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Citation use of proxied urls invalid outside the university domain

LiAnna , Sage, I wonder if we need additional training, and/or maybe a new info or how-to page specifically addressing how to deal with citations that include urls to journals via academic databases which are linked through an affiliated university, where the url is not valid outside registered accounts at that university domain. This is actually an issue that transcends just Wiki Ed, but since there's a potential problem associated with such urls, and they occur primarily in a university setting, this seems like the right place to begin to tackle it.

There is a recurring problem with citations added by student editors which are otherwise correct, but which include a url which is invalid without a log-in via a registered account specifically at that student's university. These might be ezproxy or JStor urls, for example, which are generated via the relationship that EBSCO or Gale or JStor has with a university, and can be recognized by the url domain being a university domain (e.g., "wvu.edu") and with pieces of the hosting service (JStor, or whoever) in the path part of the url. Such university-proxied urls do not work outside of a logged-in account at that university, *even* if you have your own login at JStor, your own university, or wherever. (Sometimes, they don't even work later at the same university, because they are session-based.) In such cases, there is usually a generic url ("JStor stable", and so on) that should be used instead. Where access is restricted and login is required, the generic urls will prompt you for login through any affiliated institution (I do so, through my local public library) and then access is granted to the resource.

Maybe this info should ultimately be in a supplement or how-to at Help:CS1 with links from the {{Citation}}-series of templates and Wiki Ed pages, but since the target audience is almost entirely university students (or anyone with a university account), and you already have an organized training system in place at Wiki Ed, I thought this would be the logical place to raise this. By the way, instructors may not be aware of the invalidity of proxied urls either; so if training modules are changed, I'd start with the instructors first; maybe they could then inform their students. I'm assuming you know what I mean about uni-proxied academic database urls; if any of this sounds mysterious, or you need concrete examples or diffs, I'm happy to provide them. Mathglot (talk) 23:43, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

My librarian colleagues refer to this - links that will work without proxies and other similar things - generically as "permalinks." It's likely that the library of each college and university already has a set of instructions for finding them in their particular system(s). ElKevbo (talk) 00:05, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment; I wasn't aware of that librarian usage. I'd have a slight quibble with the use of that terminology in this context, as you could have a permalink that had no session data that would work within that university just fine; permalink implies that as the page changes, gets archived, or moved, or even deleted, the url will pull up a link that still exists, and points to the same version of the content. A permalink in Wikipedia context, can pull up this ENB page from April, 2012, for example. Archived web pages at Archive.org (the Wayback machine) are permalinks. Nevertheless, if that's what your librarian colleagues call it, then we should be aware of that usage, and adapt to it.
Perhaps the colleges have instructions for finding them, but that may not help Wiki Ed students who never knew that such a distinction existed in the first place. The fact is, it's a recurring problem to see proxied urls in student-added citations, and if we're not saying anything at all about them in the module dealing with creating citations, imho we should. Mathglot (talk) 00:37, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
My (poorly made) point is that the institutions almost certainly have documentation already written and people ready to help students understand it; we just need to remind faculty and students about this issue. This is a familiar problem with solutions already in place if people know to look for them. ElKevbo (talk) 00:47, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Anecdotally, I think the majority of students and academics don't know how these proxies work or even necessarily notice that they're using one (not their fault; they're not well designed or communicated). And I'm sure I've accidentally copied a proxied URL into a Wikipedia citation before, even though I do know how they work. Annoying as it is, I don't think it would be productive to make a big deal of it, since new editors from educational programmes already have a lot of technical intricacies to grapple with just to add citations. It should be straightforward to recover the original URL from a proxied one and I imagine a bot could be set up to spot and fix them (if there isn't one already). – Joe (talk) 11:50, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Mathglot: This is definitely a recurring issue that we've looked at periodically, but I don't think it's one that can easily be solved by putting an extra slide of training material in front of student editors. The training materials are always going to be a balancing act between covering issues that are likely to come up vs being focused and relevant enough for a newcomer *before* they dive into editing that it sinks in. (Covering this particular mistake in the training would likely prevent some portion of cases, but would also be irrelevant for many editors.) In the longer term, it's part of the broad category of mistakes that we want to address reactively by automatically detecting them and sending the student editor a message about the problem and how to fix it.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:16, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
If I'm reading you both correctly, there's a common thread in what Joe and Sage are both saying, and maybe I could paraphrase it this way: there's a point of diminishing returns in training, where more is less. That is to say, there's only so much a student editor can absorb before they dive in, and the remainder needs to be applied after the fact, after mistakes are made. Is that a fair reflection of what you meant? If so, that sounds right to me, and I believe you're right that adding it to training modules is not the right way to go.
I still think it's worth explaining it somewhere, though, perhaps in an info or how-to page, so that instead of having to spin out a long-winded story to a student every time it happens, we can just point them to the info page. Joe, as to your comment about getting the original url from the proxied one, I'm not sure it's always easy to do that, at least, for some non-JStor proxied urls; I'll see if I can find an example or two. Thank you both for your comments. Mathglot (talk) 01:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
It may be worth bringing up but we just need to direct them to their own local resources and experts who have already created documentation and are eager to help them. So we may need a brief summary of the issue but not much more and certainly no detailed instructions that someone will need to (forget to) maintain and test in all of its permutations. We can probably even copy some language from a library website - some place their original materials into CC - so we don't even have to write much of our own original material. If you can't find anything, I'd be happy to ask my librarian colleagues if they can write or make available some language we can use. ElKevbo (talk) 02:25, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
I had done some searching around already, and there's a lot out there; one search expression that seem to yield lots of results related to this topic is off campus access to library resources. This will yield web pages from many universities which discuss this topic, or have links to pages that do. Mathglot (talk) 03:02, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
I would expect many of those webpages to provide instructions on how students, staff, and faculty can access library databases and resources using their institutional credentials (and possibly a VPN). "Permalink," "permanent link," or something similar is going to more in line with what you're looking for. ElKevbo (talk) 04:15, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Unregistered course

I saw that this user (SchatzieMicah) says they are associated with a rogue class (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, ENGL 312- Science Writing). A search through userspace shows some other students who also mention the same class in their userpages:

Thought I'd flag it here so the students have some oversight. Enwebb (talk) 22:15, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Enwebb Thanks for letting us know about this. I've emailed the instructor. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:32, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Ray Dalio

The article is a BLP. I ran across it through a regular check for use of unreliable sources, specifically Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#CelebrityNetWorth.

I originally thought this was a case of paid editing or other promotion, but a new SPA has stated we r just doing a class project [1]. I've already requested partial protection for the article.

There are huge behavioral problems from the initial editor, who stated I am literally just a 17 year old kid[2]. I've tried to just engage one-on-one on the editor's talk page, but that has completely fallen apart.

I'm guessing this is an unsupervised school project by one student, who has asked friends to help out. --Hipal (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Hipal, 17, that's umm, high school, not uni yet? Was the course/instructor identified? It could be some half-baked high school project run by an instructor not familiar with any best practices... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:51, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
That's all I know.
I'm not familiar with best practices for situations where there may be school projects fueling editing in this manner, and was unaware of this noticeboard. Any suggestions would be welcome. --Hipal (talk) 15:35, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Hipal, Hmmm, for now I'd suggest you explain the problem with their edit on their talkpage and tell them to read Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#CelebrityNetWorth. You can also ask them which school and who is their teacher, and then we can try to contact the teacher and tell them to start with https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training for themselves and their students. Of course, all of this assumes that their project is still ongoing and that the student will even check the talk page... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:05, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. The only editor still obviously active has been extremely hostile to my past few comments, so I wanted to avoid anything that might result in further responses. I was hoping there might be a template for such situations. Again, I'm not very familiar with education policy and guidelines, so am not sure what minimum we expect from students to steer them from situations that would result in a block or ban as they attempt to do classwork. In this case, the main editor has created a draft copy of the article to work on (Draft:Ray Dalio Draft), which never goes well without heavy collaboration. --Hipal (talk) 04:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
Hipal, At a minimum we expect them to behave just like any editor and respect policies including WP:AGF and so on. This is why we also expect them to complete the Wikipedia:Training/For students (and their instructor to complete the instructor training). Well, they are not required to do so - but if they violate policies and get themselves blocked, sadly, it's their own fault. We provide outreach and (reasonably) friendly help, but it's up to them to take our offer and collaborate. Otherwise, we run into the sadly not to uncommon scenario of "Wikipedia was very unfriendly to my students who got blocked... wait, what do you mean 'Wikipedia has rules'?" :/ Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:51, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
@Locksteel888:: I should have notified you at the beginning of this discussion. --Hipal (talk) 16:04, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Update/shameless plug of WP:UPSD, a script to detect unreliable sources

It's been about 14 months since this script was created, and since its inception it became one of the most imported scripts (currently #54, with 286+ adopters).

Since last year, it's been significantly expanded to cover more bad sources, and is more useful than ever, so I figured it would be a good time to bring up the script up again. This way others who might not know about it can take a look and try it for themselves. I would highly recommend that anyone doing citation work, who writes/expands articles, or does bad-sourcing/BLP cleanup work installs the script.

The idea is that it takes something like

  • John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:12, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Students (and instructors) frequently choosing topic under discretionary sanctions

I was recently reading over the student assignments page and I've noticed any topics under discretionary sanctions shouldn't be chosen by students. However, there are several courses that cover topics currently under DS apparently in contravention of that. Some examples:

