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Page of interest

Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Assignments might contain something valuable, but it's written to a certain audience. I like this page because it expects professors, Wikipedians, students, ambassadors and the curious will all read it. Biosthmors (talk) 18:05, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Question about usernames

I know of at least one course where students were required to post their work under their real names. What is the feeling about this? Is it a good idea or a bad idea? Is there a policy about student usernames, or is it up to the individual professor? --MelanieN (talk) 00:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Although it's a wall-o-text, there's considerable discussion of that at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I oppose students using, or even posting, their real names, for all the well-known privacy reasons. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:36, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
People are free to use their real name if they wish. It has pluses and minuses. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:44, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) In general, true, of course. But we have to be concerned about cases where the professor, not understanding how things work here, tells students they all have to use their real names. Also, we need to make sure that students can understand the pluses and minuses before they make a choice that they might regret later. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

There's no policy related to whether or not students should post their work under their real name, because there are currently no policies that specifically govern the work of students on Wikipedia. In classes I am involved with, I typically explain the benefits and risks of both real names and pseudonyms and the professors typically let students pursue the path they prefer. In most cases, I would view this as a best practice. However, I don't think it would be appropriate to try to have a codified Wikipedia policy that says "Students must be allowed to use pseudonyms if they desire." If a professor thinks that requiring students to operate under their real names presents a pedagogical benefit important enough for the professor to make that choice, it should be their call - they are the professor, and making that sort of call is their job. All American universities have procedures in place that students can use if they feel a professors assignment is unethical, unfair, or otherwise fucked (and I'm guessing this is true pretty much everywhere else as well.) So I think we should strongly emphasize that educating students about the benefits of each option and letting them decide for themselves is best practice, but not try to make some sort of ironclad rule. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:55, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Consulting those of us who contributed to this essay

Currently, there is a link to the essay page edit history in the "Advice to students" section, suggesting that they can contact any of us individually if they feel that they are being coerced into making contributions. I am having difficulty coming up with a better suggestion, but I'm uncomfortable with doing it that way. Just as I (like many of us) don't want to be an unpaid TA, it never occurred to me that I would be signing up for that by making edits here. What if someone vandalizes the page and it gets reverted, but the student naively tries to contact the vandal? What if the student urgently contacts someone who is on Wiki-break, who fails to respond? Should we, instead, create a category of editors who want to take on that role, and link to the category page? Should we, instead, link to the address for e-mailing ArbCom, or OTRS? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm struggling with the same concerns, but don't come up with a solution. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
I think I've got it ... ask them instead to post to this talk page. Theoretically, we'll all have it watchlisted? Alternatly, post to the ENB? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:41, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, both good ideas. Good point about inadvertently reaching out to the vandal. :) SlimVirgin (talk) 23:43, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks! Yes, this talk page seems like a workable option, although I think a case can be made for something more formal or where the editors who would respond would be more vetted (but what?). I'm ambivalent about the noticeboard, because it will look to the student like a place where lots of people are commenting, and we have to realize that such students will be very nervous about being found out by the instructor. Just imagine the concerns about retribution, and the desire to be able to talk to someone privately. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:55, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Language regarding sandboxing

originally titled "I think this essay should avoid using language that seems to strongly suggest or mandate that students be given the option of existing only in a sandbox," which apparently breaks scrolling on some browsersKevin Gorman (talk) 01:29, 14 December 2012 (UTC), So, I can't provide an example that has come to fruition yet, because the class will be running next semester, but I see significant problems in stressing to students that they should/must be given the option of working solely in a sandbox in all cases. In discussions with professors, a decent number of them see the potential of their students having to interact with a pre-existing community, adapt to its social norms, and engage in discussion with other Wikipedians about their own edits, (including things like having to reach consensus about WP:NPOV issues with other editors) as an active benefit of using a Wikipedia-based assignment. Much of academia is about participating in communities of practice, but this is a skill that undergraduates rarely get any chance to develop. To me, I can definitely see how this could be considered an important aspect of a Wikipedia-based assignment.

I know that what I just described doesn't match up with the experiences most of you have had with education program classes in the past, especially those of you who have had excessively negative experiences. However, I think that if you think about this suggestion, most of you can probably see how that could in fact represent an important benefit to students of participating in a well-run Wikipedia-based assignment. Although I don't have a completed example of this sort of assignment to point to currently, I will be helping run a class at Berkeley next semester where the professor definitely very much sees this as a large part of the point of the assignment - she doesn't want her students in a walled garden, and probably wouldn't use a Wikipedia-based assignment if that somehow became a requirement. (And for reasons I'll elaborate on later, I think she is absolutely correct in her assessment of this for this particular class.)

Although this kind of class may currently be a rarity, I believe its frequency will be increasing - greatly - as the program begins to mature. I would encourage y'all, in developing this essay, to do so in a way that acknowledges (or at least doesn't try to explicitly forbid) the validity of this sort of assignment. I know it's not the kind of assignment that most of you have regularly seen in the education program so far, but I think it's going to be a fairly common form of educational assignment going forward, and I think it is one that has the potential to present a lot of good for all parties involved. I'm not going to edit parts of the essay related to this kind of thing myself without more discussion first, but I can tell you that if this ends up including strong language against this sort of assignment it, unfortunately, won't be a useful tool for this class next semester - or the many others like it that will eventually occur. I need to head out, but I'll drop by again later with more details about the class I mentioned, which will hopefully sway some opinions. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

And also, to be clear, this particular class will be part of a wider program at my University where one of the explicit goals is having students conduct engaged scholarship and interact with non-University organizations. The ethical implications that this has here apply to almost every other course in the program equally, and have been cleared by the highest level of administration and faculty at my school. Students will have the option of opting out of this still, simply by choosing not to take the class (since the assignment will be introduced on the first day.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:22, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I see the sandbox thing as a potentially desirable option, but not something we should require. I have, in fact, had some good experiences with students editing directly in article space, and I've seen students have good experiences interacting with other editors. I also agree that conscientious instructors sometimes specifically want the kind of interactions that only happen in regular editing, and they are right to want it. I'd rather figure out ways to avoid the bad experiences, without treating every class as a presumed bad experience in the making. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
In discussions with professors, a decent number of them see the potential of their students having to interact with a pre-existing community, adapt to its social norms, and engage in discussion with other Wikipedians about their own edits, ... Two problems: 1) a decent number of "us" are having problems with a decent number of "them" and their approach which is not working, and 2) in my experience the students are not interacting with the community and learning about collaborative editing anyway (that is one of the big problems); encouraging them to sandbox is unlikely to have any impact on how much they interact. They start editing a few days before term-end, and drop their article in just before it's due and they will be graded, and they rarely engage or respond on article talk or user talk. They have been working in and creating walled gardens anyway; if there had been any decent measure of interaction between EP participants and established editors, I might understand the concern. As it is, I am all in favor of having them a) edit in sandbox, while b) noticing the article talk page where they are editing in sandbox. Could you shorten your section heading? It scrolls across my screen making it hard for me to enter an edit summary. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:33, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Only if they are spending significant time on Wikipedia and will actually engage with the community should they be working in the main space. Else, if the assignment is small and the engagement slight they should work in the sand box. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine)
Alright now class (Sandy), here is your reading assignment for today: User talk:FutureSocialNeuroscientist#Good work!. The problem is that this happens too infrequently, but in fact there are exceptions to the generalization. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:43, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Oh, my, there's one of my problem profs. So, the term is over (syllabus says last assignment was 12/11), and this student has a GA nom up anyway, which could be a good sign; will the student stick around? Let's hope so. If so, that proves the point (they can move it out of sandbox after getting their grade if they want). And, we aren't saying they can't move things out of sandbox ever; just encouraging them to begin there and stay there if they choose. I hope you'll keep an eye on the GA nom, btw; isn't Wilhelmina Will a DYKer? Can we please shorten this section head? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:54, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
The decision today was to make the page a GA. My own independent opinion is to agree with that decision; please feel free to tar and feather me if you disagree. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandy: I agree with you that a large number of classes that we've had so far have produced mediocre (or worse) results and involved little engagement with the community. Problems are especially bad in areas that involve medrs. However, I don't think that all classes are inherently doomed to mediocrity. I understand your concerns that working in the main space may present difficulties for other Wikipedians (and Wikipedia as a whole,) and agree with you that encouraging extensive use of sandboxes is generally desirable, especially in medical areas. I see absolutely no problem with incorporating strong wording encouraging the use of sandboxes, and would even consider supporting a policy covering medrs-specific areas that would require it until we figure out a better way to handle them - for the protection of Wikipedia. However, as this essay stands currently, it's not encouraging the use of sandboxes for the protection of Wikipedia. It is strongly implying that any option other than letting students exist exclusively in sandboxes is unethical because of concerns about the coercion of students. This language was added to this essay by Slim, who has elsewhere explicitly said that she considers requiring students to work in mainspace to present a categorical ethical issue. (I'm pointing out who added it just to show that I'm not reading in to the language something that isn't there.) For the reasons I outlined above, this is not the case. The appropriate place to include language encouraging students be given the option to, where appropriate, choose to only use sandboxes is not in a section directed to students - it's in a section directed to professors. And the appropriate way to frame it (at least if this is intended to be a mainstream essay, or one distributed to students) is not as an ethical issue involving the coercion of students. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:46, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

