Hello, Hanyangprofessor2! Welcome to Wikivoyage.

To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page. If you need help, check out Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub. If you are familiar with Wikipedia, take a look over some of the differences here.--ϒpsilon (talk) 08:07, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikivoyage educational assignment[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Hey guys, two years ago I had my students do some edits to Korean Wikivoyage (improved pages on Ansan, Debudo and others). Now the class is back, so expect some newbie edits in Korean topics. As usual, they'll get better in few weeks and we should end up with a bunch of new and improved pages. Feel free to help out, just note that it takes some time for students (new editors...) to figure out they even have a talk page etc. :) Class syllabi is here: [1] and class wiki dashboard entry is here: [2]. The dashboard is not sadly designed to show contribs for anything outside English Wikipedia :/ If you want to get in touch we me quickly please ping me under my main account (Piotrus). --Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 08:12, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I assumed something like that was going on. Thank you for doing this again! Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:27, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for letting us know about this great project. We'll do cleanup as needed, but appreciate the additional content from local experts. Ground Zero (talk) 10:43, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Sage (Wiki Ed), what would it take to get the dashboard working here? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
대박!! Ypsilon (talk) 16:14, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing, Piotrus: you can set the dashboard to show Wikivoyage mainspace contributions; you must add en.wikivoyage as one of the tracked wikis, and then it should start pulling in Wikivoyage edits.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:20, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Sage (Wiki Ed): How can I do this? I don't know where the option to add more wikis to tracked edits is. I'd love to do it for all my classes since I use multiple wikis. --Piotrus (talk) 02:32, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Piotrus: Click 'Edit Details' and there is a field for 'tracked wikis' where you can add new ones.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:21, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Done. --Piotrus (talk) 04:05, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is a great idea for a university class. I agree, knowing the basics of wikis is (or will probably become) something that many technology-related jobs will require in the near future.
"It takes some time for students (new editors...) to figure out they even have a talk page etc. :)" ... Well, maybe you should be sure to teach them that! :-) Looking at the syllabus, I don't see where you would cover topics like no one "owns" an article on a wiki, wv:consensus, or how wiki editors collaborate such as by using talk pages.
In terms of content (both looking at the older articles students have worked on, and based on my own experience trying to write about places I know nothing about), I have some thoughts on how they can have the biggest impact on WV. Just like I would have an easy time looking up things in American cities by asking people I know who live there or have been there, or knowing which American websites and apps I can easily search for recommendations, your students have a lot of knowledge and resources about Korea that I don't. (For example, since I don't read Korean I can't use NAVER very easily.)
  • It's pretty easy for anyone to look up directions for the "Get in" section, or search on a map for "hotels" to find someplace to sleep. The hardest sections to fill out are the middle ones: "See", "Do", "Buy", "Eat", and "Drink". Are there annual events or festivals? Is there a local product or food I should look for? Are there any famous restaurants, or ones that aren't famous but locals like it because it's good? Where would I go drinking if I wanted to dance at a club, or talk to locals over some beer or soju, or have a quiet drink by myself? Just look at a bunch of Seoul's districts... surely there's somewhere to eat in Seodaemun, but there isn't a single "Eat" listing!
  • After a name, the most important thing we need for a listing is a description. The rest of the details (website, latitude/longitude, address, phone, prices) can be looked up by someone else, but the description is usually the hardest thing to write, and it's a lot easier for someone from that country to write one than for a foreigner. If it just says something basic like "This restaurant serves bibimbap", that's a start, but it's better if it can include at least a little bit more detail that would be harder to learn. (Is it famous, or do locals like it, or what? Is it formal or casual, noisy or quiet, brightly-lit or dim, old or new? Tell me something to make it sound interesting, more than just "the food is good".)
Good luck to your students! If you can, maybe let us know what pages they end up working on; I'd be happy to keep an eye open for their work. --Bigpeteb (talk) 23:35, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Teaching and learning is not the same. I do show them how to leave a talk page message and even require they leave one for me, but that doesn't mean I can force all of them to complete this and remember how to do it, nor can I make sure they'll all check their talk page, etc. As for where I cover OWN and such, the syllabus links to a few presentations, but I often just simply show them various policies (last class we talked about WV:ABOUT and such) and we just discuss stuff. I think I will copy your suggestions of what to do into the next class's screen to give students some idea on what to do. PS. I haven't mentioned this this time, but all the students are ESL so their prose will likely need some copyediting for grammar mistakes and such. --Piotrus (talk) 04:05, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. ESL is no problem; I think most of us here would rather have some basic content that needs to be improved (grammar, details, etc.) rather than no content at all.
I wonder... perhaps you could kill two birds with one stone (the internet tells me you'd call this 일석이조, with the same meaning) by encouraging students to use a Talk page or Project page to request that someone copyedit or give feedback on their writing. The obvious place to do that would be on that article's Talk page, although unless several people are watching it, they may not get much of a response. Maybe someone else can suggest a better place for that; wv:Welcome, copyeditors doesn't have a place for requests, and the Pub is probably too broad as well (or maybe it's fine). --Bigpeteb (talk) 23:08, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Wikivoyage:Requests for comment is exactly the right place for this.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Piotrus, just a heads-up that RFCs are different here compared to what you're used to. You start a discussion somewhere (anywhere that seems reasonable), and then add a link to the discussion and a short note to the RFC page. The note could say something as simple as "How can we improve this page?" or "I need some help". RFCs stay "open" for at least two months and/or until the person who started it is satisfied (which could be within minutes for an easy question). If you encourage students to use the RFC process, then please remind them to check back in a few days and end the RFC (by removing the note from the RFC page). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:19, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok! I will ask every group to submit an RfC about their chosen topic over the next ~2 weeks, this will result in 5-10 RfC requests. Even if you end up copy-pasting the same few generic pieces of advice into each it will be appreciated, as it is great for students to see 'someone out there' really cares about what they are doing here :) --Piotrus (talk) 04:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Piotrus, would you please talk to your class about the importance of not reverting or overwriting edits to their work without comment and not ignoring edit summaries? It comes off as rude and irritating, but it's undoubtedly just because they are unaware of edit summaries and probably think the edits to their work were just something that went technically wrong, not intentional changes. At least three of your students have been doing these things. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:24, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sure - can you give me diffs? --Piotrus (talk) 15:46, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's easiest for you to look at these article histories, look at my edit summaries and click the relevant diffs: History of Suwon, history of Ansan. There was also the district article for Incheon which we had the Vfd thread on, and I am pretty sure some other long-time users have been involved in edit wars in other articles about Korea, but I'll leave it to them to post relevant histories if they like, rather than spending my time searching through a bunch of articles. I've posted to a few students' user talk pages, but if you could explain edit summaries and avoiding edit warring to your whole class, it could save everyone a lot of time and help make the process of improving articles about Korea unfold more smoothly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:14, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I will try my best, but keep in mind those are ESL students. Setting aside that a portion of the class has trouble understanding most of what I say because they are not used to listing to English, I did notice some of your and other edit summaries where pointing out various errors in English (capitalize Korean, etc.). This is a common error that speakers of Asian languages repeat, because, among other things, Korean (or Japanese, etc.) has no concept of capital letters... And, in all honestly, my class is not a language class, and I can't focus on language issues. I will certainly ask students to pay attention to edit summaries; last class had a big segment on how to leave messages, read messages, etc., but I simply can't make them not make grammar mistakes or such. Contributions from ESL editors will have grammar errors, and at your average Asian tertiary education level, expect quite a lot. I am sorry I don't have a great solution, but this is the language fluency level of my students (from one of the Top 10 universities in South Korea, FYI). I can teach those who listen to read messages, reply, read edit summaries, etc. (but not all of them will, of course). But to teach them to not make grammar errors etc. is neither in the scope of my class, nor is it simply possible in its timeframe. --Piotrus (talk) 12:04, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Would it help if we wrote our messages to them in more basic English? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:24, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You don't have to teach them English. We're happy to correct their errors and explain why we're doing it. All they have to do is not restore the errors after we fix them! And if they don't understand what we're writing, they should feel free to post to our user talk pages and ask for more of an explanation than we can give in an edit summary. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:40, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Replacing banners[edit]

