User talk:Sage (Wiki Ed)/1

Turnitin

Hello! You asked for "what technical features might solve important problems or make your work with classes easier or more effective". Jmh649 has in the past requested a WMF response to an offer by Turnitin to grant free perpetual access to their database to do automatic plagiarism checks on all submissions to Wikipedia. While such a request may be too intimate for the WMF, it could be a partnership on more equal and moderate terms if it were framed as something developed between them and the Wiki Education Foundation and limited only to student participants.

Two concerns I have are that the lending of the Wikimedia movement brand to Turnitin will permanently establish them as a commercial entity as the best in their field, and I do not agree with their commercial philosophy in the space that they are in as I see it as more of a domain for nonprofit organizations. Another concern I have is about money, but it may be the case that Turnitin could themselves invest in the partnership should the Wiki Ed Program wish to do so.

It is an offer which I think merits exploration and a response. The benefits of checking for copied content would be great considering how much of this happens when students come to Wikipedia and how discouraging it is for volunteers to manage it. Beyond that, I think the benefits to Turnitin as a company would be even greater for them, so they may be willing to make concessions, negotiate, and fund things if they were just invited to sit with us.

This is not my project or particular interest, although I would like to see someone respond to this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:28, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Blue Rasberry. Exploring the possibility of automated plagiarism checking is definitely on my agenda; it's central to our tentative current plans for the "version 1.0" Wiki Ed website. User:Ocaasi has been developing a relationship with Turnitin, and I think we will have the opportunity to use their system. I do sympathize with the concerns you bring up, particularly the second. (From what I gather, they aren't particularly concerned about taking advantage of Wikipedia's brand.) I'm not aware of any current non-profit alternatives. (I'd love to see something like that come out of the free culture / open education ecosystem, but it's not within the realm of what Wiki Ed could do at this point.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:37, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

User names

I'm responding here in much the same spirit as Blue Rasberry, above, and I agree enthusiastically about some sort of plagiarism checker. Another thing I can think of has to do with recent discussions at ENB about student editors not being aware of the downsides of using their real names on-Wiki. I think there is some consensus for having information made available to new users right at the time they set up an editing account and choose a user name. It could be a screen that says something like: "If you are editing as part of a class assignment, please look here. If you are editing as the instructor of a class assignment, please look here." That "here" could be the training materials that you have already been working on, and it would be good if those, in turn, could help students and instructors find Wikipedia:On privacy, confidentiality and discretion and/or Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tryptofish. When you say "some consensus", are you referring to where we discussed this before at ENB? I think this makes perfect sense within the context of the education program, but as I noted there, the people this would be targeting are just a tiny fraction of new users. I don't think it's realistic to put up that kind of splash screen for every new user just to catch the students before they make usernames. But some sort of customizable onboarding is part of the plans for mw:Editor campaigns, and I expect that Wiki Ed can work creating such onboarding flows for the education program. It would also be useful to be able to customize the experience *before* you create your account, to guide people (who got to the create account screen via a special url from the instructor) to choose appropriate names. I'm not sure if that will be part of the roadmap for campaigns, but I'll bring it up with Steven Walling when that project is further along.

However, I think improving the training for educators would be a more effective, and much, much easier, way of making headway on the specific issue of students using real names. We currently don't include any advice in that regard to professors, as far as I remember. (If we do, I don't think it gets a whole slide.) If you put together a concise paragraph intended for professors, explaining the issues and suggesting that they make their students aware of them, I can add it to the training.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:02, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

The discussion to which you linked is, indeed, part of it, but there was also a more recent discussion that was actually what I had in mind: Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive7#About outing students. Everything you said here about what is or is not practical makes good sense to me, and there's nothing where I disagree with you. As for language that you might use, we already have WP:ASSIGN, from which I'd love for you to borrow freely. In this particular case, I think you can take language from WP:STUDENTUSER, second paragraph. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Nice work!

		The WikiCookie
		You've learned how to use basic wikicode in your sandbox. You can always return there to experiment more.

Posted automatically via sandbox guided tour. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:13, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Nice work!

		The WikiCookie
		You've learned how to use basic wikicode in your sandbox. You can always return there to experiment more.

