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Unregistered class project / account sharing

During my usual vandalism patrol beat i happened to chance upon this edit by a new user. The edit mentions the account is shared between multiple editors which on its own is a clear problem, but due to the mention of a school project this also suggests that there may be multiple other problematic accounts. So far I have taken no action on the assumption that someone more involved in the education project would be better suited to follow this one up. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 19:34, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@Excirial: Thanks for the heads up. This is not a course we're aware of, but based on the information on the userpage, I've narrowed the class down to a couple different instructors. I'll see if we can reach out to them to bring them on board. I'll also leave a brief message on the students' page. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:48, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for following this one up Ryan. The explanation at the students talk page is certainly more helpful and to-the-point than any message I would have left myself. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 20:12, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@Excirial: FYI my colleague, Samantha, got in touch with the instructor. This term's assignment is just about finished, but he plans to work with Wiki Ed next time around. Samantha explained to him that the draft of the swimming in Canada article probably isn't fit for mainspace due to insufficient sourcing, and that he should pass the message on to the student before they try to move it out of the sandbox. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Cross post - Issue with the "The Wiki Ed welcome mat"

Editors may be interested in this ANI thread. I'd also urge editors to flick through the relevant user talk page and answer any outstanding queries -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 14:58, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Chemistry class maybe

User:Edgar181 has identified what is probably a class working on a set of articles about chemicals:

articles
accounts

No clear indication of if they have a teacher, but scandavianish names, timing, and common interest make it look like a class. They don't know what they are doing. -- Jytdog (talk) 00:34, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I did a cursory check on the account names that appear to be real names and as far as i can determine these are Dutch names. The check also correlated several editors as being educated at the Radboud University Nijmegen in various chemistry related topics (Biochemistry, Molecular life sciences and Biotechnology for example). Based on what i can see I'd say this is extremely likely to be a class or group project. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 01:26, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
The contributions are not very good but not 100% garbage. Maybe 80%. They must be graded by the length of the contribution. Apparently unsupervised. It is probably not worth our efforts to do much until the class is over. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:39, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
I posted here hoping folks at the education project would reach out and find the instructor and get this class pulled into the program and reined in. We all have a lot of work to do and cleaning up after a class is not one of my favorite things.Jytdog (talk) 19:13, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
Each new time this sort of thing happens, my patience wears out a bit more, as does my sympathy for WP:BITE. Editors should feel free to revert. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
Hi there. I am responsible for the Dutch education program. We haven't cooperated with this university before, and I wasn't aware that they were doing anything on Wikipedia. I will reach out to the teacher of this class to try and find out more. Best, --AWossink (talk) 18:17, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
  • note, one of the users that was listed above left me a message that they are not part of the class, here, so i removed their name and the article from the list above Jytdog (talk) 15:19, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi all, I've reached out to the teacher. He's sorry that the assignment caused concern and is interested to work with the community and Wikimedia Nederland to avoid incidents like this from happening in the future. This means that, as part of the next class, students will get an introduction into Wikipedia, editing, citation use on WP, etc. This will be done as part of the education program of Wikipedia Nederland. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any objections or concerns about this arrangement. As for the articles that have already been edited; I saw that some additions were reversed, whereas in others the edits seem to have been left in place. I am not sure how to proceed on them. The class is already finished so no new work is expected on them. Best, --AWossink (talk) 08:43, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Questionable Article on Free Store

User:Asavoie has created an article on Free Store (in Ottawa). I and some other editors consider it to be non-notable, and it has been nominated for deletion. However, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAsavoie&type=revision&diff=771975546&oldid=771972498 This appears to be a class assignment that is asking students to add non-notable fluff to Wikipedia, a questionable educational assignment. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:50, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

It looks to me like the AfD is being handled as it should be, and no consideration at AfD should be given to student editors that would not also be given to any other editor. It would be best to ask the student to ask the instructor to register an account, and to get the class coordinated with the WikiEd staff. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon and Tryptofish: Given the timing and subject of the edits, I'm inclined to think this is the same class as above. We've reached out to the instructor and offered some advice, and hopefully they will follow-up and work with us in the future, but since the assignment is over today (again, assuming it's the same class) it's unclear whether we'll see much more engagement on-wiki. As you say, students should indeed receive no more or less consideration for being students. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:47, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Unanswered question

There's a thus far unanswered question at Wikipedia talk:Wiki Ed/Swarthmore College/History 014-Friars, Heretics, and Female Mystics (Spring)#Hadewijch – could someone please attend to it? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:08, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Message left on the listed page - someone from WikiEd may or may not want to extend on this reply. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 11:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: You raise an interesting issue. As Excirial mentioned, the template was added to the Hadewijch talk page because it was added as an "available article". Before an assignment starts, instructors commonly select some articles students may want to work on. But being "available" doesn't mean a student will actually work on it. Choosing to err on the side of more information and more transparency, when we added the "available articles" feature to the Dashboard we had it automatically add a tag to those article talk pages (or rather, we didn't disable it). The idea was for it to act as a sort of notice that students will likely be editing the article. Now that you bring it up, though, I can appreciate that this could be confusing and perhaps misleading to have a template there if it's not certain whether students will actually will work on it. For that reason we've now disabled tagging of articles when they are simply "available". Article talk pages will only be tagged when a student has decided to work on it. Thanks for bringing it up.
As an aside, I'll add, following from the recent ANI discussion, that comments on the "Wikipedia talk:Wiki Ed/..." pages are much less likely to be seen/addressed than if they are left for the instructor and/or Content Expert directly or left here (if an incident) or WP:ENB (for anything else class-related). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:10, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Unregistred class project, likely Tahquitz High School

I happened to run into this edit where an editor claims they are part of a class project which is apparently being graded based on the amount of characters added. Based on the edits to Tahquitz High School i suspect a total of four accounts are involved in this class project:

None of them seem to be registered to any course, and a cursory check reveals a deleted copyright violation, a non-notable autobiography and another page that seems to be a direct copy of another Wikipedia page. In other words: "amount of characters" seems to be working out quite badly as a grading metric. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 18:50, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Ferret: Fyi, since you were on the receiving end of the above edit. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 18:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
Add Jmassis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) to the list. Appears to be a friend of B landen4 and only real edit (when I was looking yesterday) was contesting the CSD A7 placed on the article B landen4 appears to have created about themselves. -- ferret (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
A lot of the edits made seem to be problematic - perhaps even most. So far virtually everything ends up being a Wikipedia copyright violation or otherwise straith copy and paste.
And these are only part of the problem - there are more edits beyond this. The rate at which content is added is unreasonable as well - writing a 980 characters in a single edit before adding another 1000+ to another article a couple of minutes later is impossible to be anything but a copyright violation. I'm unlikely to have any time to deal with this myself so forwarding this to ANI since at the very least the stream of copyvio's needs to be dealt with. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 19:32, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
The effect of that Adventure_City link is just change of formatting. Not arguing that it might not be as a result of cut'n'pasting, and I do agree that all of User:Arios11's edits are poor. But the listed antecedent is actually newer than the equal content here...reverse-copyvio. DMacks (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
The infogalactic.com site is not actually a copyvio, reverse or otherwise. It's merely a legitimate mirror. Each article on the site contains attribution at the foot of the page "This article's content derived from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (See original source)" and the content is made available under a CC-BY-SA licence as we require. --RexxS (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
On closer examination it appears the content from Arabic swords was copied from Pre-Islamic Arabia. Therefore not a copyvio, though neither an edit that improves the article. I also noticed that two diff templates were actually pointing to the wrong diff (The first three were pointing to Arabic swords instead of their respective article's). There are certainly problems with the edits as a whole (some copyvio's among them) but it isn't as serious as I initially suspected. In retrospect my attempt to finish above analysis while under time pressure certainly didn't improve its quality. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 22:15, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
@Excirial: Copying within Wikipedia is technically still a copyvio if not attributed correctly (which these weren't). ansh666 03:44, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Article on Nso people and a Sandbox

I came across User:Efreitas2/sandbox at Articles for Creation. It has multiple problems, all of which would be mitigated by the fact that it was a draft submission and not an article. It consists of multiple sections, each written by and signed by a different student, written in the first person. It also has [edit source] at the corner of each paragraph, an indication that the students didn't know that [edit source] is supplied by Wikipedia, which, in addition to everything else, implies that they have had no proper instruction in how to edit Wikipedia. I declined the draft for all of the reasons. However, I then went to User talk:Efreitas2, and from there to the article Nso people. The article, in article space, had all of the same problems as the draft. It consisted of multiple signed portions written in the first person. Fortunately, those were recent changes, and I reverted the article to its previous stable state. It appears that we have a class project where the students edited in article space as well as in draft space without the slightest idea of how Wikipedia works. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:40, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I have posted to the instructor's page and asked that they give the student orientation as to Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:38, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Possible Class project?

Hello! A user on IRC dropped this in the #Wikipedia-en channel. They've come across 3 users that the content was a bit funky. Those of us that idle on IRC were thinking it might be a class project. Is there any way one of the folks form Wiki-Ed could take a look into this?

--Cameron11598 (Talk) 17:40, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

information Note: the content of the user pages was deleted by JamesBWatson so an administrator might need to look at the deleted content to see what exactly made us think a possible school project. (and I did notice JamesBWatson that I was dropping a note here) --Cameron11598 (Talk) 17:41, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Hi, person from the IRC here. I'd like to add that Nmaas (talk · contribs) has been making similar edits and might be related. ~barakokula31 (talk) 17:43, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Anthonie-Matumain (talk · contribs) might also be related. ~barakokula31 (talk) 17:45, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
... and one more: User talk:Thomas Oster. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
  • All of the accounts have done nothing other than post short essays about social media to user pages and talk pages, and in a very few cases posting brief messages without any meaningful content to one another's talk pages. It is not acceptable use of talk pages and user pages, and if it is a class project then it has been organised by a teacher with little or no knowledge of how Wikipedia works. Some of the pages have been deleted as use of Wikipedia as a web host (speedy deletion criterion U5) and I intend to delete more of them. However, typical examples of the content which has been posted can be seen here and here. (Those have not been deleted because the page histories also contain valid talk page messages.) I considered suggesting using user sandboxes, but having thought about it I very much doubt that these are intended as drafts for articles. It is entirely possible that someone has suggested using Wikipedia as working storage for a project, or perhaps there is some other explanation. I shall post to some of the talk pages suggesting that the teacher (if there is one) come to this page and comment. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:30, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I can now confirm with virtually 100% confidence that this is an educational assignement. One edit was made to one of the user talk pages (now deleted) by IP address 143.110.136.132, which is allocated to the College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks for looking into this. We can certainly reach out to see if we can bring the class on board. Has anyone seen clues regarding the name of the instructor or title of the class (which can often identify the instructor via the university course schedule)? Since it looks like you've pointed the students to this thread, I'll just make request here: @students, please respond to this thread with the name of your instructor (and preferably an email) so that we can talk to him/her about the many resources available to help classes like yours contribute to Wikipedia. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

10-2. For the following exercises, tutorials and help are available from each social media platform and also by using a search engine. Wikipedia: Create your own user account and log in. Go to your User talk page and click Edit source. You will be creating a page called User talk:Yourusername. Write a paragraph about social media. Find a classmate’s user talk entry and edit his or her paragraph. Go back to your talk page and click View History to see how your page has been edited. Finally, find an entry on Wikipedia that you can contribute to and edit that page. Use a search engine and find instructions to play Wiki Races (an example is http://wikibin.org/articles/wiki-races.html)." Feel free to delete their talk pages as they have finished the assignment. Again, my apologies on any confusion or alarm this has caused you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by D.Vo CSS (talk • contribs) 17:56, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Hey User:D.Vo CSS, I'm going to follow up on your user talk page with more information about our education program resources! -Samantha (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:20, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Course doing anthropology on the WP community

See here and User:Reagle/Online Communities 2017-1-SP.

The class above is studying the behavior of online communities, and does "breaching experiments" where students purposefully violate norms and watch the reactions in various contexts (e.g facebook picture stalking).

Part of what the class is doing is studying the behavior of the WP community by creating articles and seeing what happens to the articles, and how en-WP editors interact with the article creator(s). It isn't clear to me if students are being instructed to create poor articles as a sort of breaching experiment, or not. As far as I can tell the students have minimal to no training in (for example) the mission of WP, what en-WP considers "notable" and why, etc.

This appears to be abuse of mainspace and the en-WP community as experimental guinea pigs, as far as I can tell. I don't see any explicit goal here to improve WP. This is not like say a class in microbiology where the students are assigned to work on WP articles about microbiology to show what they have learned - that task has at least a nominal goal of improving mainspace.