There's plenty of other cases as well where instructors appear to have disregarded our page on student assignments and created courses on subjects covered by discretionary sanctions (mostly related to post-1992 American politics) or where while the topic itself doesn't inherently fall under DS students have generally chosen topics that do fall under discretionary sanctions. What should be done about this? Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 23:20, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Chess, can you please link to the guideline that says that students should not work on topics under discretionary sanctions? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:24, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
@Cullen: While I'm also pretty sure there's no specific guideline or policy that bars new editors (including student editors) from editing articles in topics under DS (or other controversial topics), nevertheless such topics are difficult even for experienced editors, and I sometimes advise student editors to tread carefully and to consider choosing another topic, or at the very least, to talk things out at Talk first, before diving into the article. (Such advice usually comes after the horse has left the barn.) I not infrequently see an editor waltz into some highly controversial article, with a history of having had sentences or even words hammered out through long, exhausting Rfc's, and then make a 6kb edit to the article, blissfully unaware of prior history, but no doubt with an eye, or both eyes, fixed on a grade.
If there's a guideline that applies in this case, it's WP:DISRUPTION of the unintended type, because inevitably experienced editors with better things to do, have to divert to the article in order to repair the unwitting damage.
I don't know what the solution is, but I agree with the spirit of Chess's comment. I'm aware of the training that student editors go through (and went through it myself, in order to understand student editors better and get the immersive experience), but I"m not aware of what training instructors who have affiliated their course with Wiki Ed have to go through.
Perhaps at the very least, whatever modules the instructors currently go through, maybe we could add a module about controversial articles and DS, so that instructors are clear-eyed about what is involved in sending their students "to the front" so to speak, and in particular so that instructors (and students) are aware that a not unlikely possibility is that a large part or even the entirety of the edits in such topics may be reversed. I would go one step further: I have sometimes had the (unsubstantiated) impression, that the editing procedure itself at Wikipedia is the goal for some instructors, and as long as their students go through the training and complete some edits, whether they get reversed or not is pretty much beside the point; it's all about the grade, and hang the DS, the controversy, the resulting Talk page discussions, and the disruption. If that is indeed the case with an instructor, then imho they need to be sanctioned in some way, because that is directly contrary to what Wikipedia is about; to the extent that is true of some instructor, then they are not here to build an encyclopedia, which regardless of whatever benefit accrues to students taking part, is nevertheless the main objective, and I don't see that we make an exception in the case of Wiki Ed instructors or student editors, to water down that principle. (An instructor WP:BLOCK would not serve the purpose, that would just leave students rudderless; it would have to be something else.)
In sum, as things currently stand, there is no guideline of the type Chess refers to (nor should there be, imho), but other forces are at play, and I don't know that we want to trade off the benefit to Wiki Ed student editors learning process at college (who then disappear and never come back) against the good will and time of long-term volunteers. Like I said, I don't have a solution, but I do see a problem. Mathglot (talk) 00:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
RepingCullen328. Mathglot (talk) 01:07, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
@Cullen328: I did in the initial comment; it's linked as "student assignments page". More explicitly without piping it's WP:ASSIGN. Quoting:
"Some highly contentious topic areas (some dealing with political matters, current events, or religious conflicts, as well as various other controversial subjects) have been placed under special rules called Discretionary Sanctions that are intended to prevent disputes between editors. When such restrictions are in place, editors who violate the rules may be quickly blocked from editing, including student editors who may not recognize the intricacies of such rules. Class assignments should avoid these topic areas entirely."
I tried to avoid using the words "guideline" or "policy" since it's not actually a policy or guideline but it is the most official document I could find on Wikipedia detailing how we deal with student editors (we should probably make an actual guideline or policy on this). Looking through the training for instructors modules on Wiki Ed I found an optional (does anyone do optional modules?) one on "finding articles" there's a vaguely worded statement that "controversial topics are best avoided" [3] along with a statement of questionable correctness that "The most controversial articles will have a "locked" icon on the top right:" with a blue padlock (implying ECP/protection in general = very controversial). No mention of DS I could find but the intructor modules aren't community determined.
Honestly I'm starting to think the real issue here is that we don't have any actual harmonized community-determined policies on educational assignments. The only page we really have determined by consensus is an information page. That being said I really think for the time being controversial topics under discretionary sanctions aren't appropriate (with obvious IAR exceptions for stuff like discussing infoboxes) and do go against the only guidance we have for educational assignments. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:25, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
I think we should desire that student editors have a positive experience while being forced to edit edit Wikipedia unlike us as volunteers. DS topics doesn't set them up for success in this regard. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:28, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49, I hold you in high regard but I am not aware of any circumstances where a student is "forced" to sign up for a class that involves Wikipedia editing and then also "forced" to select a topic that falls under discretionary sanctions. I agree that instructors especially, and also the students should be informed about the difficulty of editing in these areas. But writing a neutral biography of a woman state legislator whose service ended 20 years ago should be encouraged, even if it technically falls under AP discretionary sanctions. Jumping into the inflammatory controversy du jour is obviously very different, and should be discouraged but not forbidden. To be frank, when I was a university student (and I got very good grades), I was acutely aware how to engage with controversial topics without alienating the professor or anyone else, and instead to shed light and get a good grade. Ummm, neutral writing instead of overt advocacy. I think that we should provide outstanding support to college and university instructors and their students, but these students are young adults not kindergarteners, and they should be given the full range of freedoms that society accords adults. If they produce excellent content, they will receive plaudits. If they don't, they will get a poor grade. Isn't that how it has always been in universities, at least the best of them? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:20, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Cullen, while you might be technically correct that no student is forced to signup for a class, neither, in most cases, are they signing up for a class with an intent to edit Wikipedia. An edit-a-thon participant these students are not. Ultimately, I maintain my assertion, based in no small part on the comments I've gotten when interacting with them, that students can't be truly labeled as volunteers. Now I happen to agree with you that if a class wants to create biographies of American state legislatures they surely can despite it falling under AP2. However, that's not really the kind of article topic most students choose in the classes linked by Chess. Ultimately I want these students to have a positive experience with Wikipedia and believe their being steered to a choice of topics that they'll be able to successfully edit and even make a mistake or two without potentially drawing down the ire of editors who are truly volunteers. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:37, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49 Generally in most university courses major assignments given in the term are required to be listed on the syllabus which every student gets to read before choosing the course or at least right after starting the course so they can switch if it isn't right for them and get a refund. I wouldn't call students strictly volunteers (unless editing Wikipedia is an optional extra credit assignment) but they're not getting Wikipedia editing sprung on them in the middle of the term with no opportunity to back out. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 05:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
What you write is true Chess, but I maintain that very few of our student editors desire to edit Wikipedia when they sign up for a class that edits Wikipedia. They want to fulfill a requirement, it's at a convenient time, it's with a professor they like, it's on a topic they're interested in, etc etc. The fact that there's an assignment to edit Wikipedia doesn't make them volunteers here anymore than they're volunteers to write a term paper or other major class assignments. It's something they do as part of the class but they are not here as volunteers in the way that similar college students who show up to edit-a-thons are and that, in the end, makes a difference in how they act and what their goals tend to be. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:00, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Barkeep49. In general, Wikipedia editors come here because we chose to do so, for whatever individual reason, but it's an individual choice and nothing more. Students, first, are seeking to get course credit and to graduate, in order to proceed with their lives. I think it's useful to note that the overwhelming majority of student editors never edit again after the end of the class. Of course, it's wonderful when the few of them find that they like editing and become continuing members of the community. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49, Not that long ago I talked to several scholars who are also Holocaust historians, introducing them to the entire "students edit Wikipedia" idea, and suggesting that they, and their students, could do much good here. And while I am not familiar with any DS about gender issues, as a sociologist, this is obviously a topic of major interest for students, including my own students. A number of my students, over the years, have created articles about gender topics, in fact, I just reviewed a (surprise - not declared to me before) submission by a student of mine dealing with such a topic, Ye Yongrong Incident. In general, while student edits, like those of all new editors, need various cleanups, I don't see why we should tell them to stay away from those areas, outside of the fact that they are more likely to run into trolls or otherwise unfriendly editors who have some battleground mentality. On the other hand, students chose such topics precisely because they are interested in controversial issues, to tell them "just edit safe boring topics" would be deterimental to their motivation, and I see no reason to think this would be a good idea, whether from the educational perspective, or Wikipedian (as in, aiming to get students interested in Wikipedia and retain them as regular editors). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:46, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
The problem is that most professors aren't as good about teaching Wikipedia as you are. There are a handful I have seen but that is not the norm. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:14, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Speaking for Wiki Education: As we welcome courses in all disciplines, some disciplines (including many political science classes and everything related to climate science) are going to fall under discretionary sanctions because a large number of articles on Wikipedia are subject to DS. We've worked successfully for many years supporting classes whose students are editing under DS, with many students making substantive improvements to those articles. Obviously there are differing levels of problematic in terms of articles under DS. We have an alert internally that flags every time a student selects to edit an article under DS, and our experienced staff then evaluates how challenging it would be for a new student editor to contribute to that particular article. We also consider the instructor's Wikipedia experience level and whether the course is for majors (so the students have more subject matter knowledge) or is an intro class. If we have concerns, we attempt to steer students away from particularly problematic article choices. If you see one we've missed, please feel free to flag it here on the noticeboard.
Mathglot, I'm sorry you feel like some instructors are only there for the editing procedure itself and not to build knowledge on Wikipedia. I can say that's not at all the impression we have when talking to faculty; most are in academia because they want to share the knowledge of their chosen discipline, and are participating in the program to improve their discipline's coverage on Wikipedia while simultaneously providing an engaging learning experience for their students. When we do come across instructors who we feel aren't there to build an encyclopedia, we discourage them from participating in future terms. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:41, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
This has been a perennial issue: [4], [5]. I think it misses the point to say that there isn't a policy or guideline forbidding students to edit under DS. (And we do have an information page, at Wikipedia:Student assignments#Choosing a topic.) Just because something is permitted does not make it a good idea. Just think what a "lovely" educational experience it would be for a student to start editing a page, get a DS alert on their user talk page, and then find themselves at WP:AE getting blocked. Yes, with careful guidance, students can have very good and productive experiences, but it requires guidance. And without adequate guidance, it isn't worth it, for the student or for anyone else. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: I think we should have a guideline or policy page on student assignments so it's clear what community consensus is on appropriate versus not appropriate behaviours. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 05:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree with you. Someone (not me) should propose that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Tryptofish, That's not a bad experience at all, it makes for a good class discussion and provides an opportunity to engage students in a discussion of how controversies are handled on Wikipedia. Assuming, of course, that the instructor understands what's happening in the first place and can explain it to the students properly. I am speaking here from the perspective of an instructor who every know and then does explain to students why their edits got reverted - I didn't have any students reported to any A-subforum yet... (I did have two blocked as mistaken socks due to some shared campus IP, I think, once...). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:50, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
@Piotrus: I could not possibly disagree with you more, having taught thousands of university students myself. I'm guessing that you do a good job of working closely with your own students, to make sure they understand what is going on with WP culture, but I know many faculty members who would not bother to do that. For a student to be told that course credit is going to depend on doing a student editing project, and then to unexpectedly find themselves being "disciplined" by Wikipedia, can be quite upsetting and quite counterproductive to learning. Just picture being named in a complaint at WP:AE and having to defend oneself to a panel of administrators. I'm glad that your students receive a nuanced understanding of what it means simply to be reverted (which does not come close to being blocked from editing at all), but I have seen first-hand numerous edit wars by students who are convinced that they will flunk their class unless their reverted edits stick. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:19, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Tryptofish, By any chance would you have links to those student edit wars? In either case and since you echo some of what User:Barkeep49 said above, I'd think that maybe the otherwise very nice https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training tutorial should include - both for students and professors - a module on 'edit wars are bad', what to do when you get blocked and some brief explanation of controversial topics and the need to be extra careful when editing those. What do you think about this, User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed)? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:56, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
I like the idea, Piotrus! We are planning to review training materials this summer, so we'll add that to our list. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:32, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
It was a long time ago, and I'm going through a period of time when I don't feel like tracking things down. But we all know what edit wars look like, I assume. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
Tryptofish, Right. My point is that such incidents are the exception rather than the rule. I am actually engaged in a research project about instructor experiences, and I think our data confirms that while bad experiences do happen, they are not the norm (but of course, they are the ones that are more likely to be remembered). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:16, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
Not to be difficult, but you should not mistake my disinclination to go out of my way to prove something that ought to be self-evident, with my having cited something unimportant. If you are really interested, you can search the archives of this noticeboard, and look for threads with me commenting in them, and you'll find it eventually. Even when bad experiences are not the norm, that's not a valid reason to disregard them. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:14, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
Tryptofish, If something is so very rare, it can be disregarded as unimportant. I see no evidence that students who edit controversial arenas get into any particular trouble more so than regular editors. Sure, over the years a few did. So what? That ratio is very low, and based on my experiences I think that trying to solve this by creating some sort of ban on students will just create a rule nobody observes anyway. I certainly would refuse to do so for any of my courses. We already have a reasonable compromise: WikiEd will add a module discussing some controversial issues and the need for students and instructors to be extra cautious around them to their training module. We can certainly give advice, but we should not prevent anyone, students or instructors, from editing the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" (remember that part?), regardless of what topic they want to work on. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:19, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
I did not say that it was rare, nor did you make a serious effort to demonstrate that it was, but we are clearly past the point of either of us convincing the other, so this will be the last comment that I will make here. I look forward to the new training module. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:03, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
  • At this point vast swathes of the encyclopaedia are under discretionary sanctions (see ArbCom's ongoing review of the system), and it would be unreasonable to insist that student editors avoid them entirely, especially when, as LiAnna points out, some course subjects could be fully included in a DS topics. There's also a big difference between editing highly contentious core articles and more obscure topics which are technically under DS but in practice are edited just like any other page. Taking WP:ARBPIA as an example, it would obviously be a bad idea to assign students Six-Day War, but it would be fine (and helpful) to have them work on Kfar Darom. – Joe (talk) 08:36, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
The conflict should be off-limits entirely to students as it is exceedingly unlikely students (who generally have new accounts) will meet the extended confirmed protection requirements necessary to edit these articles. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

My extensive experience of teaching is not in the University Sector- more in the barely literate sector. There does seem to be something badly wrong with the psychology here- and generally with WPs approach to attracting and retaining new editors. We have discussions about sanctions but not about motivation. If a newbie stumbles on a controversial topic- our aim is to welcome them, warn them that this is a can of worms and guide them onto something safer. We can introduce them to a mentor from outside their course/uni/country to help them make the choice. In the process, we can have some helpful training sheet written in the language of Homer Simpson, that the mentor can issue.LiAnna (Wiki Ed) you said somewhere above that student editors are flagged and appear on a list somewhere- that can be the starting point. A good elementary school teacher makes contact with the kid, not the other way round. She is proactive, and tries to prevent them hurting themselves- and doesn't wait until they do so she can punish them and belittle them. Under lockdown: the student needs a welcome message, and then every two weeks needs to be contacted so they can share their experiences and problems. Amazon always sends a follow up email for you to rate your experience. When dealing with reluctant learners one is always positive. ClemRutter (talk) 09:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Thing is, many (most?) editors come to WP not with a "let me edit something today" attitude but with a very clear idea of the area they want to work in. I'd find it hard to tell someone to edit dietetics if their interest is reproductive health. — kashmīrī TALK 19:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Unknown Class

The reviewers at Articles for Creation have encountered at least nine drafts on environmental topics that appear to be assignments for a class. The drafts are:

I have left a note on the drafts asking them to advise us who the instructor is, either on the draft, or at this noticeboard. Most of them have been declined. This has happened from time to time that multiple editors who appear to be students submit drafts. Does anyone have any further information? (I am guessing no.) Robert McClenon (talk) 00:30, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

This isn't from one of Wiki Education's classes, but we'd be happy to help channel the instructor in a more productive direction in the future. Please send them our way if you do ever find any information about name, institution, etc.! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Not really sure what to do, but an editor has added a copyright image to Lady Bunny in addition to adding lots of text with a misleading edit summary. There is a {{dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment}} on the talk page, but for a different editor and for a class which already ended. I asked what class this was for on their talk page (User talk:Axolotlsanonymous) in case that's of use, waiting for a response. These college class assignments are a bit out of my area on Wikipedia, but hopefully someone with more experience can take a look. Thanks! Umimmak (talk) 01:37, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Apparently it was marked as having the appropriate license on creativecommons.org, despite not having said license on the photographer's Flickr page so I'll give the student the benefit of the doubt on this, but the apparent lack of a wikiedu page on the talk page just struck me as something to mention to people who are more knowledgeable about this. Umimmak (talk) 02:07, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for flagging, Umimmak! That student isn't in one of our supported classes, but I left them a talk page message encouraging their professor to register with us so they get support. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:05, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Modify the "about this sandbox" WikiEd template

The {{dashboard.wikiedu.org draft template/about this sandbox}} automatically appears at the top of students' draft pages in their user space. Nothing in the template indicates this is student work, and new page patrollers sometimes add {{userspace draft}}, adding a button to push to submit the draft for AfC review. We don't want students doing this. In the case of the Michelle Tseng article it lead to that article being confused with a rejected draft article of the same name and having a rejection template copied in. Student work pages are in Category:Wikipedia Student Program, but that indication ends up far down the page. I propose adding the line Wiki Education assignment space to the top of the WikiEd template, to indicate to passing reviewers to leave the page alone. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:37, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:THQ § Fiona Graham Page

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:THQ § Fiona Graham Page. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:14, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Just wondering whether there's a WikiEd advisor who might be willing to try and help this IP editor out. The IP is claiming to be Fiona Graham and that article has had lots of issues over the years. I'm not expecting anyone to just show up and resolve all of those issues, but perhaps a WikiEd advisor can advise the IP on its user talk page about what kind of help is available to instructors and their students from WikiEd. Of course, the IP is likely going to try to drag anyone who does try and help them out into their dispute over the Graham article because that seems to be the only reason the IP wants their students to edit, but maybe that's too negative of an assessment of the IP's intent on my part. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:22, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
Just to update: The Teahouse discussion has been long-archived and the IP never showed back up to seek further assistance. If someone wants to still try and reach out to the IP, then that might be nice; however, it seems kind of clear that the IP was trying to continue the content dispute over the Graham article and perhaps use their students (if there even were students) to help them do that. Such an assumption might seem lacking in AGF a bit, but that does seem to be the case. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:34, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

How to find a course, given student editor userids?

I'm trying to track some edits from June 2016, which I strongly suspect based on usage and edit patterns belong to a Wiki Ed class, or its forerunners. Editors Cal95j (talk · contribs), Kmt0715 (talk · contribs), Amyregina (talk · contribs), Chanalexccha (talk · contribs) form a group that interacted among each other, and among related articles (e.g., Cal95j @ Social construction of gender, Chanalexccha @ LGBT linguistics, etc.) and all were active for around six days ending 28 June 2016. Can you point me to a tool I can use to try to determine what course this was? Thanks, (please Reply to icon mention me on reply; thanks!) Mathglot (talk) 21:57, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot: Any student editor from a Wiki Education course (or an Education Program course from 2013 or later) will have a profile page that lists all the courses they participated in. For example, https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/users/Zzwecker
The same feature exists on Programs & Events Dashboard, in case it's a course that isn't one of the US/Canada ones that Wiki Education supported. For example, https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/users/Leabharlann
If a username doesn't have a profile on either of those websites (and their edits don't give you enough to go on), it's likely a course that was doing things on its own.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:30, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, Sage! Mathglot (talk) 23:06, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
@Sage (Wiki Ed):, although I can log in with my Wikipedia credentials, It won’t let me do anything because I’m not enrolled in a course. Is there some dummy course I can enroll in, or a priv bit you can flip for me so I can do searches? Mathglot (talk) 23:13, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
You need to just put the username into a URL. There's a user search page, but it's only available to Wiki Education staff (as it allows search by real name and email). Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:40, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Biographies as class projects

From Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Washington/Uncommon Leaders - Women and BIPOC in Science (Spring 2021) this semester we have a set of well written biographies of worthy people, most of whom will not meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. One has already been draftified and one is already up for deletion. I know the training materials cover the requirements, but I don't know how well the instructors are trained, particularly in WP:NACADEMIC. It is a shame to have so many articles about early career academics (including a graduate student) and local professionals when the course could have produced articles that met requirements. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:27, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi StarryGrandma. While we already address notability and reliable sourcing in our existing training modules for students, situations like this have brought to our attention that we need to develop better guidance specifically in these areas. We're going to convene to discuss how to best provide students with the support they need when writing new articles, especially those that cover living persons. Thank you. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:16, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
Helaine (Wiki Ed), I've looked at the training materials for students and teachers and they seem to cover notability well. The two classes that are turning up in deletion discussions at the moment, the one above and Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University_of_St_Thomas/Data_Communication_and_Visualization_(Spring_2021) are focused adding new biographies. I think the trouble may be lack of instructor understanding of notability and significant coverage, rather than a problem with students. Perhaps a guide to pitfalls for instructors to avoid would be helpful. Students aren't too clear about significant coverage either and that may be a problem with Wikipedia's wording. They seem to think significant means meaningful rather than the volume of material in a source devoted to the subject. Thank you for looking into this. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:42, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
I am also concerned about the conflict of interest implications of this particular course. Wiki Ed courses shouldn't be used to create articles about colleagues of the organizers. MarioGom (talk) 07:00, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
From some of the "student peer reviews" I've seen on the talk pages of a few of these articles/authors, I think there is a substantial issue of inadequate NPROF (and general notability) familiarity and BLPs coming out of this course definitely should be vetted by someone experienced with this guideline before making it to mainspace. A lot of these student creations have since been deleted, and probably most eventually will be, due to what is pretty obvious non-Wiki-notability. The most common trends here are significant conflation of real-life merit/importance/impact with Wikipedia notability, and major confusion over what constitutes a (GNG) notability-proving source (i.e. they don't have a good grasp of independence). These are issues for every new editor, but I think the topic of this course unfortunately additionally lends itself to a lot of other pitfalls that ultimately doom these bios. I would guess students learn academics can bypass GNG via NPROF, but do not understand that this guideline isn't applicable to every academic or academic-adjacent individual, that what might seem to be a subjective achievement-based metric ("scholarly impact") is a lot more empirical in practice and therefore harder to satisfy without strong citation records, and that the NPROF criterion most superficially suited to these bios (C7) is essentially GNG in most circumstances. So students are writing these articles on a very constrained demographic (basically BIPOC women scholars) believing that their subject's outreach efforts/diversity involvement/activism qualify them for what probably looks like a subjective parameter, and then either because they think NPROF is satisfied and thus don't need to meet GNG, or because they don't understand primary and non-independent SIGCOV doesn't count toward GNG, end up submitting a strong, verifiable, fleshed-out biography on someone important who just isn't wiki-notable. JoelleJay (talk) 04:25, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Minimum word counts in assignments

I have recently become aware that the University of Sydney has been setting assignments for students that mandate a minimum of 2000 words be added to an article. I assume they are sanctioned by the Wiki Education Foundation as {{Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment}} has been added to the various article’s talk pages. I fear mandatory word counts encourages verbose, low quality additions where quantity is the primary motivation; it could be argued these additions are the forth bullet point of WP:NOTHERE. Is there any policy against such poorly designed course frameworks and if not is there the appetite for one? Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 05:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC).

