User talk:Bulbil

Good Article nominations

Hi, I saw that you nominated multiple articles for Good Article (GA) status. These articles are Sarah Phillips (novel), I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Post-soul, and Caucasia (novel).

I need to warn you that GA nominations are incredibly time consuming as it can sometimes take anywhere from 3 months to a year for an article to get reviewed, especially since there is typically a backlog at any given time. During this time you're expected to be active and monitor the reviews so that you can fix any issues that are brought up.

Offhand I have to say that none of the articles are really ready to be reviewed for this process as they all have various issues, some of which are placed in tag templates on the articles' pages. These are actually things that would immediately cause an article to have their GA nomination rejected. As such, I've removed all of the nominations for the time being. There's just far too much that needs to be worked on with each article for them to be really ready for the review process. Something you may want to do is review some of the good articles on Wikipedia to see how they're styled. I'd also look at this, a prior (failed) GA nomination for Caucasia, as well as the criteria for GAs. The thing to keep in mind is that GAs are considered to be some of the best of the best on Wikipedia, so any issues with the articles need to be resolved prior to the nomination and you also need to make sure that it's as comprehensive as possible without going into too much extraneous details. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:06, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

• I don't want this to discourage you - I do think it's awesome that you're working after the class has ended and want to continue to participate - it's just that these weren't ready yet. If you're interested in getting them ready I can definitely give you some pointers! Let me know on my talk page what you'd like to do. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:08, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• Whoops - thought you were one of the students! I see now that you were one of the instructors - I think you were a librarian instructor? The above points are still applicable (as is the offer), but I just wanted to post and recognize your status in the class. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:09, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• On a side note, have you heard about Wikidata? As a librarian I didn't know if you'd find this intriguing or not. We do have courses on this for professionals and we're looking into starting some classes for college students very soon, if either of those sound interesting. To quote the Wikipedia article, "Wikidata is a document-oriented database, focused on items, which represent topics, concepts, or objects." It's honestly pretty interesting and there are a lot of things that need to be added, updated, or otherwise worked on with the site. I saw on your profile that you are interested in digital initiatives, so I thought this might interest you. This (rather long) video goes over it in some depth as well. This is the general help page for Wikidata, which can get you started on your own. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:22, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

@Shalor (Wiki Ed):Hi! Thanks for your feedback. I realize it's a little unclear because I was mislabeled in the dashboard for the course -- I am a librarian working closely with an english professor on an African American Lit class called Post-Soul. I was leading the Wiki editing assignment for the class, and while I've used Wikipedia with students before, I've never worked with students writing new articles.

Really, what the professor wanted was to get feedback from outside editors for students on how to improve their articles. He saw the talk page Talk:Caucasia_(novel) and saw that it was a Good Article Nominee and received extensive feedback.

I was just showing him how to include a Good Article Nomination in a talk page though I realized the articles themselves needed a lot of work. What's the best way to get feedback that isn't as time consuming as a Good Article nomination?

(By the way, thanks for the Wikidata tip -- I'd heard of it but haven't had much opportunity to explore. I believe I'll be able to use this down the line.)

Again, appreciate your taking the time Bulbil (talk) 20:16, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

• A good place would be to ask at the applicable WikiProject(s), since those are made up of people who are interested in that specific topic area. They can also post to the article's talk page. It's not always a guarantee that someone will respond quickly, but it's definitely one of the first places they should post. I'm always a good outlet as well since I can give advice. I can't guarantee that I'll say the same thing as the next person since everyone on Wikipedia is different when it comes to how they give feedback, but I'm definitely a good resource as well. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:36, 5 June 2019 (UTC)