Posted automatically via sandbox guided tour. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:20, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Query

Hi Sage, I'm interested in the Wikipedia Content Expert, Sciences position, but noticed that there isn't any mention of compensation in the job posting. Is this intentional? Sasata (talk) 17:44, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Sasata: It's a paid position, but I think the posting was intended to be vague beyond that. It's a part-time contractor position, so it'll be an hourly wage with no benefits. I'm not sure how much it will pay, though.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:10, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

• Hi there, a question from me too. I send an inquiry regarding the humanities position, but I got an automated reply that the target email has been moved (?). Should I email Frank's new address directly, or just wait? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:14, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Crisco 1492: Eek! We had the wrong email address listed. It should be jobswikiedu.org. Try again with that one, and sorry about the confusion.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Sent. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:52, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sage. I also had question regarding these part time positions. Do you know if those residing outside of the US are eligible? I could understand if you wanted to restrict candidates to those that are semi-local. Cheers Andrew (talk) 02:25, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Andrew, Crisco 1492, Sasata: It looks like it may be about a week before we know for sure whether we'll be able to hire globally. If you're strongly interested, you should just apply now.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:28, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

• Will do. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:43, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Moving a course

Sage, How do you move a course to rename it? I created Education Program:University of Southern Indiana/Introduction to Mass Communications (S1) but after creating and editing it, I saw that the name did not have the semester and year that would make it consistent with past uses. I would like to add "(Fall 2014)" to the title and address. Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you, Crtew (talk) 16:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Crtew: It's not possible to rename a course; you'll need to create a new course and then copy over the course content you set up for it. I can do this for you if you like.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:37, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Sage, I was afraid you would say that ;D . Thanks for the offer, but I'll set the new one up and delete the info from the previous. I have to set my other course up too. I think I can then delete the empty shell. Crtew (talk) 16:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Sage!  Done Crtew (talk) 17:51, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Course wizard

Thank you Sage for your help with the new course wizard! Dbzam (talk) 17:16, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Information provided

Hi. Based on your suggestion, I've sent you and email. Thanks!

A cookie for you!

For such cheerful moves and helping me pick up the crumbs :) ProfGray (talk) 20:42, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Education program/Dashboard/course ids

Hello Sage (Wiki Ed),

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Education program/Dashboard/course ids for deletion, because it doesn't seem to have any encyclopedic content.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. AAshortfin (talk) 08:30, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

• You don't deserve it, but I have moved it to Wikipedia:Education program/Dashboard/course ids. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 10:09, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
  • AAshortfin and RHaworth: Whoops! Wrong namespace. Thanks for sorting it out.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:44, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Course details template and dashboard

Sage, Hi. Looks like the course details template has improved, thanks! But I do have a question (or concern) -- Do students see the same version that I see? There's an "Edit Assignment" button that brings me directly into editing the course syllabus & assignments page. This is great for me, but I'm reluctant to having my students think about editing that page. Of course, we can revert their mistakes. Maybe this button could be an option in preferences -- for me, it'd be more useful than the Courses link to the Course page itself. Also, for a course like mine, perhaps you could make a version of the template that leaves out that Medical section?

The dashboard looks good, too. I gather all students will see that. Has there been any discussion of other parameters to include, directly or as options, besides characters? Perhaps number of edits or date of most recent edit? Thanks very much, keep up the good work, ProfGray (talk) 01:50, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

ProfGray: Glad you like it! The Dashboards will be improving over the next few weeks, as fast as we can build new features. Both of your suggestions are on the roadmap. :-)

As for the edit button, that will show up for students. If you want to remove it, you can edit the course and remove the "assignment_page" parameter, and that link will disappear. (There's no good way to make it only show up for instructors.) --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:59, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I did remove the edit button. Also modified the course dates to match our full semester calendar. Best wishes, ProfGray (talk) 02:31, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Nice work!

		The WikiCookie
		You've learned how to use basic wikicode in your sandbox. You can always return there to experiment more.

Posted automatically via sandbox guided tour. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:36, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Dashboard + date range

Sage, when the dashboard pulls in information from a course, does it pull in the date range for the course each time? I imagine it wouldn't since it would be inefficient to do so, but in my case, I incorrectly specified a date range for two of our events – I forgot to account for the fact that evening in DC is after midnight in UTC-land. The education program pages on-wiki are updated, but I am not sure that the Dashboard is. Can you look into this? Thanks, Harej (talk) 15:32, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Harej: It pulls dates from the course page, and updates them as necessary. I don't think it will pull *earlier* data if the start date was later than it should have been, but I think it will pull later data if you extended the end date.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:10, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

As I did. Thank you! Harej (talk) 16:19, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

m:Research:Plagiarism on the English Wikipedia

Hi Sage. I read m:Research:Plagiarism on the English Wikipedia. Interesting. Do you know of any works on plagiarism of students on Wikipedia? I am curious if there have been any other studies. In particular, I wonder if we can say that exposure to Wikipedia reduces amount of plagiarism somehow, compared to traditional writing assignments? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:03, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Piotrus: not that I know of. That's possibly something we'll have better data for in a year or two.--ragesoss (talk) 17:17, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I added my case study