Cavalryman, the Wiki Education Foundation supports classes in Canada and the United States. The Australian courses are operating at Education/Countries/Australia], a Wikimedia Outreach project. There are a couple of contacts listed on that page. StarryGrandma (talk) 05:25, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) For further background, there has been a recent uptick in University of Sydney students asking for feedback at various noticeboards, including Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Marine life. It has me wondering if the grading scheme relies on reviews from the community. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:39, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
I am confused about what noticeboard does what. Is this noticeboard only for institutions in the U.S. and Canada? If yes, why is it called the Education noticeboard and not the Education noticeboard for North America? Do people who are involved in Australian educational assignments watch this noticeboard? @NSaad (WMF): should we raise this issue on a different page? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:39, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree, there is no notice saying to take your queries off enwiki if you’re not North American. Pinging Fransplace and 99of9 who are listed at the Sydney Uni points of contact. Cavalryman (talk) 05:49, 31 May 2021 (UTC).
This is the noticeboard for Education issues in general. I was pointing out that the course is not a WikiEd course. WikiEd coordinators monitor this page and answer questions about their courses. I don't know if any of the other education groups do. WikiEd has been spun off from the WMF, while Education/Countries/Australia is run by the WMF. WikiEd's extensive materials for students and teachers are here and on Commons and can be used by anyone. They are obviously not being used by the course in question. StarryGrandma (talk) 09:14, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
Agh, thanks for explaining that to me. I suppose my question still stands though, is there any direction given to the coordinators of these courses? Because in my opinion the design of the course in question is deadly flawed. Cavalryman (talk) 13:11, 31 May 2021 (UTC).
Hi there Cavalryman. Thank you for pinging. I welcome your feedback and am more than happy to look at any instances of low quality, verbose edits that our students have made to stubs. We work very hard to avoid that and while I can't guarantee that all students have improved articles, I'm sure most have. 2000 words is a nominal amount that may or may not be reached by adding material to a single stub. Students can achieve it on the stub they are working on or make it up by working on a few articles over the semester. Throughout the semester they edit other articles, adding citations where they were missing, verifying facts, and addressing other issues that have been tagged. Their 2000 words can include all of the work they do. We do believe we have created a sound framework but are always willing to learn of ways to improve. After students work through Wikipedia modules in the first week of classes, they complete MCQs to demonstrate that they have learned the policies and procedures. They spend the next 12 weeks researching and writing first in draft form. After their first draft has been approved by their teachers, they add that material to Wikipedia. We don't allow all students to add their work to Wikipedia. This semester half have been permitted to do so, the remaining students have only been allowed to write articles on their chosen topics in Word format. As our students start off choosing a stub, researching to find enough information, then expanding the stub, adding structure, infoboxes, media, etc, the articles are no longer mere stubs and should be reviewed and rated. So we encourage students to go to the project pages associated with the stubs they are working on and asking for reviews. In most cases where our students do make these requests, the stubs are upgraded to at least Start class and, in quite a few cases, to C and B class. Fransplace (talk) 14:24, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Hello Fransplace, thank you for the response. With respect, this sounds like you are avoiding the issue, you are mandating students add content for content's sake, not because the content is worthwhile for inclusion on Wikipedia. A lot of stubs are stubs for a reason, because there is insufficient information on that subject that can be sourced to reliable secondary sources. So, to achieve an arbitrary word count students are WP:CFORKing information that is already well covered elsewhere, including dubious information that adds WP:UNDUE weight to certain aspects of a topic because that information is the only they could source, breeching WP:NOTNEWS because Google news throws up certain returns to a search query, relying on WP:SYNTH to tie in information and citing information to questionable or unreliable sources. I appreciate you could argue that this all occurs anyway and it is up to the regulars to remediate after these edits, but it is unusual for editors to be forced to edit.

A better metric for success may be for you to encourage students to improve a topic without a word limit, and you can verify if they have adequately searched for sources to add as much as possible to that topic. Cavalryman (talk) 02:30, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Fransplace, as volunteer editors we care very much about the success of the education programs but are sometimes overwhelmed by the problems they can cause. There are hundreds of courses and thousands of students doing education projects each term. Wikipedia has thousands of volunteer editors, but only a few hundred who regularly answer questions at the help desks and project talk pages. Early in the project education coordinators did not realize the mismatch between the number of students who would ask for help at the end of a school term and the number of volunteers who were available to help. After the initial shock to the system, WikiEd courses became entirely self-sufficient, providing resources to answer student questions, and doing article reviews internally. They stay away from help pages and do all reviewing of student articles in student user space, not on article talk pages.
Please do not tell students to ask for article reviews here. You are asking the handful of editors available at any particular talk or help page to stop doing their own work and take up teaching your students, while these sometimes desperate students try to meet course requirements at the end of term. This is not appropriate. StarryGrandma (talk) 05:12, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Also please instruct students to do their 'peer review' on their user pages/ user subpages rather than submit articles to Wikipedia:Peer review. This has been an issue with past classes of yours, and there are several open review requests from your students in the current class. This isn't the intent of the wikipedia peer review system, which has a limited capacity, and definitely cant handle reviewing many additions from large classes.Dialectric (talk) 05:30, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
And one more thing: Please use the outreach dashboard so that editors can easily track you down and talk to you. Also to be fair, while the way the course has been set up is obviously problematic as described above, you're also doing some good things such as internal reviews, so thanks for your efforts there. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:09, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback and advice, StarryGrandma (talk) and Clayoquot (talk. Our students should not be requesting reviews on the talk pages, I'm sorry. Classes are finished now but I'll make sure for the next iteration that Assistant Professors let their students know that they should not make such requests at all, let alone on those pages. We do conduct our peer-reviews internally. Our students help to fix articles needing citations, fact verification, editing etc. So I'm surprised that they are asking for "reviews" on article or project talk pages. I apologise on their behalf and will make a note of this in next years' modules. Fransplace (talk) 06:58, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Super, thanks. It would be great if you could track down the requests for reviews that your students have made in the past few weeks, and remove the requests. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:03, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Fransplace, I assume from your complete lack of acknowledgement of my concerns that you have no intention of reviewing your arbitrary requirement for students to add a minimum of 2000 words to Wikipedia articles. As someone who has designed and delivered tertiary level courses for the ADF I understand it can be difficult to assess nuanced, quality work as opposed to ticking that mandated minimum requirements have been completed, but ... that is why you pay your teachers. It is unfair that you impose the burden of cleaning up after your course on the volunteers here, again I urge you to think laterally about assessment design as opposed to reverting to unimaginative, conservative thinking. Cavalryman (talk) 22:51, 2 June 2021 (UTC).
Thank you again Clayoquot (talk. I've met with our Assistant Professors who will start going through the talk pages of articles that their students have contributed to and remove the request. Fransplace (talk) 02:33, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Cavalryman (talk) I believe that I did acknowledge and address your concerns in my response at 14:24, 31 May 2021 (UTC) above, ie: "2000 words is a nominal amount that may or may not be reached by adding material to a single stub. Students can achieve it on the stub they are working on or make it up by working on a few articles over the semester. Throughout the semester they edit other articles, adding citations where they were missing, verifying facts, and addressing other issues that have been tagged. Their 2000 words can include all of these things." Again, the 2000 words can comprise a variety of edits to a variety of articles, not just singular Stubs. Fransplace (talk) 02:33, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Fransplace, thanks for your understanding. The requests for reviews are mostly not on article talk pages; they are mostly in "Wikipedia" space and "Wikipedia Talk" space. To find them, someone will need to use the "What links here" feature for each article, or check the user contribution histories of students. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:10, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Clayoquot Thank you for this advice. I've been searching user contributions but I hadn't thought of "what links here", which certainly beats searching every possible place. I've narrowed down the members of the cohort who are doing this (including a small bunch on the WMAU notice board) and am writing to each student to let them know that their requests must be deleted Fransplace (talk) 08:38, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Some students haven't done this yet and in the past few days even more volunteer time has been drawn to these reviews, so I am archiving the requests that I see. More help with the cleanup would be great. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:52, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
Fransplace, FYI students are still asking for reviews.[6] The tap still hasn't been turned off for the current semester. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:51, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
I am adding to this conversation as an instructor who has used a Wikipedia assignment for three years (three times) and we also tell our students they need to contribute a minimum of 800 words to an article. Much like Fransplace has described, above, I too provide a lot of context about this minimum word count. First, students must tell me what they are going to write about (are they creating a new article? adding to an existing article?). Why do they think this topic/article is noteworthy? Will they be able to meet the minimum word count (students consistently add much much more than 800 words, often double.). If they are unable to achieve the 800 word minimum in one article, they can spread it across more than one article. Assigning a minimum word count is simply something that students are used to seeing, a standard in many writing courses, and makes "sense" to students as they search for and identify their topic of interest and plan for writing. I am located in the US. Bridges2Information (talk) 19:36, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

RfC on banning word or edit counts for student assignments

The above section on "minimum word counts in assignments" [7] has brought to my attention that we don't have any formal consensus on whether instructors should be allowed to grade students based on the amount of words or edits they have added to the English Wikipedia. Anyways I'm starting this RfC to resolve the matter (for clarification, "student assignments" means all editing activity to the English Wikipedia performed as part of a educational course, regardless of whether or not the course is under WP:Wiki Ed) Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 22:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC):

Should instructors for student assignments be allowed to grade students based on the amount of words or edits contributed to the English Wikipedia?