We have two separate issues here, and we ought to treat them separately on the essay page. One is the ethical issue of students giving informed consent to contributing under Wikipedia's terms of use. In my opinion, this is a genuine ethical issue, but we don't solve it by telling students that they have to write in a sandbox, or by telling students to figure it out themselves. The other issue is the one about whether to write in a sandbox or in article space (and I already said what I think about that), but that's really a separate issue from informed consent. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:58, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
But I think you are exactly correct: the right place to discuss sandboxes is under advice to instructors. It should be a teaching decision, not a student-by-student one. As for informed consent, I'd like there to be something for students (as opposed to instructors) to be able to indicate that they do not give consent, if that's the way that they feel – and instructors need to be able to figure out a way to deal with that if it happens. (In other words, it's between the instructor and the student, and Wikipedia should not insert itself by taking the instructor's side.) --Tryptofish (talk) 02:03, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I pretty much agree with you. We should, somewhere in the instructor section, insert language about sandboxes that encourages instructors to allow their use where possible and desired by students. We should also, somewhere in the instructor section, insert language talking about the possibility of students objecting to participation in a Wikipedia-based assignment and encouraging them to plan their response ahead of time, before a student actually does so. (And their response could be in the form of an alternate assignment, an agreement to use sandboxen only, or pretty much whatever else they see fit. If the instructor's response doesn't satisfy the student, the issue becomes between the student and the instructor, or if they can't reach a satisfactory resolution, the student and whatever grievance process their school has set up. Not between us and the instructor or us and the student.) We should, somewhere in the student section, insert language that clearly explains what contributing to Wikipedia will involve (re: license, etc,) that encourages them to talk to their instructor if they have a problem participating in the assignment, but doesn't imply that such an assignment is somehow categorically unethical. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
The essay doesn't say students must work exclusively in sandboxes, but that they must be given the option, because all Wikipedians have that option. It means they can ask that their work be deleted once they're done with it, which all Wikipedians have the right to do. If we don't offer the option, then the issue of whether they've given free and informed consent to the releases kicks in, and if they haven't the releases are arguably invalid.
I think that advice needs to be in the student section to make sure they see it, though if we want to repeat it in the instructors' section that's fine. I like Tryptofish's idea of the students signing consent forms. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Students participating in educational assignments have two different sets of expectations - and requirements - placed upon them. One set of standards is placed upon them by us, and one set of standards is placed upon them by the institution they are attending. We can - and should - make sure that the same standards applied to other Wikipedians are applied to them. And we should make clear to students what these expectations are. (I know we generally frown on welcoming bots, but maybe we should even do this with a bot that posts a standardized message on the talk pages of all users who sign up for a class via the education extension?) But we cannot - and should not - try to dictate the set of standards that is applied to them by the institution they attend; that's between them and their institution. We can tell them that if they have a problem with the expectations we have of them as Wikipedians that they should bring it up with their instructor - and we can tell even explicitly mention that if they can't reach an acceptable resolution with their instructor that they can pursue whatever grievance process their school has set up. But we can't go further than that.
Students are also not the only people who have standards placed upon them when editing Wikipedia that go beyond what the basic standards of being a Wikipedian - and in no other situation does Wikipedia try to intervene in dictating what those standards are allowed to be. I think I'm currently actively covered by five different non-disclosure agreements related to various things - which means there is a lot of information I cannot post on Wikipedia that a Wikipedian not covered by those could. A Wikipedian on active duty in the US military can't post certain political opinions. A Wikipedian in Saudi Arabia can't post pornographic images. A Wikipedian in Germany can't make a post denying that the Holocaust occurred from my understanding of it, anyway. In none of these other situations does Wikipedia try to intervene and dictate what the second set of standards is allowed to be, and we shouldn't try to do so here, either. The issue is between the Wikipedian and the group issuing the second set of standards.
In terms of license release issues, I would suggest that that's an appropriate issue for the WMF's legal team to consider - not us. I will explicitly ping someone at WMF directing them towards this concern. I can see how that's a potentially valid concern, but that's why WMF has a legal department. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:39, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm out of place, or if I misunderstood something, but I signed up to be an ambassador so that I could discuss changes to the grading rubric used by the professor's class I've helped. Is having this sort of conversation with the professor "out of place" for average Wikipedians? I'd think not, as long as they are super polite about it. Biosthmors (talk) 02:57, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
I like Kevin's idea of asking WMF Counsel for an opinion about consent forms and license release. I'm happy to withhold further judgment of my own until we hear back from them. Perhaps it's true that if an instructor wants a student to contribute against the student's wishes, the student's concerns must be worked out with the educational institution and not with Wikipedia. Perhaps Wikipedia's prerogatives in the matter are limited to enforcing our own policies and guidelines, and perhaps the message that appears near the save button for edits is as far as that goes – but I do not know whether that changes if there are outside pressures to hit the save button.
As for Biosthmors' question, the way I see it is that you are free to do it if you want to, but if other editors prefer not to, they cannot be expected or compelled to do so, and we ought to be clear that it is never compulsory. Likewise, any input that Wikipedians give to instructors about grading is not binding upon the educational institution.
As for sandbox editing, I prefer to have the advice in the section for instructors, because we should not be setting up a situation where we seem to encourage a student to dispute class requirements. We can only preclude class requirements that violate Wikipedia policies and guidelines (and we presently have no policies requiring other users to work only in sandbox space), so we can offer students ways to seek help if they are being forced to edit against policy, and we definitely should explain to instructors how they should keep classes within policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:14, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
@Bio - I agree with Trypto's answer to your question: we can give feedback on stuff like instructional design, we just can't mandate anything. And as a note, I did send off a ping re: the license question, although admittedly a few days after I last posted. Given the season, I'd expect some time for a response. Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:20, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
True but I'll just add that the education program has and can develop requirements/mandates. Biosthmors (talk) 01:46, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Wall of text

Kevin, the copyedits here are generally good as is the tone (my prose stinks), but you've minimized, deleted or left out what is a critical point (to me, at least). It's that wall of text dropping in, just a few days before term-end, in one or two edits, typically just at Thanksgiving vacation, and requiring all at once up to 20 hours to review that is overwhelming and leads to despair (since we know WMF staff is more concerned about its promotional goals than the effect on us). It's that, if we knew in advance ... could you please work back in some of my wording to that effect? Also that they put the wrong text in wrong articles! If we knew in advance, we'd guide them to the right article. I spent five hours yesterday removing from Jumping Frenchmen of Maine text that belonged at startle response or George Miller Beard (I've now written that article myself, so a problematic prof can point to it and claim it as one of his students). Please work some of those issues back in? (Thanks for shortening the section heading-- it made it very hard for me to enter an edit summary.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Kevin's approach and, after all, the essay shouldn't sound like we hate student projects, so watch out! I wonder whether the Advice to Editors section gets at some of the issues Sandy is concerned about. I sure don't want anyone to be in a state of despair! --Tryptofish (talk) 02:23, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I just want to make sure we cover the issue that they (always in my experience) drop in poorly written, poorly sourced text to the wrong article! Even if it were well written and sourced, it's often duplicated in another article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:24, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I think I agree with Trypto that it would be better to cover more of the specific issues in the advice to students section. Most of my edits to the intro were because I was worried it sounded more like the start of a "holy shit we hate student editing assignments" essay than the start of a "so, you're a student or instructor or wikipedian here wondering about student editing assignments" essay. I'm running out to dinner in the near future, but if no one else beats me to it, I'll make sure it's eventually incorporated somewhere.Also, haha, I clicked on to this section expecting it to be a complaint about me being verbose. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:45, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
It also occurs to me that we should also cover it in the advice to instructors section, since this issue could be prevented or at least mitigated by good instructional design. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:49, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I think we have a better chance of reaching students than profs (at least the ones I've encountered). OK, I tried to add something, but it will need repair. Slim is a good copyeditor; maybe she'll go over the whole thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:53, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
To be clear, I was suggesting covering it in both sections, not that we should do it only in the advice to instructors section. Even if it is listened to by more students than instructors, we'll hopefully get it through to some fraction of instructors as well that way. I'll add something to that section later. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:06, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Maybe we just need a general editing section, then? Feel free to butcher fix what I wrote or move it whereever; I've just tired of students writing the wrong article in "my" articles :) Because then I have to remove it all to another talk page, like Talk:Startle response! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:58, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
  • We don't want to overdo the optimistic, soft, approach, which I think much of the instructional stuff up around this project does. Then students and profs are unprepared and surprised when an editor faced with 20 crap rewrites on his watchlist within 24 hours just starts reverting whole sets of changes. Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Userspace drafts

The advice in this essay:

Consider creating your article instead in a personal sandbox on a user subpage, and asking that it be graded there. If you're editing an existing article, copy and paste it over to your sandbox and develop it from there. When the course is over, you can request that the sandbox be deleted, or you can choose to move your work over to the encyclopaedia, assuming you feel it is policy-compliant and something you want to share. If you are told you must add your work to the encyclopaedia, please alert your online ambassador or any of the Wikipedians who have written this essay.

breaks our Wikipedia:User pages guideline, our licence conditions and our mission. Draft articles in user space must be for the temporary purpose of creating something for mainspace. Every guideline and policy that applies to mainspace articles also applies to drafts in userspace, and additionally there are some other restrictions such as no non-free images. Students cannot write copyright-infringing material on the draft, for example. The advice gives the impression that students can exert control over the text they add to the userspace draft -- for example that they don't actually indend it to go public or that they don't wish to freely licence it for use and reuse. This is not the case. The text in such a draft could be incoporated into mainspace against the student's wishes. Essentially, students must write policy-compliant and sharable text even in their drafts. If they have no intention of writing article material for namespace, they should not be editing on Wikipedia.

This advice also creates a silo effect where students are working outside of any interaction with the community, perhaps with the intention of never interacting with the community. As Wikipedia is a collaboratively-built encyclopaedia, this is quite against our design ethos.

But fundamentally, we are here to build an encyclopaedia. We're not an editing environment in cloud space for students to write their homework and get their prof to grade it. If Wikipedia:User pages doesn't make that clear, then perhaps the guideline needs to have "Not homework" added to it too. Colin°Talk 16:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

It's true that everything we write on WP is released, including user subpages, but in practice we allow editors to request deletion of personal sandboxes, and even articles in mainspace if they're the only editors. Students can interact with the community even when working in a sandbox -- by asking questions on the article's talk page, for example. (But they don't as a matter of fact interact much anyway.) The point is that they shouldn't be forced to add their work to the encyclopaedia. They can write it in a sandbox, have it graded, then when the pressure is off decide whether it's good enough to add to mainspace. All Wikipedians are allowed to work that way. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Everything you submit to anywhere on Wikipedia is under a licence that allows anyone to do whatever they want with it. Your point (that they shouldn't be forced to add their work to the encyclopaedia) is valid but addressed by them not editing Wikipedia. Anywhere. Colin°Talk 11:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Someone who stumbled upon this project initially thought AfC was a great place for student drafts. I'll notify them of this thread/page. Biosthmors (talk) 19:40, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Training guidelines

There are also Wikipedia:Training/For educators and Wikipedia:Training/For students/Resources. It occurs to me (a little belatedly, sorry) that we should also consider how this essay interacts with those. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

recommendation re: using wikipedia article classes

I'm going to snip out the recommendation to use Wikiproject quality grades in any sort of grading system. From my experience, it doesn't work well. I believe (though can't 100% remember) that other peoples experiences with negative enough that the USEP people at WMF started recommending against it as well.

Tl;dr summary of the problems with it: article quality grades aren't maintained in a systematic by Wikiprojects and are thus often out of date (or alternately not regraded in time,) Wikiproject grades can be changed by anyone and generally don't get much scrutiny (so students could bump their own grade,) Wikiproject rubrics don't always conform well to educational goals, and, similar to the problem with DYKs, using Wikiproject quality grades as a way to assess students puts the workload on Wikipedians, not on professors/TA's.

Sorry for my recent absence... busy month. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:08, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you are right about the deletion, if for no other reason than WP:CREEP. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Shouldn't we at least mention it to the professors so they know how we look at articles? Biosthmors (talk) 05:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Guideline?

