User talk:W4chris

/Archive 1

Thanks for the clean-up on aisle 4. Much appreciated Calmer Waters 02:40, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No problem! W4chris (talk) 20:30, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please explain this? I understand why a bot can mistake it for a vandalism, but I am puzzled how a human can. To quote from the Appropriate uses section in WP:HIDDEN: "Providing information to assist other editors in preventing a common mistake". If you look at history of babirusa, people have repeatedly added wrong photos to that page despite the earlier warning. Hence my specification. 212.10.89.145 (talk) 20:08, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I took another look and you are correct. I missread the sentence. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I have changed it back, Sorry, Chris W4chris (talk) 20:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

 I am sorry, I am just learning details of wikipedia editing, so this is in response to your comment regarding my proposed article on Peer-led team learning. I tried to keep it factual - most of the references are publications in books or peer-reviewed journals.  It is basically a short description of a project I have been working on, leading a team, for almost 20 years. I think it should be of sufficient importance to be included in wikipedia, PLTL is a well recognized model of teaching science, and addresses an important national problem of lack of interest and success in science and mathematics, and has been replicated nationwide (as our PLTL map shows). 

Regarding your concerns - that is sounds like an advertisement. I think that the concern is misplaced. Yes, I do state that they model does improve students performance and attitude - but this is based on scientific educational, published research, which is cited in the article. I am sure that many of the scientific articles written in wikipedia are edited by exactly the same people who are working in the area they are writing about - is that a "conflict of interest"? Also, the comment about our website being mainly for "selling" products. While I don't think this is a fair comment (we have a open journal called "Progressions" hi-lighted on the website), I think you misconstrue the "commercial" nature of my work. The books we have published are guides to a teaching model - that is the primary venue to get the word out about this model. The amount of money involved (ie royalties) is truly miniscule, as is typically the case for academic work, and has nothing to do about why we have published the work- it is basically the accepted academic route to publish one work.

However, I understand that the philosophy of wikipedia seems to be headed toward a completely open knowledge base. I am very interested in this, as our "open journal" using google docs indicates. However, we also live in the world as it is, which includes many commercial products which are referenced freely on most any wikipedia entry, when appropriate.

Do you have any other suggestions to improve this article? (I will add references that do not include my name, as you suggested). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gosserchemist (talk • contribs) 21:14, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't disagree that it is of sufficient importance to be included and I suspect that it will. I reread the article and still feel like I'm reading a brochure.

My suggestions and observations are below and are not intended to be critical nor do I have anything against PLTL. 1. You say that PLTL is well recognized model of teaching science, perhaps some of those other sources could be used as references. Each reference in the article originates with the same person or group of persons. It's kinda like "Acme Magic Diet Pills" citing research and studies by the Acme Magic Diet Pill Company. It's circular reasoning (or referencing in this case). 2. When the same person that created and/or worked on PLTL is the same person that writes the wiki article is the same person that is cited in all but one of the references it causes me to suspect a conflict of interest. If I, as a paramedic or a researcher, write an article on hypoxia, there is no conflict of interest as hypoxia is well researched and documented by many others. Also, having a conflict of interest does not only apply when there is money involved, if I had worked on a project for 20 years, you can bet that I'd be biased towards that project. 3. A promotional brochure will rarely cover the negatives (Acme will never tell you that dieting/exercising subjects on placebos gained the same results as dieting/exercising subjects on the Acme Magic Diet Pills). Any process or method that has been around for 20 years has to have had some negative or critical reviews/data/studies. 4. The external link for the web site: If I want to purchase a medical textbook or reference, there are many sources for these texts. Is pltl.org the only course or are there other books by other publishers/authors related to PLTL? I searched the web for less than 10 minutes and found numerous .edu sites that talk about or are using PLTL. A lot of those refer to in-house or other studies taht do not point back to the pltl.org. Hopefully these points will assist in the editing of the article and I encourage other editors to weigh in as well.

Thanks, Chris W4chris (talk) 20:20, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments. I appreciate that you searched web for PLTL and found other links, etc. In fact, the review article that I recently wrote has 20 references for PLTL by other authors, who have published research and generally validated the model. I didn't cite all these out of desire for brevity, but in light of your comments I will try to step back and rewrite some of the article to give a different, more objective tone. Thanks for your time, Dave — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gosserchemist (talk • contribs) 02:10, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've redone the article to try to be simpler and also added many independent references. Thanks again for your helpful comments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gosserchemist (talk • contribs) 02:56, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, W4chris. You have new messages at Alpha Quadrant's talk page.
Message added 01:32, 11 July 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Alpha Quadrant ^talk 01:32, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How can I delete a page I had create some time ago, especially as I feel it has not use anymore.

Thanks

Joseph