To https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Case_Studies#Case_Studies:_Assignments ; I hope that's fine. Oh, and you may want to redirect the userpage of your old account there here too; I spent few minutes looking for this one again. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:52, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

User:Piotrus: Great!--ragesoss (talk) 16:36, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

New course announcement: User:Sage_(Wiki_Ed)/School_of_Open/Writing_Wikipedia_Articles_(Fall_2015) (instructor: User:Peteforsyth)

I have created a new course — Writing Wikipedia Articles — at dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/School_of_Open/Writing_Wikipedia_Articles_(Fall_2015). If you'd like to see more details about my course, check out my course page.--Pete (talk) 23:13, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

New course announcement: User:Sage_(Wiki_Ed)/UC_Berkeley_-_UCSF_Joint_Medical_Program/Expanding_Wikiproject_Medicine_(Fall_2015) (instructor: User:AminMDMA)

I have created a new course — Expanding Wikiproject Medicine — at dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/UC_Berkeley_-_UCSF_Joint_Medical_Program/Expanding_Wikiproject_Medicine_(Fall_2015). If you'd like to see more details about my course, check out my course page.--AminMDMA 06:35, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

New course announcement: User:Sage_(Wiki_Ed)/wikipedia_school/title_(fall_2015) (instructor: User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed))

I have created a new course — title — at dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/wikipedia_school/title_(fall_2015). If you'd like to see more details about my course, check out my course page.----LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:46, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment

This template is not really appropriate nor does it describe the function/role/purpose of a Visiting Scholar. I am not simply a reviewer and it is just slightly misleading to identify me as such. May I draft another? Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) (talk) 11:27, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Help decide the future of Wikimania

The Wikimedia Foundation is currently running a consultation on the value and planning process of Wikimania, and is open until 18 January 2016. The goals are to (1) build a shared understanding of the value of Wikimania to help guide conference planning and evaluation, and (2) gather broad community input on what new form(s) Wikimania could take (starting in 2018).

After reviewing the consultation, we'd like to hear your feedback on on this survey.

In addition, feel free to share any personal experiences you have had at at a Wikimedia movement conference, including Wikimania. We plan to compile and share back outcomes from this consultation in February.

With thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk), from Community Resources 23:46, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Add shortcut for student training as well

I see the Wikipedia:Training/For educators has a link that says: "Working with Wiki Education Foundation? You should go through the New Instructor Orientation on wikiedu.org instead of this training." Could you add a similar shortcut message on the Wikipedia:Training/For students page which would link to the wikiedu dashboard training module? I tried to be bold and do it myself but I can't figure out how to edit the templates. Lugevas (talk) 16:13, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Lugevas done. These are the pages that have the intro text:

• Wikipedia:Training/core/Menu_educators
• Wikipedia:Training/core/Menu_students

--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:30, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! Lugevas (talk) 18:10, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Box hidden when not logged in?

You seem like a very helpful knowledgeable wikipedian, so I'm going directly to your talk page, hope you don't mind. Do you have any idea why when you visit the Wikipedia:Training/For students page while not logged in or using Chrome Incognito mode, the infobox that says "Are you a student in a course supported by Wiki Education Foundation?" is not visible in the browser? Link to screenshot Lugevas (talk) 18:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

This is a caching issue. Logged out users are sometimes served older versions of a page. It should fix itself sooner or later.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Towards a New Wikimania results

Last December, I invited you to share your views on the value of Wikimedia conferences and the planning process of Wikimania. We have completed analysis of these results and have prepared this report summarizing your feedback and important changes for Wikimania starting in 2018 as an experiment. Feedback and comments are welcome at the discussion page. Thank you so much for your participation. I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, 22:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for documenting our All Staff

Hey, Sage! Always appreciate your photography skills and willingness to document the great work we're doing. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:15, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

UW Bothell

Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/UW-Bothell/Critical Media Literacy (Fall 2015) is listed with a hyphen between UW and Bothell whereas the other courses do not have a hyphen. I don't know how to correct this, but it is making trouble with the categorization. - Brianhe (talk) 07:10, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Brianhe (talk: thanks! Currently, the dashboard doesn't allow renaming, so there's no easy way to fix that issue. The categorization scheme is not particularly robust; it's just better than nothing. At some point, I'd like to come up with a better way to add categories to avoid this problem, but for now, we're stuck with it.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:16, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Test assignment plans

Sage, I've noticed that you had a lot of test assignment plans such as User:Sage (Wiki Ed)/Test/Testing (ttt) you created. However, all those pages still appear in Category:Dashboard.wikiedu.org course pages and various wanted red-linked categories. I presume that the actual course pages category should be limited to completed assignment plans and not testing (I'm nominating a bunch for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Dmak78/dfg/dfg (dfg) from another editor) so that it's easier to use if people need to use it. Would you consider listing them for U1 deletion? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:30, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Table of contents

Template:Table of contents has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Safiel (talk) 06:32, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Women in Red metrics

Hi Sage, @LiAnna (Wiki Ed): suggested that I describe Women in Red's metrics collection/documentation process to you as you might have ideas on how to automate it.

