Talk:History of the ODU Art Department

ThisWiki book is a ODU class project to record the history of the art department at ODU.


 * It doesn't seem to be following that path. Rather, it seems like a web page for the ODU Art Department.  All the links I've looked at appear to be either criteria for admittance to the program or biographies of ODU art professors.  I haven't seen any history.  Furthermore, the sub pages have not been named correctly.  For instance, Ceramics should be moved to Oduart/Ceramics.  The link to it on Oduart should then be updated as /Ceramics (note the leading slash).  As it is, this book is a mess, and in need of a lot of cleanup.  --Jomegat (talk) 21:20, 29 October 2008


 * hey As a class we are learning the WIKI Book- i am sorry if it does not meet all of the expectations yet, we are learning how to use this WIKI and we have beenreseaching the history of the ODU Art Department starting with current faculty and working our way back to the beginning of the program. We will be adding the history as we learn it this semester.
 * I appreciate your concern and we will work on it have a little patience please. I am more than happy to take suggestions on how to develop this.


 * Thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense, and now I "get" what you're doing.  Sorry if I sounded harsh, and I am quite willing to help with the needed clean-up.  I thought it better to say something now when the job is  smallish instead of waiting for it to balloon. If you like, I could move the pages and fix the links for you, but that's also something you could do (and it wouldn't be bad for you to learn to do it). --Jomegat (talk) 02:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Im not quite even sure where to start. I will be working on this today some and I cannot figure it out I will ask. Thank You
 * I made a couple of changes that should help you get started. First, I removed the space character before the first sentence.  In Wiki markup, if a line begins with a space, that means "don't do any formatting and put it in a box made with dotted lines."  This is sometimes useful when trying to show software, but more often than not, it messes people up.  The second thing I did was change the chapter links for the chapters that have not yet been created.  They now begin with a leading slash, so that when the page is created, it will appear at Oduart/new page rather than at new page (which makes it look like a book in its own right rather than a part of Oduart.  Unfortunately, the slash would appear in the rendered text, so I followed that with a "|name as it should appear".


 * Before you do that to the links that have already been created, you'll need to move the pages first. THere's a move tab along the top of the screen to do that.  Go to the page that needs to be moved, click the move tab, and type in the new name.  Then click the move button.  Voila - page moved.  The old page will still exist, but it will be replaced with a redirect, so that if anyone goes to the old page, the wiki will automatically display the one at the new location.  Once the pages have been moved, you can edit the blue links just as I did the red ones.


 * You might also consider renaming the book. "Oduart" might be better as either "History of the Old Dominion University Art Department" or "History of the ODU Art Department".  Wikibooks does have a naming policy that you might want to check out. (Note: I see you moved the page while I was editing!  Good!)


 * For more info, take a look at Using Wikibooks. There's a lot of good info there.  If you get stuck, leave me a note, and I'll do what I can to help. --Jomegat (talk) 13:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

More concerns over the contents of this book
Dear contributors,

While I don't wish to diminish the work that you've put into this book, I have to point out that this book stretches the limits of what Wikibooks is.

While we have numerous books on the subject of history, Wikibooks is not a place to publish original works or research. This page still looks much more like a department staff index than an educational account of it's history. It is certanly not acceptable for users to write a historical take of themselves! Should the ODU Art department wish to provide information about its staff, it would be more appropriate to do so on the department's website. Information is valuable, but does not make a textbook.

Sincerely, --Swift (talk) 09:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)