User talk:ABrundage

Thanks so much for contacting me! I'll get back to you as soon as I'm in my office.

Note: Please visit the project page Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/ENTO_431 for more information, as I am answering any and all frequently asked questions there. I will do my best to respond to each of you individually, but most questions and comments are addressed in the assignment instructions.

I moved your page to the project namespace at Wikipedia:School and university projects/ENTO 431/Ento 431 Writing Assignment Rubric. NawlinWiki (talk) 18:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please review your list of topics for your ENTO 431 project. I feel that there is only so much that a general encyclopedia needs on this subject and you may be going a bit over the top. As you can see, your group's articles are getting prodded, redirected and proposed for merging by a number of editors in addition to myself.

As an alternative, please consider creating a specific FE wiki on Wikia. You will find your students can ramble on there to their heart's content.

Incidentally, what on earth is this about "double spaced, 12 point font, and reasonable margins"? Wikipedia is not paper! -- RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 22:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for your feedback; however, given that forensic entomology is much more extensive than the few paragraphs written here, and given that most of the articles proposed by the students are specifically addressing known gaps on this site (as indicated by other users), this seems to be the place for this information.

This project is also following all the guidelines as set forth by the Wikipedia:School and University Projects page. If you have any feedback about the idea of a university project, please continue the discussion on that page.

As for the rubric, that is specifically designed for the hard copy portion of this paper which they are turning in later in the semester. Let me know if I can clarify anything else. ABrundage, Texas A&M University (talk)

I came across this article because it was nominated for peer review, so I thought that I would review it (peer review comments are here). While I applaud your efforts at trying to get Wikipedia into the classroom, and to get students to actually contribute to articles instead of attempting to cite it as a source, or plagiarize from it, I have serious concerns that the students working on this particular article just don't "get it". The paper in question is really just a term paper, and written in that style. It's not an encyclopedia article, and I am failing to understand why this topic is important to the encyclopedia. An encyclopedia article is NOT a term paper, mostly because of the style of writing; an encyclopedia article must be informative, complete, and written from a neutral point of view. Most college term papers actually encourage a more persuasive style of writing, and I think if students are to learn how to effectively collaborate and write articles for Wikipedia, they need to break out of this mode of writing (see WP:NPOV for Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy).

Your students also need to follow Wikipedia's Manual of Style, and not something else that you give them in class. And as their professor, you should be teaching them this manual of style. If you publish material in an academic, peer-reviewed journal, you're expected to adhere to that journal's style guidelines, and not something else. The same thing should apply to Wikipedia. The article in question does not even come close to adhering to WP:MOS.

I notice that you mentioned the featured article process on your course page. One thing that you should take a closer look at is the Featured article criteria, which outlines four specific criteria that all FAs must adhere to. It would be good to make sure that your students understand this criteria, as it goes hand-in-hand with the manual of style. There's also another article review process as well; the Good article process. GAs have a similar set of six criteria, though it is a little less stringent than FA. It might be worth mentioning this as an option to your students since it sometimes takes less time to go through a GA review than a full FA review.

Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 16:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One other thing that I should also address, and this isn't exactly negative. I should commend the students in the article for going out and nominating the article for peer review, which, as far as I can tell, they did on their own. This does show a certain commitment, and a desire to get feedback on their article. So, while there are still some significant issues, and I stand by my original comments, I did want to point out something positive that I observed from the group. Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 18:38, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As the editor who has come under some criticism for nominating the above article for deletion, I would like to add a few points to the above comments. But first let me say that I think it is admirable that you are encouraging your students to make use of the vast resources that are available here on WP and more broadly on the internet - I wish they had been available when I was a student in the early 80s; second, as a one-time classicist and now lawyer, I am obviously not an expert on the subject matter of these articles, so my comments are not intended to be criticism of the work done by the students, but rather advice as to how it (the work) should be presented here on WP:

1. As has been said above, WP is not a repository for term papers, so your students will have to be very careful to adhere to the appropriate guidelines. I would be more than happy to add welcome templates, with links to appropriate WP guidelines, to your students' talk pages if you point me to their user pages.
2. In addition to the guidance above, your students should be very careful that articles do not veer off into original research (WP:OR) - the reason I AfDd the above article was that looked to me a lot like OR.
3. If your students will be writing their articles in stages, I would strongly advise that they create them first in a sandbox, preferably a user sandbox - see Wikipedia:User_page#How_do_I_create_a_user_subpage - before copying them to the article space.
4. I would be more than happy to attempt to help your students on their WP journey as my time allows.

 – ukexpat (talk) 17:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, regarding your project whereby students create and develop articles relating to a specific subject, this template should be placed on talk pages, not article pages. I am going to go through and change them now. J Milburn (talk) 23:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks so much!ABrundage, Texas A&M University (talk) 01:31, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • Hello again, thanks for your comments on Talk:List of schools and organizations related to forensic entomology. Just to say I really do support your project, I think it's a wonderful idea, it's just that some of the articles need a little bit of help, so I'm just cleaning them up a little where I can- treating them like any other article I come across. J Milburn (talk) 09:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • • That is exactly what I was hoping for with this project--I wanted to give the students a taste of the real world; It's one thing not to follow my directions when turning in a paper to me, it's quite another to ignore a large, well-established and serious group of people who care deeply about the project. Thanks again for helping out so much! ABrundage, Texas A&M University (talk) 14:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the "my contributions" is there a way to expand our sections so you can see what we have written? How can you tell if we actually contributed something are just added a punctuation mark to fill up the space?Quatrevingtsix (talk) 22:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adrienne, we received a comment on our page directing us to Wikipedia's writing style manual. The requirement on the assignment page was that we write "encyclopedia-like writing." Our group had a talk about this before our article went up, and we thought that it was like an encyclopedia article. We also sent it to you to read, and you didn't comment on any changes we needed to make regarding the writing. What should we do about this comment? You can access our article here: The Original Body Farm. Also, I just wanted to comment that I find commenting/editing fun. Thank you, ~ Leila Weilingz (talk) 05:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I deleted my sarcastic comment shortly after I made it Talk:Forensic entomology and society (formerly pop-culture). It was late so I don't really remember. Is there anyway you could see if I did have enough sense at the time to remove it and it was dug up to punish me or if it was left there after all? Quatrevingtsix (talk) 02:05, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've linked at least 20 other articles to our article and the orphan banner is still up. Any suggestions? Our article is Use of DNA in forensic entomology. Thanks. Runwild2006 (talk) 11:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rather different, but you might be interested in Murder, Madness, and Mayhem, and particularly in Madness, a short essay I wrote about the project. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 11:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I find this project very, very useful (from several perspectives) and everyone is obviously committed.A delight. Hope to get back to you. Just a few provisional comments right now.