Seeing some of the discussions at the education noticeboard has been making me think about whether we should start thinking about whether this essay sufficiently reflects community consensus that it should be upgraded from an essay to a guideline. I'm just floating the idea in a very preliminary way here, not making a proposal. What should we do, in terms of improvements to the essay, in order to work towards making it guideline-eligible? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:38, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm guessing that no one is recoiling at the idea of making it a guideline. I'm going to wait a few more days, particularly to give anyone a chance to either point out an objection, or to point out something that should be changed on the page before it could become a guideline. If the crickets continue to chirp, I'll then initiate a formal proposal process. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:08, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
I know peer review is normally used for articles, but why not submit this page for peer review and say we're thinking about the possibility of promoting to a guideline and we'd like some feedback? Biosthmors (talk) 22:10, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
That's an interesting thought. Another possibility would be to post a short comment at the Village Pump, asking the same thing. And I guess a third possibility would be to just go for it. I don't really think there is anything wrong with the page as it is (but just wanted to see if someone would raise an issue). I would guess that what could go negative in a formal RfC would be either something specific about one part of the page, which would probably be no big deal because it could be fixed, or sentiment that we don't want to create a guideline like this (maybe as instruction creep). If it's the latter, then that's that, and really no big deal, as it would remain as an essay. We probably won't find that out until the whole community has a go at it, so I might lean against putting too much effort into responding to reviews from just one or two people. Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm having some second thoughts (and may well yet have third thoughts...). As I see how the discussion is going at the ed noticeboard, I increasingly think that this page, in its current form, works well as an essay, but that it just needs to be more widely linked and recommended. On the other hand, I think a more succinct guideline or policy could be devised by extracting direct, rather than discoursive, statements about proper or improper conduct. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:25, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd definitely support this information page being bumped up to a guideline, considering that guidelines and policies carry more weight. On the other hand, some of our essays, such as WP:BRD, are pretty much treated as guidelines. Flyer22 (talk) 19:18, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm going around and around in my head about this. I definitely think we need a guideline or even a policy, no question. What I'm unsure about is the right way to write it, but I tend to think it should focus less on information, the way this page does, and more on what I'll describe as "do this, don't do that". Please see also WT:Assignments. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:31, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
A short, sweet (separate) guideline would be helpful. One that wasn't simply defensive, but said "here are the right ways to get started, to get feedback, and to follow up after contributing." – SJ + 17:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Do you feel that the page, as it is now, is too "defensive"? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
I feel that it is defensive in the sense that it rationalizes its assertions, when in fact there ought to be a guideline which dictates authoritatively without explaining itself. I would be in favor of there being a much shortened mandate which got guideline status and which linked to this page a supplemental rationale with more weight than a personal essay. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, that's helpful in terms of what I've been trying to figure out. So this could be an information page that goes into why we do things the way that we do, whereas a guideline should be more like what SJ calls "here are the right ways to....". Does that sound like the right approach? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Student peer review

The strangest aspect of the two unfortunate UofT classes is that they seem to have no peer review component at all. (Even though this is something the professor is known for, and something he stated years ago he wanted to bring to his class projects.)

Part of a guideline for editors should say: if you are working with a group, a) review one another's work, and b) assign some part of the group to more extensive peer review (proofreading, citation style, media licensing, plagiarism checking). Even a bad editor can be a decent reviewer; and thinking like a reviewer - like teaching - makes your own work and thinking better.

A possible model:

  • Ask every student to go through an on-wiki tutorial - at the end of which they have auto-generated a userpage, corrected a typo, added an image, reverted a copyvio.
  • Assign one "moderator" for every 8 students asked to edit. The moderator's task: reviewing the edits of the others, helping them to meet editorial, copyright, and citation standards.
  • Assign one "meta-moderator" for every 8 students asked to moderate (and no fewer than 1). Their task: reviewing the moderators' work and activity, maintaining a project page describing the class's work & progress, responding to questions about it.

– SJ + 17:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Some of that is very specifically proscriptive. I'm wondering whether a guideline should instead not specify things like 8 students (as opposed to 7 or 9). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Right. This is just a very specific toy model to get a feel for something that could possibly work. I wouldn't include such specifics, or even a fixed # of layers of [meta]moderation, in a guideline. But indicating a rough proportion of total participants focused on moderation would be useful ("we've found that assigning roughly X% of a group to moderation improves the quality of the resulting work"). – SJ + 04:41, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
OK, got it. I'd like to here from anyone where on this page (ie, which section) would be the best place for this. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
I agree that peer review should be a recommended component. And those comments need addressing, so that would be another. I also like the idea of having some specialized reviewing tasks. Biosthmors (talk) 15:25, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Is anyone aware of any professors using the approach SJ describes? Do any case studies use this approach? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:01, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

In the news

For those who don't know, the student problem, specifically regarding psychology articles in this case, was mentioned in the news yesterday. As some of you know, the class the source talks about was reported at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Flyer22 (talk) 23:47, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I just put a link to it at the education noticeboard, where news coverage from multiple sources has been discussed. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Okay, good. I knew that someone very likely saw this in the news before I did minutes ago. You posted that link there at the same time I started a thread here about it. I take it you saw me mention that source at Lova Falk's talk page? Flyer22 (talk) 23:57, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Exactly right. I've watchlisted her talk since the Wikibreak situation started. (Although I'd be happy to claim clairvoyance instead!) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Top ten lists

I moved this to the talk page. I would rather not have the content on the information page where classes can see it, because it looks unfinished to me. I think we need to discuss the criteria for selection as the "top ten" – what are they? Also, I think any such lists, if we have them at all, should be lower on the page. I'm OK with giving examples of good practice, but this looks too preliminary to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Under discussion here: Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive5#Top 10 lists czar ♔ 22:59, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
That's a good point Tryptofish. I just made it boldly made it prose (sorry for the fragmented discussion). Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:04, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
You might want to check out outreachwiki:Education/Case Studies, which has detailed information about two of the professors' assignments you've already mentioned, and encourages other professors with good assignment ideas to create features on themselves as well with an easy template to help them do so. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
True true. Thanks for the link. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Guideline

Should this page maybe become a guideline one day? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:22, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, either this page or something like it should be. When we discussed the issue above, at #Guideline?, I think there was some consensus that this page should remain written as an information page, and that a guideline should be more focused on things are are somewhat enforceable. I think I agree with that, and I had been thinking about working on a page parallel to this one, that would serve as a proposed guideline. For personal reasons, my editing time has been rather limited lately, so this is one of a long list of things here where I've fallen behind. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:11, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
No worries at all. And thanks for all you do. I should revisit the older discussion with fresh eyes. Without looking, I tend to think we might not need separate pages because I think guidelines can have some content that is enforceable and some that isn't so enforceable. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:14, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
What, exactly, do you think should be an enforceable guideline? There's a lot of good advice on this page that is of the this is one good way to do it or you should probably do this variety, but most of that should not be upgraded to you must do this.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:42, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
My answer to that question would be along the lines of dealing with situations such as that mega course from the Toronto area that caused so much aggravation not too long ago. That was a particularly egregious case, but it is inevitable that things like it will crop up from time to time. I believe that the community is moving in the direction of wanting to be able to codify some norms of conduct in such situations, and of course my "believing" that would be tested by a community discussion about whether to elevate whatever comes out of this to guideline status. By the way, I do realize that we are talking about a guideline and not a policy, but I think that a guideline is what we are looking for in this case. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
The Toronto mega course is certainly a type of problem I don't want to see again. What kind of rule do you think could prevent it, though? (I'm not against a guideline in principle, I'm just trying to pin down some specifics.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Whereas a policy, in contrast, would be about "don't do this or you'll be blocked", my opinion is that a guideline can serve the purpose of being able to point someone to where it says: "this is what we generally expect of you, and we generally expect that you will not do that". If you remember the talks that Philippe had with the principals in that case, a lot of what he had to do was explain to them just those kinds of expectations, and it sort of sounded like those expectations came as a surprise. I believe it could save a lot of grief if we had an accepted way to tell users: "please look at (this link), and note what our expectations are". And as a corollary of that, users who chronically fail to work constructively with such pointers would be at risk of sanctions. An information page like this page focuses on "this is how we can help you", rather than on expectations. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:45, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Might you be overstating things with the bold and italicized must? "Policies explain and describe standards that all users should normally follow, while guidelines are meant to outline best practices for following those standards in specific contexts", says Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:59, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
In practice, there is not much difference between a policy and a guideline; the enforceable aspects of a guideline essentially become the way everyone is expected to do things, with rare exceptions.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:03, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
According to Smallbones: the "[q]uick and dirty difference [is that p]olicies can be enforced directly, [whereas] a guideline is only enforced if there is repeated disruption associated with ignoring it." Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:16, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree that we need something with more teeth, so that the community can better deal with student editing in ways that need to happen and are not yet, but I do not see anything on the current version of this page that will help to that end (it started much stronger but got diluted), and see this page as more of a "helpful advice if we can get them to read and it", which they probably don't. We need something different that will help the community deal with the problems that arise. By the way, @Colin: is an excellent guideline writer (instrumental at WP:MEDRS) and is not in denial about the effects of student editing on other editors and article quality-- perhaps he will help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
WP:Assignments was a first stab at this issue by Colin and Wikipedia talk:Assignments has some discussion from earlier in the year. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:35, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Maybe we could submit this Wikipedia space draft up for peer review and ask for feedback and suggestions about developing it into a guideline, just to see what kind of comments we get. Although, I'm not sure WP:Peer review has templates, etc., that would allow that. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:37, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Biosthmors, which essay are you suggesting be submitted for review? This page or the WP:Assignments one?
The WP:Assignments was designed to be a policy the community could agree to wrt all kinds of assigned-work. In particular it spelled out where the responsibility for the assignment lay and levels of experience and knowledge required by those running the assignment before they start. As you may see, this is out of alignment with the current education program practice, which regularly unleashes classes on us where the prof is unprepared, unable and unwilling to fully take responsibility for the mess their inappropriately designed assignment has created.
As for Wikipedia:Student assignments, I'm quite happy for it to be just regarded as essential reading / advice for those running student courses on WP, rather than worrying about it being a WP guideline. -- Colin°Talk 10:25, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
We could potentially submit this one for review, or the other. I don't mind either. We might also develop one policy and one guideline that are not yet written. Who knows! I'm just trying to judge which way the wind is blowing to see if we can get something going. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:59, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Maybe we could develop a quiz based upon this page, the page you started, and the WP:Training for instructors. Then if professors don't pass, then they can be "policied" or "guidelined" out of editing Wikipedia. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:03, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
As for which way I'm blowing (????), I think a proper guideline will have to come from either creating a new page or massively revising the page that Colin started, because this page ought to remain as an information page and the other page has a long way to go before representing consensus. I doubt that a quiz would be enforceable, but there's a time-honored practice of admins acting after repeated non-adherence to guidelines, when that repeated non-adherence occurs after warnings. To block something preventatively, as soon as it shows up, there will have to be an existing community consensus as to when that would be justified. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it is absurd the amount of time we are all having to spend trying to get water from a stone, and our efforts would be better expended in getting MEDRS elevated to BLP status, so we can stop trying to get the WMF or WEF or WEP or whatever they call themselves to pay attention to these issues, and instead work towards community solutions to the bad edits that are disproportionately hitting medical articles. The Education Program is not going to change, our time is increasingly taken with babysitting, and if we get MEDRS elevated to something closer to a shoot-the-bad-stuff-on-sight like with BLPs, content will improve, as will our satisfaction. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:58, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think elevating MEDRS will help here. I don't want to go to war with students so a bigger gun doesn't help me. The problem is the the false concept that "anyone can edit == we can and must do nothing". It is flawed because that soundbite is not an axiom -- it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If profs want to treat WP as an online homework exercise, WMF won't help and actually encourages it. When a prof, who knows nothing about WP decides to point 20 of their students on our most popular articles, they look forward to all these newbies. I don't think the WMF have the slightest clue how few people actually tend those medical pages, and how few of them actually have quality access to sources in order to defend them properly. Add to that the utterly meaningless research they keep producing to delude themselves it is all good. It is time the community answered back with a policy that says, no, actually students are not typical newbies. They are editors compelled to edit in a way that wouldn't have occurred to them normally, and who typically write stuff they don't understand, never mind what our readers will get from it, using sources they can barely follow about a subject they are only just learning. When in the history of education has the textbook ever been written by the clueless? Well it's happening on Wikipedia. The responsibility for this lies with the person running the assignment -- who is a new kind of creature Wikipedia has no policies for. Is that person clued-up and a Wikipedian in good standing with the community? No, they typically have no concept of how Wikipedia works -- a test edit with the Visual Editor -- is that a joke? I know the WEF are working to fix that for the profs they work with, but what about all the others? Have we not learned enough yet to say: unless you get proper training, please don't attempt to run classes on WP. It has worked a very few times in our history, but mostly it is a complete disaster. This is an encyclopaedia. I sometimes do wonder if the WMF have forgotten that. -- Colin°Talk 10:45, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, as always, you are right. Shoulda read this before my last post to WP:ENB (where I am at least relieved the Mike is on board). I would much rather be mentoring students than "reporting" their offenses, which always relate back to negligent profs who are encouraged by glowing press reports to teach students to do something they don't know how to do themselves. And often, pushing a POV, their personal research, or their pet theories into articles. I have been trying to do DSM5 updates for a month (since my busy summer ended). Yesterday afternoon, I logged on to hopefully finally focus on that, and was instead confronted with three new issues on three different articles, all of which needed to be researched before automatic revert, all of which took time. We need something with teeth, and it has to come from the community. Students are not "regular" newbies, and I'm still waiting for just one example of one of them becoming a long-term productive editor. I am additionally dealing with likely meatpuppetry at echolalia, but I don't even bother taking that to WP:ENB because a) the likely students haven't even responded to any talk queries, so b) they will say we don't know they are students, and c) no one there is equipped to help anyway. So I guess I'm going to have to either end up BITING, or just wait til the term ends to correct. I am pretty much giving up on working in here-- so let's get to work on promoting something to the community. The problem as I see it, though, is how well is this problem known outside of medical editors? Other content areas don't have serious sourcing guidelines, so are they letting the bad stuff slide? And are they checking for copyvio? The DSM5 does not take copyvio lightly, and I don't think the WMF can still pretend they do anything to address copyvio (that fort was held down almost exclusively by MRG, until she too became a staffer, focused on other issues-- sure hope we don't see User:Mike Christie go down that rabbit hole). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:19, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
About "anyone can edit": there is something that I have long thought about that phrase, without any particular association with student editing, but it occurs to me now that it applies particularly well in this context. It really is "anyone can edit, and anyone else can revert that edit". In my opinion, any reversion that is in conformance with WP:BURDEN is not a violation of WP:BITE. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:56, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
No battles please. This isn't about reverting stuff. You can't even know to revert edits because the best written ones turn out the be plagiarised from their textbook, to which you don't have access. This needs to be about prevention and about the prof taking responsibility for reverting. They shouldn't be running the classes with the assumption that wikigomes will revert the bad stuff -- because they aren't -- they need to fix the mess themselves -- either individually or in some kind of education-support-network. But my complained with that phrase is that it is used to say we can't prevent profs running courses -- they aren't editing!!!! they are just massively meatpuppeting. Colin°Talk 16:29, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
In fact, I very much agree with you. I'm not advocating battles, just advocating not feeling bad about reverting, not worrying that reverting is automatically bitey. It's absolutely clear to me that we are going to need a guideline with some teeth with respect to what the community expects of instructors. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:19, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Argument