Poll

  • Support Oppose. This has been an unofficial expectation for a while now. This is because forcing students to contribute based on quantitative metrics such as "number of words" or "number of edits" causes students to "game the system" with low quality edits focused solely on meeting word or editcount requirements. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 23:00, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
  • No, they should not; I oppose this kind of grading (not sure what the nominator's "support" means.) I agree that students should not be editing simply to rack up some kind of metric unrelated to improving page quality. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:06, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Tryptofish: You're right, I originally phrased the question as a negative (should we ban this rather than should we allow this) and changed it because I realized it would lead to unclear support/oppose voting. Forgot to change my !vote though. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 23:13, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
    Based on the WikiEd feedback in the extended comments section of the RfC, below, I think this RfC is really moot. Per this, WikiEd is already giving advice that reflects the intent of this discussion. And based on numerous comments here, anything beyond that is unenforceable, except to the extent that anyone can revert student edits that should be reverted. I don't see much point in anyone saying "improve advice", unless one has specific recommendations to improve the wording of the existing advice. Otherwise, we are simply telling WikiEd to do what they are already doing! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
    I will add the caveat that the course that prompted this discussion is from Australia and is one of the many courses that are doing educational activities on English Wikipedia but not part of Wiki Education. So while I obviously agree with the advice to not set minimum word counts since it's also what we at Wiki Education tell our instructors :), I will acknowledge not every instructor is under our guidance, and an RfC about educational projects has scope beyond us. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Partially yes Word count is an easy, familiar, and useful metric for students. I entirely agree it should not be the sole metric, but it has a place in ensuring students do a certain amount of work. The gaming the system argument is only relevant if the professor counts up the words/edits and completely ignores the quality of contributions, which would only happen if this is the sole metric used in grading. Zoozaz1 talk 23:51, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support (I think?) I agree that word count requirements on a single article can lead to poor quality. Ideally, only the quality of the edits would be graded. But I think we have to face reality here. Most WikiEd courses are intro level gen-ed courses that are fairly large. A vague "improve this article" is hard to quantify a grade for, unless the classes required everyone to make a GA, which would be impossible. I don't blame professors for putting some minimum word count on things; I think we can all remember wanting to be lazy students (or knowing lazy students) that wanted to do the bare minimum. I think we could ban word limit counts for a single article, and instead require that some minimum number of words be added across articles, as that is more likely to lead to incremental, quality edits. But to ban word count grading altogether ignores the reality of overstuffed classes and overworked TA's and professors that already find Wiki-Ed to be a lot more than they bargained for. Realistically, if we did ban it, most professors either wouldn't notice, or would simply not mention in on-wiki. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 23:53, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
    • I can agree with both of you, so long as word count is not a primary metric, in addition to not being the only metric. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Although, contra what the Captain says, I'm unsympathetic to faculty who do not want to bother dealing with WikiEd and Wikipedia norms. If they can't be bothered, then we can't be bothered with their students. WP:NOTTA, and I say that as a former professor. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
    • If instructors don't want to put in any effort into reviewing their students work I don't see why Wikipedia editors should have to do their job for them. And if instructors insist on organizing groups of people to edit Wikipedia against our policies then we can block them for disruptive editing. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 02:43, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • No, courses should not be mandating students add a minimum number of words to articles, as I have said above such minimums put quantity of edits over quality contributions. I think a more targeted question might be the following proposal be added to policy: Instructors are prohibited from mandating students add a minimum number of words or characters to Wikipedia articles as a part of their course assignments. Cavalryman (talk) 01:12, 19 June 2021 (UTC).
  • None of our damn business We cannot prohibit behavior and decisions that take place off-Wikipedia and over which we have no control. We can certainly make recommendations, try to persuade them to use good practices and avoid bad practices, discourage this practice and, to the extent that we offer support for faculty and students, refuse to support those who do not adhere to our recommendations and requirements but we cannot tell people what they can or cannot do off Wikipedia. Moreover, dictating to faculty what they can and cannot do in their teaching, including how they grade assignments, is a clear violation of their academic freedom and we have no business going anywhere near there. ElKevbo (talk) 01:17, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
Nothing suggested here is a clear violation of their academic freedom, they are free to teach whatever the hell they like off-Wiki, but when off-Wiki requirements spill onto Wikipedia it is very our business. Cavalryman (talk) 03:01, 19 June 2021 (UTC).
You are telling faculty how to grade one of their assignments. There can't be a more clear violation of their academic freedom. You're also doing it when you have absolutely no authority to enforce your restriction. Are you really planning to march into classrooms and...do something (I don't even know what you think you can do!) if faculty refuse to abide by your demand? ElKevbo (talk) 03:06, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
The focus of this proposal is entirely wrong. You can't control what faculty do. You can, however, control what you do. You can, for example, say that members of this project will not provide feedback on student-written materials that routinely exceed __ words or that are part of an assignment that requires __ words. You need to be careful about how you word that, however, as you may regret creating a policy that doesn't prevent students from submitting these materials (because you can't really prevent this in the encyclopedia that anyone can edit) but prevents you from working with those students and faculty in any capacity to mitigate their impact. You also need to do everything you can to make this a convincing recommendation for faculty accompanied by evidence; you can't make faculty do anything but you should be able to convince many of them if you approach this the right way. ElKevbo (talk) 03:15, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
What do you call someone who recruits a group of WP:SPAs to edit Wikipedia, tells them what to edit, strictly manages their editing process, and actively incentivizes those editors to disrupt Wikipedia? I'd call 'em a meatpuppeteer. If professors want to use Wikipedia in their assignments then they can abide by our policies on said assignments. If they don't care we can block them. It's not a violation of "academic freedom" to tell them they can't use our website if they don't want to follow our rules. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:10, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
You're going to stir up an immense amount of trouble and probably get a lot of very public backlash if you go through with this proposal that is attempts to tell faculty how to grade one of their assignments. It's simply a untenable proposal that is going to blow up in your face if you don't significantly modify it. ElKevbo (talk) 03:15, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
There is an illogic to treating the issue as one of academic freedom, just as there would be if someone argued that we should repeal WP:NPOV because it violates the freedom of speech of users who want to push a POV. We cannot tell instructors what they must say to their classes, but if they choose to use us as a teaching resource, we can inform them what will result in making everyone happy, and what will result in their students getting reverted. In that sense, they have the "right" to tell their students to make whatever edits they want to tell them to make, but we have the right to revert them, and to block or ban them if we don't like what they are doing. Per WP:OWN, they cannot claim a right to have their edits stand. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:58, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
This RfC explicitly asks "Should instructors for student assignments be allowed to grade students [in a specific way that some editors do not like]." It's not an attempt to prohibit the actions of Wikipedia editors, it's an attempt to prohibit the actions of faculty members. This RfC is poorly written, unenforceable, and conflates many things that are best addressed separately. The approaches suggested below about improving our advice are much better. ElKevbo (talk) 20:50, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
I guess it should really ask whether instructors should assign students according to such a grading system, but, whatever. As for "allowed", we cannot allow or disallow what happens in a classroom, but we can allow or disallow the resulting edits here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:19, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Improve advice instead I think we've all seen essay-like articles that came of out a student assignment, that need to be almost completely reverted / time-consumingly pruned. There needs to be improvement in that regard, as we're using up volunteer time and missing an oppurtinity for students to contibute something great. I always thought that citations added was the golden standard for these assignments, but I say this without evidence. There might be a place for a word count in an assignment: it's quite difficult to waffle in a biography for instance. I think what we need is some wikipedia editors find around 10 good / bad outcomes of assignments, and then figure out how they were assessed. After doing that, we need to get into conversation with the various supporting groups of these educators (like WikiEd, but also WMUK) making sure their advice to educators lines up with what is useful for both Wikipedia and educators. In the WMUK / University of Glasgow booklet for educators, word count is showcased and recommended. It would be good to have this type of supporting material reflect the input of Wikipedia editors too. FemkeMilene (talk) 07:18, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
    That booklet is very interesting. I would hope that the authors of the booklet chose case studies that produced good-quality edits. If Wikipedia editors could get the dates and article titles associated with the courses, we could evaluate for ourselves. E.g. case study 11 describes an "Investing in Global Health" course at the University of Edinburgh which was assessed using word counts - I'd be curious to see what the students contributed. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:06, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Improve advice per Femke. I don't think banning specific assignments/grading methods is particularly helpful, but better communication and alignment in goals between groups like WikEd and WMUK is clearly needed. firefly ( t · c ) 14:10, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
As it involves education outside of the United States, such communication would likely fall under the purview of The Foundation's Education Team, but my past attempts to get them to participate on this noticeboard were unsuccessful. Another (less optimal) possibility would be the volunteer Education User Group.Dialectric (talk) 15:33, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
That was my experience too. @NSaad (WMF): would you like to participate in this discussion? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:30, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. The proposal seems to say that we would do *something* if professors choose a different grading scheme, but it doesn't say what that something is so I can't support it. Also, if an assignment asks for a low word count, e.g. 200 words, that's a word count requirement that might actually yield higher-quality results than giving no word count expectations at all. Our online training for educators could perhaps advise what kinds of grading schemes are most likely to produce quality encyclopedic material, but I'd leave that to our experts who have been working with educators for many years and know what works.
If we're getting lousy student work from a particular course, perhaps the instructor hasn't taken the training that already exists. I'm wondering if there are ways as a community that we can make our already-developed processes, which include training and transparency, compulsory. From what I've seen personally (and which might not be representative) the biggest problems are from courses that aren't using our processes for training and transparency. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:26, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Improve advice - Quantitative contributions not really what is being graded. My experience is that academics regularly set minimum wordcounts for student contributions to make sure there is an awareness of what is expected and creating a level playing field for all student contributions. But this is just a guideline for students. it is the quality of the contributions that are graded. Or more usually, the reflections/essays/blogs/oral presentations on their work post edits. Working collaboratively with academics creates a win-win situation for Wikipedia and the course programmes. We could design better advice and also help design better rubrics of course, and we are ideally placed to give pointers to academics who may not have the same level of wiki experience. But telling academics they can't set wordcounts risks either driving it underground (they'll just do it anyway and not let on - not ideal) or they'll just disengage from Wikipedia entirely if more impediments are put in their way (which is a loss on all sides). I take the point that overly long word counts runs the risk of content for contents sake but it can be managed effectively.
    • NB: I encourage academics to mention the assignment on WikiProject Talk pages ahead of time - to indicate which pages will be created/improved, the focus of the edits, and when the editing will take place. A group of students adding 500 words to articles on Islamic art is okay for a group edit given that the students are encouraged to evaluate the article content and discuss it ahead of time before they even think of hitting the 'Edit' button. Global Health students are encouraged to add 180-250 words to articles related to global health related topics, using their research from recent review literature. Seems uncontroversial to me and improves the pages with more recent relevant research from quality review lit. Global Health Challenges students work in groups of 4 to add 1,000 words to stub articles on natural or manmade disasters (so 250 words each and they look at Featured Articles to assess the kind of sections they could each work on and keep some consistency and quality assurance to their article improvements. World Christianity MSc students were asked to create new articles of 1,000 words approx following a literature review of a whole topic areas (e.g. 'Asian Feminist Theology' on enwiki) but the course leader is a Wikipedia editor with over ten year's experience and designed a Word Count tool to better assess and separate out the number of words in the main body of the article compared with the number of words in the references to be more useful. Translation students are asked to translate 1,500 to 2,000 words from Featured or Good Articles into another language Wikipedia each semester. Given Good Articles and Featured Articles are enormously long this is actually requiring the students to select the most useful parts or else work collaboratively with another one or two students to get enough useful content. Perhaps the word 'add' is the problem. Adding for adding sake, content for content sake is potentially problematic. Not always by any means. But as mentioned in the examples above, it is a case by case basis as to what is most appropriate. And I think improving advice and chatting pre assignment about what may work best on WikiProject Talk pages has the best chance of creating a win-win situation. Stinglehammer (talk) 19:07, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Improve advice instead on why setting word counts as the sole metric may be unhelpful in a way that describes its potential impact on article quality possibly with examples. As others have pointed out something like this seems likely to discourage academics from engaging with Wikipedia, also I cannot see any way of enforcing this rule at all. My suggestion would be ask academics within the Wikimedia community, WMF education staff, Wiki Education Foundation staff etc to engage with the process of improving advice. John Cummings (talk) 19:35, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Improve advice instead I've been running successful educational assignments on Wikipedia for several years, and if others have been running them badly, then edit count targets are not the problem. Also note that edit counts for assignments can include maxima. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:44, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes I have taught three university courses with Wikipedia assignments. The students have many requirements for the assignment, including a minimum word count (800 words). When we discuss the assignment in class, we discuss, at length, what makes for a good Wikipedia article. The students are told they must tell me what they are going to write about...if they are creating a new article, they must tell me why it is notable. If for any reason they think they cannot reach 800 words, then I am flexible and they can tell me why (when they do this I usually suggest they add an infobox or external resources) or I tell them they can split the word count across more than one article. Word count is something that university students understand and helps set a baseline for the assignment and grade (I wish I didn't have to give grades, but that is another problem entirely). Bridges2Information (talk) 05:44, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Improve advice instead I don't think we should be limiting how teachers teach or how they grade or what learning outcomes they seek for their students. I'm not sure that the claim that students game the assessment criteria is backed up by any evidence or actual research. Students are often strategic in how they approach learning tasks and we can improve our advice to educators and to students in this matter. I think it is important not to create 'them and us' between editors and educators as often we are the same people and all are welcome. Equally the students who learn from their assignments to think about how information is authored, shared, curated and contested online are gaining key information literacy skills and they are welcome to become members of our community of editors. They should be supported rather than restricted. User:Melissa Highton (talk)
  • Improve advice The above discussion seems to show a disconnect between "add 2000 arbitrary words" and "improve X articles by fixing citations and adding relevant content, by adding 2000 words." The latter is my read of Fransplace's comments, which also indicates that one or more instructors are overseeing these changes. This seems to be one of the huge benefits of a Wikipedia assignment—that is, the advice and oversight of educators who are experts in the field who are aware of Wikipedia policies and guidances. My concern with the OP for this RFC is that it presumes that those outside of courses have a clear view into all criteria as communicated to students via editor training, syllabi, LMS, etc. As an instructor, I would not be able to gain the approval of my University bureaucracy if I did not have a word count target; nor can I have an assignment that is only assessed based on a word count target. Hence, the OP seems to veer towards instruction creep. --Caorongjin (talk) 08:52, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Huh? Am I missing something? This can't possibly be enforced, and professional educators are not going to take advice on course design from Wikipedia guidelines. – Joe (talk) 09:15, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Enforce existing guidance strictly. As others have noted, this is already part of the rules, but clearly whoever sets up WikiEd partnerships does not bother to actually vet applicants or advise faculty contacts. We don't need a rule change, but we do need to make clear to our partners that failing to read and understand the guidelines are grounds for immediate termination of the partnership, and get the people working on WikiEd on the Wikimedia Foundation side to actually take this and other issues seriously. I don't say this because I dislike WikiEd - WikiEd has had some of Wikipedia's greatest successes - but because I think it's a great idea, and yet the people in charge have done a horrible job vetting and explaining this to would-be partners, opting for things like plagiarism & copyright violation farms to classes of 200 freshman on common topics that already sport detailed WP articles rather than deep seminars on obscure topics for 300 & 400 level majors. SnowFire (talk) 04:14, 28 June 2021 (UTC) (EDIT: See below, some of this isn't WikiEd's fault.)
Hi SnowFire, just to clarify here, Wiki Education as an organization *does* vet courses we support (the ones announced here). But many student editing projects on English Wikipedia (including the course that prompted this discussion) are *not* overseen by us. Some are overseen by other groups, others are run by individual instructors without any guidance beyond the knowledge of the instructor, who may or may not be an experienced contributor. At Wiki Education, we don't allow 200-person courses to participate, and we run all our students' contributions through a plagiarism checker, addressing anything it catches. It's not perfect — like in all automated systems, some slip through — but we at Wiki Education have tried very hard to ensure the courses we're supporting are overwhelmingly a net positive to Wikipedia. Just as no individual contributor can speak for "the community", I can't speak for education projects on Wikipedia, but I can speak for Wiki Education as an organization and the courses we support, and I assure you we do take our commitment to positive outcomes to Wikipedia seriously. We make our resources available under a CC-BY-SA license so they can be used in projects we aren't directly supporting, and we're always happy to advise other program leaders with the best practices we've learned over the years of doing this. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:17, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
@LiAnna (Wiki Ed): My apologies - I was under the impression that WikiEd had sanctioned it, but more close reading says that is not quite the case. Are the contacts at Wikimedia Outreach Australia volunteers or staff? I will redirect some ire in their direction instead. Regardless, I think the guidelines need to be far stricter on this, up to and including "we will arbitrarily revert and reject all contributions made as part of a school project unless the faculty contact signs on to follow the Wiki Ed principles." And to be willing to reject even well-meaning requests for collaboration if they persist in thinking models so faulty as mandatory word counts are a good idea. Sadly, it looks like this particular University of Sydney project did seem to be aimed at more "intro" classes and came with whining about work the faculty had to do which was offloaded to the community. To be sure, I don't think asking for reviews / notifying the community is bad (it's weird that THAT was what was reverted to me), but it seems as if these projects are not complying with the principles we both agree should be enforced - that the faculty be engaged and paying attention to all their student's edits, and if that's too much to ask, to either hire more faculty or use a smaller course size. The ideal WikiEd course is not an "intro to the Internet" course or the like which is what appeared to be the case here, but rather "deep subject mastery of an academic topic" that is then shared and applied on Wikipedia. (The bit about large intro courses was a reference to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-07/Special report, for reference - the Pune plagiarism incident.) SnowFire (talk) 19:37, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
This remains the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and until someone can get project-wide or foundation agreement to change that then that also includes faculty members and students who choose not to work with WikiEd or do not know they can work with WikiEd. Faculty members and students who violate our policies and practices - plagiarism, harassment, persistent and intractable problems, etc. - can and should be assisted, blocked, or banned as appropriate. But until someone gets project-wide consensus to change our blocking policies, "some editors have a philosophical disagreement with your instructor's course or assignment design and grading policy" is not an appropriate reason to block editors. ElKevbo (talk) 19:41, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
That's great, and I agree with that, because I never proposed blocking editors? I proposed reverting contributions made as part of a course. If an editor in good-standing wants to reinstate them because they were positive, that's great. See WP:CCI for examples of how large-scale problematic editing has been dealt with in the past - many editors checked on CCI are not banned. SnowFire (talk) 19:59, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
My apologies; I was not very clear in that some of my comments were directed more broadly than just toward you. Sorry for the confusion! ElKevbo (talk) 20:14, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Improve advice We shouldn't be limiting how teachers grade their students but rather advise and support them when need be to make sure we find a balance between credible information being added and at the same time students get to learn and be graded fairly. BristolTreeHouse (talk) 06:49, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Extended comments

