User talk:Psyc452-GGeorge

Welcome[edit]

Hello, Psyc452-GGeorge and welcome to Wikipedia! It appears you are participating in a class project. If you haven't done so already, we encourage you to go through our training for students. Your instructor or professor may wish to set up a course page, if your class doesn't already have one.

Go through our online training for students.

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We hope you like it here and encourage you to stay even after your assignment is finished! Stuartyeates (talk) 07:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the effort on your part. I doubt that many will complete the training but it's a nice gesture.Psyc452-GGeorge (talk) 00:18, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks[edit]

Thanks for engaging and posting your perspective on the WP:ENB. I thought it was a good post. Best wishes. Biosthmors (talk) 20:28, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've been reading through a bunch of articles and deletion discussions as well. I've dealt with a few education projects, and it's always a shame if a group of students is (let's say) thrown to the wolves, without a professor there to direct traffic and answer questions. At this moment you're one of only a few things standing in the way between many of those articles and deletion. I have to say that I also saw plenty of difficulties with the articles I looked at, but it's not really my expertise. Anyway, good luck, keep on talking with those other editors, and let me know if I can be of any help. Thanks again, Drmies (talk) 03:20, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Problems[edit]

I have been ambassador to several courses, and the most difficult part of the work was trying to find suitable topics within the subject of the course that weren't already covered and that would make suitable articles that could reasonably be completed in the time available. For many topics, especially general ones or interdisciplinary ones, it isn't really possible. What I've usually advised is adding sections to existing articles, expending existing skimpy sections, expanding s=existing stub articles, or writing about small discrete subjects that would be clearly acceptable--and I consider the ideal topics of this sort to be major authors or scholars in the field who do not yet have articles. In essentially any subject, though we may cover many of the current generation, we don't cover the preceding ones, and it is earlier people for whom material is most likely to be available.

Did the instructor, or anyone in the class, think of consulting with us first, at the beginning of the term? If any efforts were made, I'd very much like to figure out why they weren't successful. Or if this never occurred to anyone, I wonder if you could assist us by telling us what seemed to have been the reasoning--was it a feeling that this problem would not occur, or that people should solve it on their own? DGG ( talk ) 03:13, 24 April 2013 (UTC) problem was[reply]

DGG, I apologize for the delay in my response, as I've been embroiled in watching this whole situation develop. Your comment is well-received and would have been greatly helpful at the onset of this project. As it is now, maybe our discussion will help illuminate how to deal with future events.

I agree with you that making suitable articles (especially in a field like Psychology) is fairly impossible. Here's what I have to say about your advice.

Adding Sections to Existing articles - Well, this may have worked, except the article for "Evolutionary Psychology" (the focus of our course) was already too big. So expanding skimpy sections or adding sections was not ideal (and I think our instructor recognized this).
Expanding Existing Stub Articles - Interestingly enough, our professor actually created a variety of stubs before we (the students) ever arrived on the scene. However, these stubs were content-less and deleted as per Wikipedia policy. If similar stubs already existed, could an editor have helped us find them?
Small Discrete Subjects - Interesting. I don't know if our instructor has considered this proposal.

Here's a bit more info on the efforts made at the beginning of the term. Our instructor believes/believed that the students could look at sections in the existing Evolutionary Psych article and expand them into a full article with pages of their own. As mentioned above, the instructor tried to make stubs, but to my knowledge, did not continue consulting editors or use the Educational Assignment guidelines. There was a very real expectation that problems would occur, but that we, the students were responsible for solving these problems and could ask both the Wikipedia editors and the instructor for help. So, regretably, while there has been very little contact (until recently) between our instructor and the Wikipedia editors, our instructor has communicated with and discussed with us matters such as quality, notability, plagiarism, etc. If the articles showed these problems (most did), it was probably due to a lack of effort or time investment on the students part. Although I admit clear guidelines and communication with Wikipedia editors from the beginning would have been helpful.