One interesting argument I've seen floating around I disagree with is that we should somehow compare students to new editors when evaluating quality. I happen to disagree with this approach. The training is there at WP:Training for students, ambassadors, and instructors. There are course pages, there are paid staff (with a current $150,000 grant), and their are how many volunteer ambassadors? The expectations should be much higher for the quality output of student assignments than newbies, in my opinion. Volunteer newbies get nothing. Student editors get "paid" with course credit. We should expect much more in return. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:22, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Not to mention WP:MEAT (when their fellow classmates edit war for each other). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I actually would just want that they not be at the low end of what we get from inexperienced users. The problem comes when mediocre or worse edits show up in large numbers over a short period of time. It's in the nature of class projects that they generate a lot of edits all at once, and I agree with you both, that it's a major aggravation when those edits are problematic. We need to recognize that the students don't get "paid" by us, but by the instructor. I think that's a compelling reason to work towards a guideline that sets expectations not only for the student editors, but for the person who sends them here and grades them. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Like Wikipedia:Assignments. -- Colin°Talk 10:27, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
We should indeed look at both pages in this regard. A big part of what is worth continuing from earlier discussions is where WP:Assignments tends towards being a draft policy, there is also interest in developing a guideline and not a policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:21, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
For everyone, see also WP:PG#Role. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:24, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Copy edits

I think we need more copy edits to the article, generally speaking. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I've been away from active editing, but I'm getting back into the swing of things now, and I intend to give this information page some love in the near future. I'd like to draw attention to what User:Mike Christie said about half way down the thread at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard#Motor system as a test case for this board, about this page not working well as something that instructors will read. I'd appreciate any pointers from Mike or from anyone else about what specifically needs fixing. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:49, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Responsibility

Who should have the chief responsiblity for fixing student edits ensuring student content quality? To me, the answer is obvious: the instructor. The instructor is the one that forces students to edit by making it required in their courses, so then they should be able to take responsiblity for the content, if they really want to collaborate here. Wikipedia is not the place for instructors to use and abuse the volunteer community. If they can't take responibility for the content that is published, then they should just let their students work in sandboxes. We need a policy or guideline that says as much. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 05:28, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes and no. Or rather: it depends on what you mean by "responsibility." Take a regular university class: students write essays (and exams etc.). The instructor does what he or she can to ensure that they do well in those essays. But it is the student who gets graded and judged, in the short term at least. (In the longer term, good teachers get rewarded and worse teachers don't, but that's in the longer term.) As an instructor, I am happy to be "responsible" in so far as I should ensure that a student assignment is a "net positive"--indeed more than merely a "net positive"--for the encyclopedia. I have a responsibility to ensure that an educational assignment is not disruptive, and doesn't uselessly tie up volunteer time and effort. But I do not feel responsible for each line or each word that a student contributes. Furthermore, over the course of a class, we need to ensure that there is time for a student to make mistakes (because nobody learns without making mistakes), just as we accept that newbies in general don't do everything right the first time. There needs to be a certain amount of flexibility, and also an understanding of the temporality of the university semester. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:59, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
By all means, I want students to make as many mistakes as is needed to learn how to edit in the sandboxes. But to me, average undergratuate work from an average undergraduate university just isn't welcome here. It's not good enough. Only "A" quality work that follows all Wikipedia policies and guidelines, in my opinion, should be made live. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:33, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
This deserves a broader discussion, no doubt. It would be lovely if all student contributions to Wikipedia were A quality. Just as it would be lovely if all contributions to Wikipedia in general were A quality. But the latter is nowhere near true, and I'm not sure why one should insist that the former should be, too. Otherwise, it's a double standard that is being set up. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:20, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
It's not a double standard because normal edits are voluntary, whereas student edits are done under compulsion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:27, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
This doesn't seem like a particularly relevant distinction to me, at least in this context. Does it really matter if the rubbish that "normal" editors contribute is voluntary, while the rubbish that student editors contribute is "under compulsion"? Or vice versa: is a "voluntary" contribution of good content somehow inherently different from one produced as part of a student assignment. Meanwhile, for what it's worth I find "under compulsion" to be rather unhelpful and misleading wording: students are not exactly prisoners, and they may well choose to take a particular class precisely because of the forms of assessment it offers. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:58, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes it does, because this is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. And the can is only true for voluntary edits. No one has the right to force anyone to edit a live Wikipedia article, as far as I'm concerned. And I never had the option to view a syllabus before taking a class during my undergraduate education. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:51, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Beyond the emotive language, I still don't understand in principle why a mediocre contribution from a "normal" contributor is somehow better than a mediocre contribution from a student editor, who is participating as part of an assignment. Which is not to justify mediocrity; far from it. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:31, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I happen to think that a solid grounding in ethical thought will at times lead to anger. Do you disagree? Volunteer ambassadors could move over the B- ones if they were so inclined. But we need competent ambassadors. I've seen absolute rubbish come through AfC... Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:23, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Students generally attempt work that stretches them (and often, it seems, is actually beyond them). They are more likely to tackle a subject that requires scarce expert eyes to fix. They are more likely to use sources that many editors have no access to. They are more likely to create full/new articles in complex subjects than normal editors do. They are more likely to add stuff they only just learned and barely understand than normal editors. Our generally inclusionist approach to deletion means it can be very hard to delete such essays with people there expecting some fairies to turn up and merge the decent bits. I worry that WP article-space is going to be polluted by all these B, C, D grade essays that nobody fixes and nobody merges and nobody deletes. Colin°Talk 22:32, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Colin, these concerns seem more pertinent to me. Specifically, the instructor is responsible for the assignment and its design, which may well raise the issues you mention. I'm not sure that these are inherent problems with educational projects, but they are very definitely among the places that such projects may go wrong. Hence the importance of a page such as this one (WP:ASSIGN) to try to head off such problems.
On the other hand, even some of the negatives that you list can be portrayed as positives: for instance, the fact that students are "more likely to use sources that many editors have no access to" means both that it is harder for other editors to check for plagiarism but also that students are generally using better sources. Indeed, this is one of those paradoxes of plagiarism detection: the lazy plagiarist copies and pastes from the web; the problem is with the hard-working plagiarist who (God forbid) goes into a library and reads a book. And yet, in general, we would rather than Wikipedia editors do go to libraries and consult books; the standard of sourcing throughout the encyclopedia would greatly increase, even if as a result plagiarism would become exponentially more difficult to identity.
Likewise, surely the fact that students "are more likely to tackle a subject that requires scarce expert eyes to fix" is also double-edged. When a "normal" Wikipedia editor adds rubbish about (say) Pokemon or some TV show, the fix is easy enough, and there are many other dedicated editors around to ensure that the fix is done. But this leaves enormous gaps in Wikipedia's coverage, which should be filled... and in principle, who better to fill those gaps than people who are studying those topics, under the instruction of a suitably competent expert?
So the issue is really, I think: do we want to have some so-so articles (let's call them B- grade) plus a few good ones (let's say A-/A) on topics that otherwise Wikipedia hardly covers, or would we prefer there to be none at all? As you point out, the culture of Wikipedia in general tends to prefer something to nothing, however poor that "something" often is. As such, the problem if there is one is not so much with student assignments (which in this instance, at least, go perfectly well with that general Wikipedia culture) than with Wikipedia itself, and its founding principles. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:58, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