I am posting here to make sure that the Education program is aware of this and can confirm that this is what this class is actually doing. The liaison for the class is User:Adam (Wiki Ed) who is not around; am pinging User:Shalor (Wiki Ed) and User:Ian (Wiki Ed) who have been filling in for Adam.

I am considering posting at ANI to have the instructor indefinitely blocked as being WP:NOTHERE and purposefully wasting volunteer time. Am still thinking about that but want to see how Reagle and others respond. I have notified Reagle of this discussion. Jytdog (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm also interested to see if any other Wiki Ed-authorized courses have such anthropological learning objectives. – Train2104 (t • c) 22:46, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
I looked pretty carefully at the syllabus and the other link. I see the part about a breaching experiment, but I'm not seeing anywhere that says that it will be done on Wikipedia. It's not at all clear what the activity for the breaching experiment will be. I would want to AGF until we hear back from the instructor. If, and I emphasize if, the intention is to do that here, then that needs to be closed down. I remember a long time ago when an editor did something like a breaching experiment, and the consensus then was that it was unacceptable. But – other than that, it does not look like anything that would be any more disruptive than any other class (I see some talk page comments by students who sound interested in starting pages that I suspect would fail at AfD, but that's about it). The instructions to students to familiarize themselves with policies and guidelines prior to starting content actually look to me to be better than what usually happens in class assignments. It's not yet a matter for ANI. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:59, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm going to ping Reagle to this. In any case, I found the list of social breaching experiments that the students can pick from and Wikipedia isn't listed among the list. I get the impression that he's getting the students to edit Wikipedia as a way of experiencing this particular type of community since it's fairly different from say, IMDb message boards (when they still existed) or Facebook. Some clarification would be good, though. I also think that it would be good to officially set up your class dashboard. All in all though, I don't think that he's here to vandalize Wikipedia. It doesn't really mesh with the interactions I've had with him so far. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:39, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
  • just want to be clear, that even if students are not doing "breaching" experiments here, the other thing I was trying to say in my OP is that this course is not like say a microbiology course, where the WP work is really integrated with the course work in terms of students trying to share what they are learning in WP. In this course, the mainspace content itself is just being created as something for the community to react to, so students can experience the "social" part of WP. This is the other part of NOTHERE that is troubling to me. Jytdog (talk) 01:24, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Hello all, there is no breaching at Wikipedia. This is the sixth semester of a project in which students make good faith contributions to Wikipedia. The students choose topics for which they'd like to write a legitimate article. Originally, these tended to be from our University Special Collections but we addressed much of the low-hanging fruit and in this case we have the difficulty of having mostly primary sources. More recently, students have chosen their own topics, which has its own issues, including that their interests tend to be seen as promotional. I continue to refine the instruction and guidance I give them on this front. Students are asked to reflect on their experiences in light of what we've learned about online communities.

