User talk:Max Snodderly

I am trying to do a major upgrade to a Wikipedia article as an assignment in my undergraduate science class. I find the material i have seen so far to be very confusing and dominated by text editing issues, which distract from the content. I would like to let the class create an article that can essentially replace the present one as a single entry. Are there instructions how to do this? Max Snodderly (talk) 23:03, 1 March 2013 (UTC)Max Snodderly (talk) 23:05, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This question is clearer (to me) than the one you asked on the helpdesk.

To achieve what you describe, you could create a subpage of your user page to create the new article in, and give your whole class your password so that they can work on it there. Then when it is ready, you could copy its contents to the existing article. But there are several snags with this plan.

Wikipedia strongly discourages the use of one account by more than one person.
It would mean that if you retain any of the content of the current article, it would become attributed to you rather than to its creator. This also is against Wikipedia policy.
If you suddenly replace an entire article which people have been working on, however incompetently, by completely new content, it is likely that at least one of them will revert what you have done. Then you would have the choice of walking away and letting your class's work be wasted, or becoming involved in an edit war or a long argument. It would be better (though possibly not ideal) if you were to describe what you propose doing on the article's talk page before making any drastic changes, and mention your credentials as a professor working in the field of the article's subject. In brief: before making drastic changes to an article, you should discuss your plans with those editors who already feel a commitment to it.

Maproom (talk) 16:10, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]