I got to agree with jbmurray. Ive had students work on Wikipedia articles for some time now. Most students write decent stuff, certainly no worse than the average Wikipedia editor. Yes, some students cut corners (as do regular Wikipedians) but it is not feasible to insist that professors go over every article with a fine-tooth comb before it is "live." However, insisting that student peer review each others' work as part of the process is reasonable, as is good planning by the professor, learning what students are capable given students' level and time constraints. For this reason, most of the work my students do (English as a foreign language) is article translation. I had Medical English students write articles in English last semester but I ran into problems as I could not assess many of the articles due to my lack of medical knowledge. Fortunately, the faculty of the med program helped me out with this and we have been discussing how to move forward from that. Thelmadatter (talk) 01:25, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Speaking as someone who was, until fairly recently, a student: we can't expect student contributions to universally be of the level that would receive an A on a normal class assignment. Many of my content contributions are not of the level that would receive an A on a normal class assignment. I think it's the responsibility of the instructor and CA to ensure that a class represents a net benefit to Wikipedia, preferably a significant one. But the nature of having any large (or even moderate) sized class editing means that quality is never going to be universal. There's always going to be someone in a class who has a weirdly heavy courseload that semester, has major medical problems, extracurriculars, etc come up - or who just prefers to slack - and thus slacks off on a Wikipedia-based assignment (or a student who just sucks at writing etc.) I would expect instructors and CA's to intervene in 95% of cases of students doing things that are blockable, or near blockable (even in egregious cases, sometimes you have someone slip through - 100% is not a reachable standard.) I would expect instructors and CA's to intervene in many/most situations where an individual students edits have lowered the quality of Wikipedia, although this should often be just pointing it out to the student. I would expect instructors and CA's to directly intervene in relatively few situations where a students edits have problems, but represent an overall improvement to Wikipedia, except through the use of auto/semi-auto stuff like citationbot, and through iterating their instructions in future assignments to improve results. If an instructor or CA went around rolling back all student edits that had problems but represented net positives, I would expect someone to smack their hand (and except in really small classes, instructors and CA's aren't going to have time to individually fix every single problem in student edits.) I would expect instructors who cannot get their classes to represent net positives for Wikipedia to be asked to step back and rethink whether or not they should be here, and if necessary be forcibly disinvited, or blocked through technical or social means from participating in the future (although currently we lack good mechanisms to do this.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:35, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
  • The problem is that Wikipedia works through crowdsourcing both for content creation and maintenance. But student edits (in the medical sphere I see) aren't crowdsourced. They are one barely-capable editor writing complete articles/essays who then disappears. The supervisor gives them a mark and also disappears (they never edited in the first place). And the crowd who are supposed to fix and maintain this article for the next decade just can't do it. Yes, frankly, I'd rather see less material that we could, as a crowd, deal with. We aren't the only source of knowledge so adding bytes to our articlespace shouldn't be an end in itself. We take our responsibilities seriously so I would rather we had one reasonable article on epilepsy (say) than 20 satellite essays on epilepsy that all contain about 50% of the same material as the core one but use different sources (sometimes abysmally ancient ones).
"who better to fill those gaps than people who are studying those topics, under the instruction of a suitably competent expert" There's a huge difference between students at university and an apprentice car mechanic. With the students, they get instructed but if the student doesn't pick it up or put in the effort, then they fail. The prof won't complete their essay for them and doesn't have time to give much tuition. With the apprentice, I'd expect my car to be serviced to exactly the same standards as if the experienced mechanic did it. It might take a bit longer and the apprentice might make a mistake, but the supervisor take responsibility for the job and ensures it is done right. If the apprentice isn't up to the job, that just means more hassle for the supervisor but doesn't affect the end result (we hope). So, no there are better people to write advanced articles on Wikipedia than undergraduates, particularly 1st/2nd year. I think we should go after the post grads and profs and get them buzzing about Wikipedia. Then, once they understand it, they might be capable of figuring out how to get a small class of theirs to be useful here. But remember, when these students go, no matter how good or bad they were, they've gone. They aren't part of the crowd who will maintain the material. That's a problem. Even if these students were creating great new articles, there's only so many times one can add new essays about epilepsy before all the low-hanging fruit is gone. Is anyone going to set maintenance assignments for these students? "Class, your job this semester is to fix up the essays written by my students three years ago." Yeah, right. :-) Colin°Talk 08:43, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
@ Colin, many of the student assignments that I get involved in are indeed “Maintenance” assignments as you call them. Here are two examples:
Students in a writing class are asked to review WP:Lead and WP:Copyedit in advance of choosing an article to improve. Improvement is accomplished by students rewriting article content (in draft, sometimes in sandboxes) so that it better complies with WP content style. We find articles for students to work on via Category:All articles needing copy edit. As of this writing ~ 2800 articles were in this category. Under the guidance of a CA, many of the student’s copyedit drafts after they are graded are rolled into mainspace articles. Sometimes this is done by students who want to learn to edit WP and sometimes it is done by the CA. Regardless who makes the edits, WP is improved.
Students in classes where basic research skills are being taught are asked to review Category: All articles lacking sources (~275,000) and Category: All articles needing additional references (~225,000) and select one or two articles where they are challenged to do the research to find WP:RS for the content in the article. There may be some subject matter context, depending on the discipline teaching the research skills. If sources are found, they document them (in draft, sometimes in sandboxes). After grading the exercise, students or the CA may add the sources to the relevant articles.
There are any number of ways in which WP can be used to help achieve learning objectives relative to information fluency, including exercises that contribute to the maintenance of WP. We (the community and the WEF) need to do a much better job educating CA’s how to do this.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:52, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Colin, again your points are well-taken, though I agree with Mike that we need to be open to (indeed, actively encourage) different kinds of assignment. I know that I have had students return to articles that I had set as part of a previous educational assignment. I also think it important that the instructor should make time to do a proper job of supervision. Which is why (to return to a discussion Mike and I are having elsewhere) it's important not to suggest that Wikipedia assignments are the easy way out, a way to leverage vast amount of volunteer labor--precisely the mistake that our friend in Toronto made. Wikipedia assignments, when done properly, take far more instructor time than do regular assignments. This point needs to be emphasized. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:31, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
With all due respect, Mike, copyediting is the low-hanging-fruit of maintenance and one that volunteers can do too. And one of the problems is that volunteer do do this stuff, making them a timesink for wikigomes -- copyediting a plagiarised essay is not a really great use of our time. Real maintenance involves digging up all the sources used in the article. Real maintenance involves keeping the article on your watchlist and looking at it on a regular basis so you can fix errors, vandalism and pov pushing. Real maintenance involves continuing to search journals and books for the latest information to keep the topic up to date. Perhaps someone can write an art-lit topic and it will be good for years but try that with a medical topic. It is jolly hard work. These articles are often under constant attack by pov-pushers and RandyFromBoise and, well, other students. But these student essay articles have zero editors on their watchlist and won't be found by "articles lacking sources" searches nor even by "copyedit important subjects" searches because they really aren't vital (clue: we've done all right without them up to now -- don't misinterpret that as being anti-rare topics, just, you know, we're not talking Cancer here). We are setting ourselves up for being a collection of dusty mediocre essays with the odd gem, rather than a well-maintained repository of encyclopaedic topics. The WMF have found a solution to the "How can we add text to Wikipedia" problem, but in fact, at this stage of maturity in the project, that's not our top priority. -- Colin°Talk 18:58, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
@Colin, I find this constant reference to “student essays” as the scourge of WP to be a bit tedious. I am sure it happens, but it is easily prevented with good advice. The instructors that I’ve worked with (especially in the writing classes) understand the concept of encyclopedic writing, primary, secondary and tertiary sources. We spend a great deal of time with the students ensuring they understand these concepts as well. (many times that's the very learning objective we are trying to achieve) The result, if editing WP is involved in meeting class objectives, is content that meets WP norms, not so-called student essays. I am curious, as it seems the intersection of medical topics and the education program in the encyclopedia is a particular sore point, about their scope within WP. As of this morning there were ~4.4 million topics in WP. In your estimation, what % of those are medical topics? --Mike Cline (talk) 11:17, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Mike Cline, I find the constant "I don't see any problem with classes I'm involved with" response to be a bit tedious. In fact, denial there is a problem is why I unwatched the Education Program page. I'm sure the tiny number of people involved in the education program are doing their best and have some good classes. But the current policy is that any prof setup a class on Wikipedia and set any old assignment for their class and we have to treat that mass editathon as though it came from newbie volunteers. You say essays are "easily prevented"? Well unwanted pregnancies are easily prevented too. Doesn't change the facts on ground though. They aren't being prevented there are so many ways advice is not being translated into effect. Look at User:AlexLee90/stem cell and gene therapies for treating epilepsy. Also this WikiProject page where the article topic was discouraged. This is an essay. It looks suspicious for plagiarism too but I can't access the sources. Looking at the Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) I see no mechanism to guide students to choosing encyclopaedic topics that WP needs rather than random essays based on something they read in New Scientist that week. This is not a new prof. So why does point 10 on that page encourage aiming for a Featured Article? Is this a class under Education Program supervision? Or are you going to say "Not one of ours" again? -- Colin°Talk 13:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
@Colin, how about the question as the % of articles that are medical topics? I am just not familiar enough with that genera of topics to even guess. Since you are, do you have an estimation? --Mike Cline (talk) 13:50, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
I really don't have a clue. User:WhatamIdoing is probably the one to ask. It's the sort of figure that is fairly meaningless really. Perhaps a more important one is what % of our most read articles are medical? There are all sorts of reasons why students tend to write essays rather than articles, or write highly obscure unnecessary articles that are mostly a repeat of existing articles. I don't know why medicine appears to be hit more. Perhaps the involvement of medical editors in the forums here. Or perhaps a bias among profs. I see elsewhere SlimVirgin highlights the problems with humanities graduates who need to learn critical original thought but that is exactly what we don't want here. So I think the education folk need to consider which subjects and which classes work best for WP. I have yet to be convinced any 1st / 2nd year undergraduate course is useful. -- Colin°Talk 14:11, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
User:Mike Cline, I'd like an answer to my question. Is this class under the Education Program? Why is a prof who has done this before still setting class assignments that are clearly designed to fail? Why are these students writing essays when this is "easy to prevent"? Isn't about time we had a policy/guideline to prevent this. Colin°Talk 08:31, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
@Colin: Good morning (at least where I am). I have an answer to and will answer your question, but do need some clarification so there is no misunderstanding. I assume when you say “this course” you are referring to the linked GT Neuroscience course (Fall 2013). Your characterization of this course as “designed to fail” is a pretty broad statement, so understanding what you believe “failure” means here is important to my ultimate answer. I would also guess you could look at failure from two perspectives—the WP perspective and the instructor’s perspective and I suspect failure in one perspective might not equate to failure in the other. But knowing what you think “failure” means in this context is important. Once that is established, I would be interested in knowing what specific aspects of the course design you believe are directly contributing to the “failure(s)”. The course page is pretty comprehensive, so identifying specific flaws in design that will result in failure is an important step in preventing those failures in the future. --Mike Cline (talk) 11:29, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
The main failure point that caught my eye was the aim for featured article. I though we discouraged that these days. That any student might think they should aim for this in an assignment like this suggests to me the prof doesn't know how hard an FA is or the extent of teamwork often required to pull it off or the time taken. The other point is the lack of direction over article topic. It seems that buck has been passed to WikiProject Neuroscience. I'm not really sure where the list of topics came from or how this was discussed. The third is no guidance about what makes an article encyclopaedic and what is needed. Again, the emphasis is on new articles -- we can't go on creating new articles for ever you know. The above-mentioned draft has gone to mainspace as Gene therapy and its application in epilepsy without a review picking up that it is an essay (Intro, Body, Conclusion). Where is the "responsibility" to ensure only needed articles (The WP Neuroscience already discouraged the creation of this article) and to ensure articles are actually encyclopaedic rather than student essays? Is this not the issue of this talk page section? Who is responsible for that? Are the other wikipedians responsible now for deleting this or inserting what per WP:WEIGHT actually belongs in an article? Who is going to assess whether this essay's focus on the promise gene therapy is justified by the literature and so NPOV? I'll tell you. Nobody. Unless a student writes something that is clearly bollocks or outrageously far-fetched, this will take expert eyes with access to sources a lot of work. And we have a class of dozens of students turning out such unassessed and unassessible work. I might be more comfortable if this was graduate work but for a class doing an "Introduction to ... " course, we are asking for trouble imo. As for which perspective failure matter, how is failure from a instructor/student perspective of any weight? Sure it matters to them. Joorden's thought his class was a huge success from an instructor's perspective, but was a disaster from ours. And nobody has cleaned that mess up, by the way. Finally this is the darkest sign to me that the class will not succeed. If the prof isn't editing here, who is editing this class's work? We've just got a machine that takes student essays and posts them to Wikipedia to rot. Colin°Talk 13:31, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