  • I'm going to make some comments that I think will fit better here than in the poll subsection. Despite the seemingly varied comments in the poll, I think I can see something of broad agreement. Some editors are calling for improved advice, and some say that it should not be the only metric for use, but should not be prohibited in all cases. I see these views as compatible, and as reasonable. I'd like to think of it this way. Imagine a course where the instructor tells the students something like: As a rough metric, you should add approximately 800 words of new content to the article you work on. However, the quality of what you write, and your adherence to Wikpedia's policies and guidelines, will count for more than the word count will. You should continue to watch the page after you make your edits, and engage on the talk page with anybody who questions or reverts your work. I think everyone can agree that this would be entirely good, and the word count language is no big deal from our perspective.
But imagine a different hypothetical course where the instructions would be something like: Your assignment is to add 800 words to the article you work on. Your grade depends on having that addition appear in the article at the end of the semester. This could be a recipe for disaster. In particular, it has the effect of encouraging students to edit war if their work gets reverted, and it sets up a situation where it is quite possible that it will be reverted. I think it is entirely plausible that we could reach a consensus that the first situation is welcome, whereas the second one is to be strongly discouraged. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:41, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • As a second comment, I want to address the issues of whether we can or cannot make this obligatory, and whether or not we should treat this simply as a call for better advice. It's important to remember that the English Wikipedia has no policy regarding class assignments specifically, nor even a guideline. WP:Student assignments is an information page only. So, despite the structure of this RfC, there really isn't any possible outcome that administrators could enforce (although all class assignments are subject to the general policies and guidelines that apply to all editing). So really, this RfC can mainly just establish a guidance for WikiEd staff to better understand community sentiment, and that means for them to take it into consideration when developing advice for classes they work with. In other words, this RfC cannot really be anything other than one about potential improvements to advice. Now, as to whether we should have a policy, that's another discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:52, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • [Placeholder so that I remember to join this conversation when I'm back at work on Monday.] Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 19:44, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
    Isn't work where you shouldn't work on Wikipedia? Heart (talk) 04:16, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Heart:, When you work for Wiki[p|m]edia, working on anything *but* Wikipedia is what you shouldn't be doing. Mathglot (talk) 06:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    Reping User:HeartGlow30797. Mathglot (talk) 06:34, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Adding the perspective of Wiki Education here. For those who are unfamiliar with us, we run the education program in higher education in the U.S. and Canada. That means we support a lot of the educational assignments that are running on English Wikipedia, but definitely not all of them. We specifically reject courses that have a minimum number of words; instead, we encourage instructors who want to set minimums to set minimum numbers of references instead. You can see our whole orientation for instructors here, and the specific training slide on this issue here. (The other big challenge we see that Tryptofish referenced is assessing on what sticks on Wikipedia; our slide saying not to do that is here.) All instructors in our program go through this orientation before they can create a course page. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:13, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
LiAnna (Wiki Ed), thank you very much for your comment, I think it is most illustrative, this slide in particular gets at the nub of this exact issue, Wiki Education Foundation specifically advise against setting minimum word limits. Is there any collaboration between you and Wikimedia Education? Because this issue came to light due to one of their supported courses from my alma mater, Sydney University. Cavalryman (talk) 05:01, 22 June 2021 (UTC).
Hi Cavalryman, good question. So the Wikimedia Foundation's education team generally promotes the use of Wikipedia in educational settings, and they're the ones who run that outreach wiki page you linked. Many different volunteers, individual professors (as is this specific case from Sydney), organizations (like us), and Wikimedia affiliates around the world engage in educational program activities of lots of different kinds. We don't specifically collaborate with any of the other people who work on English Wikipedia (we all run our own programs), but we at Wiki Education generally recommend others follow our best practices too (since we support 600+ instructors each year who teach with Wikipedia, we have a lot of knowledge about what works and what doesn't). --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:01, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Programs & Events Dashboard user survey

I've just launched a Programs & Events Dashboard user survey. If you use, or have interacted with, Programs & Events Dashboard (which is used for for some classroom assignments on English Wikipedia), please consider taking the survey. There's also an on-wiki preview available on Meta. (Programs & Events Dashboard is the same Dashboard codebase used for Wiki Education's dashboard.wikiedu.org, but is configured differently and is used for a wide variety of events and classroom projects that are outside of Wiki Education's scope.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:31, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

You're probably already familiar with the {{find sources}} template, that displays links for finding reliable sources on general topics. There is now a template {{find medical sources}} based on the same idea and aimed specifically at finding sources that comply with WP:MEDRS which could be useful for student editors working on related topics. The main discussion for this is at WT:MED#Announcing new template Find medical sources. Adding User:Sage (Wiki Ed). Mathglot (talk) 10:33, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Topics subject to MEDRS = articles in WikiProject Medicine?

Question: Is the set of all articles that should comply with WP:MEDRS theoretically identical to the set of all articles in WikiProject Medicine (assuming they were all project-tagged appropriately)? If there's a difference in the two sets, what is it?

The reason I ask, is I've run across any number of articles tagged with related WikiProjects, like WP:WikiProject Microbiology (e.g.: Cytophaga hutchinsonii) or WP:WikiProject Molecular and Cell Biology (e.g.: Mitochondrial membrane transport protein), and maybe some other projects, where the articles seem like they ought to comply with MEDRS. I found myself wondering, "Does this mean I should add WP:WikiProject Medicine to the article?" Or does MEDRS apply to several WikiProjects and not only to Medicine? It looks to me like it's more the latter, but I'm not sure. I'd appreciate any clarification on this.

There is a practical reason for this question: this proposal at Village Pump will, if adopted, cause the Talk header to display the new {{find medical sources}} template for medical articles but currently that includes exclusively articles which are tagged with WikiProject Medicine. But it would be easy to expand that to articles tagged Medicine, Microbiology, or Molecular and Cell Biology, and indeed, whatever other projects ought to be in that list. Any thoughts? Adding Sdkb. Mathglot (talk) 09:37, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot, It would have to be on a case-by-case basis, for example the microbiology of brewing beer or the cell biology of seaweeds are not medical topics. MEDRS applies only if the article (or part thereof) is directly relevant to human medicine. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:08, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
So it sounds like it's more that we'd have to add the Medicine project to those articles that needed it, if they didn't already have it. Thanks, Roger. Mathglot (talk) 17:01, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Students adding assignments at Apgar score for red-linked course

If you check Talk:Apgar score, you'll see a sign-up by three UCSF students for a course that exists on the dashboard (here), but red-links in the wiki assignment template on the talk page (here). Is this just a temporary situation due to a time lag in some batch job creating the page, or what's going on here? New course announcement was placed four weeks ago.

Also, this board has gotten real quiet lately; is it no longer the main venue for communication? Are y'all on summer break or something? Mathglot (talk) 20:34, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot: In this case, the Dashboard's attempts to post the course page are getting block by the spam blocklist, because of some of the URLs that are on the course timeline. Normally the Dashboard works around this by breaking the links that get flagged and reposting, but it looks like that strategy isn't working in this case. It's not immediately obvious to me why, but I'll investigate when I have a chance. (I'll be on vacation from tomorrow through September 8, so it'll probably be late next week.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:30, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, Sage. Also, WP:NODEADLINE . Mathglot (talk) 23:51, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Mathglot: The format of the MediaWiki API response for the spam filter changed, so I needed to update the Dashboard's handling of it accordingly. It's working now: Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/UCSF School of Medicine/UCSF SOM Inquiry In Action-- Wikipedia Editing (Fall 2021).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:04, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Converting Wikipedia:Student assignments into an actual guideline

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Converting Wikipedia:Student assignments into an actual guideline. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 20:06, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: WP:VPP/Archive 167#Converting Wikipedia:Student assignments into an actual guideline
Mathglot (talk) 03:53, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Missing class table

This U Mich Portuguese class seems to be missing the class table with students and article assignments. Mathglot (talk) 02:34, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot: Looks like this a similar problem as above; the MediaWiki API has a different format for some spamlist edits versus others, and the initial fix I made didn't account for the format for this case. (I did a quick workaround by replacing a bit.ly link on the course timeline, so now it's updated with the student list.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Undeclared class making good-faith but often unhelpful edits in US history subjects

Please see User talk:Webuckpstcc#Your assignments for my message to the presumed instructor. Any further advice or monitoring of the students' contributions would be appreciated. Graham87 06:44, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! We'll try to reach out to the instructor. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
Thanks LiAnna. I just declined an unblock request from one of these lost sheep. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 02:22, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Heads up: unaffiliated instructor giving poorly-designed assignment to create articles

(Please feel free to suggest or directly change to a clearer section heading.) Hi! Just wanted to let you know to please look out for classmates of LokayaWC. An involved admin has asked for the identity of the instructor, who may have set students loose on Wikipedia without explaining copyright or WP:V. (The instructor seems to have failed to tell their students that Wikipedia articles cannot be based on private email correspondence with the article subject, nor can they contain copyrighted text.)

Just for the record: I do not want to cast blame on anyone. I just want to notify interested parties. Hopefully, efforts to find the instructor yield results soon, so the involved admin or someone here may speak with them (and save the poor students some stress). Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 15:46, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I just reached out to them. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:48, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

U of MD articles misspelled in course listing

Can someone fix the name of Timeline of medicine and medical technology article in the course listing for this U of MD course, which is currently redlink-listed as Timeline of Medicine and Medicinal Technology? Ditto for History of tattooing. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:07, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot: I fixed the first one; leaving the tattooing one alone because the student has already added some draft work in a sandbox that matches the incorrect name which I don't want to confuse them about, but they appear to be working in a group with others on the tattooing article, so I expect they'll sort it out when it comes to moving content to mainspace.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
That makes sense; thanks! Mathglot (talk) 18:17, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

FYI, independent class assignment going around

I wasn't sure what the procedure is with this, but there's an independent assignment that doesn't appear to have gone thru WikiEd. One of the students asked me a question about it on my talk page here. Since apparently articles are going through AfC, I didn't think there would be any issues, but I thought it best to mention it here just in case. ThadeusOfNazerethTalk to Me! 14:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I just left a note on the student's talk page. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:59, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the same class or not, but the page Concept 2 Rowing Oars seems to be from another independent class assignment, based on the comments on the talk page. ~~~ Niftysquirrel (talk) 16:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Project #KMUOS

There is a potentially excellent educational project being run by the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Sharjah. It was run previously in February. See this link. It's run with goodwill, but is exposing its students to the many challenges of editing Wikipedia without truly understanding that it is not a kind place.

My talk page shows a dialogue with one of the participants, a dialogue which has gone nowhere. The WP:AFC Talk Page shows more background information.

This note is to ask those with an interest in helping that project to grab hold of it and bring it into a 'safer' place for the students to edit. They are being graded on successful publication.

I have emailed Prof. Sane Yagi from the February project with, so far, no reply. I'd very much like someone with education expertise to pick uo this baton, please. FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 20:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@SPatnaik (WMF), @NSaad (WMF), @MGuadalupe (WMF), @VHargyono (WMF), can one of you help? --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:14, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
@Timtrent It looks like @Smmohd: has simply given up with trying to get articles approved through AFC and instead has resorted to just creating them in the main namespace.
I think this is happening because they're being given the assignment of translating Arabic documents describing a person rather than creating something from scratch. And because they're being graded on completion, they're frustrated that they can't get them to pass and are now just publishing them. Lectrician1 (talk) 20:06, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
@Lectrician1 Regrettably this is Wikipedia. If they are poor quality then they must either be improved or deleted FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 22:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
Yesterday I raised the issue of articles being rapidly translated at ANI. I didn't know about this, and it's now been pointed out they are unattributed, thus a copyright violation.User:Asma Alblooshi is also created them in article space. Probably others. Doug Weller talk 07:29, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Hope this is the right place for this - I've noticed a fair few issues with the above course's students unfortunately, and wanted to mention it somewhere in the hope that they/their instructor can be given some guidance perhaps by someone from the WikiEd team.

Specific issues that I've come across:

Can someone give them some guidance? Thanks, firefly ( t · c ) 17:28, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Firefly Helaine is setting up a call with the instructor. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:40, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@Ian (Wiki Ed) fantastic - thank you :) firefly ( t · c ) 17:41, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@Firefly, I just talked with the instructor. She's going to work more closely with the students to check their work before moving it to the article main space. Thank you again.Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello. I came across this course content as well and have some concerns. It appears that the instructor is stealth canvassing (example on Twitter here) to try and keep the now-redirected Ratchet Feminism article live; the instructor is not sure about the draft article process (see where the instructor questions if others can edit a draft here); and the instructor's oversight of the creation of articles with major rewrites and overhauls needed, such as Black women in the romance industry, which has no less than five tags on it currently. Can someone help the instructor? Thank you. --Kbabej (talk) 23:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

It is difficult to see why a WikiEd course should be creating an article called Black women in the romance industry when there is no article Romance industry. Do multiple reliable sources discuss the asserted "romance industry" topic? Are there articles about the Science fiction industry or the Mystery novel industry or the Spy novel industry or for any other "industries" associated with genres of novels? It seems not. No way am I disrespecting the contribution of Black women to the U.S. Those who follow me off-Wikipedia know that I often describe them as the stalwart saviors of U.S. democracy, and I have respected them since the days of Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and the historic presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm. My wife and I hired an African-American woman to assist us in an extremely important aspect of our personal finances recently. I love and will always respect Black women. It is quite concerning that a university level instructor allowed her students to get so far out of control that poor quality contributions were added this encyclopedia, and that attempts to bring the new content into alignment with policies and guidelines has led to a vigorous campaign of off-Wiki harassment of a good faith editor trying to improve the situation and help other editors out. Cullen328 (talk) 05:58, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
FYI @Cullen328 there is a more active discussion ongoing here. JoelleJay (talk) 06:52, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
Black women in the romance industry could probably be moved and lightly refactored to a Portrayals of Black women in fiction article or a Media portrayals of Black women article, or perhaps split into Media portrayals of Black women and Black women writers. We have several encyclopedic articles starting with "Media portrayals of..." such as Media portrayals of bisexuality. I'll propose a move on the article Talk page. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:23, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Endozoicomonas

This is minor compared to the extremely unpleasant thread above, but is also positive. This draft was submitted, and there already is a stub article on Endozoicomonas. There is a class that is submitting drafts on microbiological oceanic species. The instructor is User:Donvannelli. The student and the instructor should be assisted, with thanks, in updating the existing article on the genus. There is a common misconception that Articles for Creation can be used to improve existing articles. That isn't the way to improve existing articles, but we certainly want to help anyone who wants to improve existing articles. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:43, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Organized harassment of me over botched course

I have been harassed on Twitter by the organization Black Women Radicals (who's article is up for deletion). I had to make my Twitter account private because of them. This is all because I explained in a Twitter comment to the instructor of the course, Mkibona, that the article on them was being put for AFD because of notability guidelines and explained what canvassing was. Then the Black Women Radicals organization retweeted my post and I received harassment from them and their supporters. This was because they accused me of being racist and creating a racial bias for simply explaining about the notability standards and the rules against canvassing. The harassment included:

I had to block many people, including the organization, as the harassment was immediately overwhelming to me as soon as I saw it. They then proceeded to tag Wikipedia, accusing me of mean behavior when I was simply trying to protect myself. This is not OK for an organization to be doing, and I am now scared of what they will do next, if they'll follow me into other social media or even here to make attacks or potentially doxx me as an act of 'revenge'. I've been crying over and over today because of them because I am very, very scared and hurt by their comments. Please help. wizzito | say hello! 05:57, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