• Start by reviewing this: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Metrics.
• Then look at this and its edit history: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Metrics.
• Here is an outline of the steps:

• During the month, someone at WiR (often me) copies entries from these pages to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Metrics.

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's history/New articles
• User:AlexNewArtBot/WomenartistsSearchResult
• User:AlexNewArtBot/WomenWritersSearchResult
• User:AlexNewArtBot/WomenScientistsSearchResult
• User:AlexNewArtBot/OperaSearchResult

• The dumped articles are cleaned up in Excel.
• Then the articles are moved to our Metrics page.
• We also copy all the articles from our various editathon pages and add them to the Metrics page.
• Then we alphabetize the list and remove duplicates.
• Then we archive the completed month's list.

Please let me know if you need any more details or clarification. I look forward to your thoughts. --Rosiestep (talk) 02:19, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

WiR Metrics Barnstar

	WiR Metrics Barnstar
	Thank you, Sage, for developing scripts, databases etc. in order to automate the metrics-reporting process for WP:WikiProject Women in Red. We appreciate you! Rosiestep (talk) 05:08, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Training for Newcomers

Hi Sage, wondered if you were still overseeing the Training for Newcomers tutorial? The first page is still getting over 100 views daily, though this tails off to about 7 by the end. It's linked from Help:Directory, Help:Getting started, Welcome to Wikipedia and many other places. If it's still intended for use it needs some maintenance and updating:

• The program is based on wikitext editing, while new editors are now being guided to use Visual Editor.
• Problems with links on Page 3, explained here.
• The "Menu" button on each screen leads back to Page 1, not to a menu.

On the other hand if newcomers needing this type of program would be better directed elsewhere, should the main incoming links be changed instead?: Noyster (talk), 10:56, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Noyster: Hi! I'm not working on that tutorial any more. Actually, when I get a chance I'm hoping to do an experiment with offering these trainings to newcomers. But I think the best option for the older ones you linked to would be to remove the incoming links. The more we can do to reduce the sheer number of choices in our help and welcome pages, the better experience it will be for newcomers.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:57, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Y I've removed most of the links anyone is likely to follow, and marked the page as historical for good measure. Yes the number of help and instruction pages is amazing and it's hard to see how they can all be maintained: Noyster (talk), 20:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Sage,

Was wondering if you could evaluate my Old Testament section of the Christian Pacifism article? I am needing to move it to the mainspace tonight, but will still have time to make revisions. I hope I did a better job answering the question you posed about "according to whom" explicitly. I just was not sure if I was suppose to mention every author before I wrote a line that I cited them in.

Thanks, TylerTyler Chinappi (talk) 05:53, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

dashboard.wikiedu.org

Hi Sage, Apologies for the interruption. I got your name from this page, which has information on the dashboard.wikiedu.org tools. I think we have a small issue with these tools, which should hopefully not be too difficult to remedy.
When adding a banner with details of a course to an Article Talk page, the tools place the information within the {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}; this means that they are included in a section relating to WikiProject within whose scope the article falls, rather than in the general list of banners. See here for an example. It would be greatly appreciated if this could be modified to place the new banner outside the banner shell. Apologies if you are not the right person; if so, you will hopefully know who to pass the details. Thanks in advance for any effort on addressing this issue. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 13:26, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Ryk72. I'm the right person. The intended behavior was to put the banners after any existing banners but before any non-template content in the first section. It's tricky to deal with {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}, though. I'll see what I can do about improving it.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:51, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Ryk72: I think I've got a good fix for it, deploying now. New templates should get inserted after the end of the banner shell and similar nested templates.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh wow! That's quick! Thank you very much for this, and for all your efforts in supporting WikiEd. Very much appreciated. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 03:48, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Muslim women in sport page

Hi Sage, I was wondering if I could get your help on the Muslim women in sport page. A user has deleted large chunks of information (around 4000 characters). They claim it is synthesis, but I don't see how it is, and I also don't want to get into an edit war. Would you mind looking at what they've deleted and helping me figure out whether or not it really is synthesis? Thanks! Rjpg12 (talk) 15:31, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Rjpg12: hi! The volleyball part seems fine to me. For the tennis and association football section, I think there's some room to either remove the broader summary statements that frame the paragraphs, or add citations that directly support the generalizations. "Women's tennis is rapidly growing in popularity within OIC member states" and "Women's football has significantly increased its profile within the OIC bloc in the twenty-first century" in particular are the parts where I can see the case for a bit of original synthesis. I suggest the following:

• Add some explicit citations for, or remove, those broader statements, and restore the details for those sections.
• Explain your changes and how they address the SYNTH concerns on the talk page.
• Ask on the talk page for more clarification on what User:Le new account sees as synthesis for the volleyball section, and either address those concerns, or restore the content if you don't hear back.