Hi, Hanyangprofessor2. I noticed an IP user's remarks about proposing and adding pagebanners. Assuming that was you not logged in, I want to go over the process with you. If there is no custom pagebanner on a page, a user who creates a suitable banner, as defined on the Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition page, should go ahead and add it. If there is a custom pagebanner on the page and they believe another one would be better, they need to start a discussion on the article's talk page and should also post a notice with a link to the discussion on Requests for comment if possible. They need to wait to see if a consensus agrees with them and should not try to replace pagebanners unilaterally. See Wikivoyage:Banners for explanations of all of this, and let me know if you have any questions.

All the best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:49, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Ikan Kekek Roger. If there is any change in wording to the assignment you think would be helpful, do let me know. I expected them to mostly leave comments in the Banner Suggestion page like last time, but somehow this time the group figured out the code so many where adding banners directly even BEFORE I modified the assignment to say they can do so (the initial version was 'go to banner suggestion page and leave your suggestion there for a review). Most of the banners I reviewed seem to match the requirements, for those that do not, I told the students why. I think there is one copyvio that will get axed from commons shortly, and one or two students changed banners without discussion and I told them to start relevant discussions on talk pages. We are mostly wrapping stuff up, next class I think I will go over the climate section with the nifty graph. Anything else you think would make a good teaching activity? Piotrus (talk) 02:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make sure they know that if there's an existing custom pagebanner, they should propose a new one if they think it's better but should not unilaterally replace the existing pagebanner. I'll give your question about a good teaching activity more thought. That might be a good question for the Travellers' pub. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:15, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think one good thing to challenge the students to do is make their edits as brief and to-the-point as possible, within the bounds of English grammar. Emphasize even more than you currently are that they should not use encyclopedic language or depth in any part of Wikivoyage articles, and that travelers need quick, easy-to-read information. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page messages[edit]

I understand that you are using Wikivoyage as a learning exercise for your students, but I think that your comments about talk page messages are missing a key point. If a volunteer editor takes the time to provide constructive suggestions for your students, they do so to encourage the students to (a) fix their errors, and (b) stop making the errors going forward. I am losing interest in providing such assistance because I find that it is just being ignored. I am learning that it is a waste of my time to interact with your students. Ground Zero (talk) 03:03, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Ground Zero I am sorry to hear you say that, but I understand. Now everyone is cut out to be an educator, it is a job, and most of us here (including me most of the time) are volunteers. Thank you for helping until now (it is very much appreciated, certainly by me). Piotrus (talk) 12:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]