User talk:JudyCChan

Welcome

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We hope you like it here and encourage you to stay even after your assignment is finished! CAPTAIN RAJU ^(✉) 20:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Caption Raju,

Thank you for the welcome. I'm the instructor of the course and I wonder if you are sending a welcome to each of my students. I do have a course page (actually three to accomodate the large class). Students are now exploring possible topics for their term projects and should be posting them on the course page sometime next week.

Judy

Student edits

Dear Prof. Chan,

I have come across a couple of the articles that your students have edited and unfortunately have had to remove all or almost all of their contributions. There are several reasons for this.

The edits tend to appear as mass rewrites of the whole article rather than building on what is already there.
The students seem to have a very narrow view of the subject, focusing on food technology.
The writing is often not very good.
The students seem to use a fairly arbitrary selection of narrow technical articles as sources.
They follow these articles slavishly, including far too much minor technical detail about particular processes.

Successful editing on Wikipedia is a collaborative process. Editors learn how to edit effectively by starting with small contributions and then moving on to more major edits later. I would love to see your students become productive Wikipedia editors, but Wikipedia editors are not made overnight. --Macrakis (talk) 01:05, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PS In looking at some more of their articles, I see that I'm not the only experienced Wikipedia editor who finds the student contributions problematic... And in cases where the contributions are still there, it looks as though they will have to be removed. --Macrakis (talk) 01:12, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Macrakis: Thank you very much for your feedback. This is my first time using Wikipedia as a submission format for a term project in my course, a second-year university level food science course. This is indeed an idea that had been incubated in my head for a few years and was finally implemented with some planning and support from Wikipedia staff, instructors who had attempted this in the past, etc. Obviously, we still have a lot to learn.

I had originally wanted my students to work on stub articles only to avoid potential problems that you'd recognized. A few groups saw the needs of additional 'science' content, such as basic processing techniques, packaging, nutrition, and regulation. I let them work on enhancing existing articles. In the end, I must say that some of the contributions has added values to the articles. I must also admit that we have broken a few rules :), as you pointed out.

I would like to do this again with continuing support from staff at Wikipedia Education. I don't teach again until the summer of 2017 and I should have plenty of time to reflect and fine-tune my approach. Thanks. JudyCChan (talk) 04:41, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian regulations and "food exploration"

Why is it so important that several students in your class (and you) want to add this to numerous articles? The content has limited value, except to a few topics like ice wine, in my opinion, and seems off topic to your general class objective of exploring food. It seems a narrow view of food exploration, and shows absence of actual research and improvement of article content when the same information and source are being used repeatedly to insert into a variety of topics. --Zefr (talk) 14:09, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Zefr, Thank you very much for your comments and offering your opinion. My course is an introductory course in food science and the teaching team aims to guide our students through an exploration of the chemistry, microbiology, processing, engineering of the foods our love and consume. Understanding how food is regulated in Canada is an important segment of our learning journey. As an instructor, I encourage students to explore foods that are meaningful to them either nutritionally, culturally, or personally. In my course, my students are learning about two reliable sources of information, our Food and Drugs Act of Canada and Canada Agricultural Product Acts. While my students are citing different sections of these two acts for different foods, they may appear that they all come from the same sources. Thanks for your feedback again. I will certainly communicate with Ian and Wmengle to see how we can better support the learning of our students who are passionate about foods and are eager to share their learning and knowledge. Thanks! JudyCChan (talk) 15:29, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, but I suggest your apparent encouragement of students adding the Canadian regulations to various articles is misdirected, and the student edits are being reverted by myself and other editors, one of whom is a WP administrator. Revert comments are "excessive detail", narrow jurisdiction not of general interest, off topic information, and WP:UNDUE weight. Use of the regulatory background on Canada's foods may be useful for your students' education, but it is not being accepted as encyclopedic, so I respectfully request your students to stop adding this information for foods here and move on to actual on-topic content, if supportable by WP:RS.--Zefr (talk) 15:41, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

May I ask you for examples of actual on-topic content, and especially existing gaps? I may then suggest my students to explore those topic areas. JudyCChan (talk) 15:57, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can find experienced editors and their contributions as examples. I suggest you take it up with Ian or go to a project talk page, such as this where you could ask questions on the talk page. --Zefr (talk) 16:46, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again! I realized that I've signed up to be a member of the Food and Drink Project a while ago and put myself down with special interests in chemistry and regulations! I've now turned on the 'receiving emails/notifications' feature and hope to be a more engaged participant in the project in the future. Thanks again. JudyCChan (talk) 18:28, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Judy. It's worth thinking about the from the perspective of what the "finished" article would look like - you might have a section on regulations in each type of food, but you wouldn't have one for each country in the world. That would produce an unreadable article. Writing a short section about how different foods are regulated in general might be feasible, especially if the entire article isn't too short, and within that they might include a sentence about Canadian regulations as one of a few examples.