There's been some frankly vile Twitter harrassment of Wizzito for his attempts to explain in good faith why the page was at AfD. There are some really grotesque claims of racism -- one of those links is mocking him by using the N-word. Vaticidalprophet 06:04, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
I am not sure why you took the conversation to Twitter and publicly announced your connection to this issue in a way that continued to chastise me for my behavior and accuse me of trying to canvass for votes. I initially only turned to my community on Twitter because I was frustrated, I was not being heard, and I didn't know what to do. I've asked for the redirect to be stopped, it never was. I addressed many of the issues around citations, etc... those were deleted. I needed help getting resources and ideas for the article, as well as help navigating Wikipedia. I also needed support from my community because it is not a good feeling to feel like you're not being heard and to feel powerless to do anything about it. The "backlash" you felt was from other people who at various times have experienced similar silencing and powerlessness. I've talked to several people about this over the last couple of days and it really struck a nerve. I do not want to trivialize your feelings, but I have been around long enough to recognize this shift in the narrative. I promise you that no one will hurt you. We are not a bunch of violent thugs. Many of the people who expressed themselves are fellow academics. None of us is willing to risk our careers over this. Mkibona (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 06:25, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
@Mkibona: Well, it really hurts when these academics mock me by using the N-word, attack me for protecting myself, and make ageist comments telling me to "go back to school". I do regret bringing the conversation off-wiki, but I felt just as frustrated as you were at the time, and that still doesn't excuse the harassment. wizzito | say hello! 06:38, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
I also tend to overthink a lot, especially when I feel harassed, abused, or threatened. wizzito | say hello! 06:43, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
Also, FYI, this discussion really isn't about you. It's mainly about the harassment by the Black Women Radicals organization and their followers. There was little or no harassment until the organization stepped in. wizzito | say hello! 06:48, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
@Wizzito: I am so sorry you've experienced this off-wiki harassment - I am disgusted at the comments you've received for trying to explain what was going on. I strongly recommend you report this to Trust and Safety who will investigate this and take legal action if merited. Behaviour like this damages our community, and I will not stand for it. I will review if Mkibona's off-wiki actions constitute a violation of our harassment policy, seeing as they "initially [...] turned to [their] community on Twitter" - I would expect better behaviour from a Wiki Ed instructor and will be asking Ian from Wiki Ed to review this internally -- TNT (talk • she/they) 06:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I think that the instructor is innocent and acting in good faith; the harassment only started when the Black Women Radicals Twitter jumped in and they are the ones who should be looked at. I only blocked people on Twitter in an effort to prevent further harassment by others. wizzito | say hello! 07:06, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
FYI here is the instructor's original tweet. wizzito | say hello! 07:12, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry that you've been subjected to that, Wizzito. Twitter is a nasty place. I've experienced my fair share of harassment there myself and 100% of it was related to Wikipedia. Unfortunately it's got to the point where I rarely talk about my work here there, because there are so many people who can only see "Wikipedia" is yet another faceless corporation and, when "it" does something they don't like, will take it out on anybody who sticks their head above the parapet. I'll second TNT's suggestion that the best people to follow up on this are WMF Trust & Safety.
That said, looking at the page history, this was handled really badly and I can see why things escalated. Many of the tweeters and perhaps Mkibona herself display the (very common) misunderstanding that an 'editor' is someone with special authority over Wikipedia content – like editors in the real world. Of course we know that anyone who edits Wikipedia is an editor, and anyone can edit Wikipedia. But that is not obvious to everyone, especially when you act like someone with elevated authority: Vaticidalprophet blanked and redirected the page with no discussion and a jargon-filled edit summary, you restored it with no additional information after Mkibona had tried to make changes, and then an administrator came in to back you up with technical protection. When she tried to start a discussion about it, she was met with bureaucratic stonewalling and the bizarre accusation that asking for help with an article is a wiki-crime. Looking at it from the other point of view, is it really surprising that people reacted badly to the perception that two self-disclosed young men had the only say on whether an article on a feminist movement gets to stay on Wikipedia? That isn't how people expect we do things, nor how they should be done. I know that you only played a small role in this, Wizzito, and again I'm not condoning the Twitter harassment, but all involved really should have done better here. – Joe (talk) 08:02, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
@Joe Roe: - As seen in Talk:Ratchet Feminism, the main issue causing protection was that the instructor refused to discuss with other editors or use an edit summary. The instructor discussed with others only when the article was protected. wizzito | say hello! 08:09, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
And where was she invited to discussion? – Joe (talk) 08:21, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
This is a Wiki Ed course, which has liaisons on our side, and instructors know that. Multiple issues with the course were raised, and still things are only getting worse. MarioGom (talk) 09:03, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) When I encountered the article, it was 1100 words with 10 references, most of them not about the concept of ratchet feminism. I considered a BLAR appropriate given the circumstances and the existence of a related article to redirect to. I mentioned in my edit summary that a de facto merge (that is, adding new content, with better sourcing, presented as an encyclopedia article and not an argumentative essay, to the target article) could be an appropriate way to incorporate information on this concept to Wikipedia. Retrospectively, I should've made that clearer.
I sought administrator help to protect the article to try and induce discussion on the talk page or an appropriate other page between editors, which I have repeatedly seen discussed as a legitimate cause for protection; I consider redirect-warring a particularly destructive form of edit warring due to the greater impact on readers (similar to move warring, which is explicitly called out as requiring rapid protection due to its unusually destructive position) and moved accordingly to prevent redirect warring while discussion occurred. I kept the page on my watchlist but was not asked about it either there or on my talk page (I see now Wizzito was on his), so eventually took the page off out of concern the instructor had decided not to communicate entirely, especially given the course was over by this point.
At the time of this series of events, it felt the best one available to me with the apparent situation; I redirected an article not appearing to satisfy our standards for inclusion to an appropriate target, attempted to give an edit summary pointing towards how to incorporate content related to it in the encyclopedia (retrospectively this is a weak link, and it should have been more explicit), and prevented a destructive edit war that would handicap readers and place strain on NPP. I think retrospectively there were likely ways to handle it better, but I don't believe any of it is much worth a kid getting dogpiled on Twitter for supposedly being a racist. Vaticidalprophet 09:06, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
  • To observers: I'd suggest not engaging with this organization on Twitter. They seem to have picked a fight, and I doubt anything positive can come out of further engagement. Please, stay safe. MarioGom (talk) 13:47, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks unfortunate all around. More or less agree with Joe's summary above. I want to validate both the professor's frustration and Wizzito's feeling about what happened on Twitter. Only want to add a note about Wikipedia and Twitter, coming from personal experience. It's useful [for me anyway] to remember that the nature of Twitter is to encourage quick responses. People aren't going to be doing a deep dive into article histories or policies, but reacting based on their personal experiences, feelings, perceptions, and judgments based on what limited information they do have. Having accidentally done this myself [at least] once in the past, when people are on Twitter talking about or venting about injustices on Wikipedia, especially when they connect to injustices outside of Wikipedia and Twitter, it's a bad idea to respond with anything remotely resembling a claim that there was not, in fact, an injustice, or with instructions about how to work around that injustice. That's especially true for anyone who might not be able to see the events through the same lens. It's obviously heavily context-dependent, but IMO the best approach, if you want to reach out on Twitter, is to offer to talk by email or some other less public medium. Some people really appreciate that, and it limits the discussion to the people who really do want to figure things out. None of this is to say you deserved those responses -- you most definitely did not, and I'm editing this comment again because I want to emphasize that -- just my $0.02 about Wikipedia controversy and Twitter. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:22, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

My fundamental belief is that anyone with hard power over another person (an adult, an employer, etc.) who harrasses said person who lacks it has crossed a line it's exceptional to come back from. I was the target of sustained online harrassment campaigns by adults at Wizzito's age and younger, sometimes much younger, and it flecked my worldview in ways I can't quite paint over. I am sure this is a well-intentioned post (I concur with the broad "Twitter is the worst thing ever because it handicaps longform communication" stance), but fundamentally the response to "these people with hard power over my livelihood are systematically harrassing me" is not "maybe email them next time". Vaticidalprophet 21:12, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
I'm horrified at what has happened here, and I feel awful that I didn't jump into the Twitter thread yesterday when it was first posted to try to explain RS and N. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:34, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
@Ian (Wiki Ed):, don't. You'll become a target of them if you do so. wizzito | say hello! 15:53, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Wizzito. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
@Ian (Wiki Ed):, I see you responded to them already; maybe your comments will be the ones that help them understand, maybe not. Your conversations with them so far have been very good, though. I hope you or someone else can clarify that I am not lying about my age or using multiple accounts, like they are accusing me of. wizzito | say hello! 16:38, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

FYI the organization is also attempting to harass other people who attempted to explain policy to them. This includes taking another editor who responded to them's opinions on a separate Twitter thread and using it as a personal attack. They also made other personal attacks towards them and falsely accusing them of blocking the organization as they think it's me, it's not. There's another ageist comment in that link as well. Here's another personal attack of theirs on another user, claiming that they were just asking questions. They are also accusing me and other editors of faking our ages and hiding behind anonymity. Ironically, a bit of the harassment was from anonymous users. (These other people have given them answers, yet they continue to stick their fingers into their ears and say "la-la-la"!) I'm done interacting with them, just monitoring and archiving the instances of harassment as they continue. I also highly suggest not interacting with them; if you do, you become a target of theirs and they will not hesitate to use anything they find against you. wizzito | say hello! 15:53, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's a Black Women Radicals supporter, linked to initially as being one of the harassers, falsely accusing me of defending child pornographers and also insulting Ian (Wiki Ed) because of where he is from. This is absolutely unacceptable and I am deeply offended at these false accusations being launched at me by the organization and their supporters. wizzito | say hello! 17:46, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

  • While people can hold views as to whether it was wise to reply on-Twitter, it remains that the user had every right to do so, and their reward for trying to be helpful has been vile. While being on the outside might be good reason for not understanding (or, more accurately, accepting explanations of notability) and partial reason for canvassing, it would escape me on how it could then be viewed as even partial cover for many of the statements made. I do wonder what any topic as potential controversial as this was doing as the focus of any wikied course and why an instructor made a public response rather than handling it internally. Surely any instructor should be abundantly aware of both the relevant policy and how to handle disputes like this in-house? Nosebagbear (talk) 22:57, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

(EC) It's also troubling that WikiEd instructors do not seem to have adequate familiarity with how Wikipedia works?? This is far, far from the first time an Ed class has produced articles that get speedied per G11 or A7, get taken to AfD for lack of notability, and/or require history revdel for copyvio. I don't know how common this actually is in proportion to the number of classes on Wiki -- maybe it's only a small percentage that are even dealing with mainspace creations at all. But I think a much more rigorous understanding of WP:N, WP:RS, and WP:COPYVIO (and WP:BRD) among WikiEducators would go a long way in reducing these issues. The way I learned about notability and RS criteria (and maybe more importantly their actual application) was by reading hundreds of archived >10kb-discussion AfDs in my areas of interest and then participating in active AfDs. Maybe some kind of training module involving discussion participation would be helpful here? JoelleJay (talk) 23:22, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

That really is the most fundamental problem here I think and something I was also concerned about. It's been hard for me to help people understand the site (admittedly, I'm no teacher, but this is regarding interested people I know), and I'm sure that if I were a student in the class of an instructor who does not understand Wikipedia, it would be a bad experience. Not blaming the instructor, but we are not preparing them well enough if this sort of thing could happen. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:59, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I have worked with instructors, including difficult ones that the fallout ended up on national news websites. I really want to defend the instructor, but I can't. The instructor broke the rule by attempting to WP:CANVASS via Twitter. And that attracted others who attack Wizzito. I agree with TNT here. It is borderline harassment, specifically off-wiki harassment. The only argument against that is that the instructor didn't attack the editor, but someone else did. TNT, I'm willing to analyze that with you and co-endorse any admin action that may be taken. Time to sharpen my block hammer. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:18, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I'm waiting to see if Mkibona is going to reply before making any decisions of if they should be blocked. I absolutely do not want to see them doing any other Wiki Ed work (and frankly I'm getting sick of the issues Wiki Ed causes in general) -- TNT (talk • she/they) 05:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
@TheresNoTime: There's plenty of good work done by Wiki Ed and its predecessor. It's typically the bad cases that raise the surface (aka negativity bias). OhanaUnitedTalk page 20:49, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I have intentionally disengaged from a lot of the hour-by-hour, back & forth. I doubt my words will provide you with the solace you are seeking. My class is tied to my research around the misrecognition and misrepresentation of Black women’s voices. The assignment was both an academic exercise, and a contribution of content important to Black women. For the class of mostly 1st year Black women, and myself, the assignment signified a lot. I am more than willing to admit my errors in not adequately preparing students to carry out the assignment. They needed a lot more oversight. I also deeply regret the pain that some of them experienced in what they saw as an environment in which they were not heard. I took on the editing for a few pieces because 1, I am better positioned to do so and 2, as the instructor who brought them into this space, I felt I had a responsibility to protect them. I could take being called names and being chastised (even the title of THIS discussion is offensive), but I didn’t want to subject my students to that. I tried to be heard more than once, and I felt ignored, and I was even chastised. The experience was hurtful for me and for my students who witnessed it. It is easier to find the words to criticize others, but far more difficult to constructively engage with people.

As for going to Twitter, after being frustrated and feeling silenced… I won’t apologize for that. I needed help learning to navigate Wikipedia and I wanted resources for the article. I wanted to save and improve the work the students put into writing a topic, which is very relevant for millennial and gen z Black women. I read the policy on canvassing (after the fact), and I never asked for “votes” or for anyone to come on Wikipedia on by behalf. I am connected to a network of Black feminist scholars on Twitter who know this topic well. While people expressed their frustration, more importantly, they listened and reach out to help. I received a lot of sources and ideas for the article. Some of which were incorporated.

The engagement with Wikipedia editors on Twitter was ONLY done when editors volunteered to identify themselves. No one sought to find out editors’ identities. Some editors actually engaged in a helpful & meaningful dialogue on Twitter. @Wizzito had a different experience. Honestly, knowing his age, I hate to single him out because I feel that it’s irresponsible. But I will say, when he went on Twitter, identified himself, and continued with the tone of criticism and chastising that I had experienced on Wikipedia, I anticipated the reaction. I wish it had not happened, but it did not have to happen.

I would be more than willing to engage in a constructive dialogue around some of the larger issues. We could discuss the idea of engaging students in editing on Wikipedia if we also discuss problematic interactions experienced by people of color and women in the Wikipedia community. That would be far more productive. Mkibona (talk) 06:26, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Mkibona, I appreciate your comments especially your willingness to engage in dialogue and I encourage you to read the comments I made in a related thread above (and respond if you choose to). You have already conceded that you made errors and so I will refrain from chastising you. Successfully editing contentious topics on Wikipedia requires a deep understanding of Wikipedia's policies, guidelines and social norms. My friendly question to you is how can you expect to be able to guide your students to do so when you yourself acknowledge that you lack that deep knowledge? I have edited here for over twelve years, am an administrator and have spent an enormous amount of time assisting new editors. I would be happy to engage with you about Wikipedia's social norms if you want to do so. Just reach our to me on my talk page at any time. Cullen328 (talk) 07:01, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
Regarding the accusation of canvassing, I think Wizzito interpreted your tweet I don’t know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Women_Radicals as an attempt to recruit your friends, family members, or communities of people who agree with you for the purpose of coming to Wikipedia and supporting your side of a debate. The intent may have been to vent or to solicit solid references for the articles, but I believe most editors would see it as directly asking supporters for help in keeping the article at AfD. JoelleJay (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Cullen328 I read the comments. I do not want to speak for WikiEd, but I see the benefit of having subject area experts guide their students in contributing content in those subject areas. While a professor may not be a regular editor on Wikipedia, many have the subject expertise. I see the importance of guiding students in creating articles with the goal of addressing specific representations. It’s similar to the goals of projects like WikiProject African diaspora or WikiProject Africa… Which is relevant to discussions around Racial bias on Wikipedia.

For my class, I gave students topics related to Black women in popular culture: music (especially hip hop), film (including adult film), literature (including romance), digital media (including spaces like Wikipedia), etc…. While I have published extensively in this area and I am well positioned to identify topics that are “notable”, there were issues with that notability being demonstrated via citations. But again, I teach this course and selected those topics because it’s an area I know well. Students are required to complete 10-12 Wikipedia tutorials over the course of about 15 weeks before they draft their articles. But undergraduates are notorious for not doing their readings or homework. This is where additional oversight was needed.

