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Class blocked

I received e-mail from Karen Sue Rolph stating, "Admin MuZemike has blocked 64 student accounts - Students I am supposed to introduce to Wikipedia contributing tomorrow. Also blocked is the librarian JSeroff. Can you help?" Most likely this is an IP block of the school due to vandalism - school is Saint Mary's College of California and I'm following up with User:MuZemike. Rolph is not on the class list, so it's not clear to me if she is an official participant in the WEP this term - she was in the past (see Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Anthropology, Wikipedia, and the Media (Karen Sue Rolph)). Dcoetzee 23:33, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Handled on ANI already I believe. Muze saw that many accounts registered from a mobile IP and blocked them. They are unblocked now. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:36, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah I just spotted that. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Urgent_need_for_admin_support. I'll deal with account creation as needed. Dcoetzee 23:46, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I've now created all the necessary accounts (that didn't already exist) and delivered the random passwords to Karen (she didn't want to divulge student e-mails). Note that existing accounts currently have a shared password, which is problematic - we should caution teachers who wish to create accounts on behalf of students to use random passwords for each student (e.g. using a client-side Javascript password generator) and deliver them to students by e-mail or individual paper notes. I've also advised her to indicate on student user pages what course they are a part of - this should be a mandatory requirement for all student accounts, and will prevent problems like this. Dcoetzee 02:04, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

DYK concerns and AFD

Certain concerns regarding DYK and the Education program have been raised at Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors#DYKs_and_students. Additionally, an article from Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Personality (William Fleeson) has been listed at AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dimensional approach to personality disorders.Smallman12q (talk) 21:36, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, left my thoughts at Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors#DYKs_and_students. Dcoetzee 04:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

A big problem with this course (and most of the psych courses) is that most of their articles shouldn't exist, and much of their writing is based entirely on primary sources.

Many psych course professors, students and ambassadors seem to be unaware of Wikipedia's sourcing policies on the correct use of primary, secondary and tertiary sources, so the coursework amounts to original research and synthesis. A good deal of it needs to be deleted, although there is some content that can be salvaged and added to the appropriate articles. I've left comments on two talk pages, but I got the usual sense of non-responsiveness one gets when dealing with student editing. They just don't seem to understand that Wikpedia primarily reports on secondary sources, with limited use of primary sources. We aren't in the business of writing academic papers by compiling primary sources: we report secondary sources, and leave publication of original thought to professionals.

Another problem is that it is hard to get the merges, deletes, etc. accomplished, when the involved participants (students, professors, ambassadors) dominate the normal consensus process. It has been pointed out that this should be considered as coordinated editing, aka meatpuppetry.

Another problem at AFD and other discussions where consensus forms is that involved parties are not declaring their involvement in these discussions: when discussion is dominated by students, ambassadors or professors, where they do not declare their involvement or COI, we have a situation where coordinated editing is overwhelming Wikipedia policies. Editors who are part of and representing these education parties should declare that in their statements.

And ... another problem is that parties are declaring articles notable based on primary studies, rather than secondary sources. If the information in some of these articles is narrowed down to what is covered in secondary sources, eliminating the primary studies, it becomes more obvious that the content may only warrant a line or two in another article (for example, in this case, an article about personality disorders or their treatment). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:46, 20 April 2012 (UTC)