Talk:Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool/Introduction

I would take the scare quotes off "community" and "Wikipedia"; just leave them for "wiki" and "pedia". And say in the first sentence of that section, 'many are unfamiliar with the community behind it.'

Using "wiki" as a synonym for community is a little weird to me. Maybe add a sentence that connects the dots from wiki as a type of editable website to wiki as a kind of community to Wikipedia as a particular instance of that kind of community focused on building a pedia?

This is more of a rhetorical trick than anything else. It is to get across the idea of Wikipedia as a community and an encyclopedia - not an official definition of "wiki". Awadewit 19:30, 14 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

"These are the five guiding principles for the operation of Wikipedia." - I don't like the phrase "the operation of Wikipedia". Maybe "how Wikipedia works"?

"Articles must pass a basic standard of "notability" for inclusion and be kept to a reasonable size, for the sake of readers and dial-up modems and mobile browsers." I don't think it makes sense to combine notability with article size requirements... in fact, the latter could probably be cut here. Too-large articles (and the reasons for the size guidelines and the norms for breaking large articles into subtopics) seem like minutiae at this point. If anything is to be said about article size, it should probably just connect back to readers and the goal of creating an encyclopedia, made up of appropriately-sized articles.

"For example, essays containing your personal views on Walt Whitman or theories on climate change are not allowed on Wikipedia." I think the second example should be changed to something closer the borderline of original research. Theories of climate change may just imply crackpot ideas since the field is so technical and full of theories already, whereas something more specific would give a clearer indication of what we mean, like "a novel analysis of the climate history of Montana" or something else that could conceivably be pieced together from primary sources but still seem like more than personal opinion to the person doing the research.

Changed to "your unpublished analysis of..." Awadewit 19:30, 14 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't think so much needs to be said about "Wikipedia is not a democracy." The bits about straw polls and voting seem like too much detail for this.

Removed. I do think that many people are interested in how the site runs and consensus is crucial for understanding how to interact with editors, so that is why I wanted to mention this. Awadewit 19:30, 14 December 2010 (UTC)Reply