Great job with that article, by the way!--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:33, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks so much! I revised the association football and tennis sections to include fewer broad statements, and asked for clarification on the volleyball section. We'll see what happens I guess. Thanks for all your help!Rjpg12 (talk) 17:58, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Hey Sage

...is there a messaging functionality, an easy way to send simple messages to all students? I suppose not--it'd be in between the talk page and the email functions. Would be nice, though: now, if I want to send something out that's easy and quick I have to go through Blackboard. Thanks, Dr Aaij (talk) 15:18, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Dr Aaij: No, there's not at this point. I'm doing some preliminary work towards a Slack-style chat channel for each course. (We also have a framework for sending talk page messages to all the users in a course, but in most cases students are more easily reached by whatever methods the instructor would use otherwise, so we haven't extended that functionality beyond a standard message reminding them to complete their assigned trainings.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:EDUCATORS

Hello,

I notice that Wikipedia:EDUCATORS contains template-like content. As you may know (since it seems that you created this page with your old WMF account), this title could easily be confused as a shortcut redirect. I also noticed that Wikipedia:EDUCATORS has no transclusions, so if it is used, I'm assuming that it is substituted. Is this page currently/still in use with the education work you do? If not, may I restore the redirect? If so, is it possible to have the content at Wikipedia:EDUCATORS moved elsewhere so that the shortcut can be restored? Steel1943 (talk) 20:19, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi. It's basically intended as a shortcut... it just serves to provide a link to the more current off-wiki version of the instructor trainings. It's not transcluded, but it is linked to in a few places. In any case, I don't think restoring the old shortcut would be a good idea, as it might mislead people to use the old, unmaintained training modules that the shortcut pointed to.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:40, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I think I see what you mean. In that case, would it be okay if this page were moved to a non-shortcut title of some sort, but keep Wikipedia:EDUCATORS targeting that page? If that may not work, then ... either way, my goal, more or less, is to ensure that there is a clear distinction from Wikipedia:EDUCATOR and Wikipedia:EDUCATORS. (I've been sifting through some pages at Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia: lately as a bit of a cleanup task, and noticed this issue upon seeing that Wikipedia:EDUCATORS was not a redirect.) Steel1943 (talk) 21:16, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Moving it to another page with the redirect targeting it would be fine, if you're keen on keeping shortcut-style pages strictly as redirects. I suggest pointing Wikipedia:EDUCATOR to the same target; I think I just neglected to change that one when I changed the EDUCATORS one, but they ought to be the same, like they originally were.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:46, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Agreed that both titles should target the same place (or one target the other.) However, if Wikipedia:EDUCATORS were to be moved, I am not sure where it should be moved. Do you have an idea/preference of a title that might work? (In the meantime, sort of in line as you suggested, I retargeted Wikipedia:EDUCATOR to Wikipedia:EDUCATORS.) Steel1943 (talk) 03:12, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Any title would do. Perhaps 'Wikipedia:Training for educators'.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:26, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. WP:EDUCATOR previously redirected to Wikipedia:Training/For educators. Is your intent for the content at Wikipedia:EDUCATORS to replace Wikipedia:Training/For educators? Steel1943 (talk) 22:29, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, exactly.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:31, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Okay, then here's my plan, per your comments. I plan on moving the current contents of Wikipedia:Training/For educators to Wikipedia:Training for educators, moving Wikipedia:EDUCATORS to Wikipedia:Training/For educators, and then blanking/redirecting Wikipedia:Training for educators to Wikipedia:Training/For educators. If this is will work best for you and the work you do, please let me know. (If this is what you want, I assume that all of the subpages of "Wikipedia:Training/For educators" probably should be tagged {{Historical}}, possibly referring readers to https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training/instructors for the new procedures?) Steel1943 (talk) 00:31, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. Thanks!--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

•  Partly done. At this point, I did all of the steps I mentioned except for marking the subpages historical. Steel1943 (talk) 01:38, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Halshara/sandbox