A place to work on Canadian regulations in more depth might be the Food labelling in Canada article. The Food and Drug regulation law itself might also be a topic to consider. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:49, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good ideas, Ian (Wiki Ed). It seems that I may need to prepare a list of potential articles (long-ish, but with missing regulations) for my students to choose from in future offerings of the course to avoid the 'weigh' / 'undue' situation. Right now, I take the learner-centered approach and let them pick whatever foods they are passionate about. JudyCChan (talk) 21:02, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Are you running this project again? Wikipedia:School and university projects/UBC FNH200/Food Regulation Assignment doesn't even have contact information, which is already a problem in terms of being a collaboration with the wider Wikipedia community. The students' explicit assignments, and the resulting edits by the students, are being widely undone by many editors, just like last time for the same reasons as last time. It doesn't look like there is any support for inclusion of Canadian legal regulations of food in the articles on each foodstuff. DMacks (talk) 23:25, 16 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DMacks: As seen from the comments above involving Macrakis, this same 2019 project run at UBC by JudyCChan has occurred since at least 2016. The result is the same, with my view here. I'd like to see a temporary block on JudyCChan and the course, although it may be too late because the "edit-a-thon" by her students concluded today. --Zefr (talk) 00:35, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi DMacks, Macrakis, and ((u|Zefr)), Thanks for your criticism on my assignment. I think about your past comments a lot and modified my assignment each year based on your comments. My students are enjoying the learning opportunities a lot, even with a steep learning curve on making contributions and edits on Wikipedia. Through this editing experience, they learned about collaborative knowledge creations and many of my past students told me that they would continue to attempt making edits in their disciplines (my students are from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds). I would like to continue having Wikipedia editing as part of their learning and I would appreciate having support from you experienced editors. I have been running the regulatory assignment for three years now and I made changes each year. For examples, I'm telling my students that their entries should be no longer than 30 words each, including citations. The 30-word limit is a surprise to them as they are so used to lengthy academic writing. I also encourage them to look up regulations from other countries to avoid the undue problem. My students are also learning from guest speakers and reading resources from WikiEdu. They worked very hard for this assignment.

DMacks, I especially value your feedback on my assignment design since you are a member of the academia, with a solid understand of how 'traditional' university assignment works. Wikipedia-based assignment is still a new 'thing' in university teaching and learning. There is so much to learn and I need constructive feedback. May I email you guidelines of this assignment for your feedback?JudyCChan (talk) 08:28, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

July 2018

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia. Your edits appear to be disruptive and have been or will be reverted.

If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, please discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page, and seek consensus with them. Alternatively, you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant notice boards.
If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, please seek assistance at Wikipedia's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Please ensure you are familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and please do not continue to make edits that appear disruptive. Continual disruptive editing may result in loss of editing privileges. It should be fairly obvious by now that many other editors object to adding chunks of "Canadian regulation" to various food articles. However well intentioned and of possible value to students, this behavior of students (and now you also) is becoming disruptive to our encyclopedia. Please stop. DMacks (talk) 18:42, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi DMacks, May I ask you to show me which edits I made are considered to be disruptive? I like to learn from my own mistakes and avoid making them again in the future. It is my sincerely goal to contribute to Wikipedia articles. I made several edits in the last while and recognized some mistakes I made and reverted them myself. More guidance and some patience from fellow wikipedians is highly appreciated. JudyCChan (talk) 19:53, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This edit at cinnamon is what brought me here. As best I can tell, that volatile-oil "must contain" (minimum level) is merely a legal regulation for certain marketing or labeling purposes in certain places. It's not intrinsic to "cinnamon" a plant material or spice that it always has this. Likewise this edit to condensed milk, a concern mentioned by User:Rpclod. DMacks (talk) 02:26, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Should I go ahead to edit the cinnamon and condense milk article now? Would it be considered to be disruptive even after reading your commments and those from other wikipedian? I like to engage, but feel like I never know all the rules. JudyCChan (talk) 02:52, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pineapple juice

@JudyCChan: You are invited to vote on Pineapple juice.Catfurball (talk) 17:00, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your class edits

I appreciate that you have organized the students in your classes to edit about food safety. I have edited in this space myself and feel that there is great consumer demand for this information and also that Wikipedia's expertise in this area is undeveloped.

