overuse or unnecessarily use capital letters. This is a common error of new editors.

• The WP guide on how to add references is pretty poor. There are many template tools for referencing and other things but the WP introductory guides don't introduce these very well. My advice is to find a suitable article and look at the tools that have been used.

• A simple way to create a new article is to copy an existing article into your sandbox and use it as template. Two words of caution though. Don't leave any breadcrumbs from the previous article - "bits" left over from the template article that really don't belong. Secondly, make sure you erase the category links at the bottom of the article before you save the template to your sandbox. Leaving them will cause your sandbox to appear in category lists as it were a "real" article and annoy other editors. Categories can be added when the article is added to the main space.

• A good first step in creating a new article can be to create a red-link in an article that refers to the new "subject article". I could explain this more. Clicking on a red-link results in WP asking if you want to create a new article because one does not already exist. One you prepared earlier can then be copied and pasted from your sandbox. So, if Joesepine Blogs appears in an article as the spouse of Joe Bloggs but is, herself, notable ...

• 1st Mountain Battery (Australia) is an excellent example of collaborative editing, which can be seen by looking at the history.,

• The Kokoda Track campaign article version of earlier this year omitted any significant detail on the Australian counter attack and concentrated on the initial withdrawal and has since been rewritten. A number of offspring articles for the individual battles were also created about a year ago. This is an example of how an article can evolve and might give some ideas for the evolution of other articles. Examples of referencing and other templates used in the article might be useful too.

• You may want to link Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Military as a source of possible subjects for new editors. I have created a couple of articles in support of this project. Many of the women in this list have articles in other Wiki projects (ie non-English). The catch though, is that many may not meet the English WP notability guidelines. Another thought is that any officer of brigadier or higher is generally (haha) considered notable and there are many that don't have articles.

I appreciate that this an introductory guide that is supported by other materials and that some of the points I have raised may belong elsewhere. Hope this is of help. Regards Cinderella157 (talk) 00:56, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi, again. I just realised that the "print" deadline is probably for hard copy printing. Why not make most of your guide (including most of this) online? I have been an adult and vocational educator. For many of my students, e-learning was a barrier by virtue of both access to the physical resource and "accessibility" by virtue of aptitude for the medium. Given the nature of the course, neither of these would appear to be a barrier, since both of these "issues" are (more-or-less) intrinsic prerequisites of achieving the outcomes. Any Wiki generic material is a useful addition to the Wiki domain. Course specific material could reside on your own server as a pdf or word file - both of which support links. The hardcopy introduction could then be limited to as little as a page! The downside is that any material published on WP can be edited by anybody. There are a number of checks and counters to this. Most Wiki edits will be of a positive nature. Oversight (by yourself and the class) can/will mitigate vandalism. Oversight by the class can be written into the outcomes as can the requirement to monitor changes that might affect the outcome of the assessment. There is the potential to offer "bonus points" for positive improvements to the WP materials that are specifically defined as supporting the course. Monitoring changes are "normal" parameters of working within the Wiki domain and are neither onerous nor extraordinary expectations in the context of what you are trying to achieve. On the otherhand, these materials could be housed on both sites (WP and your own) such that your own site is a stable copy for the duration of the semester and the WP version is subject to continuous improvement, such that the WP version could then be incorporated at the end of each cycle. Just some further thoughts. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:52, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Handout is live!

For those interested, the history handout is now live here: File:Editing Wikipedia articles on History.pdf. Thanks again for all your feedback! --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:16, 29 September 2017 (UTC)