@Colin, instructive and useful. For the most part, the course design flaws you describe are indeed contributors to a lower probability that all the students in this course would be successful in their WP assignment. However, I believe all of the flaws you highlight are correctable with well curated and widely available best practices. For instance the reference to FA in the course design doesn’t reflect reality or best practice in a WP educational assignment. We experienced editors know that getting any article to FA status isn’t easy and at the least is time consuming. I know from my very poorly organized CA training several years ago that the WMF just started suggesting things like DYK, GA, FA at random as cool ways to reward students with little regard as to whether such activity was really relevant to the goals of program or the specific course learning objectives. It was the classic example of let’s just do something and see what happens. I suspect the presence of the FA suggestion in this course outline is a remnant of early ill-conceived ideas. I find the most challenging of the design flaws you highlight is the “WP topic selection” aspect of a WP assignment. The selection of new article topics or existing topics to edit by students is very much complicated by a locus of the course learning objectives, knowledge of WP norms and expertise in any given discipline. I personally feel very comfortable as a CA steering students and instructors toward topics in most of the humanities, social and political sciences, geography and history because I have a very well-rounded education, 50 years of global life experience since I left high school in the military, commercial enterprise and in the classroom. However, topic selection in complex sciences is something that I just don’t know much about and wouldn't even attempt to try. That said, I still think this is something that can be dealt with through robust, widely disseminated curated best practices and robust training of CAs.

To the broader question as the whether this particular class is part of the “Education Program”, I want to give my personal perspective on this. As I see it, several years ago, and with good reason, the WMF started an outreach program to involve a very large, and resource rich academic community in the Wikipedia movement. The “Education Program” was a by-product of that outreach. The WMF, now the WEF in the US/Canada has never and will never “control” anything in the academic community. The Education Program will in my view always remain an outreach program, encouraging participation by the academic community, providing that community resources to facilitate effective participation, and providing the academic community as much expert advice about the Wikipedia community as possible. As a CA, I consider myself part of that outreach effort and believe that robust, widely disseminated best practices is the best way to ensure effective participation by the academic community in the Wikipedia movement. I think trying to force—through policy or guideline—a particular class of editor to be “responsible” beyond the existing norms that apply to all Wikipedia participants, is wasted effort and counter-productive. By way of example, WP has a very robust and complicated set of policies and guidelines related to article titles. For several years I was a regular participant in closing Requested Moves. That little bureaucracy deals with 20-50 move requests a day and there’s always a lengthy backlog. A great many of those RM are controversial and consume a lot of editor time in essentially useless discussion. Despite having pages and pages of policies and guidelines on article titles, many editors didn’t like the results of the RM process so a new bureaucracy was concocted, the Move Review. Now we have two editor time sinks to deal with editors who either are ignorant of, chose to ignore or just don’t agree with our titling policy and guidelines. At the end of day however, all that energy does little to actually improve the encyclopedia. There’s no doubt in my mind that any kind of outreach to communities outside the normal WP community is going to produce some percentage of contributions that don’t meet our community norms. When that happens, as in the case you apply describe above, I believe the community has sufficient existing mechanisms in-place to deal with it. The WP community has always voluntarily found ways to continually improve upon all the contributions of all editors—one timers or experienced. That’s how this WP was built and continues to be built.

The larger WP community, especially those editors not intimately entwined in the EP, needs to decide if outreach to the academic community can be a productive way to improve the encyclopedia and its reputation in a very large, and resource rich, community. Such outreach is going to result in some contributions that need a lot of community energy to fix, that’s inevitable. However, I do believe, that if the WMF, the WEF, and the WP community want to sustain outreach to the academic community, it will be the wide dissemination of robust and well curated best practices and well trained resources into the academic community that gets the most productive results. It probably won't eliminate contributions like you describe above, but it should certainly make them far less likely to occur. A bunch of new policies and guidelines won't fix the issues and generally generate a whole handful of new issues that become an additional waste of time and editor energy. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:07, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

We appear to be talking at cross purposes because each time I or someone else points out an actual problem, you respond with a theoretical solution. You may interested in designing courses and making education programmes work so your focus is on improving that process. I'm interested in edits to Wikipedia so am focused on guideline/policy that helps that. The fact that there are classes doing sub-optimal assignments, and that these classes aren't new, and will be encouraged to participate again next year, is a real actual problem. People look at other examples and learn from them. This class is using all the template pages that make them look like an official WP education program class. Yet they clearly aren't an example of best-practice to copy.
Topic selection seems to be a huge problem for "complex sciences" as you put it. I really don't see the education program scaling in this area with the approach taken for "new articles". Psychology has already hit the point where multiple classes are trashing the same article or are yet again creating another variant on the same topic. There is a limit to what topics an undergraduate class covers, so naturally that limit gets hit rapidly.
I think getting an undereducated (about Wikipedia) and inexperienced (on Wikipedia) academic community to participate enthusiastically with their large classes on WP has been a huge mistake. Just fundamentally bad. And quite unlike any academic practice in other areas where one expects the teacher to be more knowledgeable and more experienced than the students. I also think the focus on using junior undergraduates to write WP articles on hard subjects is misguided. These students don't yet know their subject. They shouldn't be writing educational material (this encyclopaedia) on a subject they don't understand. This actually leads to plagiarism as they aren't knowledgeable enough to successfully rephrase the material.
Perhaps we are seeing different Wikipedia communities. The one I see in Medicine has just a small number of active editors (and I'm not one of them). Maybe in other areas there is a vibrant community that can easily absorb the student edits. In my area, editors struggle with access to sources and limited free time. Plus they just plain don't want to be classroom assistants. How do you motivate someone to fix someone else's article on a subject you don't even think should have been written? You talk of some classes needing "a lot of community energy to fix". Where is this community or this energy?
Wikipedia was built on the assumption that the content creators did a bit of fixing too, that they integrated their work into the whole, that they went on to monitor their articles and work with other editors who came along to contribute. We've now got a class of transient editors who do none of this and are being directed by non-editors who do virtually nothing on-wiki. That's a huge problem. I think it is time for the wider WP community to set some guidelines and policy. The concept of allowing the academic community to treat WP as a huge online homework exercise book needs to be killed off imo. Anyone can edit Wikipedia as a volunteer. In another role, such as for a student assignment or as a paid advocate, say, ... much less clearly beneficial. Colin°Talk 14:49, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think we are talking at cross-purposes at all. We merely have different perspectives on EP outreach and the issues it has and is causing within the WP community. You and others believe that the outreach has been a bad idea and (I guess should be stopped) and that the problems that outreach into academia causes for WP can be solved by promulgating policies and guidelines (and I guess establishing the various boards and processes to review and punish transgressors). I, on the other hand, believe the outreach is good for WP and provides far more benefit to the encyclopedia than harm. I believe current WP norms can effectively deal with any issues created by outreach if applied correctly. I also know that the "actual" problems you are concerned about are real. We have the same purpose, reduce those problems. Neither your solution or my solution is "theoretical", they are just different. We shall have to agree to continue to disagree on that. I am just one voice, as are you. It will eventually be the WP Community that decides. (Interesting tidbit in this: Wikipedia:The community Whether it is true or not, I did not know that most content is added by IP addresses, not registered editors. This thing is out of control) --Mike Cline (talk) 15:55, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Mike Cline, your obstinance leaves me speechless, and that is quite a feat. What is happening in medical articles is disgusting; why you insist on this obtuseness befuddles. Kudos on Colin for finding a way to even engage in this conversation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:02, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

@Sandy, if you and others feel this way: What is happening in medical articles is disgusting, then draft the policy/guideline, whatever, that you believe will "solve" the issue and submit it to the WP community for consensus. I won't stop you, as I am not in charge here, but neither are you or Colin, JB et al. I have a position in this discussion, as do all of you. We just disagree. There's nothing obstinate or obtuse about it. I don't lose sleep over medical articles in WP because that's not where I play (There may be huge problems there caused by no end of reasons). But I do lose sleep (figuratively) over at lot of WP contributions in topics and processes that I do play in. (Where I do know there's lots of problems caused by no end of reasons). But I am deeply committed to successful WP outreach into academia. We all play where we are comfortable. If you remain "befuddled" after all this, then your expectations of me are way too far from where I live. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:25, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both Mike and Colin for what I think is a very useful discussion, which I hope doesn't simply get lost. (And because elsewhere I've been frustrated by his use of jargon, I'd like especially to thank Mike for the clarity of his contributions here.) I have always hoped that the WEF would help provoke and coordinate such serious discussions about both the theory and practice of the education program.

And yet this is the biggest single weakness of the WEF as it is currently constituted: it has inherited the intense disinclination and even discomfort with disagreement that was also the hallmark of the WMF's management of the Education Program. I pointed this out ages ago. The WMF was comfortable only with jamborees such as the meeting in Boston, in which all the potential problems of the Pune program and Steve Joorden's Toronto class could go utterly unremarked in the general atmosphere of celebration and self-satisfaction. Hence we also see that the number one requirement for prospective WEF Board members is that they "be positively passionate about a partnership between Wikimedia and education".

When they do encounter any disagreement or conflict, the Board members take their discussions off-wiki as far as possible, accentuating the opacity and lack of representativity that plagues their entire operation. Most of the Board (User:DStrassmann, User:Etlib etc.) don't bother to demean themselves with any discussion at all, leaving poor User:Mike Christie as the fall guy. And they are paralyzed, unable to replace Board members who leave until they even fall beneath their legal quota (while at the same time complaining that the reason they can't respond to anyone is that they are over-taxed and too busy). This is ridiculous.

The result is that any sense of legitimacy or goodwill towards the project is eroded, and the opportunity for serious thought about the issues is lost, except on rare occasions such as this one. But the Board should be seeking more such discussions like this, not fewer. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:13, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and incidentally, to respond to a question from Biosthmors on the Education Noticeboard: when or if the WEF Board finally get their act together to organize some kind of consultative elections on new board members, the first person that I would propose to stand would be User:Colin. Even (or especially) although he is not "positively passionate" about the Program; but precisely because he is passionate. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:25, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

This assumption is dangerous without data

Many contributors to this discussion here and on the noticeboard have continually made the assumption inherent in this statement: The instructor is the one that forces students to edit by making it required in their courses. That assumption is that students who edit Wikipedia are “forced” to edit WP against their will. That they are coerced into doing so for the “grade”. Of course adopting this assumption as fact now makes it easy to put blame and responsibility on the instructor and artificially create a new class of “editor” that requires special policies and guidelines to control.