Hi, I saw this edit. Your edit summary actually identified the real problem. The page should be deleted either as a copyright violation of an unattributed Wikipedia page, or under WP:A10. I think the latter is better, but I've given the user 24 hours to save anything before I speedy, I therefore haven't put the A10 speedy tag on yet. please let me know if you have any concerns about this Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:22, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Jimfbleak: A10 applies to mainspace, not a sandbox. The appropriate solution to this kind of thing is described at WP:RIA. More generally, copying some content so you can prepare a first (small) edit in a sandbox before making it live is a good idea for newcomers.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:30, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

This is more than a small test edit. If I understand you correctly, you appear to be saying that if the attribution is repaired there is nothing to prevent a user having what is effectively a copy of a Wikipedia article in their user space? Also pinging Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi as an involved editor Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:37, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks both. Since I originally tagged as G12, I'll stick to that if that's OK (I don't really deal with A7s- perhaps I should!). An administrator recently commented to me that 'the policies on copyright are applied across the board. If Jimbo Wales created a page that was in breech of the copyright policies then it would be deleted. The policy on copyright applies across all namespaces including the draft, templates and user spaces (which the draft was in)' which I think sums it up nicely. And I thnk I've previously said- specifically regarding copying within WP- something along the lines that the operative guidelines are WP:COPYWITHIN, and specifically WP:ATTREQ- 'The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use are clear that attribution will be supplied. Just copying articles into userspace is effectively breaching other editors' own copyrights- even though we are releasing our contributions under opensource licence, they are stil our contributions. Which I guess is why WP:C is described as being a 'Wikipedia policy with legal considerations.' — O Fortuna! ^{Imperatrix mundi.} 15:07, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

This should fix the problem. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:00, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: You tagged it G11 (spam), not G12. G12 is also not applicable: "This applies to text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a compatible free license". The fix is trivial, and does not require an admin: WP:RIA.

User:Jimfbleak: copying a whole article to a sandbox like that isn't a good idea, and we explicitly include instructions for how to do it better in our student training. But it's allowed, and not a big deal in and of itself.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:25, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

On the first two points: I agree, as this was a complex case- should have been multiple issues really- and the original article is, after all, effectively an advert. But my discussion on G12/CWW is correct. Cheers. — O Fortuna! ^{Imperatrix mundi.} 16:38, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

We live and learn, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:42, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Scaffold

Is scaffold a term you use in your courses? If so, what does it mean? --David Tornheim (talk) 05:53, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

David Tornheim I can't think of anywhere that we use that term explicitly, but in the context of assignment design, it refers to instructional scaffolding.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! --David Tornheim (talk) 16:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

ping

FYI. I mentioned here: User:David_Tornheim/EJustice_Class_Collaborative_Discussion#Allegation_5. I think the Ping didn't work. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:28, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Education noticeboard‎

		The Instructor's Barnstar
		This Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who have performed stellar work in the area of instruction & help for other editors.

Little bird mentioned you should be on center stage for the recent class project work. Looks great! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Eh

Look what we're up against. Admin glasses only. Drmies (talk) 02:48, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Disgusting.

• And maybe you know what to do with Expanded Ptolemy's Intense Diatonic Scale to Modes? Drmies (talk) 03:00, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Given the lack of refs and lack of context, I guess userfy. Definitely doesn't belong in mainspace at this point, and I don't know enough to say whether it might ever.--ragesoss (talk) 03:07, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Deleting Talk page content

Not sure if you are the right person to raise it with. It looks like several students in Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/University_of_Oklahoma/Women_and_Medicine_(Fall) are deleting all/most of the content on article talk pages. See, e.g. [1] and [2] I've cleaned up some of it, but not all of it. Is there a good way to address with the class? Thanks meamemg (talk) 16:22, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

meamemg Thanks! There was a dashboard bug that caused this. Shalor is working on cleanup right now, and I'm fixing the bug.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:27, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's a quick explanation of what happened: Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard#Talk_page_blanking_by_student_editors_via_dashboard.wikiedu.org. meamemg, thanks again for the ping. --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:29, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the update! meamemg (talk) 17:58, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Rice PJHC Help

Hi Sage!

You just left a comment on the page i'm editing for my Rice course, Poverty Justice and Human Capabilities, indicating that the work I had contributed had copyright violations? I'm aware that the lists I posted were directly from a source but thought that since I quoted and gave credit to the source it was OK - that was my bad on the list part i'll go back and re-edit that .. but were there other issues? The comment left was, to me, fairly vague and since all of my edits and sources were deleted i really need help figuring out what it was that I did wrong.