DGG, I feel like this is a special case. From what I can see, our instructor is rather infamous in Wikipedia. I would guess that this is why he didn't take the traditional avenues of article creation. Either that, or misplaced confidence in his students' abilities. Psyc452-GGeorge (talk) 02:26, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

George, please see WP:ANI, section "Spam attack on Evolutionary psychology". I think this is one of y'all's. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:02, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion noted. I'm not sure what role I can take. Obviously, the spam attack was inappropiate. If my peers were more familiar with wikipedia, they'd know that it was improper to post virtually identical articles after deletion. The attention that this project has garnered so far has been overshadowed by the infamy of its instigator. I feel like my hands are tied; it's difficult to be unbiased in this situation.

Past transgressions aside, the current criticism lobbed at the instructor hones on the point that he's "using the students to push his agenda", which I feel is untrue. All of our student edits have been in good faith. We haven't been using original research. We were told to keep a neutral point of view and create unbiased encyclopedic entries. Before this incident hit the Adminstrator's Noticeboard, some progress was being made. And now... Now there is talk of sanctions. For this project, having an unlisted alt account, minor breaches of civility on talk pages. I feel morally obligated to defend him on those accounts. What say you?Psyc452-GGeorge (talk) 02:26, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your response has been very helpful, and will be very useful in refining the way we deal with courses. We're still experimenting; not experimenting as blindly as we did in the first year, but still experimenting. We know some things that do not usually work--fortunately, there are a number of different ways that have been shown to work if used intelligently, and can be adapted to various classes.

I was a college teacher for many years myself. In teaching classes beyond the introductory level, it is desirable and even necessary to give the students a degree of independence, increasing as they go along. But for a WP assignment, which for almost everybody is very different than earlier work, both because you are writing to a live and diverse audience and because of the large number of stated and unstated conventions--for this part of the work, guidance is necessary and there are all too few people here who are interested in doing this right--and we who do are reluctant to interfere with the instructors who are responsible for the courses, and have as they ought to have their own educational strategies. We are furthermore in a position where there is no way we can insist on something: we can remove a person or a course from the Education Program just go ahead outside it. All we can do is reject an article or block a user.

Now, about the agenda. (I am expressing my own personal view here, not the consensus position on WP; I greatly doubt my view is shared by the majority of people at WP interested in this topic.) Please examine at the section "Reception" of the Evolutionary psychology article and especially the article Criticism of evolutionary psychology. Try to judge the balance and adherence to NPOV: consider amount of space in the criticism article devoted to defense of e.p., and the clarity with which the defense is written. There is a great sensitivity here to anything that might be considered racist , sexist, etc.... This can verge on a attitude known sometimes as political correctness, and we have normally rejected under the pretense of NPOV any point of view that is very different from the the major English-speaking countres' current liberal consensus. As I am not really eager to spend all my efforts here in trying to challenge entrenched prejudices, I avoid these articles. (Don't try to extrapolate my actual political views from what I say about this issue--my views are not in any of he standard categories. I consider myself a scientist; I consider psychology is or ought to be a biological science, and I go by what I see as the scientific evidence, however unwelcome the conclusions in terms of what I would like to believe. I am simultaneously very aware of the use of what was thought to be scientific evidence in this field for nefarious purposes. I also know the propensity of humans to think the evidence is what they would like it to be, and I know I share the weaknesses of the rest of humanity.)

I have some reason to suspect your instructor shares my POV in this to some extent, and that he designed the course in order to express it. For example, some of the expansion areas he suggested are particularly sensitive topics, ones in which nobody who knows WP would advise a beginner to work. I am sure he knew this, and it was utterly unfair to deliberately expose the students to this. The general strategy , of expanding parts of an article, is a perfectly valid one, and the instructor was not wrong to use it. Considering the subject of the class, I would have picked a less difficult article than the main one on the subject.

I hope you will be one of the relatively few people who continue to work in WP after one of the courses using it; you have a facility for reasoned discussion, and for clear writing. Do choose a different user name, of course. :) DGG ( talk ) 02:01, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]