From the blow fly page. "Blow-flies are usually the first insects to come in contact with carrion because they have the ability to smell death from up to ten miles away".I need a reference here. Ten miles is a long way.

"Upon reaching the carrion, females deposit eggs onto the body. Forensic entomologists have begun to use the information to determine a person’s time of death at crime scenes".Why begun? It is quit an old science now.Also we don't need this info here,this page is about Calliphoridae and not Calliphora vicina and the other forensically important species.I don't like the redirect for the same reason. Will you consider this.

I removed the gear lever comment. All Muscomorpha have this.

Please italicise species names.

Forensic pages I do not like the phrase post mortem interval post colonisation interval is better (many things preventing egglaying can happen after a death) but PMI has common currency.Notafly (talk) 20:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Phormia regina "Discovery Much of the research that was invested in blowflies is attributed to German scientist Johann Wilhelm Meigen. Meigen's career works were mainly involved in the taxonomical aspect of identifying different species of diptera. Spending a lot of time classifying species based on wing ventilation as well as, antennae, he discovered that this was not sufficient enough to classify these dipteran species. He then reasoned that species can only identified by combination of characteristics; this technique later became known as the eclectic method."

Meigen was a pioneer of Diptera taxonomy and taxonomy underpins biology and it is gratifying to see this recognized.But this page is about Phormia regina.

Wow the messages thing is really cool too. Yes I am enjoying the editing part of the assignment a lot. I am signed up to check our page on Tuesdays and Sundays but I find myself checking multiple times per day! Weilingz (talk) 04:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there! I've reviewed a few of your student's articles and I'm impressed with some of their levels of dedication and commitment. The only thing I'd like to advise you about really is that flooding the Peer review page with entomology requests is not a good idea - it's a niche area and most of the feedback you'll get will be manual of style suggestions as reviewers will not have the background knowledge to give much information beyond that. Rest assured the peer reviewers will do their best but it may not be exactly what you and your students are hoping for. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, not to worry! The peer review backlog may take some time to diminish but we'll do our best! If you have anything which needs a particular priority review then let me know, otherwise we'll just plod through them. All the best, and good luck with your ongoing project. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am likewise very impressed by the whole idea of synthesizing material on wikipedia as an educational exercise. The only improvements I can think of to make it more encyclopaedic is to spend more time on deciding the overall structure- sections and how they fit with each other. For instance an article on Entomological evidence with sub-sections/sub-articles

• for neglect
• for violent crime
• veterinary applications etc.

would have made for a better fit. Right now, for instance, there is the trunk article Forensic entomology, there is a terminal/distal branch Insect indicators of abuse or neglect, but there is a missing connecting branch Entomological evidence (the link is a redirect). Perhaps that can happen on the next run, but seriously, if this idea is repeated, students of subsequent years are going to have a progressively tougher time finding new topics ! Shyamal (talk) 11:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I just wanted to applaud you guys on the absolute great work so far. A marvel idea, Miss Brundage and everyone lucky enough to be in your class. Here's a little something to be shared by everyone there:

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		Congrats to everyone in the team - cheers, and a long, successful real and wiki-life. AGGIES ROCK! LaPianísta! 03:31, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed -- I took a look at the class assignment and the articles that the class produced, and it looks like great work all the way around :) Good job. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 20:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see from peer review that another class of entomology articles will be working their way through PR. Just so you know, the rules have changed since last year and a single editor can only nominate one article at PR per day and have no more than four open PRs at a time. This set looks like a nice crop of insect article topics, thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your Writing Assignment Rubric requires conclusion sections. Please see the well-worded comments from User:Dr pda regarding conclusion sections at Wikipedia:Peer review/Oiceoptoma noveboracense/archive1. Thank you. --Geniac (talk) 00:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Thanks for the heads up, but the rubric is specifically for the written, hard copy of the article the students are to turn in at the end of the semester. Since I have to follow specific, university regulated writing requirements, I need to have certain aspects included in the hard copy that are not included in Wikipedia article. The students know this--don't them them tell you any different. ; ) Thanks again --ABrundage

I just wanted to say thank you for teaching your students the proper way to use Wikipedia! Two of the groups asked me to peer review their articles, and I must admit I was a little wary at first. I've seen too many school projects where the articles were just a complete mess. I was pleasantly surprised - the students had done an excellent job learning how to properly use wikipedia syntax, how to format citations, and other basics like that. The articles I saw were in decent shape, and with some work could be pulled into GA or FA status in a reasonable amount of time. You've done an excellent job preparing them, and the students in turn have greatly improved some important articles. Thank you! Karanacs (talk) 20:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]