CHAteach1901

Welcome

Hello, SCS AP US! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:02, 26 May 2012 (UTC) Getting Started The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions New contributors' help page Where to: ask questions • make requests Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Please tell students to stop using talk pages as a forum

Hello Mr. M. Will. I've been trying to track you down. Your students have been doing a fantastic job expanding Wikipedia articles. Their contributions are excellent and I'm sure many of us would welcome more such contributions.

There is one problem: the students seem to have been assigned the task of asking each other academic and scholastic questions of a speculative nature on article talk pages. Please read WP:TALK and WP:FORUM. It is against Wikipedia policy to use talk pages this way; the talk page should only be used to discuss ways of improving the article. Discussions like "What do you think would have happened if..." are not relevant to making the article better since an editor's opinions are not reliable sources.

One other thing: please ask them to not use "ibid" and "op cit" if possible. Wikipedia discourages this, and cleaning it up creates work for other editors. See WP:CITE for how to cite. But the main thing is to stop off-topic discussions on talk pages.

Oh, also, your user name "SCS AP US" probably violates the username policy; see Wikipedia:Username policy. User names should not be associated with roles, groups, or organizations. Read Wikipedia:Username policy for instructions on how to change to a more appropriate user name.

Sorry for all the complaining. Wikipedia has a lot of rules, unfortunately. Your students are doing wonderful work and they should be commended. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:10, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Asking questions on an article talk page is, of course, perfectly fine if they point out issues the article has, such as areas that need clarification, or, in general, if they may help to improve the content of the article.  --Lambiam 22:37, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I have asked my students to no longer psot these speculative questions to the discussion pages. I will also be changing the instructions for that component of their assignment. Thank you for the positive feedback for the students. I look forward to sharing it with them in class. SCS AP US (talk) 18:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

ANI notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding students assigned to use of talk pages as forum. The thread is St. Clement's School AP US History students have been making Wikipedia a lot better. But.... Thank you. —Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:26, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

More on citations and edit summaries

Hello, I just noticed the great work of one of your students, Eunice.jones (talk · contribs), on the Black Sunday (storm) article. I have a couple of suggestions for things to emphasise to students in any future classes:

1. As mentioned above, they should not use "ibid" and similar constructions. Instead, ask them to use Wikipedia's system for named references.
2. Emphasise that they should use an edit summary for every edit they make, to avoid misunderstandings like this; a Wikipedian reverted Eunice's edit because he thought she was removing text without explanation. She was in fact trying to fix the references – in an incorrect manner (see above) – but if she had left an informative edit summary, her edits would probably not have been undone.
3. Mention that other Wikipedia editors may leave messages on students' user talk pages, and these messages should be replied to, if possible. It might be worth noting that some users prefer to have the reply posted on their own talk page, while others prefer to keep messages in one place – users usually specify this on the header of their talk page.
4. This is a very, very minor point compared to the others, but Wikipedia uses straight apostrophes and quotes rather than curly ones.

Hope this helps. Graham87 05:59, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Graham87 , for the feedback. I will pass it along to the student on the Black Sunday article. I will also make sure to make changes to the assignment package that I give the students so that these errors do not continue. Thank you! SCS AP US (talk) 16:48, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

November 2023

I came here for a similar reason, though I haven't yet had to block anyone. I am not sure if it is at your direction that your students are adding promotional material to St. Clement's School, but it appears several of them did. Please make sure your students are aware that Wikipedia does not permit promotional material (which includes school "boosterism" type stuff), edits must be neutral in both tone and content, and that article material must be referenced to reliable and independent sources, not based upon personal perception or knowledge. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:33, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I can assure you that I have not encouraged anyone to add promotional material to the page. As you can see from the history, some of the content that was removed goes back to material posted in 2007. I can also assure you that much of the content you have removed from the page was not contributed by my students.

I will speak to my class about neutral tone and content. At this point, I don't have any questions...but might reach out in the future if I do.

Thank you. CHAteach1901 (talk) 01:14, 21 November 2023 (UTC)