User talk:MusicUWT

Welcome![edit]

Welcome to Wikipedia, MusicUWT! Thank you for your contributions. I have been editing Wikipedia for some time, so if you have any questions feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. You can also check out Wikipedia:Questions or type {{help me}} at the bottom of this page. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that will automatically produce your username and the date. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

The first thing I would suggest, before you get too many edits under your belt, would be to change your username. Because you have so few edits, you can just create a new account and leave a note here about what your new username is. The reason for this is that our username policy discourages "organizational" names, where the account seems to be representing a group (like a faculty) rather than an individual user. You could use something in the form of "JDatUWT", or just create a completely original name.

Thank you so much for this advice, I missed this detail of the username policy. I've set up this new account which is more clearly individual, although also still with the institutional reference, for my students' sake. --KimD UWT (talk) 17:19, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Next, I would suggest making sure you feel comfortable with the basics of editing and the basics of Wikipedia policies, as well as (importantly) what to do if something goes wrong. I can help with the latter - feel free to post to my talk page any time, or you can call me to another page by using this template: {{ping|Nikkimaria}}. "@Nikkimaria:" gives me a notification that there's a page someone would like my attention on. For the former, read through the pages linked from the welcome message above, and let me know or ask at the Teahouse for new editors if you have questions. There's also a training program for educators (and a similar one for students).

In addition to editing basics and Wikipedia policies, try to get students to understand the differences between assignments they might have done before or are doing for other classes, and writing Wikipedia articles - it's a bit of a different style, and some have trouble getting the hang of it. Also make sure they're familiar with the standard plagiarism guidance from your university, which is also relevant to Wikipedia editing. Keep a list on-wiki of all the usernames in your class (you might wish to provide guidance about privacy in choosing usernames) and what articles they are editing, so other editors can help keep track of what's going on. Encourage students to engage on-wiki over the course of the assignment (not just dumping in text at the last minute), and tell them not to edit-war if someone undoes their changes - they should instead discuss them at the article's talk page. (It's probably a good idea not to base their grade on whether their edit "sticks"). Finally, consider posting to the Composers WikiProject - this is a group of people who are interested in writing about composers, and they might be able to give further guidance on article selection. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:31, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tremendous advice, thank you, and thank you as well for the cookies! I'll start making my way through the training program for educators today! --KimD UWT (talk) 17:19, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]