User talk:Seanryan002

Welcome

Sean,

Welcome to Wikipedia. It looks like you're a botany professor in Canada supervising your class on Wikipedia. I'm a community college bio/chem instructor interested in botany, and an active Wikipedian, and I'd like to help make sure things run smoothly for you. We've very recently had some problems involving large classes (mostly intro to psych and the link) with very detached instructors, and some editors may be a little prickly when students drop in. This isn't meant as criticism of you personally—the work I've seen looks good so far, and the fact that you're in here and helping puts you a cut above many instructors. In fact, I'm hoping some of your students' contributions might get promoted in the quality rankings with some help and collaboration. I believe there's also a noticeboard where you can post the accounts of the students in your class so people know what's going on when a bunch of new editors drop out of the sky, but it will take me a little while to find it. Could you drop me a message on my talk page to let me know you've gotten this message? You can also email me if you'd prefer. I look forward to working with you and your students. Choess (talk) 23:55, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Choess,

Thanks for your comments. I am indeed a botany instructor at the UNB in Saint John, Canada. I'm doing my best to stay on top of my students articles as they come in, so hopefully they don't end up disrupting things for others too much. None of them have used Wikipedia before, and they shouldn't be able to move pages or anything major yet.

I'm actually friends with a user by the name of "Thompsma", who has been doing this with his highschool students for some time now, and have been getting some advice from him, but I certainly appreciate having other more experienced editors reach out and offer assistance.

I'll be sure to let my students know that they shouldn't try to edit other people's pages unless they have strong evidence for doing so - that is actually related to the main goal of this project, to have them evaluate the quality of sources of information on the web. Hopefully it sinks in.

Best regards,

Sean

I should also mention - our entries for this exercise are almost complete, and they will be restricted to plant species that do not yet have Wikipedia entries. I have given them a standardized format, and the content they are uploading has already been handed in to me once - what they are uploading is supposed to be the revised version, but I will keep checking to ensure they are following proper rules as much as I can.

That sounds good, Sean. Your students are pretty much going to be in and out, then, rather than prolonged editors? If you have a list of them or their articles, I'm happy to help with categories, formatting, naming and other tweaks. What caught my eye was American Columbo (Frasera caroliniensis), on the list of new plant articles, as it looked quite good for a new contribution (even before you improved it, for that matter). The major issue we usually face with student work is copyright violation or close paraphrasing, but my spotcheck on the Columbo looked good, and it sounds like you've audited these before uploading. Since they look fairly well-sourced, we might be able to send some of these along to Wikipedia:Did you know?, which could be a nice reward for the students. Choess (talk) 00:24, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I can fully appreciate your caution with student work regarding the whole problem of copyright violation - proper use of other authors' information is another obstacle they must overcome if they want to publish the article online. I've still run into a couple of instances where it was 'too close for comfort', but again, I will do my best to weed these out before it becomes an issue. And you are correct, they should just be 'in and out' for these articles.

Thanks again for your interest!

Sean

G'day, I have rejigged the Blephilia hirsuta article a bit but I couldn't see footnote 5 (about its possible medicinal qualities as Blephilia ciliata was used by indigenous people). I wasn't sure how the source itself covered B. hirsuta so I began Blephilia ciliata for info to be transferred into.

Now, here comes the fun bit - wikipedia has a Did You Know Section on the front page, and new articles that are well referenced and above a certain size are elegible. I stumbled over this one and nominated a factoid for it. See Wikipedia:Did you know for information, and Template talk:Did you know where it is listed. Someone may post some queries and it may get its 15 minutes of fame on the front page. I don't know much about US botany but am pretty familiar with aussie plants. Feel free to ask any questions. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:33, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Sean, I also nominated Frasera caroliniensis - do you have any photos of either of these plants you'd like to upload to wikipedia to illustrate the articles? cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:52, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the nominations - my students will be delighted to hear the news!

They are being added to, and should be appearing on the main page in the next few days - Blephilia hirsuta will be on in the next few hours. Casliber (talk · contribs) 18:53, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

In response to Casliber, I've actually discouraged my students from uploading photos of plants unless they've obtained permission from the photographers directly, so there may not be as many photos in their articles as there would be in others. I will do my best to encourage contacting the photographers to obtain that permission in the future, but many have opted to simply not include them for now.

As for the source of information on medicinal plants for Blephilia hirsuta, that was my edit, and it was making use of a common approach to writing about understudied species in biology - that of citing information on related species when the information you seek does not exist, but making it clear that the information is from closely related species. I will double-check the source and the clarity of the argument.

Aah ok about the photos. I just thought someone may have gone and photographed it. I have photographed alot of local flora and uploaded images. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:36, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

PS: Here is one I expanded...and took a photo of to illustrate too --> Ranunculus lappaceus in my neck of the woods...Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Casliber - I had a look at your photo - very nice! Great colour and clarity, and you can see most parts of the plant. I often find 'whole plant' photos are missing from botanical descriptions in favour of close-ups on particular morphological features. I think it's better to show people what they would actually SEE, rather than what they should be looking for. SeanRyan002

Thanks - I worry that I underexposed it a wee bit - it was a bright sunny summer day so I set the exposure to underexpose by two stops. I do try now to always take a snap of the whole plant as well as the closeup features, though when one is in bushland or scrub the outline is often indistinct....people often import appropriately licenced images from flickr as well. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Blephilia hirsuta

The DYK project (nominate) 00:04, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Frasera caroliniensis

Orlady (talk) 22:10, 16 December 2011 (UTC) 09:03, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Ranunculus allenii

Orlady (talk) 16:56, 18 December 2011 (UTC) 08:02, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Cirsium muticum

Orlady (talk) 00:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Addition to List of botanists by author abbreviation

Hi, it's important to check botanical author abbreviations in the IPNI which is the definitive source. Guy L. Nesom's abbreviation is "G.L.Nesom" not "Nesom" (he was already in the list). Don't be put off from adding correct author abbreviations! Peter coxhead (talk) 16:14, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 19

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Back again

Sean,

Do you have another class writing articles? I'm starting to see some nice sandbox-developed botanical articles from new editors flowing in, and I was wondering if they were your students. Choess (talk) 20:21, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 27

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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added links pointing to Enamel, Crown, Cusp and Occlusal

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