Welcome to Simple English Wikipedia change

Hi, Castilibrary, welcome to Simple English Wikipedia! Thank you for your changes. If you need help, check out the Help section of Wikipedia, or leave a message on my talk page. Whenever leaving messages on talk pages, please remember to sign your name by typing four 'tildes' (like this: ~~~~); doing this makes your name and the date show up. Also, it helps if you write something in the box that says 'change summary' whenever you change an article. Below are some useful links to make your time here simpler. Happy changing! Peterdownunder (talk) 21:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Getting Started
Getting Help
Policies and Guidelines

The Community
Things to do
Other

Peterdownunder (talk) 21:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

Welcome change

Please enter comments below.

School project change

I will be able to assist with your planned school project. Please feel free to ask any questions, or for any help.--Peterdownunder (talk) 21:05, 7 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your assistance. There will be high traffic from our IP range on that day. Will that create any issues or blockages? Castilibrary (talk) 22:10, 7 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your invitation but unfortunately I will not be available for those hours (+9 hours difference). Sorry. Good luck. Maurice Carbonaro (talk) 07:22, 8 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

Class project articles change

Hello, Castilibrary. Thanks for the articles your students are creating -- they're good additions here!

I was wondering how much and what kind of input you would like about these articles. I've seen several things that need to be done, and I didn't know how much you want the students to be coached in doing it and how much you're OK with others doing. Please let me know. Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 23:50, 23 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hi there, thank you for checking in! I am starting to go through and clean up some student work. I would be happy to hear feedback, as we continue to hone the instructions we give the students. This was the first year we worked with mostly new articles, which was exciting but also brought on some new challenges. However, you should also feel free to edit directly, if you wish. I actually think it is good for them to see their content changing, too. Alway open to feedback. Thank you, sincerely, I know you are an active editor here, as I recall meeting you last year. Castilibrary (talk) 05:26, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
I have been marking most of these articles as "patrolled." But by all means have your students continue to go back and fix things. Some still have grammar/usage issues. At least one article concerning a deceased author has not moved past "Early Life" and "Early Career". I do not propose to tag these things yet, as long as your students are still working. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:28, 31 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Referencing change

Hi Castilibrary, the writers project seems to be going well, with some good material being added. Most are adding general references at the bottom of the pages, which is quite acceptable, but in line references are much preferred. In line referencing can be a more difficult to teach, but it would be nice. Well done to all for the wotk so far.--Peterdownunder (talk) 11:00, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Sorry to but in, but I was going to say something similar. Sources are there to support the claims made in the text. If there are direct quotations from anywhere they must be explicitly signalled as quotations, and sourced. Or they can be reworded, with a source reference. This is not "reading list" territory, it is "where exactly did you get it from?" territory.
Example: 4000 or so bytes copy/pasted in to Rita Williams-Garcia by student. Where from? Not English wiki, I've just checked. If it comes from the book listed, then a direct copy would be a breach of copyright. If the table was organised by the student on the basis of information in the book, well, that's good. These issues are regarded by Wikipedia as very important. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:45, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for the feedback. We actually showed them how to do the in line references, and expected them to include the proper kind. My mistake/point of learning was that we had always had students add information to existing articles before, rather than have them create a completely new article. So, the references are where they got their information but, since we restricted their sources for this project, much of their article may have been derived from information in just a few sources. I'll work on the in-line references.
Please note that the copy-and-paste you see is because we had students first write their content in a doc and then copy and paste it in. Although I see she will need to simplify it, the students working on Rita Williams-Garcia are very strong writers--I checked the source from which they drew their information, and all their narrative is original.
We already know that for next time we want to give them a slightly wider range of resources to work with, and we will be more explicit about what we want in terms of references. I must say it was very, very empowering to the students to add their favorite women authors and see them represented in Simple English Wikipedia. Thank you for the feedback. Castilibrary (talk) 15:14, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
Castilibrary, I'm afraid I deprived your students of the experience of simplifying that article, because I just did some simplifying myself. Feel free to undo what I did if you want them to try it themselves. The things I did besides the simplifying can easily be redone. --Auntof6 (talk) 15:52, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
Not a problem. Thank you for your help. My colleague PrincessPotatoChip and I are also simplifying. Given some elements of how the classroom teachers targeted this assignment (we are the librarians), an important element is allowing the students to see how Wikipedia is constantly changing. How their work will change over time. So, thank you!Castilibrary (talk) 16:15, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
Also, Macdonald-ross, thank you for the feedback--it is not butting in, we are grateful for feedback so we can improve our processes and the students' work. Castilibrary (talk) 15:16, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Where? change

Hi, nice to see some educating being done. I have helped a little at Montclair State University. You might want to Put some background info on your user page about yourself and especially your class. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:28, 29 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Apologizing for answering late to your help request of Ambassador for School Project change

Greetings Castilibrary,
I apologize for answering so late to your help request of Ambassador for School project that you posted on my user talk page on 7 February, 2013 in order to interact with the actual editings starting from about 2:00-3:15 PST on Wednesday, February 27, 2013.
I must have read your message but the 2013 Russian meteor event that took place on February 15, 2013 has completely absorbed all my attention and obviously I have entered in some psychological state of denial (I guess!).
FYI in broad daylight on 15 June, 2009 I have witnessed myself a meteor falling on Sicily and (luckily!) getting destroyed entering the Atmosphere of Earth.
I hope you will understand that I take these kind of Near-Earth objects quite seriously. Honestly.
Please keep me posted if I could be of any help in the future for School projects.
Yours faithfully.
Maurice Carbonaro (talk) 07:57, 23 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Body systems project change

Hi, Castilibrary. Welcome back to working on projects here. I noticed that your project page mentions a banner to be put on pages. The code given for the banner points to the project page itself -- if you put that on a page, the entire project page would appear. That's probably not what you want!

Also, if you put a banner on the main article page, please be sure to remove it when the class is finished working on it. Thanks, and I hope your students enjoy working here. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:46, 8 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi Auntof6. Lovely to see you again! I will work to get the banner correct--thanks for the heads up. We will certainly remove the (correct) banner when done. -- --Castilibrary (talk)

OK, we are off and running! Students are editing. --Castilibrary (talk)

Possible future project change

We spoke a few years ago when I was just getting my own class project off the ground. We are now in our fourth year and I'm happy to tell you that this year all of our students will be expanding articles on female authors! I thought of you when I saw this blog post about working with NARA to improve coverage of women's suffrage in Wikipedia, because I know your students have researched various notable women in the past. Perhaps your students would be interested to participate to celebrate the 100th anniversary coming up!? Swim123blue (talk) 20:53, 2 May 2019 (UTC)Reply