Thanks Mlk10 (talk) 21:25, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Sage! Thanks for your quick response - In my notes on my computer I have the sentence introducing the lists in my article changed so that they're directly introducing the source and in quotations - i did citations after all of my additions perhaps they all didn't save properly or I forgot to save after every addition. I sincerely apologize for this! I put a lot of effort into the research and construction of my work bodies and did not mean to plagiarize or take credit from someone in any way! I feel so completely embarrassed. I'm going back now and fixing my body in order to avoid using direct quotes all together to ensure nothing like this happens again. Just to clarify - was all of the work removed because of the one instance (because when there is one there is likely others) - or were more than the lists problematic / there were issues with the sources I used?

Mlk10 (talk) 21:43, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Plagiarism

Hi, Sage! To avoid the risk of another copyright violation, I have made sure to go through all of my sources again and subsequently made the appropriate changes in the "Refugee children" Wikipedia page. I apologize for this careless mistake! To specifically respond to your identification of the plagiarism of http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147854 in the "Nutrition" section of the article as well, I have made changes such that I was no longer plagiarizing or close paraphrasing. I would like to hear your feedback and suggestions as well. Thank you in advance! ---Aleong809 (talk) 01:18, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

'term' in dashboard

Hello, SageRoss. I noticed that this edit, which I gather was made with dashboard.wikiedu.org, removed the term= parameter. In fact, that is all the edit did. I wonder if it would be possible (and worthwhile) to jigger the application in a way that makes it ignore term= and not remove it. I find that parameter useful on pages such as Talk:Language and gender, which have been the subject of various Wiki Ed projects during different terms. (Sorry, by the way, if you are not the appropriate person to approach about that application.) Cnilep (talk) 06:09, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Cnilep: Currently, when someone makes a change to the assignments for the course, it works by searching for that template with the right course parameter on each talk page and then replacing it with the most up-to-date parameters that it uses. Supporting additional manually-added parameters like 'term' would be tricky. I'll file an issue for it, though. It might be something we can improve at some point.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:08, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Student unfairly blocked, needs an unblock

What's our policy in cases where a student is blocked? Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Student_unfairly_blocked,_needs_an_unblock. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:26, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Rolled back Edits in House of Wisdom

Sage,

I am part of the Group in the History of Science and Civilization in Islam Class, you just rolled back some plagiarism edits that one of the other group members made, but in the process, deleted a significant portion of editing I was making on the intro section. Do I just need to resubmit these over the new rollback? because I think I lost some 1500 characters trying to edit the page and can't seem to find a record due to an editing conflict when I tried to upload.

TheRogueGeographer (talk) 17:16, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Suppression

Hi, who can suppress this edition for me? It's security necessity, that is my IP. Thanks,--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 19:26, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Felipe da Fonseca: Try pinging one of the admins for Outreach wiki; I'm not one anymore.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:32, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 19:50, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Course campus volunteers listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:Course campus volunteers. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:Course campus volunteers redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 20:12, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Project Proposal

Hey Sage! I'm editing for the PJHC class at Rice University this fall and was wondering if you or anybody else would be willing to give a little bit of feedback or tips on my sandbox! User:Spaul57/sandbox I'm interested in my topic but am very new to Wiki and was just wondering where to find a community with some constructive feedback. Thank you so much! Sachi Paul (talk) 04:32, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Sachi Paul! That looks like a good topic to work on, and it looks like you've got a solid start with the bibliography. I think your plans for it make sense. The biggest piece of advice I have is to work in pieces; start with one section you know you need to revise or create, get it ready, and then put it into the live article... and work directly on the live article from there. Good luck!--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:26, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

ORES

Hi there, Sage. I don't know if you have been alerted to the ping I left for you here. I would be interested in hearing your comments. ORES is a great tool but it really looks as if it could be improved for the enwiki.--Ipigott (talk) 19:26, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Question re Patrolling

Hi. Recently, I've been going through unpatrolled user pages created with the wikiedu tag. I had an idea of seeing if there was support for a bot to automatically patrol these pages, but first I wanted to ask: Is there ever I time or chance where pages created with the tag of dashboard.wikiedu.org are not part of the wiki ed program? --DannyS712 (talk) 22:29, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Only edits that get made by the dashboard.wikiedu.org site on behalf of someone in a Wiki Ed program (or someone who is in the process of trying to join) will get that tag. So far, at least, that's limited to 'housekeeping' type edits; I think automatically patrolling them is likely safe.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:57, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@Sage (Wiki Ed): If I were to make a bot for this, do you think I would need a village pump-esque discussion? --DannyS712 (talk) 22:58, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Maybe? It might be minor enough to take straight to the bot approval group.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:02, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@Sage (Wiki Ed): Okay. I'll start on a script, and ping you once I have a brfa. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 23:02, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