We do do a innocuous social breaching assignment, but this is completely unrelated to Wikipedia. We have a class dedicated to the ethics of online research -- and discuss why breach experiments of Wikipedia are not cool. We have ethical guidelines for all of our assignments, and the one for the social breach and Wikipedia contribution are very different. -Reagle (talk) 12:25, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Looking at the assignments as written on the syllabus, the course seems like a good one - it explains to students how Wikipedia works, has them take the tutorial, requires citing sources, and (better than others) provides a warning about promotion pitfalls. What I think Jytdog is concerned about is how the assignment description jibes with the reflection essays students are writing in their userspace, which talks less about their experience writing for Wikipedia, and more about the social/community aspects of Wikipedia, as well as analyzing users' treatment toward newcomers. If I did not look at the syllabus, and merely looked at their articles and the reaction essays, I could easily see how this could be seen as a social experiment - perhaps not in the strictest sense, but definitely in the "not here to improve the encyclopedia" sense. Also pinging @Bri: who commented on the instructor's talk page. – Train2104 (t • c) 14:27, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Train2104, just to reiterate, the students contributions are intended to improve Wikipedia, nothing else -- even if some Wikipedians find some of their attempts fall short. That, of course, is not exclusive to being asked to reflect on their experience, it can even complement it. Some will be positive, others will be less so -- just like Wikipedians. To step back and look at the big picture, some students attempted to make articles about topics they were interested in and which others found non-notable or promotional. I will be more vigorous about warning students about this in the future, but this is something Wikipedians disagree about all the time. There is no experiment, hoax, vandalism, or damage, just sincere efforts to do their best. -Reagle (talk) 15:44, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
I'm not seeing a problem. Thanks Reagle for the replies. Jytdog, you are wrong about the nothere thing. There is nothing wrong with making a good faith attempt to contribute good content and then observing how other editors react. It's only disruptive if the contributions are not intended to be constructive. Simply being interested in what the community does is not disruptive. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:05, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
I take issue with Reagle's comment these are sincere efforts. If that were true, his students would have accepted my offer to help them, and I would not have been talked about behind my back. I've explained that somewhat, although not in detail in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Decibel Therapeutics. I deserved to know that I was engaging with students who were planning to write about their interactions with me. That, in my view, violated applicable ethics guidelines from Reagle's university. Mduvekot (talk) 21:04, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Hi Mduvekot, my students' are not performing research (i.e., "contributing to general knowledge" and publishing papers) and this is part of an educational activity to learn about Wikipedia by contributing to it; these exclude it from the ambit of research ethics. Instead, I ask them to make sincere efforts to contribute and reflect on their experiences as a Wikipedian, something any Wikipedian can do. They are required to abide by the policies of Wikipedia but I can't guarantee that they will make all Wikipedians happy nor that all the Wikipedians they encounter will be do the same for them.
That said, I am committed to ensuring as productive and positive experience as possible and have been relatively successful over the past few years. I'm disappointed at this turn of events but recall that it stems from the simple issue that some students chose topics that others thought overly promotional. I will provide more guidance about this in the future should I teach this again---this assignment is done and will not teach this course again this year.
Also, in the future, I would require the students to document on their User pages that their participation is part of an assignment to both (a) contribute to and (b) learn about Wikipedia. -Reagle (talk) 22:25, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Reagle You didn't address my the issue I raised. You continue to claim that their contribution is sincere when their behaviour is so demonstrably disingenuous. You seem to be incapable of any insight into what went wrong and your role in this mess. Some signs of compunction would be most welcome at the moment. Mduvekot (talk) 01:18, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
When denying that Northeastern's policy for classroom research applies, you also didn't address "but which will not lead to generalizable knowledge or publication/dissemination of findings outside of the classroom" (emphasis mine). Note the OR. The findings were published outside the classroom: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Mduvekot (talk) 12:20, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
:::::: Mduvekot as a long time Wikipedian, I am sincere in wanting to advance Wikipedia and further students' skills and understanding. I can't definitively speak to others' interior states, but I also sincerely believe my students are making good faith contributions. Two of the things I love most, Wikipedia and teaching, have been amazingly complementary. Among the seventy plus articles students have started, I'm proud of most of them as useful contributions: Circle of Poison from a science student, local and forgotten history as seen in the Boston Society of Vulcans, and even No Holds Bard on the pop-culture front. I am sorry my class had an unusual number of misfires this year; there were some novel circumstances and I've identified how I can improve on the notability of topics and independence of sources.
On the student reflections front, again, until recently, this has been amazingly complementary: students reflect on Wikipedia as nascent Wikipedians and as students of online community -- using the same techniques that we, as more experienced Wikipedians, use to discuss and reflect. For instance, in these reflections I ask students to make use of the Special:Permalink and Special:Diff. Last week, when a student got the import of these tools and how we use them on Wikipedia, she said "that's cool!" Indeed. (You might think such things are trivial, but most students -- and many educators -- at first don't appreciate there is a community of volunteers, that pages have a history tab, and a talk page.) This is one of the most common sentiments in student reflections: being warned off Wikipedia as bunk by teachers but coming to better appreciate the importance of sourcing (even if, for some, still imperfect) and that Wikipedia is an extraordinary collaborative effort. These reflections have informed my own approach when I talk about the importance of Wikipedia and engaging it constructively.
I, nor anyone else I've spoken to or read of (Wikipedians, other instructors, ethics scholars, WikiEd folks), had previously understood or spoken of these reflections as "research" or an ethical concern. Sometimes there are negative sentiments (more so this semester), but they are predominately positive, thoughtful, and even touching. But I'll cut to the point, if there was agreement that on-site reflections are unwelcome, I'll stop. I'd be disappointed because I think it contributes to students' learning and might be of interest to Wikipedians and educators, but I can ask them to instead turn in a paper to me. -Reagle (talk) 09:11, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
  • From what I've seen so far, it's relatively common for students participating in WikiEd to write some sort of reflection or commentary on the article(s) they're editing or reading. Some of these have been added to the talk pages of the articles themselves, however ideally they would be placed somewhere in the student's userspace or in some place off Wikipedia, so they don't fill up the article talk pages. From what I've seen from the lesson plan, there was never any intent to deliberately disrupt Wikipedia nor any plan to manipulate anything from a psychological point of view. I've interacted with Reagle in the past with my main account and he's always taken great pains to follow guidelines, so any errors made by the students are unintentional. I've looked at one of the articles and it does need improvement, but this is actually pretty common with new users in general and with students, especially as students are typically used to writing persuasive essays and academic papers for class. Writing encyclopedia articles is an entirely new beast for them, which is why even before I started working with WikiEd I would usually just move them to the students' userspaces so they could work on them. It's rare that a student isn't willing to try to fix whatever needs fixing with an article. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:16, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I'll quickly make a suggestion I have and then I'm done discussing this. It appears that regulations on human-subject research are about to be relaxed, so my point (it's unethical and should be forbidden) is moot. I'm dismayed, but not interested in pursuing this further. In addition to simply following the consensus at Wikipedia:Student assignments. I would suggest that
  • Improving an article offers better opportunities for engaging with other editors than creating a new article in the Draft: or User: namespaces.
  • Students who write a reflection paper on-wiki should post a note on their user page that clarifies that they are required to write a reflection, with a link to the the instructions for writing the reflection, and a link to the reflection itself.
  • Students who create articles that are part of a course assignment should post a note on the talk page of the article with a link to the course page and a link to the user page of the student who was assigned to work on that page.
  • Perhaps a template exists (I only know of Template:WAP student, which doesn't quite fit) or can be developed that students can use on their user page and the talk page of the articles they work on. I would be willing to help with those, if needed. Mduvekot (talk) 14:30, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, I think it is inappropriate to be nominating other students' articles (Ipsy_(company) and Rue_La_La) for deletion with the claim that "This was created as a class project to probe the behavior of online communities ... not worth wasting more community resources on." I disagree with your former characterization: there is no probe or experiment (see my point above). These students have, or were trying, to be part of the community and spent their resources, as well, trying to make a useful contribution. Over the past few years, prior to this semester, we've contributed over seventy articles; a handful have since fallen due to lack of notability, but each of those were decided and discussed on their individual merit. This semester has been different, for a number of reasons, including an unusual degree of interest in online companies and social media / beauty celebrities. I ask you to slow down a bit, assume good faith, and not think in terms of "the community" versus "newbies." If you feel you've wasted too much time on this issue, it might be better to step back and let others consider the concerns you've raised and my responses. -Reagle (talk) 18:08, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Agree. I just un-prod-ed the two pages linked above (with no prejudice to AfD). If there are other prod-ed pages, please let me know. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:16, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
I did not tag all the articles (I reviewed a bunch of them and left plenty alone); please don't put a framework on this like I prodded unselelectively. I will AfD those two.
User:Reagle a few things:
a) both of my PROD nominations started with "Badly sourced or unsourced; company is just another online retailer." They were primarily about the content. You omitted that. Hm.
b) this has nothing to do with the "community" vs "newbies" - that is your hammer and apparently everything is a nail. I ask you to think about how your class in particular sucks up volunteer time. (that is my hammer, and your class is a nail).
c) And I won't leave your claims here that student articles are created freely, and are not created In order to probe the community's response at all, unchallenged. Both are "truthy".
c1) The framework of their interaction with the en-WP community is very much an experiment which they have to write up when they are done. That creates a context that changes the interactions for the students. They are not "just" here like everybody else (I think reflecting on what happens is important.... but I wonder how much you are making your students aware of their own context as "anthropologists" out exploring WP)
c2) And these students are in the education "game" and within the rules of that game they have to do what is assigned or they are penalized. Yes they can choose the topic freely but that is within a context.
Please don't minimize either piece of the context.
I withdraw the concern about NOTHERE but I do ask you to be more reflective about the impact of your class on volunteer time and to keep in mind that your students are not playing the same game as volunteers in the community, on two levels. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

