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Online mentor

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Hello! I am one of the online mentors, and I am interested in helping your students with their conservation biology course. I do a lot of writing about lemurs and national parks in Madagascar (such as Marojejy National Park), so there are a lot of articles under the topic of conservation biology that I would like to see get some attention. If your students need suggestions, just let me know. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:51, 26 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome!

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Welcome...

Hello, Kyleharms, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! Sophus Bie (talk) 13:27, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Some pages you might like to check out are:


You're welcome! Good luck with your class; I hope everything goes smoothly! Sophus Bie (talk) 08:09, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

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Here is a list of what I found at a quick glance. There are certainly more articles out there that could use a lot of work:

Article Issues
Ecosystem Massive clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references (good for a group project)
Keystone species Massive clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references
Flagship species Massive clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references
Indicator species Massive clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references
Umbrella species Massive clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references
Lacey Act of 1900 Massive clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references... but also becoming a hotly contested topic because of recent raids at Gibson Guitar Corporation—the tea party movement may give grief to any student daring to fix this up. However, the article is badly needed given the press this topic may receive...
United States Fish and Wildlife Service Also likely to be a hot topic because of attacks by the tea party movement per the same reasons given for the Lacey Act above...
Rainforest Alliance Same as above... hot topic politically, so care needs to be taken with neutrality
Conservation reliant species clean-up and expansion
Biodiversity hotspot clean-up and expansion
Conservation (ethic) clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references
Ecosystem diversity expansion
Habitat corridor/Wildlife corridor These two articles will need to be merged, illustrated, referenced, and expanded
Monoculture clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references
Environmental protection Massive clean-up, expansion, and filling in missing references (good for a group project)
Food chain This may fall a bit outside of the scope of your class, but it is crucial for the topic and needs massive expansion
Illegal logging expansion, references, and clean-up
Poaching expansion, references, and clean-up
Bushmeat expansion, references, and clean-up
Wildlife trade expansion, references, and clean-up
Nature reserve country-specific details should be moved to separate articles, and the article should be written to cover the topic in general, with a global perspective
Endemism expansion, references, and clean-up
National park clean-up, references, expansion... and balance it out for a world perspective (not U.S.-centric)
Rainforest expansion, references, and clean-up
Ecotourism major clean-up (re-writing text, picture placement & captioning, etc.) and references needed, as well as covering any missing material
Conservation movement This one has so many problems, that only the most self-motivated students should try to tackle it...
Biosphere major expansion, clean-up, and references (good for a group project)
Habitat fragmentation expansion, clean-up, and references
Habitat destruction clean-up, references, and possibly some expansion
In-situ conservation major expansion, clean-up, and references
Ex-situ conservation expansion, clean-up, and references
IUCN Red List expansion, clean-up, and references
Clearcutting expansion, clean-up, and references
Disturbance (ecology)/Perturbation (biology) These two articles may need to be merged, followed by expansion, clean-up, and filling in references...
Natural resource major expansion, clean-up, and references (good for a group project)
Cyanide fishing clean-up, expansion, and references ... pictures would be nice, but that would require getting experts to release some—you can work with me on that
Environmental impact of fishing Massive expansion needed... good for a group project
Carbon footprint massive clean-up, expansion, and references
Island ecology needs references, expansion, and clean-up
Aquatic ecosystem needs references, expansion, and clean-up
Marine ecosystem needs references, expansion, and clean-up
Freshwater ecosystem major expansion
Water conservation needs references, expansion, and clean-up
Wildlife management needs references, expansion, and clean-up
Reforestation clean-up, expansion, and references
Natural resource management expansion, clean-up, and references needed — but this topic could get very controversial, so students need to be very cautious about bias by making sure that they remain neutral
Conservation biology Although nearly complete, this article needs a lot of clean-up: filling missing references, copy-editing, writing a comprehensive lead section
Biodiversity Action Plan clean-up, expansion, and references
Inbreeding depression needs references and expansion
Background extinction rate expansion and references needed
Effective population size needs inline references and more text about the history of the term and its usage

Several of these articles are quite general, and some of the best sources for very broad academic topics are (multiple) textbooks. The more specific topics require searching the academic literature using your university's library or something like Google Scholar. Some news stories can and should be included, but for topics as broad as this, I would strongly discourage web sources (unless it's a news story from a reliable source). I say this because the students I worked with last semester almost exclusively used the Internet as their research tool and tried citing unreliable sources, such as blogs. Honestly, if your students can find good academic sources, your class could have a lot of potential. I would particularly like to see them work on the broad topics. Although they are more challenging, I'm not expecting perfection, plus their access to the latest textbooks gives them an advantage in working on these articles.

Anyway, this list is just a starting point. By the time I started wearing down from the search, I came across this list, which may also help: Index of conservation articles

Also, although it's unreasonable to expect good article or featured article quality from the students, I would suggest pointing them to existing recognized content to give them ideas on how to cover a topic, handle pictures, create proper citations, etc. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but these are the articles I'm most familiar with (because I wrote them):

Conservation of slow lorises
Marojejy National Park
Silky sifaka
The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates
Hoollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary
Seacology
Illegal logging in Madagascar—this article was not promoted over scope, title, and possible neutrality issues... but illustrates good layout and comprehensiveness... though not entirely up-to-date...

Anyway, I hope this helps. – VisionHolder « talk » 21:47, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for editing Wikipedia! Need help?

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Hello Kyleharms, thanks for contributing to Wikipedia! I want to invite you to the Teahouse, a forum on Wikipedia for new editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia, and get support from peers and experienced editors. I hope you see you there! SarahStierch (talk) 16:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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