User:DexDor/Effects of IEP on Wikipedia

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User:DexDor/IEP

Whatever I am editing on my topic is made to be reverted again to normal page .Not a single edit done by me on this page is saved.What to do?

Student comment on another student's talk page^[1]

my typical experience with recruited editors involves copyvio, plagiarism, non-reliable sources, edit warring, less than high school level grammar, unhelpful article additions, and failure to understand anything about Wikipedia or to engage on talk.

^[2]

Between August^[3] and December 2011^[4] students in India added large amounts of poor-quality content to the English-language Wikipedia.

In most cases the new content was copyright violation, duplicated information already in wikipedia, incorrect (due to lack of understanding of the subject), incoherent (due to lack of fluent English) and/or not formatted correctly for Wikipedia.

Background

The Wikipedia:India Education Program involved over 800 students at colleges in the Indian city of Pune.

Articles

Some of the articles affected are listed at Wikipedia:India Education Program/Students.

The types of articles affected included:

New articles^[5]
Existing articles^[6]
Existing redirects^[7]
Existing disambiguation pages^[8]

Copyright violations

Many (most?) of the students commited copyright violations.^[9]^[10]

Students

According to one of the Campus Ambassadors (CAs) there were 843 students.^[11] The students can be categorised as:

Those in Category:Wikipedians in the India Education Program (as of 2011/10/09 there were 234 in the category - not necessarily all students)
Those with WP accounts that were not in the category^[12]
Those not using WP:EN accounts (i.e. IP editors)^[13]

One CA has said that there are just 5 CAs^[14], but others put the value at 40.^{[citation needed]} Some of them CAs didn't have much Wikipedia experience (or understanding of WP:COPYVIO).^[15] Some of the CAs did try to control things.^[16]

The response

Some of the edits made by IEP students were quickly reverted by those who had the affected articles on their watchlists, other editors (including IP editors) and ClueBot^[17]. New page patrollers tagged and deleted articles. Some wikipedians investigated other edits made by the students. Some wikipedians put considerable effort into explaining to students why their edits have been reverted.^[18]

WMF staff said they were taking it "very seriously"^[19], held meetings and thanked volunteer editors for their work clearing up the mess. However, they were unable or unwilling to shut the IEP down.

Quotes from talk pages

Some of these have been edited for brevity - see the linked diffs for the full info.

Student: hey . I have created my wiki-topic in my sandbox. Can you please watch it out ? I am waiting for suggestion. (unsigned)

CA: You have just copy pasted content from other websites. This is a copyright violation. ...[good advice]... . P.S: you always forget to sign your comments on my talk page. To do that, you just need to put four tildes. (signed)

Student: Okay. (unsigned)^[20]

Student: You have deleted the article UML fever. I don't know the reason behind deleting it, if it is copyright violation or any other then let me know. This article was written as an assignment .... I have attended seminar on copyright violation on wiki and came to know lot of thoughts. So please let me know why you have deleted the article because I have to complete the most of it as early as possible.
Admin: I deleted it because it was obviously a hoax.^[21]

Student: hey bro plz i need ur help. I hv got marks for editing one article. so plz m requesting u not to delete whatever content i m adding. N YES U CAN REMOVE THEM AFTR ONE WEEK. or i will myself remove that after my evaluation^[22]

CA: I'm a campus ambassador for Wikipedia's India Education Program. I just want to request you to take the edits made by our a bit lightly.^[23]

CA: I think now the situation is pretty much in control ... (4th October)^[24]

Effect on Wikimedia Commons

The IEP also resulted in many images being added to Wikimedia Commons, however almost all were either copyright violations (e.g. scanned from a textbook) or extremely poor quality.

References

^ [1]
^ Wikipedia_talk:United_States_Education_Program/Archive_1#IEP_Summary_.E2.80.93_problems_and_consequences
^ e.g. see User_talk:Gunit31
^ e.g. [2]
^ e.g. [3] and [4]
^ e.g. [5] and [6]
^ e.g. [7]
^ e.g. [8]
^ e.g. see multiple blocks at User talk:Ds731992
^ E.g. see User:Fluffernutter/checks
^ [9]
^ e.g. [10], [11], [12], User:Rucha Mulawekar, [13], [14]
^ e.g. [15], [16]
^ [17]
^ [18]
^ E.g. [19]
^ e.g. [20]
^ For example [21]
^ [22]
^ [23]
^ [24] (the student's article was copied from [25])
^ [26]
^ [27]
^ [28]

[1] [1]

[2] Wikipedia_talk:United_States_Education_Program/Archive_1#IEP_Summary_.E2.80.93_problems_and_consequences

[3] .g. see User_talk:Gunit31

[4] .g. [2]

[5] .g. [3] and [4]

[6] .g. [5] and [6]

[7] .g. [7]

[8] .g. [8]

[9] .g. see multiple blocks at User talk:Ds731992

[10] E.g. see User:Fluffernutter/checks

[11] [9]

[12] .g. [10], [11], [12], User:Rucha Mulawekar, [13], [14]

[13] .g. [15], [16]

[14] [17]

[15] [18]

[16] E.g. [19]

[17] .g. [20]

[18] For example [21]

[19] [22]

[20] [23]

[21] [24] (the student's article was copied from [25])

[22] [26]

[23] [27]

[24] [28]

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[6]

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[12]

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[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]