NPOV problem

Concerned/interested editors and admins should look at WP:Wiki Ed/University of California, Berkeley/Environmental Justice Section 101 (Spring 2017) and evaluate it from WP's WP:NPOV policy. My concern is the general description, which is blatantly anti-Trumpian. I am traveling this week. If this is resolved during that time, I'll be happy. If not, I'll return to comment and to notify those who created the material. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 19:30, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the edits, but it sounds like the subject matter is also subject to discretionary sanctions from an ArbCom case. I think that class assignments should be actively discouraged from entering into DS subjects, because there are too many ways for things to go badly, but if they go there anyway, they need to be formally notified of the DS, using Template:Alert. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:20, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
I just noticed that the same situation has been raised at WP:ANI#POV forks being created as school project. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
From what I see, the Wiki Edu does not require students to submit work for WP:New pages patrol review before moving them into the mainspace. – S. Rich (talk) 00:13, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
There are 6 sections of this course, so let's not focus solely on the one linked. There are likely serious POV-pushing issues in all of them, given what we've found so far. Can someone compile a list of all the articles these students created? (there surely has to be an easier way than checking each one's contributions) – Train2104 (t • c) 01:19, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
@Train2104: The course dashboard has a tab that lists all article's created and edited by editors in that course. It only lists live edits though - sandboxed content isn't included. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 07:12, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
About submitting drafts to New Page Patrol, it would probably make better sense to do it through Articles for Creation. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Hfrankl self-declared shared class account

Someone left this comment on my talkpage indicating that the account Hfrankl (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a shared account used for an unspecified class at an unspecified institution. - Bri (talk) 22:44, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

@Bri: It's that same Berkeley environmental justice class that's causing a mess all over the place. – Train2104 (t • c) 23:31, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
That kind of account is actually a policy violation, per WP:NOSHARING. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:02, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
Looking into this first thing in the morning. Will try to address the immediate issue of at least one account in this class being used by multiple people, and to determine whether the training and/or other communications with instructors needs to be clearer on this regard. It's common for students to work together on a single article, and from the course page it looks like students have individual accounts, but for whatever reason (e.g. collaborating in physical space on a single computer) this group (hopefully just this group) wound up using a single person's. Of course, this isn't an excuse, but rather a likely explanation. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:50, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
@Bri, Train2104, and Tryptofish: This seems to be a matter of one group of students not reading the instructions. The instructor did select that they are working in groups, which automatically creates the "Best practices for working in groups" section of the timeline. It's under "week 5" of their course page's timeline. Specifically:
  • "Wikipedia doesn't allow multiple people to edit from different devices at the same time. If you're working together in person, one person should add the work to the Sandbox. If you are all working independently, make small edits and save often to avoid "editing conflicts" with classmates. Make sure that you're logged in under your own Wikipedia account while editing in your classmate's sandbox to ensure your edits are recorded.
  • Don't create a group account for your project. Group accounts are prohibited."
As usual, feedback is welcome for how to make this clearer. It's not something we see happen very often, though, among Wiki Ed supported classes (i.e. classes in which students are given this text). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:19, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
One thing i did notice: Week 5 does indeed have a warning related to creating group accounts, yet the course page instructs students to create an account in week 2. The warning seems a bit late in that regard. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 01:50, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Gender and Labor in Vermont - class project?

The newly-created article Gender and Labor in Vermont is being edited by a wide range of equally-new editors, mostly fairly sensibly and with sources, each working on a separate section. It looks as if it's a class project - too much of a coincidence for so many newbies to be editing such a very specific topic in the last couple of days. Not a particular problem, but no evidence of any links being made to the course or instructor: seemed worth mentioning it here. PamD 22:54, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

@PamD: I think you're spot-on with this being a class project. My best guess would be that the editing is done by Middlebury College, a college located in Vermont. The account LaurieEssig seems to belong to an "Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies" linked to this college while the other accounts seem to be students at the same college. Combining that with the subject and location the article focusses on i'd say this is clearly a class project. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 01:35, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Satchidananda Panda

I gradually became aware of a class project when an editor created a nearly blank page named Satchidananda Panda. A reviewer tagged the page for speedy deletion. Another editor removed the tag and added a little, but not much, to the article. My first assumption was that there was one human behind the two accounts, and a different account was removing the speedy tag than had created the article because the creating editor is not permitted to remove a speedy tag. After minimal information was added to the page, so that it looked like a very incomplete article, I moved it to draft space. I filed a sockpuppetry report. Use of multiple accounts, as experienced editors here know, is too common by editors trying to publish promotional articles. Fortunately, the sockpuppet investigation process appears to be backlogged, and has now been put on hold based on my follow-up report that it appears to be a class project rather than sockpuppetry. One of the editors contested the speedy deletion and stated that this is an undergraduate class project, and they are only trying to get an A in the course. First, the draft has become a reasonable article that is the work of three accounts. It is not promotional; its subject appears to be a notable academic person. A class project is a plausible reason why three humans would be working only on one article, regardless of whether the instructor was following proper procedures in assigning the project. At this point, my concern is that the instructor didn't give the students adequate orientation to how to develop a Wikipedia article, such as to develop it in user space or draft space so that the placeholder or stub will not be speedied. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:08, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Other than the need to improve the formatting of the references, it is in my opinion now ready for review and acceptance. My concern is not with the draft page, only the process. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:13, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
Robert McClenon - the students are enrolled in Biological Clocks and were supposed to be working on a draft that students in a previous iteration of the class created two years ago User:Diana He819/sandbox. It seems like the missed the fact that they were supposed to enroll on the Wiki Ed Dashboard; had they done so, they would have been prompted to do various training modules (which, hopefully, would have eased their transition) and which would have clearly identified them as students.