You specifically questioned the notability Black women in the romance industry… There have been publications (scholarly and news) and documentaries on the increase in self-published authors to emerge in the romance industry in the wake of 50 Shades of Grey. There are also sources, discussing emerging Black women romance authors and the depiction of Black love in those books. There is an upcoming book on the topic coming in February (Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters). There are also several podcasts (The Black Romance Podcast, The Turn On, #fallsonlove, etc…) dedicated to Black romance and erotica. I could go on, but you get the point.

The issue regarding the redirect… As a subject area expert, I was very upset that the article on ratchet feminism, which is often critical of womanism (& feminism) because of their respectability politics, was redirected to womanism. Inadvertently, I’m sure, the redirect silenced ratchet feminists by inferring womanists were better equipped to speak to the issue. This ended up being an example of the respectability politics that is at the core of ratchet feminism. And it is also why I tried repeatedly to get the re-redirect undone while the issues with the article were worked on. While editing these types of topics does require an understanding of “Wikipedia's policies, guidelines and social norms”, editing, redirecting, or dismissing these types of topics should require a deeper understanding of politics around that topic.

I have tried to read all of the comments. Rather than engaging, like we are now, my ability as a professor was critiqued, I was called irresponsible, it was said that my behavior was “disgusting”, and I was admonished of me stepping in to work with my students. There seems to be the misconception that I willfully ignored editor’s concerns. That is not the case.

JoelleJay I understand the thoughts on canvassing. I did clarify the reasons I sought help on Twitter via one of the talk pages before Wizzito went on Twitter to criticize. I reviewed the timeline and I posted my explanation on the 15th and that Wizzito took to Twitter on the 16th. Mkibona (talk) 08:54, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I just want to say how saddened I am that some of our longstanding norms seem to be crumbling. We have a norm that if the deletion of an article is controversial and non-urgent, we hold a weeklong discussion at WP:AfD and the article is deleted only if there is consensus to do so. (Yes, I know that redirection is covered by a different policy than deletion, but the effect of redirection is the same or even worse, and I'm talking about norms rather than the letter of policies.)

Another norm is that admins use the protection tool with ambivalence to whichever side of a content dispute is the right one - admins should choose to get involved in a content dispute either as an editor or as an admin, not both. Reading the discussion on the Talk page, I think OhNoitsJamie mixed up these roles by expressing opinions on content.

These norms are valuable for exactly the reasons we're seeing here - we invest the time for community discussion at AfD because it causes fewer mistakes, and because while it sucks to have your article deleted the process at least feels respectful if you have a chance to express yourself and have your views considered by the wider community. We have survived for 20 years as a community largely because our culture and processes allow us to feel respected even when we disagree.

A third norm, not specific to Wikipedia, is that we refrain from cruelty to children. Even if they are in the wrong, unfairly criticizing our friends, or furthering systemic bias. None of us here have been cruel to children, but some of our friends have. It's concerning to me that we don't all seem to find it shocking. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 10:41, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Regarding admin responsibilities, you said that

admins use the protection tool with ambivalence to whichever side of a content dispute is the right one

That's right, and that's exactly what they should do. (I would add, not with ambivalence but with disinterest, but perhaps that's too fine a point here.) Admins are agnostic with respect to content disagreements; that is to be decided by consensus, not by admin fiat. Mathglot (talk) 02:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Safety first

@Wizzito:, above you said that you were scared of this group or individuals that are harrassing you, and I just wanted you to know that whatever the issues about the article are, your safety comes first. The Wikimedia Foundation that runs Wikipedia and other sister projects, has an office dedicated to preserving the safety of everyone, and if you feel the slightest concern for your safety, you should consider contacting them. The link Wikipedia:Trust and Safety is a soft redirect that will take you to the right place and explain how to contact them. I see that a couple of editors have already mentioned this, but I didn't know if it got lost amidst the rest of the discussion, so breaking it out into a new subsection to make sure you've seen it. Good luck, Mathglot (talk) 23:26, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: have already emailed Trust and Safety wizzito | say hello! 23:44, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
Thumbs up icon     Mathglot (talk) 23:47, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education comments

Hi all, I'm LiAnna, the Chief Programs Officer at Wiki Education. My apologies for my delay in chiming in; my family and I have all been sick the last week so I've been on a wiki break and just catching up on the discussion. I want to offer some thoughts from Wiki Education to the discussion.

  1. First, harassment of any kind — on wiki or on Twitter or anywhere else — is unacceptable. I'm very sorry this situation has resulted in multiple people feeling harassed. That's never okay. I hope the Trust & Safety team can help resolve that issue.
  2. I want to particularly thank Mkibona for chiming in here. Wiki Education supports more than 300 instructors each term, and it's rare that we have an instructor as dedicated to engaging with the community as she is. Thank you, Mkibona, for your willingness to participate in the discussion and share your perspective. Noticeboards full of experienced editors' comments are particularly challenging spaces for inexperienced editors to participate in, and I deeply appreciate your willingness to post here.
  3. I hope those of you who have suggested Mkibona was canvassing can read her explanation above that she went to Twitter — where she has an extensive network of fellow subject matter experts — not to solicit votes on an AFD but to seek sources and more information that could be included in the articles to address concerns brought up in the process. Please appreciate that this is a common behavior among the subject matter expert academics we work with. Many academics use Twitter to reach others in their discipline who have more specific expertise in a particular article's topic. Obviously there were some problematic responses (importantly not from Mkibona) on Twitter, but please note exactly zero people on Twitter took her tweet as a call to vote or even comment in the AFD. I recognize there are a lot of bad actors trying to influence Wikipedia, and I appreciate your dedication to ensuring that doesn't happen by upholding guidelines like WP:CANVASS, but please remember WP:AGF is also a guideline.
  4. Aside from the specifics of the two articles in question: Wiki Education as and organization and I as an individual remain committed to bringing classes like Mkibona's to Wikipedia. To create the sum of all human knowledge, and especially to promote knowledge equity as our Movement Strategy calls for, we need to welcome contributors like Mkibona and her students who are adding to Wikipedia's coverage of Black women and popular culture, the subject of her class and an area in which she is a subject matter expert. Anyone who reads the Signpost knows just how much popular culture articles are always in the top-10 for our readers, and if we're not serving our Black women readers, we aren't succeeding in our goal to collect the sum of all human knowledge. We at Wiki Education want more courses like Mkibona's to participate because the knowledge they have to share is important, part of the sum of all human knowledge, and wanted by our readers, and we need to figure out a way to make it a good experience for them. Mkibona, I'm sorry you felt silenced. I'm committed to working with my colleagues, with input from Mkibona and others if they're willing to engage still, on how to improve Wiki Education's support for courses like hers to avoid problems like this in the future.
  5. To my fellow Wikipedians: I ask that when you are assessing articles like these, or any others in knowledge equity areas, keep in mind that those "structures of power and privilege" that have "left out" "knowledge and communities", per the Movement Strategy, also exist in the publication processes of what we consider reliable sources. Systemic bias is also prevalent in what gets covered in reliable sources; the idea that "if it were notable it would be covered in RS" ignores that systemic bias in our sources. Now let me be clear: I am NOT saying we should accept articles that don't meet Notability or don't have citations to sources that follow WP:RS. In the current battle against mis and disinformation, these policies are important tools for Wikipedians to maintain our quality and neutrality. My ask is that when you participate in AFDs about topics related to knowledge equity, you keep in mind that the authors of articles aren't trying to pull one over on Wikipedia for some nefarious reason. Instead, they're doing their best to abide by the labyrinth rules and guidelines that keep Wikipedia the trustworthy source it is today — from a position where the topics they're writing about are also facing systemic bias in the publications Wikipedia deems reliable. Be gracious, be welcoming, acknowledge the inherent challenges in this, and seek to find a middle ground, where we are a Wikipedia that welcomes their contributions and helps identify what kind of sources they'd need coverage in while acknowledging that's a big ask in publishing systems with inherent bias against them.
  6. Finally, I'd like to extend a thank you to everyone who has participated in this discussion. I want to acknowledge this is a challenging time for all of us, global health-wise, and I thank you all for sharing our common goal of building an encyclopedia, even amidst all the current challenges we're facing as a world. I deeply appreciate the commitment to Wikipedia that everyone participating in this discussion has shared.