I think this is a very dangerous assumption to bandy about without real data to understand the scope of “forced editing”. I would encourage the WEF to conduct a perpetual survey (via surveymonkey or some other method) of students working on Education Program assignments to build a set of reliable data on this question. The simple questions might be:

Did you edit WP during the class assignment (Yes/No)?
If Yes, Was editing WP required as part of the course? (Yes/No)
Answer Yes if you were required to edit WP to meet course objectives.
Answer No if the instructor made editing WP optional, and you were given an alternative method of meeting course objectives.

We shouldn't be trying to concoct policies or guidelines based on an assumption that may be completely baseless in reality. --Mike Cline (talk) 11:41, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

See above class. Here is the syllabus. The Wikipedia assignment is 20% of the grade so for the students to get an A or B grade, they must do the Wikipedia assignment. Mike, you need to stop this offensive defensiveness and talk of "dangerous" assumptions being "bandied" about. Ha! The WMF bandy about enough crap data. We don't need hyperbolic responses like "forced to edit WP against their will" like they are locked in a room unable to come out till they've produced a GA. Per Wikipedia:Assignments, whether students are encouraged or compelled (to various degrees) the issue is they are editing in a way they would not do as volunteers. The effect of that needs to be studied because it is not clear that's a positive. Given that most of these students are being guided by profs who are not actually serious Wikipedians, the chances are rather low. -- Colin°Talk 13:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
@Colin, I would be in complete agreement that some students may be "forced" as Biosthmors characterizes it in the opening of this section, but would not agree that this "forced" editing is widespread without some real data. That is my concern, we shouldn't be considering policy based on an assumption that isn't supported by real data. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:59, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Forced/compelled/encouraged. It doesn't matter that much. Even the "encouraged" ones aren't being given marks for "Write or improve article on WP on whatever subject you like." -- Colin°Talk 14:11, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Let's please not stonewall morals and common sense, Mike Cline. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:25, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Every edu class I have participated has given a meaningful non-Wikipedia assignment for students who are uncomfortable working on Wikipedia. In every higher institution of learning I've been in, I also really doubt that a student severely uncomfortable with the idea of contributing to Wikipedia who brought that concern to their instructor would not be accomodated. Most college students when given the chance to edit Wikipedia instead of write a term paper, and I say this as someone who has seen hundreds of them, are pretty damn happy. One student in one of my recent classes said something to the effect of "I've been in Berkeley for three years, and I honestly feel like this is the only assignment I have ever been given that actually matters." I have problems with the idea of framing student edits as 'compulsed,' and think it is unnecessary and untrue hyperbole for the vast majority of students editing Wikipedia. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:59, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Would you prefer "led"? The point is the focus of their work is directed by the prof. And often the class specification is too vague or the prof doesn't really have an idea of what makes a good WP article, or they go targeting featured articles. Stop getting would up over words when this is a distraction. Really, you and Mike Cline are not addressing the substance of the problem, and just having an argument for argument sake, going on the offensive over choice of works. This isn't helpful. The student's choice of activity on WP is not entirely voluntary. I couldn't care less whether they can choose to do something else (that's an education issue, not mine). The dynamic changes utterly as soon as you have work on WP being directed by someone else, and changes in effect as soon as one person can dictate to 10, 30, or 1500 students what they can do. Currently WP has no guideline or policy to deal with that. Colin°Talk 08:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
If you don't think my last post was productive or directly related to what you think we are trying to talk about, then you have failed to adequately frame what you would like to talk about. I have a better idea of where you're trying to go based on your last post, but if you aren't willing to extend the slightest bit of WP:AGF - keep in mind that no class I have been involved with has caused significant problems, or you personally even the slightest problem - this is going to be a hard discussion to have productively. I'm not having an argument for argument's sake. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:38, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I think the two of you are coming at this from slightly different angles. Kevin, you seem to be approaching a problem that I've seen raised here before, that students assigned to edit Wikipedia are being compelled to sign away some of their creative activity under CC-BY-SA 3.0 & GFDL, and that ethics may require an alternative to this. I think Colin's exploring a different angle. The default assumption behind many of our policies is that editors' actions, for good or for ill, are intrinsically motivated. The community as a whole isn't quite sure about how to deal with extrinsically motivated editors, which these students are, at least to some extent; witness the vitriolic debates on paid editing. The real governance issue is that the person providing the extrinsic motivation is making or influencing at least some of the editorial decisions, but is isolated from community feedback about those decisions. I think that's something well worth sorting out as it specifically applies to education and students. Our present guidelines and policies for dealing with undesirable off-wiki influence on articles tend to assume malice rather than honest ignorance, and would be rather blunt weapons if applied to these situations. Choess (talk) 00:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with your assessment; that became a lot more obvious after his last post. And I agree that that is an issue worth sorting out. But I am going to reiterate that, if people involved in the education program are met with attacks about things that are simple misunderstandings, it's going to greatly lessen our desire and willingness to engage with people who do so. WP:AGF is policy for a reason, and if Colin isn't willing to apply it to people involved in the education program, then discussions launched by him are unlikely to get substantial participation by people involved in the education program. Making a good faith post aimed at trying to resolve an issue (that of compulsion) that has been repeatedly brought up and was what I thought Colin was going for and getting accused of arguing for the sake of arguing doesn't exactly make me want to pour a bunch of my volunteer time in to participating in conversations he initiates. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:32, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I understand. I think frustration is justifiable on both sides: Mike's answer to Colin's question seems to boil down to "No, there's nothing we can do about a class that's producing useless articles, even if we agree that the assignment is poorly designed." But given the history of tension here, it's just a fact of life that a lot of people are going to be cranky and sharp-tongued until we can resolve some of these issues.
Moving back to the issue at hand, I think the extrinsically-driven nature of student editing is a key point in the matter. Mike refers to the "existing norms that apply to all Wikipedia participants". But the wonderful thing about norms on Wikipedia is that there are so many of them. :-) There's one "norm" that applies to the generic newly-joined editor: we are, frankly, generous to a fault when those editors are making good-faith efforts to improve Wikipedia, and it usually takes a long siege of unintentional damage and failure to respond to communications before they get sanctioned. On the other hand, we also have norms to deal with the repeated appearance of new accounts whose editing is coordinated off-wiki by third parties, and they include things like rangeblocks and Wikipedia:discretionary sanctions. I think it's fair to say that neither norm is entirely appropriate. We have started by applying the first; if we want to avoid applying the second, we do need to find some middle ground that acknowledges that this is a special situation.
As a college instructor myself, I find the notion of being held responsible for absolutely every edit my students might make rather intimidating. But I can also understand this as a reaction to the current system, where instructors can be completely detached from any kind of community feedback. Looking over the exchange between Colin and Mike above, what I find frustrating is what appears to be an unwillingness to say to instructors, "Hey, you're going about this the wrong way. Why don't you look at some of these other techniques and cases before going forward with this assignment? It will get more cooperation from our editors and will make your students' work more productive." I think your perspective on instructor and CA roles upthread, Kevin, is pretty reasonable. But the WEF has to be willing to go beyond the dissemination of best practices to sometimes telling instructors to "step back and rethink whether or not they should be here," and taking the risk that, yes, sometimes they will stalk off from Wikipedia in a huff. If they don't, the community here will eventually catch up and do so, and in a much more heavy-handed and damaging way than if the WEF gets ahead of the issue. Choess (talk) 07:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree that the WEF should be prepared to tell professors when their course is likely to get into trouble. I think ambassadors and regular editors and the WMF should be prepared to do that too, but for US/Canada courses I think the WEF can help deflect some mistakes, and I hope we can get better at doing that over time. Where I agree with Colin is that the community doesn't seem to have a way to deal with courses that go badly. Joordens' class is an extreme example, because a single edit by each of hundreds of students means that reverts and blocks and talk page warnings have no effect at all, but there are other classes which are designed to have more interaction that also don't go well, and we don't have a good community response in these cases. They end up creating more work for regular editors than benefits in terms of good added material. I don't have an answer for this problem; I think the WEF can help at course planning, but will be less able to help once a course has started and is causing problems.
The idea I've heard that I like best is to identify areas that are troublesome and put additional resources into prevention in those areas. For example, I think there's a consensus that when a class edits medical articles the outcomes are typically worse than for other topic areas, to the point where the cleanup work outweighs any benefit from any good edits. (This is hearsay on my part, since I have no medical expertise, but I trust the judgement of the editors whom I've heard talking about this.) What if we come up with a message that we want to convey specifically to instructors proposing to work on medical articles? It doesn't have to be just a minatory page with a stop sign and dire warnings; we can also offer consultation with experts who've done medical class work on Wikipedia successfully; perhaps quotes such as Joordens admission that he didn't understand how Wikipedia worked, so he designed his course badly; perhaps a half page case study of a successful student's work, and another of a failure. If we do offer phone or Skype or in-person time with experts, I'd suggest that we pick people with credentials, not because they're better but because that will help the message. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:37, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
A sane voice amid a growing sea of despair. Mike Christie listens (maybe because, like Jbmurray, he has actually built real content). No reason to belabor AGFing on those who don't, won't, or can't listen, read, digest, investigate, or care, and continue to promote faulty analyses of the effect student editing is having in here on established editors and on content. Thanksgiving is coming: as students rush to add their content so it can be graded just as families are planning holiday celebrations, I can look forward to spending hours as an unpaid TA cleaning up bad edits to articles not worth the time for students who will never come back and maintain their articles or help, guided by profs who have never edited Wikipedia. While the WMF/WEF does nothing to put the word out of the damage it is promoting (you all DO have the power of the press release). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:54, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Who is that dig about 'real content' aimed at, Sandy? Of the people participating in this thread besides Mike Christie, Mike Cline has started ~500 articles, has 22k articlespace edits, and has contributed substantially to an FA. Bios has 4k articlespace edits and has contributed substantiall to two medical GA's. I don't have any GA's/FA's, because I haven't dove in to those processes as a content writer yet, but am the primary author and maintainer of at least a couple of dozen articles, including several substantial science and law related ones. If that dig was aimed at anyone in this thread, it's misguided. Yes, no one participating here has written the same amount of high quality content as you, but to suggest that none of us have built 'real content' would be insulting. And if the dig was aimed at people not even participating in this discussion, what was the point of it?
I hate to drag this discussion further off-track from its original point, but I feel like little productive is likely to come out of any discussion where half the people participating assume the other half are either incompetents or malicious. I understand why having to clean up after incompetent or untrained editors is annoying, but the tone of your and Colin's recent posts is actively counterproductive. I have previously told you elsewhere that I actively support the idea of just flat out blocking poor classes that represent an overall loss to the encyclopedia if it's clear they can't be improved, and that I would support such a sanction if you suggested it. I've previously shared a quite frank assessment of some of the flaws I saw in the education program at one point with you via email. You know I see the problems, and you know I want to fix them. People frequently bemoan the fact that not everyone involved in the education program chooses to regularly interact on-wiki, but with the tone you and Colin have taken in some of your recent posts, doess that really surprise you? And do you think that continuing to take the same tone is likely to make the problem better? Btw, the reason you've never seen a MEDRS problematic class out of Berkeley is because I've pre-emptively stopped every psych class that wanted to use Wikipedia-based assignments from doing so. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:04, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Kevin, Sandy frequently plays the "content producer" card and I can see how it upsets some people. You need to take things here less personally. You attack me for lack of AGF yet I haven't criticised your education-related involvement at all. For all I know, your classes could be laying golden eggs every time and you are personally defending Wikipedia from lots of unwise assignments. I don't know and that isn't my point here. I'm sure those in WEF have experience with classes that are positive and well run. My issues is that Wikipedia is currently open for anyone to come along and screw up and the WMF keep telling us "anyone can edit" as though that means we have to let them treat Wikipedia as an online homework exercise. But it isn't. It is an encyclopaedia. My advice to you and Mike Cline is to taken criticism on the chin. When you see someone complaining, rather than being defensive, try to work out what they problem is. I think most of your responses above seem to stem from misunderstanding other people's points. Why not ask them to explain, rather than get out your weapons for attack over word choice. This battleground stuff needs to stop. I agree with much of what Choess and Mike Christie have written. -- Colin°Talk 21:22, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Re taking things too personally, no kidding. Kevin, it is aimed at the boatloads of professors who never make more than ten edits yet pretend to have students editing Wikipedia, and the boatloads of ambassadors who don't know thing one about RS much less MEDRS, as well as the boatloads of WMF employees who have never built content. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't put it on yourself. It astounds me that this still has to be pointed out to you-- almost as much as it still astounds me how unwilling you and Mike Cline and several others are to acknowledge how bad this problem is, and to refuse to recognize that all of you who are up to your eyeballs supporting this program and singing its praises have it well within your power to help make things better for those of us who are paying the price for what has become a failed experiment, albeit one that is now supporting some people economically. Please stop suggesting we should solve a problem we didn't ask for, when we're as busy as we are just cleaning up articles. My latest little gem is one article where two classes at once are editing, neither of them tagging talk. Lovely mess. They drop in one incomprehensible bunch of text in one edit; another editor and myself have to make hundreds of cleanup edits, and the thing is still a wreck. If you want me to sound happy, it's unlikely to happen. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:46, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
If it wasn't aimed at anyone in this discussion, then why inflammatorily bring it up? And seriously, you've seen me shittalk the program plenty of times. You are fully aware I see problems in the program, and want to fix them; that's why I'm here in the first place. As I've explicitly told you before, I'm willing to back any reasonable measure you or anyone else comes up with necessary to tide the problems in MEDRS areas, but lack enough knowledge of how the edu program has been functioning in those areas to come up with a magic bullet myself.
I am not suggesting you should somehow fix all the problems in the education program. I'm just pointing out that on the one hand you're complaining that certain subsets of people involved in the program don't participate much on-wiki, while at the same time giving them plenty of reason to want to avoid participating on-wiki. It's not your job to fix the program, but the way you have been approaching discussions about the program, at least part of the time, is actively making it less likely that the problems you see will ever be fixed.
I don't need to you to sound happy (although I'd love it if you were,) but I would enjoy it if you weren't vitriolic to the point of making people not want to engage with you around this set of issues. Also, I'd be more than glad to hear your suggestions about how someone (me) who has no affiliation with the WEF or WMF, isn't even an ENWP sysop, and doesn't normally work with MEDRS classes can magically make all the problems go away, as you suggested in your last post (besides what I've already been doing, of course.) Doesn't really seem within my power to me. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:12, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Kevin, WMF/WEF whatever is not going to engage me or the thousands just like me no matter how I sound or how much I type and in what tone I write; that's not what they do, and they have a long record of not doing it and of hiring the like-minded to continue to not do it. What can you do? It's not rocket science; read Mike Christie's posts, note the difference, and consider a concept called validation. He acknowledges the impact this mess has had on medical articles, and respects the difficulty, and even if he can't do anything to immediately fix it, at least we know he is aware and will engage in dialogue and entertain any reasonable possibility, if we could ever come up with some. Makes one feel a whole lot less put out and abused. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:20, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Which is pretty much what I've done in a vast majority of conversations I've ever had in you? I recognize the problems the program produces, particularly in areas covered by MEDRS, and realize they need to be fixed. Admittedly I'm coming off cranky in this thread, but just one or two posts up from yours, I even explicitly said that I would back you up on any reasonable measure to try to get the problem under control. These are things I have told you on tons of occasions. You are wrong in assuming that people at WMF/WEF refuse to engage with you on principle, I guarantee it is at least partly related to the fact that you aren't really fond of playing nicely with others. Anyway, I'm out of this thread and dewatchlisting this page for the next couple weeks. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:40, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
It sounds like the possibility of you being more open to frank discussion of real problems, and less defensive, is off the table. "Btw, the reason you've never seen a MEDRS problematic class out of Berkeley is because I've pre-emptively stopped every psych class that wanted to use Wikipedia-based assignments from doing so." BTW, excuse my bad manners; thank you very much for that. Even if only one less, it helps. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:55, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not taking things particularly personally, I'm just pointing out that if the goal of you (or of Sandy) is to start conversations that are likely to be productive, taking an exceptionally hostile tone isn't going to be productive (and certainly won't attract the oft-bemoaned absent WEF members.) You are right, I misunderstood you - although I would suggest you initially did a less than ideal job at explaining your point. I addressed in a substantial way the substance of what I perceived your complaint to be - which is a complaint that has frequently been brought up, and you responded by accusing me of arguing for the sake of arguing. "I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make" would've been a reply infinitely more likely to result in something productive than "You are arguing for the sake of arguing." This battleground stuff does need to stop if anything productive is to happen. The only way that's going to occur is if stuff like some of your previous posts and Sandy's previous posts cease, and both of you start assuming that everyone here has the best interests of Wikipedia in mind. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm coming to the impression that there is a scale or ratio problem here. At its extreme was Joordens who thought there were so many thousands of active Wikipedians that we could (and would be happy to) mark his 1700 students work for him, and fix any mistakes they made. It was perhaps rather a shock for him to realise there were only a few editors actively editing those articles, and most of them were unable to access the sources his students used. But even a class of 20 can produce enough material to overwhelm the system. I wonder if this whole big experiment needs to reboot and take another approach. The current approach (infamously measuring success with the analogy of piles of paper, or War and Peace) valued new content (of whatever quality). But an encyclopaedia isn't built by people chucking articles into a pot and giving it a big stir. The education program needs to take a more holistic approach to this whole endeavour. The reliance on the volunteer community to do everything other than write the student draft is lopsided. -- Colin°Talk 21:22, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