I'm glad that they have worked things out with your help. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:30, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I have requested that the sockpuppet report be closed. It will be a good idea to note that one of the risks of inadequately prepared class projects is that if they all work on the same page without explaining what they are doing, and don't know what they are doing (e.g., by creating an empty placeholder in article space), it may look like multiple account abuse. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:53, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

One-sentence drafts about lichens

At Articles for Creation, there were two user sandboxes tagged for review, each of which contained a single sentence on lichens. Is this part of an educational assignment? The sandboxes are User:Btdyer/sandbox and User:Bombus polaris/sandbox. If these students are taking part in a class assignment, they have not been properly oriented, because single sentences on an existing topic should not go through AFC review, but should just be added with the appropriate reference to an existing article. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:01, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there is an appropriate existing article. They should probably go into a Glossary of lichen morphology, analogous to Glossary of plant morphology. I'd be happy to create it and flesh it out a bit around the student contributions; let me know when we've ID'd the class and let's see what can be done. Choess (talk) 11:12, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Podetium by Youdontknowbeans (talk · contribs) might be part of the same class project. Choess (talk) 11:25, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I think there are a couple more:
All of these are created in the last few days, and all of these cite "Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest " as a source (The same as the sandbox article). The chance that four new editors would decide to create a new article on lichens using the same source is rather low. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 12:55, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
The three listed above were created in article space, and presumably will remain there unless they are proposed for deletion or nominated for deletion. The two that I reviewed are in draft space. That would imply that the students were not given consistent instructions. (Putting them in article space was not incorrect. Putting them in draft space was not incorrect.) Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Oh, you sweet summer child. I assure you that students are perfectly capable of generating inconsistencies even with a complete and consistent set of directions to follow. Choess (talk) 04:54, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Well, yes. If we think that we have covered Murphy's Law so that some particular mistake cannot be made, it will be made anyway, as well as the ones that could have been made. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:19, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
Adding Draft:Cyphellae... Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:58, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
It doesn't look to me like a registered class, since there should, at the very least, be an incoming link from the course page to their user page. It's possible that they're part of a class but didn't register (and thus, didn't have access to training material. Given the very limited contributions, I think the only way to track down the instructor would be to ask them. Any other thoughts, Ryan? Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Indeed. Not one we know of. Students in Wiki Ed classes also have their sandbox created with an alternative template that [all but] ensures it isn't accidentally sent to AfC. If we can find out the name/email of the instructor and/or the class and school names we may be able to track them down and set them up with some resources. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:56, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I think I can guess—there can't be that many lichenology courses out there. Emailed the instructor of the possible course and cc'd both of you. Happy to remain a point of contact for this. Choess (talk) 19:13, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
In the mean time, no one should feel any obligation to pass one-sentence pages out of AfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Oops, think I guessed wrong. Trying again. Choess (talk) 00:05, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
OK, found the instructor and put him in touch with WEF. Will try to find a good solution to consolidate these articles. Choess (talk) 04:54, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Just following up on this to note that we've reached out to the instructor to offer support. Thanks Choess for finding him and putting us in touch. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:56, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Environmental Justice class project - update from Wiki Ed

Thanks everyone for your patience as we work through the issues with this class's contributions. After a good video conversation with the professor today, we have mutually agreed on the following course of action in the short term:

  1. Wiki Ed staff have now moved problematic articles back into user sandboxes. Students will continue to make edits to their articles to fulfill the assignment only in the sandboxes and will not edit in mainspace. During Wiki Ed's normal course-closure process this summer, we will move any appropriate content from sandboxes into mainspace; inappropriate content will be left in sandboxes.
  2. Articles that are already deleted or at AFD now are mostly problems with forking. Students will work in sandboxes to suggest how to integrate some of what they've done into existing articles rather than creating new articles. Students will ask Wiki Ed staff to review drafts in the sandboxes before moving anything into existing mainspace articles, and will only move these sections to mainspace after getting an okay from Wiki Ed staff. At this point, where AfDs are already underway, we have not moved any additional articles back to sandboxes, deferring to the community's ongoing discussions.
  3. Some students did follow directions and have good content on Wikipedia. These students will be continuing to make minor edits (adding additional citations, fixing formatting issues, etc.) until the due date for their work, which is April 24.
  4. The professor will grade students on the work they did, *not* on what ends up in the article namespace, so students won't need to worry about their grades if their work remains in sandboxes.

Please let Wiki Ed staff and the instructor know if you see major problems that have not yet been addressed, or if students continue to make problematic edits, edit war, etc., and we will handle it.

In the long term, we're looking forward to a productive discussion with User:EJustice on how to ensure better adherence to Wikipedia rules and guidelines for future classes like this.