If I've missed replying to anything in the discussion you'd like to hear from Wiki Education on, please feel free to ping me. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:57, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedians made mistakes here. Wikipedia does systemically underrepresent certain notable topics compared to some other topics. It is to our readers' benefit, and in fitting with our principles and our history of work to do a better job covering notable topics. Subject-matter experts such as Dr. Clark (Mkibona) are allies in our ability to generate better coverage of notable topics. Part of that value comes not only from her first-hand knowledge but from her ability to tap into the expertise of others to improve our sourcing and coverage. Ratchet feminism is not the kind of topic someone is inserting into Wikipedia for money or for promotional purposes and it's necessary to have that kind of nuance when patrolling new articles.
That said, I cannot get over the mistake made by WikiEd here by the blase handling of demonstrable harassment. The official WikiEd statement spends more twice as many words thanking people for the discussion and asking if anything was missed (94 words) as saying harassment was bad (41 words). And it doesn't actually say that what happened here was harassment. Just that people "felt" harassed. Of course they felt harassed. They were harassed. The links prove it. Ian recognized this early on but somehow with more time the comments from WikiEd equivocate and diminish that. WikiEd often gets unfairly smeared and tarnished despite being overall positive work to the community but this comment has lessened my faith in the organization. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:14, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: Yes, it was harassment. It was pretty vile. I reported several of the comments to Twitter as harassment (though my expectations for Twitter's application their "community standards" is pretty low).
As for the actual wording of the statements - I don't think that the word choice reflects anything other than the fact that we're over-stretched, and this happened on a day when things were particularly bad. I did my best to staunch the bleeding - Helaine and I met with Dr. Clark, I engaged on Twitter with the assumption that understanding might lessen people's readiness to continue the vile attacks, knowing that it's generally more important to play to the silent audience than it is to convince people who are digging their heels in.
So yes, the word choice could have been better. But bear in mind that it was written by LiAnna, on a Sunday, under far less than ideal conditions (it isn't my place to detail them) because a reply couldn't wait any longer. (Posting this on my personal account because I'm supposed to be on vacation today, and because I'm not speaking for the org, just myself.) Guettarda (talk) 17:54, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
I just want to wish LiAnna and her family a quick recovery. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It wasn't just me who sees it as canvassing, as another editor also agreed with this position. The "elephant in the room" issue is that not only is this harassment, it's knowingly committing harassment against an underage editor. We have specific rules to protect them. Is Wiki Ed going to do anything in this regard? OhanaUnitedTalk page 18:56, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
@OhanaUnited: I'm at a loss as to what we are supposed to do? This was off-wiki harassment of a Wikipedian from people not connected to Wiki Education (not the instructor, not a student editor, not our staff); from the discussion above, it looks like that Wikipedian correctly reported it to Trust & Safety at the Wikimedia Foundation (in case this is not clear, we are not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation). It's literally that team's job to deal with those issues, and they have way more expertise in this area than I do. Am I missing something? --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:41, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
@LiAnna (Wiki Ed): I think there are multiple things being missed here. Multiple editors have raised issues about this course in two subsections on this page, including the instructor having a lack of knowledge of WP policies, the instructor's oversight of the creation of articles with major rewrites and overhauls needed (see Black women in the romance industry as an example), the instructor not engaging with other editors over the Ratchet feminism redirect disputes, the instructor stealth canvassing (which for some reason you're replied is "common behavior among the subject matter expert academics we work with", despite the instructor calling for "editing & saving", a direct appeal to Twitter users to engage at an AfD (the fact they didn't doesn't change the appeal)), and the fact that the instructor's canvassing led to a targeted harassment campaign against a dedicated editor. It seems as if none of that is being addressed. There seems to have been a complete lack of due diligence in helping the instructor prepare for this course or help them with knowledge about how WP works overall, and now that there have been hours spent by multiple editors trying to clean up the resulting articles and discussions of behavior, the only substantive thing I'm seeing is that Wizzito should contact Wikipedia:Trust and Safety. This lack of response and inaction is very surprising to me. --Kbabej (talk) 22:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
Kbabej I wanted to chime in here since I and Ian (Wiki Ed) were in close contact with Mkibona throughout their course. We explained to Mkibona some of the issues her students were facing on Wikipedia with suggestions on how to move forward in the most productive way possible. This meant keeping some work in sandboxes and working closely with other student groups to make sure that their work met all Wikipedia policies. We also stressed that writing about historically marginalized populations like Black women can prove challenging. Nevertheless, we wanted to see her students succeed. As soon as we learned about the issues stemming from the Ratchet feminism article, we reached out to her to discuss the situation. Throughout this experience, we had two video calls on top of a number of email exchanges. Everyone acted in good faith and was working toward making Wikipedia better and more inclusive. Neither Wiki Education nor Mkibona intended to circumvent Wikipedia policy, but rather to work within the existing structure to cover a topic in much need of expansion.Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:24, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Tryptofish. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: You're absolutely right, my post yesterday should have read "being harassed", not "feeling harassed". My apologies for my poor wording choice, thank you for pointing it out. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Most of the aspects have been well covered, though some still pend responses (and presumably will do so until post-Christmas, since things like "instructor understanding" is not really something to try and resolve over the break). I would stress that the phrasing on Twitter unequivocately reads as a canvass attempt (whatever the intention). That it does not seem to have caused BFR members to attempt to flood the AfD is anomalous - I, and no doubt you, @LiAnna (Wiki Ed): can both highlight countless cases where a Twitter post has led to that behaviour. Canvassing as a policy is both clear that it's the attempt that's relevant, and that it's possible to do it while acting in good faith. I would be interested in knowing more about how experienced overseeing instructors like yourself and Ian oversee newer instructors to the process. Is it normally this lax, and we are just often more lucky, or did circumstances (such as your illness, or others we don't know) hinder it? What will help this in the future? Nosebagbear (talk) 00:27, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    • With apologies for being a bit long-winded, I want to give my take on this episode, in the overall context of class assignments. There is wide agreement that cruelty to or harassment of any user is antithetical to what Wikipedia is about, and WMF Trust and Safety is the proper entity to deal with it offsite. Editors here at the English Wikipedia recognize and respect that.
    At the same time, WMF sometimes fails to adequately recognize and respect the special expertise of the editing community here. It is unrealistic to say, on the one hand, that we should follow the advice of the Movement Strategy to open up our content to previously excluded categories of sourcing, while on the other hand, we need not alter our existing norms for sourcing and notability. You can't have it both ways. The editing community's policies and guidelines are not arbitrary; they have evolved from extensive experience. I helped write an ArbCom decision ([8]) that said in part: In particular, it is not the purpose of Wikipedia to right great wrongs; Wikipedia can only record what sources conclude has been the result of social change, but it cannot catalyze that change. WMF disregards the editing communities at the larger projects like the English Wikipedia at their peril.
    Added: In case anyone else is confused, the paragraph above is in reply to point 5 of LiAnna's statement. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:41, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    Education projects here have the most value when they offer the students the opportunity to learn how Wikipedia works. But it is not their proper purpose to come here and try to change how we work. Part of the learning experience should be for the instructor to learn about and work within our existing ways of doing things, and for the students to see first-hand what happens when they do, or don't, master our rules. Of course, editors should assume good faith, and treat instructors and students with appropriate respect and politeness. ("Please see our guideline on WP:Canvassing" is far better than "You violated our guideline on WP:Canvassing!") Student editors are entitled to the same considerations as other new editors, but they are not entitled to more consideration. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    U do know wikied is a separate foundation right ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:56, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    I assume from the indentation that you directed that question at me. The answer is yes, of course I do. The reason that I wrote about the WMF is that LiAnna referred to the WMF in her comments. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    You mean that one line where she defers to T&S, or that one line where she speaks about the strategy ? You are the one who then offloads all their responsibility and turns it into a WMF problem, which just shows that this is turning into yet another WMF bashing fest, A shame because there sure are points that LiAnna and Wiki Ed could improve and take more responsibility in. Also u can keep u passive aggressive spellchecking at home. This be the Internet, not English class —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:15, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    I trust that that does not require a response from me. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    Thanks for your thoughts, Tryptofish. I agree it's not Wikipedia's role to right wrongs. I'm just asking that we acknowledge those wrongs may be at play in a particular discussion. It's absolutely appropriate to tell a biology student editor working on a species article they must cite a journal article or book about the species and not, say, a hobbyist's blog; those journal articles and books surely exist. But I'm asking the community to approach articles like these with care, and instead of saying "These sources aren't reliable", say "I realize traditional publishing has excluded coverage of topics like this in the past, but we need coverage in independent sources that fact-check to meet Wikipedia's policies. Has your topic been covered in any magazines or newspapers?" It's sort of analogous to your examples about canvassing; I'm asking more for that respect and politeness, for us to be encouraging of historically marginalized communities who are trying to contribute knowledge to Wikipedia, but not bending the rules for them. I agree students aren't entitled to more consideration, but I hope we all approach any good faith new contributor with some consideration. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:38, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
    I can agree with all of that. And I'm pleased that you understood my comments in the way that I intended them. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:24, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
    @Nosebagbear: Only an experienced Wikipedian would say to their community, "Hey, can you help me identify more sources for this article, but make sure you don't vote in the AFD". Inexperienced ones will phrase it how Mkibona did. She never mentioned AFD! She never asked people to vote! She literally asked people to edit the articles! I simply can't see how asking fellow subject matter experts to help save a student's not-yet-sufficiently-sourced article by using their expertise to add more reliable sources to that article is considered canvassing. If you think it is, we will just need to agree to disagree about that.
    For your second question: Hers was one of 329 courses running this assignment we supported this fall term (September to December 2021). Her 31 students were part of the cohort of 5,970 we supported this term. So most of the courses in our program and student editors make uncontroversially positive contributions. (It's worth noting it's much easier for students to find reliable academic sources for, say, a nucleic acids biochemistry class or even an African archaeology class, since those are well covered in traditional academic publishing, than it is for a Black women in popular culture class, but content about Black women in popular culture is still important to add to Wikipedia, too.) Instructors must go through orientation prior to creating a course page, and students are required to take a series of training modules (which specific ones students take depend on what they're being assigned to do, but everyone takes the "Basics" section). Our staff is aided by our Dashboard software that sends emails that we should look into something based on certain behaviors (a student assigns themselves an FA, a student adds a copyvio, or a student's article gets nominated for deletion, for example). This helps us proactively intervene with potential issues before they become issues. But we're not perfect: things get very busy at the end of the term, when most assignments are due, and it's hard for anyone to keep up with the firehose of notifications; sometimes things slip through the cracks. The ongoing pandemic and its disruptions to higher education in the U.S. is certainly also a factor this term. My point is, most classes do great work with the support system we have. But some don't, and I believe in continual refinement of our support based on each term's learnings. As you note, the holidays are upon us, but I've already scheduled time with my team for January to reflect on what we could do better next term to avoid challenges like this. We want to have courses working on topics like Black women in popular culture succeed at adding content that follows Wikipedia's policies to Wikipedia, because that information is part of the sum of all human knowledge too. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:29, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I for one see this tweet as probably a legitimate request for help. If someone really wants to get people to vote at an AfD, they generally mention only the article(s) that are at AfD and don't distract readers by also talking about another article that isn't at AfD. Furthermore, someone seeking votes would ask for any warm body, not just "nerds", to show up.
    Any reasonable person who had been treated by Wikipedians the way that Mkibona had been treated would have asked non-Wikipedians for help. That tweet is what a request for help looks like. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 00:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
  • One of my biggest concerns with the class projects I've seen is that almost none of the instructors understand how article creation on Wikipedia works. Giving an assignment to write an article from scratch to an absolute beginner is seldom a good idea unless the course itself is based around writing for Wikipedia and is instructed by someone who has written multiple articles themselves. If the instructor has never created an article from scratch themselves, they probably don't even know enough to know that Wikipedia writing is very different from any other writing assignment. I welcome creations from students, but if they're being taught by someone who has never created an article, it's not at all unlikely they're going to end up creating an article that is going to be put up for deletion. Why aren't we asking instructors to go through the creation of an article themselves before they start assigning article creation? Or if they don't want to learn how to write an article before they start teaching others how to, they can have their students find a current article and improve it, which is much more likely to end in success. —valereee (talk) 17:06, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    • What I'm about to say is old news, but it is worth repeating. If – and I emphasize if – the instructor works with WikiEd from the start, WikiEd has an excellent program for guiding the class through just those kinds of issues. Also, faculty and students alike should be pointed to WP:Student assignments. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:10, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    @Valereee: That's the role Wiki Education plays; we teach the students the Wikipedia editing portion of the course. Of course students shouldn't be assigned to create an article without any support from experienced contributors. In our program, the instructors' role is to provide subject matter expertise: to guide students to well-regarded sources and to ensure the information students add to Wikipedia is accurate. Wiki Education teaches the Wikipedia parts. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:44, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    I'll also add that it's way more common for students in our program to expand existing articles; in this current term, for example, students edited 6,390 articles, but only 493 of those (or 8%) were new articles. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    Of course students shouldn't be assigned to create an article without any support from experienced contributors. So why did that happen repeatedly in this course? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:07, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    Or in Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Palo Alto University/Foundations of Clinical Trauma Psychology (Fall 2021) this other course, which resulted in the creation of drill-down essay-like articles like ACEs in Latinx Populations, Psychological trauma in older adults, Draft:Secondary Trauma in Forensic Interviewers (which was at least made in draftspace), Influence of childhood trauma in psychopathy, Mental health of Latin-American refugees in the United States, Vicarious trauma after viewing media, and Psychedelic treatments for trauma-related disorders (a medical article that needs to be compliant with WP:MEDRS), and has redlinks for other similar topics that I suppose are still waiting to be created. All of the articles I listed have serious issues tagged, and I haven't even gone in-depth to see if there are issues with copyright or sourcing. It feels like professors are not being given the guidance about students not creating new articles, and if they are, they're certainly not listening to it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    Or this UW course on "uncommon leaders" in which students created numerous BLPs, many on non-notable private people at UW/in Seattle (although at least one was on a current PhD student at another university). Where was the instructor when this article on a mid-level research administrator(!) or this one on a Canadian Food Inspection Agency analyst (who in 2020 both completed her PhD and became a PhD candidate according to the article) were moved to mainspace sourced solely to interviews and other non-independent media and zero chance of meeting NPROF? Several of these even featured the term "uncommon leader" shoehorned into their descriptions... JoelleJay (talk) 00:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
    These kinds of things are a perennial and significant problem on Wikipedia. I'll leave it to the WikiEd people to respond about what happened in each of these cases, but speaking in general terms, it seems to me to almost always be a matter of instructors who do not pay attention where they should. There is no incentive in academia for paying attention to what WikiEd or the editing community say. There may perhaps be things that the community and WikiEd can work together on, to make this sort of thing turn out better. But editors are not unpaid TAs. I think we should always try to start with a polite pointer to instructors and students, but when that doesn't work, then revert or nominate for deletion. (That teaches the students some things about how Wikipedia really works.) And it's unfortunate that even reverting and deleting make work for the community, magnified by the unique way that class assignments come in all at one time. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
    The fact this thread is this long now does not fill me with confidence - the community's patience seems like its nearing its limits with WikiEd. -- TNT (talk • she/they) 01:27, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
    Aight. I just kind of feel like if we're giving instructors adequate support and teaching the students ourselves, we wouldn't be seeing Black women in the romance industry in article space from a class project. I value the work you're doing, but that article...I've gone to the talk page to help. —valereee (talk) 21:50, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
    The Twitter harassment has pretty much all boiled over by now; but I do really think that overhauls are needed for WikiEdu, especially with creation of new articles. Some of the subjects written about do have potential, but there's so many problems with a lot of the articles, mostly them sounding like personal essays, and there are some notability problems like some completely non-notable BLPs being created. Perhaps an RfC about this could come into order soon? wizzito | say hello! 01:26, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
    At large, there is a community frustration with WikiEdu content that is reaching a breaking point. If the issue is not resolved soon, odds are there will be a giant trainwreck at AN or ANI or here, and I don't think anybody here wants that. If we want to avoid such an outcome, there needs to be concrete changes in the way WikiEdu operates going forward, so things like this do not happen again, and insane article creations that have to be deleted or cleaned up by editors stop happening so frequently. Instructors whose courses repeatedly cause problems must be held accountable or even suspended from the program if all else fails. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:21, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
    I share the dissatisfaction with class projects that have been expressed here by growing numbers of editors. But at the same time, I want us to be fair in what we expect of the WikiEd staff. In my experience, they have excellent training materials and work very hard at getting classes to do things in accordance with community expectations. As I said in an earlier comment, the disregard for community norms really arises from instructors, not WikiEd. It's not that WikiEd tell instructors the wrong things; it's that some instructors don't listen (or only hear what they want to hear). We put the WikiEd staff in a tough place: getting criticized here, while also having to "lay down the law" to university faculty who may very well feel like "who is this random person on the internet, telling me what to do?" University faculty do not get rewarded for working collaboratively with us. They get rewarded for their research (and any time spent on classes is time lost to research), the grant money they bring in (ditto), and being able to teach a lot of tuition-generators without having any kind of conflict that gets the attention of the dean. And non-tenure-track instructors focus on just the third of those, at minimum pay. Student editors are our only population of non-volunteer editors, who just want to get course credit, regardless of whether or not the rest of the community is happy with it. We can give WikiEd feedback, as we are doing here, that the community wants stricter adherence, but there's a limit to how much we can reasonably expect them to tell instructors to get in line or fuck off. The community, on the other hand, can face some very difficult questions. Do we want to flat-out ban all class projects, with all the repercussions that would entail? Block and revert all students and instructors on sight, as disruptive users? Accept that it goes against the "anyone can edit" tradition and accept the negative press that would follow? If not, we just have to be prepared to revert and delete. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
    I've actually seen multiple good things come out of class projects, especially English writing classes aimed at ESL students. A lot of students in such classes write about notable foods from their culture which have never been written about in English. This kind of contribution is rare and very valuable. Yongfeng chili sauce was a student project that I found at AfD. I could probably find dozens of others. —valereee (talk) 21:10, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
  • This was an awful and probably avoidable scenario. Wizzito getting attacked on Twitter on account of their perceived age, race, and gender is beyond the pale (yes, even if it is "white male", since identities of users are not credentials deserving evaluation and should have no bearing over content where sourcing is supreme, though I don't think the person who did that was formally involved with this course).
The WikiEd staff who've commented here have basically advised everyone to WP:DONTBITE the newbies, which is a takeaway from this affair, but I don't think the most important one. I think there's some fundamental problems with the paradigm here. First of all, Wikipedia is an entirely volunteer enterprise. The community does not attach strings to writing a certain number of articles, completing certain tasks, filling specific holes etc. aside from maybe doing specific work after being asked to be able to do so (like an admin being active in dispute resolution after asking for the mop at RfA). In other words, if you decide to not write an article, you will not be punished for it. Assignments in college courses are attached to grades, which are ultimately attached to graduation and the ability to get a good job. If you assign a student a Wikipedia article to write, you've just attached it to a goal external to the purpose of this project. You've created a WP:COI. You've incentivized the student to put content on Wikipedia to satisfy their instructor's immediate standards, not necessarily to improve the encyclopedia. A well-meaning instructor can try to make those two things match up, but this will always be an underlying issue. If deleting or severely trimming an article (due to quality concerns) jeopardizes a students' grade, you've got all the ingredients for edit-warring, gnashing of teeth, and many hurt feelings. This is a problem that's built into the system, and the only way to fully insulate the encyclopedia from this is to tell the course instructor to not care too much about the end result of their students' work, which defeats the purpose of said instructor making it an assignment. Also, Wikipedia has WP:NODEADLINE, and coursework is nothing but impending deadlines. It takes time to find good sources and write thoughtfully, and a time constraint incentivizes rushed work or reliance on poor quality web sources when a day at the library would have better served the content being created.
The second problem, which has been alluded to above, has to do with Wikipedia editing skills. User:Mkibona wrote, I do not want to speak for WikiEd, but I see the benefit of having subject area experts guide their students in contributing content in those subject areas. While a professor may not be a regular editor on Wikipedia, many have the subject expertise. User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed) did not disagree when they wrote, We at Wiki Education want more courses like Mkibona's to participate because the knowledge they have to share is important, part of the sum of all human knowledge, and wanted by our readers. Between the lines here is a subtext of information activism aimed at WP:countering systemic bias. Personally, I've grown to dislike activist attitudes on Wikipedia due to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS violations, despite mostly focusing on content in underserved topics myself. However, there is a way this can be successfully melded to improve the encyclopedia. Case in point is WikiProject Women in Red. User:Victuallers may be a skilled lecturer and User:Rosiestep may have been an excellent business administrator (now retired), but fundamentally they and most other top WiR contributors are excellent Wikipedia editors first. This enables them to be effective assets to the project. I doubt most of WiR has women's studies degrees or other formal qualifications. A professor can have all the subject expertise they want to amass, but it means zilch if they don't have the editing skills to translate that onto the encyclopedia and similarly guide their students. I think editing skills and familiarity with community norms and standards need to come first, before subject matter expertise. Unfortunately, that takes time.
@LiAnna (Wiki Ed): @Ian (Wiki Ed): Sorry I'm late to the party, but do you have any thoughts on what I've said above? I don't mean to fully assault Wiki-Ed, but these appear to be structural issues with the program and I bring my concerns to you in good faith. -Indy beetle (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
Indy beetle, thanks for ping.
I am saddened to learn about the "wiki"-related doxxing/harassment on social media that some have described in this section. It is NEVER acceptable and I know it to be JARRING. Pinging JEissfeldt (WMF), T&S leader for awareness and in case they have something to add on the matter of Twitter-based wiki-related harassment.
As for Women in Red, its talkpage is a good place to discuss articles within the project's scope (women's biographies, women's works, women's issues, broadly-construed). It doesn't matter if the article in question was created as a school assignment, e.g., via WikiEdu, or through any other effort. All are welcome: newbie, veteran, subject-matter-expert, or otherwise. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:32, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
I said it before and I'll say it again. WikiEd does a good job of making useful advice available to instructors, but we, collectively, have no good way of making instructors pay attention to, and make use of, that advice. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:11, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
This discussion gave me the idea of making this edit. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: I don't know if that's the wording I'd use exactly, but I agree that this is something that Wiki-Ed partners and other people in similar situations (new folks at edit-a-thons) need to be reminded of. Unfortunately, the WMF and related foundations don't do a very good job of communicating that, and at times seem to almost encourage directly violating that principle. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:31, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
If you (or anyone else, for that matter) have better wording, please feel free to suggest it at the talk page of that page (WT:Student assignments). Please understand that WP:Student assignments is a WP-space information page, and is not part of the WikiEd training materials. But I agree with you that the WikiEd people should consider adding something along those lines to their materials as well. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:47, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
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