In large part I agree with you that a more substantial portion of the burden educational assignments pose to the volunteer committee needs to be handled by CA's, instructors, and similar positions. I'm hoping that my upcoming residency at Berkeley will provide a model that will be reproducible at other schools in the future. Far stronger in person guidance is needed for successful Wikipedia-based assignments than most classes receive. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:57, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm all in favor of constructive ideas for doing anything that can be done, but often these suggestions won't address the horse that is so far out of the barn already-- that is, what I am most often finding now is professors who have not registered a course page, and are unleashing students on Wikipedia without being part of any program, and the student editing only comes to light when one presses, queries, reverts, harangues and finally a prof shows up. Because the word of mouth got around about free TAs on Wikipedia (in fact, I was approached by a friend who knows I edit Wikipedia because she had a professor friend who wanted to talk to me about getting on the bandwagon). So, I continue to plead that the WMF WEF whatever legal entity they are now put out some information to the press that is different than the glowing and false reports that we've seen so far, that will stop the barrage of ill-equipped professors using us as TAs. It might not make a dent, because that horse is so far out of the barn, but it's worth a try, and it may make a few of us feel less abused and taken advantage of by functionaries who won't listen to regular editors and seem to have no concern for what is going on in here. Absolutely the small courses are doing as much damage as the 1,700 psych students, and they are hitting more significant topics. Shifting more burden to more editors we don't have might not even work for those courses that register; those that don't are, I suspect, beginning to outnumber those that do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:55, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Can we please have someone like User:DStrassmann or User:Etlib respond here. Don't dump everything on poor User:Mike Christie. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:19, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I respond here more than anyone else because that's one of my main roles in the WEF. I'm not exchanging scores of emails with our attorneys; I'm not negotiating with a CPA firm to get cheap accounting work done; I'm not the one who deals with the bank; I'm not working on the website; I don't run the meetings. My expertise includes Wikipedia communication, and I volunteered to be the primary person to monitor the relevant talk pages and answer questions. I believe this is better and more efficient than having every board member respond to every question. I think every single board member has responded at least a few times on various boards, particularly when direct questions have been put to them. Jon, your edit summary says "does anyone in the WEF give a damn"; my post above, suggesting one way that the WEF might be able to help, was meant as a WEF response. I suppose I could have a separate User:Mike Christie (WEF) login to make it clearer when I'm posting in that role, but I'd rather not since I see my community role and my WEF role as largely overlapping. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:57, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Mike, and you are appreciated. (But no, the WMWhatever does not give a damn, and they will be the end of many productive editors.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, I'd have thought that people who were concerned about the issues raised here would also have some interest in discussing them and thinking them through. This is not about "answering questions" (how limited a conception is that?!), it's about contributing to a conversation. Oh well. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:03, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Dear all - It's important that we find good solutions to the important concerns raised both on this page and elsewhere by our stakeholders. As a nonprofit, the board of WEF has a duty of care. We are together committed to making good decisions. These decisions are taken jointly, and for the WEF to move forward constructively, it's important that we attend to all aspects of what is needed. Mike Christie represents the WEF on this page; however, we plan to host regular office hours as well as times for conversations where members of the WEF board and committed stakeholders can speak and listen to each other. DStrassmann (talk) 14:34, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
  • About whether students are "forced" to edit against their will: I rather expect that relatively few students feel as though they are being dragged here against their will, but I like the idea of getting actual data from a student survey. But I think there is, indeed, a more subtle process that differentiates student edits from other kinds of edits. Students are always doing it for a grade, or some sort of credit towards a degree. Aside perhaps from the controversy elsewhere over paid editors, there just isn't the same thing for other editors. Wikipedia runs into problems when students are told to edit without the learning curve about how to edit that successful editors go through. We have problems when students are worried that what experienced editors are telling them, or when experienced editors modify or revert their edits, is going to adversely affect their grade. Consequently, we need to find better ways to communicate to instructors how to construct their class projects so as to fit with, and not conflict with, Wikipedia. And we need to figure out how to put ourselves in students' shoes and understand what pressures they may feel about class assignments, and use that understanding to better align their needs with ours.
  • About "responsibility", as Biosthmors originally asked it: It's an interesting question. In a way, each student editor, like any other editor, is "responsible" for his or her own edits. That's certainly the position that WMF Counsel would take. And, in a way, instructors are responsible for their classes, and ambassadors are responsible for communicating with them. Ultimately, the question becomes what the community should do when class edits present problems. Some of that may be sanctions against someone (class? instructor?) when something really bad keeps happening, but it is often better to prevent problems before they occur. I suspect that an "information page" like this one can only go so far, because the information only helps those who pay attention to it. We will need to end up with a guideline that reflects the expectations of the community as a whole, and not just the same small group of editors who pay attention here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
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