@Tryptofish, Srich32977, Excirial, Bri, Jytdog, Train2104, I am One of Many, and Seraphim System: Pinging some of the editors who have been involved with the various content-specific discussions of this class (my apologies for omitting anyone). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:53, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that, Ryan. I think that you handled it very well, and it's a very good outcome.
While I'm here, I'll mention something related to your question above, about suggestions to make the instructions about not creating shared accounts clearer. (I also think that the reply by another editor above, about making sure the instructions precede account creation, is a good point.) I'll say it here in case other editors have feedback about it, but it also grows out of the conversation you and I had recently on my user talk, about the training materials versus WP:ASSIGN. Something that I think the information page does a little better than the training materials is framing its cautions in terms that "get inside the heads" of the intended audience. You've been pointing out how some students have been following instructions, and others failing to follow. I know from my own experience teaching that students tend to tune out formal-sounding warnings, but pay close attention to warnings framed in terms of possible bad repercussions for them. Instead of saying that shared accounts are prohibited, I suggest saying that shared accounts are prohibited and can get you blocked from editing. I think that addition will help, more than one would expect. And it would be a good idea to look for other places in the training materials where you can do the same thing. For instructors, it's similarly helpful to point out repeatedly how student non-compliance can lead to bad experiences for the students and unwanted attention from other editors. I know that there is a natural tendency to want to make WMF materials sound "professional" and thus a bit restrained, but here is a situation where a bit of IAR will go a long way. Thanks again! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:02, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree about issuing warnings framed in terms of possible bad repercussions for them. The effect of doing that is just making it that much easier to block students by citing to the warnings found in the materials. Wikipedia is supposed to be welcoming editors not threatening them for non-compliance. In my opinion, the problem is from our end. If students are to be held accountable for learning the materials, have a quiz on the materials before they edit, and make sure they know the rules, and make sure the results of the quiz are part of their grade. Possibly make it so they can take the quiz over and over until they get it right. Blocking students or the instructor is not the solution. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:54, 15 April 2017 (UTC) [revised 13:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)]
In my not inconsiderable experience of teaching teenagers and young adults, I've found that rules are far more likely to be followed if the student can be given some understanding of why a rule applies to them. Treating them like rational human beings who can cooperate in their own learning is far more productive in the long run than threatening them with dire consequences if they don't obey. In the case of shared accounts, for example, the important point to stress is that contributions are the intellectual property of the individual editor and we have a default position of ensuring that attribution occurs to the individual (even if pseudonymous) editor. That is the real reason why we insist that accounts are individual, and not shared. Similarly, a review of learning ("quiz") does nothing per se to improve learning. As one of my teaching colleagues pointed out many years ago, "You don't fatten a pig by weighing it". I do know that review can identify weaknesses in teaching materials and methodology, so please don't assume I'm dismissing its value. It's just not the tool for the job you're suggesting it be used for. I would certainly agree that continual reflection on teaching materials is an essential part of an educator's job and I commend the Wiki Ed staff for their efforts. --RexxS (talk) 11:57, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
One who commits a traffic violation does not deserve to be treated like a murderer.
@RexxS: Yes. I agree with most of what you said, including the importance of explaining why following certain rules is important. I wasn't disagreeing about shared accounts--I agree they should be prohibited. I was disagreeing about having bad repercussions for students. (I have changed my above statement to make that clear.) I have had a number of years of teaching youngsters too, and indeed they respond much better to positive reinforcement, encouragement, appreciation and the ability to gracefully make mistakes as opposed to what they got way too much of here: negativity, harsh pejorative and undeserved criticism and the threat of punishment.
We'll have to agree to disagree about the value of quizzes for learning and/or assessment. I'm not suggesting we give quizzes--although I don't see any harm of making them for those who want to check their own progress in learning the rules. My main point that I have been stressing over and over, is that we have to be more welcoming to new editors (including students and instructors) and be supportive mentors, following the five pillars including "anyone can edit", civility/respect, and allowing new editors to make bold contributions. Instead of biting them or treating them as described at the right (from: WP:BRICKS).
I too commend the Wiki Ed staff for their work and having to put up with us. --David Tornheim (talk) 13:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
@David: I'm sorry I was unclear: I have no intrinsic criticism of quizes as a form of assessment – in fact I'm currently engaged in trying to help an eminent fellow Wikimedian, Charles Matthews in creating banks of quizzes to use while training new editors. I just don't believe that a student learns anything more about a topic simply by taking a quiz on it. I'm happy to accept that your view may differ from mine on that. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:00, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
@RexxS: I just noticed there are quizzes in the instruction materials, such as [1]. That's good. I'm going to spend some more looking over all those materials to better understand how the courses are designed, what the instructors and students learn up front, what they are expected to do and how editors like myself can help make their experience better. Rather than say, "read WP:OR", I might say, "Please review [2] from your course materials and then also review WP:OR which explains it in more detail." I hope other editors will do the same in helping these students. Nice chatting with you. --David Tornheim (talk) 14:33, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
  • @Ryan (Wiki Ed): I do feel the approach used was a good choice, and along the lines of what I was recommending at some of the WP:AfDs. And I apologize to the instructor and to the students for how unwelcoming our editors have been to their hard work. I hope more classes in the political realm take place, not fewer. Our articles will greatly improve if we have academics and experts working on them, with more eyes, not fewer.
I would like to see Wiki Ed do more outreach to get editors, like myself, who want to help students rather than get them blocked and have their work deleted. I would hope most Wikipedia editors would want that rather than the nastiness that these students and the instructor had to endure.
The incivility and failure to follow core policies of welcoming and working with new users comes from our end and we need to take responsibility for our failure to be more welcoming and supportive of these students' hard work. I can certainly understand that WikiEd does not want to advertise our problems with following core policies of "Wikipedia the Encyclopedia anyone can edit", civility and be bold. --David Tornheim (talk) 00:15, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Encouraging a group of newbie, passionate editors, led by a passionate newbie editor, to edit on politically charged topics, is a recipe for disaster on a bunch of levels, both for the community and for the education program. The instructions the education program gives explicitly warns against editing this kind of topic, because of that. What you write here could not be less clue-ful. I encourage you to engage with the people who work in the education program and listen to them before you go campaigning about this further. - Jytdog (talk) 00:57, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Comment I want to clarify my comments on editing contentious topics - of course every editor can edit any article they want, that is beyond dispute. But do you want to edit in the discretionary sanctions area is a different question. I whole-heartedly support editors who have that level of commitment to creating balanced articles in this area, but it is much more difficult then editing "calmer" articles (especially with a broken consensus clause that is currently under review.) I don't want to misrepresent this to new editors - it is harder, and very difficult to get new edits in under the current rules (even edits that are policy-compliant). Seraphim System (talk) 14:38, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
  • So today, here is what User:EJustice wrote in Wikipedia today:
  • At ANI:
    • note including Their [the students'] constructiveness and meekness in the face of hostile editorial responses that seem at times to be motivated by a dislike of topics related to race or class is admirable.
    • note including We are finding that material related to women, indigenous communities, people of color, and low-income people is being more heavily targeted for criticism than other material both at the full-article level as well as sub-sections and focusing only on sourcing, which is not the main problem with what this class is doing. As has been said many times already.
    • diff denying the edit warring behavior of students and again missing the point of what is going so wrong - namely that the class is writing essays advocating for environmental justice; they are not ~trying ~ to write neutral encyclopedia content. It is one massive abuse of SOAPBOX, multiplied by 180.
    • diff, their last edit today, trying to add wikilinks to WP:Systemic bias, and which points up the real issue here. As the two quotes above illustrate, EJustice blames "systemic bias" for rejection of the POV edits by students. There is nothing new under the sun in WP, and new editors who come to WP with a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission (namely, that WP is an appropriate site for advocacy) are always delighted to discover that essay and use it to as a further excuse to ignore the feedback that they are violating core WP policies and guidelines. The awkward thing here (which is a new thing under the sun!) is that this particular POV pusher is leading a class of 180 people under the aegis of the education program.
  • !keep vote at an AfD, ignoring the deletion rationale and not considering the essay in light of any policies and guidelines.
  • At an admin talk page, complaining about deletion of copyvio content (echoing the same complaint they made today at ANI here), with no regard for the actual problem, namely that we cannot host COPVIO content in WP.
That is what they did today. As others have noted at ANI, we would already be moving toward an indef per WP:NOTHERE, if this person were not here under the education program. Jytdog (talk) 00:00, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
@Jytdog: And the students are recruiting meat to participate in the AFD's. I'm not sure if the instructor encouraged this, didn't say anything, or discouraged this. – Train2104 (t • c) 01:10, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm not surprised that some editors have been looking for reasons to re-frame what I said as though it were a recommendation to threaten students and to fail to explain the reasoning to students. Yes, and I smell bad, too. Anyway, what I actually said was nonetheless good advice. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:36, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
  • One of the students posted on my talk page today: Because our project are required to present on a wiki page, it might not work if we move it to the user space. I don't know if the student misunderstands something, or if their grade actually depends on them getting edits to stick. I could see how communications could go wrong in a class of 180 people and i hope that is what happened... Jytdog (talk) 06:22, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

There are a lot of important issues/questions coming up here. Wiki Ed is committed to learning from this experience and we appreciate the feedback the community has provided about the class, our processes, and our training materials. Our priority is on supporting classes so that they make positive contributions to Wikipedia. Since April and May are among the busiest months for student editing, our priority needs to be on content.

