Requested articles and requested translations (along with maybe a pointer to substubs if the prof would count significant expansion) would be a really good resource for these folks. Coming up with an idea for an article on the spot can be hard, so while it's easy for them to write Dartmouth cruft, prominently displaying requested articles would make selecting something needed they know about almost as easy.
Laurascudder
On 8/15/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/08/05, Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
But. Maybe ten per cent of these articles were puff pieces on subtrivial aspects of Dartmouth student life, talking about some student activity in language that would have been appropriate to a recruiting brochure, traditional games played in certain living units, and so forth. The sudden arrival of a few dozen pieces of Dartmouthcruft brought out the very worst in the Wikipedian community.
Assuming good faith, all these Dartmouth students will want to write a _useful_ article for their course credit. So, let's help them do so.
Would it be worth putting together a quick welcoming page, targeted at these students (and anyone else coming along later on the same sort of project, since there will be more), which points out resources like [[Wikipedia:Requested articles]], [[Wikipedia:Requested article translations]] (hey, *I'd* offer bonus credit for a translation), [[Wikipedia:Most wanted articles]] &c, with some notes on the kind of thing we'd really like and the kind of thing we'd discourage?
This'd also serve as an opportunity to make links like the Help Desk clear, mention the talk pages of some users willing to assist, &c &c... thoughts?
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- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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