Thanks also for engaging with the administrative process for classes in Wikipedia. The origin of this process is to support professors and students in having good experiences in Wikipedia which advancing learning goals for the students and meet the expectations of Wikipedia readers.

Previously you have spoken with Ian (Wiki Ed) of the Wiki Education Foundation. Consider staying in touch with him or anyone else at that organization. Thousands of classes have found it useful to have them as a support network.

I see that your students have gotten some criticism at Wikipedia:School and university projects/UBC FNH200/Food Regulation Assignment. What works about what the students are doing is that they are sharing relevant information and citing a source appropriately. Something also is not working - Wikipedia reviewers are frequently removing student content and posting feedback, and I am not sure how aware you are of the content removal and feedback, or also that the rejection of student content is fairly uncommon in general but happening a lot for your classes. I am writing here to both make you aware of this and also to share my opinion that the content that you are generating seems close to being useful and welcome with some changes and explanation.

Before I suggest changes, I want to be mindful of your time and student time, because I know both are scarce. If I were to recommend the fastest path to success, it would be for your or some team leader to make a few practice edits of the sort you ask of students then get feedback on them at relevant Wikimedia community groups. Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink is a natural place to start. For anything affecting health, at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine you would get some of Wikipedia's best content review. You could ask at both of these and other places to be sure.

For much of this content you have a strong case that conversation would sort. For example with sweet corn, your student described the difference between good and bad corn, but framed the information as only applicable in Canada. I expect this confused the Wikipedia reviewers who are unfamiliar with this content. Instead, consider presenting the information as widely useful in a "food inspection" section, and report that Canada is the authority making the claim. Also it could be worthwhile to discuss the published source somewhere, to understand if this is primary data and subject to interpretation or an expert claim from the government. The distinction between primary and secondary sources is very important here, and I strongly suspect that deletions are happening to your students because student phrasing and the unusual sourcing seem like primary data. If you are interested in primary data, we really need structured data on food at Wikidata. Ian could tell you about the beginner data science classes that Wikidata offers.

If your classes include student conversation and followup, the wiki reviewers would talk this through. Content always is removed for a reason, and sometimes a little revision goes a long way to getting more successes to pass.

I really hope you stay around. I greatly appreciate your years of engagement in this area which is important to me. Please try to have a chat with Ian / Wiki Ed to keep the student experience positive. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:37, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, ((u|Bluerasberry)) This is the most constructive feedback I've received in the last several years. Thanks a lot. I'm guiding my students to check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink and suggesting them to improve some of the lower grade, less important articles there this year. I am about to start teaching and will re-read your suggestions in great depth later today and this weekend. With heartfelt thanks, JudyCChan (talk) 16:16, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again, Bluerasberry I used the wrong brackets above and will certainly implement some of your suggestions and asked my students to complete a few more tasks when I see them next week. I am also in touch with WikiEdu Foundation now. JudyCChan (talk) 20:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and feel free to ping me if you have questions. Remember that even if you have ever felt pushback it is only because people care and because support is available. Stay in touch with wiki ed and also know that I and others are here to support you in sharing this important information. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:41, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian regulations

I'd also like to ask you to remove the requirement for adding Canadian regulations from Wikipedia:School and university projects/UBC FNH200, Canadian regulations are just not relevant enough to include on any general foodstuff article apart from maybe Maple syrup. There is of course a steep learning curve for Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean we should encourage adding barely relevant information, and cleaning up after student editors who reapply their edits hoping for a better grade is time consuming. Perhaps they could be encouraged instead to make their edits in their sandbox and then drop a note on the main article's talk page so that their edits may be reviewed and merged as appropriate? – Thjarkur (talk) 18:17, 8 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Þjarkur, Thanks for the suggestion. This is indeed an idea that my colleagues and I are considering for the next offering of this course. We plan that as soon as I will be asked to teach this course again and as suggested by Bluerasberry above I will engage with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink to see what small/minor edits are needed and will help my students reach their learning goals in my introductory food science course in Canada. I also need to revise how I introduce the Sandbox to my students as well. Thanks again for your suggestions and kind thoughts to help my students and me improve our learning experience with Wikipedia. JudyCChan (talk) 06:20, 9 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]