This specific class's assignment is finished in a few days. If content issues remain, please continue to flag them and we will continue working to help. But as there are thousands of other students actively contributing, I would like to request that we put on hold the bigger picture/meta issues until the summer (i.e. what went wrong, how problems could be avoided, and the best way to address such problems). In the summer there are fewer active classes, so we have the time to both engage in discussion and, based on that discussion, to make changes to our processes and training materials so that they can be in place for the next cohort of classes in the fall. We've pledged to come back to this in the summer, and will ping involved editors here (less anyone who expresses that they do not want to be pinged). The instructor has likewise agreed to revisit this when things quiet down. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:38, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

  • Just a note that problems are continuing with the students edit warring, meatpuppetry, etc. in discretionary sanction topics with 1RR such as at Pesticide drift and leaching in the Central Valley of California. This is extremely difficult for individual editors to deal with, especially considering the course page says the class was supposed to have wrapped up last week. I'm all being patient with students who are put in difficult situations by their professors, but this is getting to be more of a mess. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:08, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Statement by Wiki Ed regarding AE

Hi all,

A few words about this AE situation on behalf of the Wiki Education Foundation, the non-profit that provides support to instructors and students in the Education Program at institutions in the United States and Canada. We agreed to support this class at Berkeley, and as such feel like we should leave a comment regarding the ongoing AE.

Over the years, we've learned a lot about what does and doesn't work in a Wikipedia-based assignment, and we've developed a number of technical tools and processes to guide instructors and to set students up for success. We continually update our best practices based on our own experiences as well as community and instructor feedback. As I've mentioned elsewhere, we will most certainly be engaging in discussion with the community to figure out how we can update our training, onboarding, best practices, or other forms of support so that we're doing everything we can on this end to avoid situations like this in the future. I've requested that we postpone these forward-thinking discussions until the summer, since we're in the busiest time of the year for student editing right now, and we'll have more time in the summer not just to discuss, but to make changes and implement best practices prior to onboarding the fall term's classes. Already, however, we've learned a couple concrete lessons from this experience. For example, in the past we treated the ‘general description’ of the course as a space for the instructor to frame their course as they saw fit, and instead relied on the specific Wikipedia-related assignment details and conversations with the instructor to guide our topic-based advice. Here we realized it's something we need to pay more attention to. I look forward to other ways we could improve our processes when we revisit this in the summer.

When we began discussing this class with EJustice, he had already been planning a Wikipedia assignment and was referred to us by a colleague. Since it dealt with controversial subjects, we discussed some of the finer points of NPOV and on-wiki advocacy and made recommendations regarding use of sandboxes, article scope, existing vs. new articles, etc., to which he was receptive. Over the last few weeks, a number of editors have raised concerns about the class, as outlined by Jytdog. As community concerns mounted, we went into "triage mode", working to evaluate student contributions and try to prevent additional problems, moving a content back to sandboxes, and having additional conversations with EJustice to further explain and emphasize community concerns, NPOV, etc. We also made specific requests/recommendations regarding student activity moving forward. We thought we had reached an understanding and he planned to take our advice, but the problems continued. In one of our conversations, once problems had become particularly pronounced, we agreed on the steps I posted here. Students were only to make minor main space edits for the duration of the class, and any contribution marked as problematic was to continue exclusively in sandboxes. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.

If we suspect early on that a class won't follow our best practices, we strongly discourage them from undertaking the assignment at all or recommend alternative projects, and make it clear that if they move forward as-is, we cannot commit staff time to supporting a poorly conceived project (this is quite rare, and when it happens, they nearly always decide not to start the project or quickly realize why it was a bad idea). In this case, it seemed they would follow best practices, and so we agreed to provide support. What we've not encountered before over the course of several years and hundreds of classes, is an instructor who repeatedly reassures us that he is going to follow our advice and then fail to do so.

At this point, the assignment is technically over (as of yesterday), so there shouldn't be any additional issues. If this is all due to misunderstanding, I hope we can learn how to avoid it in the future. If it's a matter of EJustice disagreeing with particular ways in which Wikipedia policy/guidelines are typically applied/interpreted, our options in a support capacity are clearly limited. Ultimately, while we can try to head off problematic classes, take great pains to try to explain Wikipedia's policies, and to steer classes in the right direction, we cannot force anybody to do anything. This sort of situation puts us (and everyone involved) in a difficult position.

I'm posting not to opine or influence this AE, but rather to assure the community that we are absolutely committed to doing everything we can to help educators and students understand and embrace Wikipedia policies and guidelines. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:27, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this. We do look forward to discussing this further when you are all less busy. I will post at link at AE so folks are aware. Jytdog (talk) 03:14, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. And just for reference, I think everyone involved here knows that Wiki Ed isn't at fault for the situation, and indeed did everything in their power to try to fix it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:26, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
As someone involved in this from the beginning, I'll echo that WikiEd is not responsible for this issue and has made serious efforts in attempting to resolve it, within your own limitations. I'll also note that the fact that this has not happened before is a credit to WikiEd. When the time comes, I'd be glad to help review the process to see if there are improvements that could be made to prevent future occurrences. The WordsmithTalk to me 18:15, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
Just a note - Ryan acknowledged that in the past they didn't pay much attention to course descriptions, and that they will change that going forward. The course description here was a gynormous red flag that whatever else was going on training-wise, the instructor had clearly stated plans to use WP for advocacy. It will be good to talk more in the summer about what other "signs" to pay mind to and how to address them. That is a discussion for later. Jytdog (talk) 18:25, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
Exactly so. It reverses the "find sources and summarize them" standard of article writing described in beginners guides. Instead they started with a position, then looked for sources to back it up. The students' grades were contingent on their ability to do so. Just incompatible with our process. - Bri (talk) 19:44, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
Like other editors here, I want to say thank you and it's not your fault to Ryan and the rest of WikiEd. I look forward to discussing this, this summer. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
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