My new research on teaching with Wikipedia

Hi Sage. I am starting to work on my new project that I think you and Wiki Ed in general will find of interest: I want to learn what instructors think of this and why some stop using it. It has been my general experience that a lot of instructors try our ideas once and then stop. Do we know why? So, first, I wanted to let you know I am thinking about researching this. Second, I wanted to see if you or Wiki Ed want to offer any input, in the form of questions you'd like to ask, etc. Perhaps you have done some surveys or such on this before? Do let me know what you think and to what degree you'd like to be kept in the loop (I'd be happy if you'd like to review my survey once version A is ready). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:22, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Hey Piotr! Instructor retention is one of the things we've been watching and trying to better understand for a while now, but we don't have any good answers for why people don't keeping teaching with Wikipedia. I can give you some highlights of what we've found, but you should follow up with LiAnna if you want to know more. We get about 45% of instructors who teach at least a second time after teaching with Wiki Education the first time. The ones who answer our surveys almost all say they plan to teach again, but the ones who don't plan to teach again are also the ones who don't answer our surveys. Here's the internal analysis we did the last time we tried to take a close look at it, several years ago.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:41, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! Ping User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed) then :) Right now my next step is to gather contact information for the instructors. It is public (through dashboard) but it is not easily extractable (AFAIK), which means I have to manually visit a page for the course, record instructor username, see how many courses they taught, and if they have a registered email. It can take several minutes per instructor, and my goal is to have 1000+ people to contact. Any change you have some tools/tricks&tips/suggestions on how to automate this? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:47, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Piotrus! Good to hear from you. Are you specifically interested in people who taught with Wikipedia once and then never again? We do have a database with all our instructors in it, so I can easily pull a list of people who have only taught with us only once (around 500 people). I see two options: (1) I can't give you their email addresses because that would violate our privacy policy, but if you want to put together the survey link and an email about your research, we can forward it on to everyone that fits the criteria of taught once and hasn't taught again. The upside of this is it should reach a fairly high percentage of people, unless their email has changed since they last taught; the downside is you would likely not get a huge response rate because these people have by in large stopped responding to us and may not even be opening our emails. (2) I can give you a list of the Wikipedia usernames we have, since this is public on the Dashboard, and then you would have to manually check if they have email enabled. They're perhaps more likely to open an email from Wikipedia than from us? But I have no idea how many of them have email enabled. Let me know if either of these work for you. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:31, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

@LiAnna (Wiki Ed): After thinking about it I think it would be more valuable to contact all instructors who stopped, limiting the research to 'stopped after just one try' is not logical - what about people who tried two then stopped? Why they should be ignored? In fact it may be easier to contact as many instructors as possible, and just ask them in the survey how many courses/semesters did they taught. But it would be great to be able to compare it to your date with regards to the response, rate, to be able to say that 'out of X instructors who taught only a single course, only Y% replied'. Since the survey methodology generally recommends contacting subjects 2-3 times over the period of that many months or so (to get replies from people who were busy but became less so or just forgot), I think both approaches have merit and can be combined. Once the survey is ready (soon - i.e this month I hope) I think we could send it to people from your email list, then after a while I could follow up with the wiki usernames one. PS. Do let me know if you'd like to look at it and offer comments on questions etc.; I am not making the link public here due to privacy concerns as well (the survey is inn Google Forms right now so I'd need your preferred email(s) to invite you to see it).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:56, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Thanks, please do share it with me when it's ready: liannawikiedu.org. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:45, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

@LiAnna (Wiki Ed): Google invite send for the survey draft. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:03, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Instructor retention analysis from 2016

177 instructors taught in the 2014-2015 school year. Of those, 103 taught in the 2015-2016.

Of the 74 who did not teach with us again,

• 18 did not teach at all
• 21 had an unknown teaching status (19 could potentially be teaching the same course)
• 34 taught a class in 2015-2016. Of those 34:
  • 23 taught a different course
  • 6 taught the same course.
  • 4 taught again at the same university, but their course was unknown.

Nomination for deletion of Module:TrophyCase

Module:TrophyCase has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:12, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

User:Sage Ross (WMF)

Perhaps you could update that page with a note that your current official account is this one? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:02, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, Sage (Wiki Ed). Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.   Mathglot (talk) 23:39, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Requesting small help

Hi,

Greetings, requesting small help.

When one sees history of Talk:Islamic feminism there are multiple edit attempts relating to some education program. But on talk page Talk:Islamic feminism I see same education program mentioned thrice. May be new users were confused, don't know what they were trying to do. I could not decide what to do with repeated text. May be you or some one want to look into it.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 01:27, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Bookku thanks! Looks like this was a bug with the Wiki Education Dashboard, an edge case we hadn't run into before. I cleaned up the page and will fix the bug so it can't happen again.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2020 (UTC)