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Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Washington/Online Communities (Winter 2022)

Noticed a few problems with this course from the get-go:

wizzito | say hello! 10:20, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

P.S. not related to this course but seems worrying enough: for the course Historic Site Interpretation (Spring 2022), the professor here might possibly be asking students to make non-notable biographies. One article in the available articles section on the dashboard pulled up no relevant or reliable sources to draw from on Google when I searched the persons' name. They claimed to have previously created the article Lynching of George Scott, which has only 3 sources and may not be notable either. wizzito | say hello! 10:56, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

More problems with the "Online Communities" course have been found:

wizzito | say hello! 22:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks wizzito. (cc @Khascall and Benjamin Mako Hill:) Regarding miscapitalizations, these are pretty common during the early phase of a course assignment when student editors are choosing topics, but in most cases they get sorted out by the time things reach mainspace. Wiki Education Dashboard will automatically fix some cases (for example, if "Pinky Swear" is actually supposed to be pinky swear, as opposed to Pinky Swear Foundation or something like that) by matching existing articles that have been edited by a student editor with case-variant assignment titles. Existing redirects (like The decemberists) usually don't cause any problems, but we don't automatically change them because in some cases, the intention is actually to replace the redirect with a new article (usually in cases where a related but distinct topic is redirected to another article or section).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
@Wizzito and Sage (Wiki Ed): Wizzito left a message with more-or-less the same content over on my user page and I've responded over there. The short version is that I've addressed all the issues that were raised. As Sage suggests, students are still choosing their topics and we're going back-and-forth with them to make sure they land on appropriate articles/topics. We'll make sure everything is linked up well as this gets sorted out. Thanks for all your helpful comments! —mako๛ 00:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Oddities with PrimeBOT and WikiEd Course

I also described this on @Ian (Wiki Ed):'s talk page here but @Benjamin Mako Hill: recommended this spot as a way to activate potential attention from a few other folks: it looks like some sort of interaction between the Wiki Edu dashboard and PrimeBOT @Primefac: is leading to repeated edits to the talk pages of articles that our students have selected, alerting folks to the presence of students editing the article. Example: Talk:Donghu_District has 'Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment' 5 times at present -- but the same issue seems to recur in all the articles the students have chosen so far via the WikiEdu dashboard. Is there something we can do to prevent this happening? Thanks for everything you do! Kaylea Champion (talk) 02:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for my tone in my first two messages, I was writing that as I was running out the door going to work. I have removed them but have presented them for the record. While I do recognise that I said in my own close of the TFD that the template should remain "in its current form" until things got sorted with the subst-ing end of the script, I was assuming that the WikiEd folks (should) have known this was coming for over a year (i.e. the TFD closed Dec 2020). I do suppose a delay of a day or two to "flip the bits" and implement it was to be expected, but according to this discussion with Sage it sounds like no one was expecting the change to actually happen?
In the meantime, I'm a little concerned when a single user can spam 80 pages in a single minute with these updates; I do not think this is acceptable, but am not sure how it can or should be dealt with. (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 08:02, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
I let Sage (Wiki Ed) know about the issues arising from the TFD, and it should be fixed by now. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:25, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Ian (Wiki Ed), just to double-check, does that mean it can be re-converted into a subst-only template? Primefac (talk) 15:58, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: I believe so, but it's probably best to wait for Sage to respond (it's still early morning in his part of the world). Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:03, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Fair enough; I'm just getting off work and won't be able to implement for a bit anyway. Primefac (talk) 16:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: No, it's not ready to be turned back to a subst-only template. All I did yesterday (with my "ragesoss" account) was to revert the template. There are still a number of unanswered questions about how the Dashboard and template should work (which were not settled in the TFD, but as far as I know, were not discussed or decided afterwards either), so I'm not sure *what* to implement. I could relatively easily disable that features altogether, but I don't think that's the right solution.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Ok, I'll wait for further discussion. Primefac (talk) 17:52, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Sage (Wiki Ed) answers to your questions:
  • What should happen when a student editor is no longer working on it? - nothing. It's a talk message and it will get archived.
  • What should happen when the editors working on a given article change? - If the message hasn't been archived, post an update there. If it has, post a new one.
  • What should happen after the talk page message has been archived or removed? - Nothing.
Hope this helps move things on. Gonnym (talk) 15:55, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Example converted wiki ed assignment section One

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor i

Example converted wiki ed assignment section Two

Curabitur pretium tincidunt lacus. Nulla gravida orci a odio. Nullam varius, turpis et commodo pharetra, est eros bibendum elit, nec luctus magna felis sollicitudin mauris. Integer in mauris eu nibh euismod gravida. Duis ac tellus et risus vulputate vehic

|headerstyle=background:#ccccff |style=text-align:center; }}

{{WikiEd banner shell |1=

Example converted wiki ed assignment section Three

Fusce convallis, mauris imperdiet gravida bibendum, nisl turpis suscipit mauris, sed placerat ipsum urna sed risus. In convallis tellus a mauris. Curabitur non elit ut libero tristique sodales. Mauris a lacus. Donec mattis semper leo. In hac habitasse pla

Example converted wiki ed assignment section Four

Proin nonummy, lacus eget pulvinar lacinia, pede felis dignissim leo, vitae tristique magna lacus sit amet eros. Nullam ornare. Praesent odio ligula, dapibus sed, tincidunt eget, dictum ac, nibh. Nam quis lacus. Nunc eleifend molestie velit. Morbi loborti

How should Wiki Education assignments be announced on article talk page?

How should Wiki Education assignments be announced on article talk page? --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:39, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

In late 2020, this Templates for Deletion discussion for the {{dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment}} template indicated the need to make some changes to how the Wiki Education Dashboard handles announcing and updating which courses and student editors plan to work on an article. However, there was no consensus on what specifically should be changed, and in the time since then, there doesn't seem to have been any interest in figuring that out. (Recently, the template was temporarily changed to be subst-only, and then all the usages of it were substituted into talk page sections via PrimeBOT. That caused some cases of the bot and the Dashboard edit warring with each other, so it's been reverted for now.) I'd like to settle the desired behavior, so I can implement any needed changes on the Dashboard side.

Here are some possible options I could implement:

  1. The template should be substituted onto talk pages in a new section (similarly to what PrimeBOT did with all the previous usages). In this case, it would only be added once, without being updated when additional student editors sign up for the same article. It might get re-added if the section gets archived or removed before the course ends.
  2. The template should go at the top of a talk page like WikiProject banners, but it should be automatically hidden after the course ends.
  3. The template should be added in a new section but not substituted, and — as it has been at the top of the page until now — updated (or removed) automatically when new editors from the same course sign up or change articles. In this case, it might get re-added if the section gets archived or removed before the course ends, but won't get re-added after that.
  4. The template should not be used at all. Assigned articles will still be linked from wiki course pages (like this) but don't need to be announced on article talk pages.

Indicate your preference and/or discuss below. --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:39, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey

Indicate your preference(s) below.

Option 1: Substitute the template to a new section

Option 2: Put the template in the top section, hide it after the course ends

  • First choice: This is my preferred option. I think it's both the most useful and the easiest to implement (aside from not using it at all). Almost all the existing usages have already been substituted into section by PrimeBOT, so the only ones that would show up at the top of talk pages would be newly-added ones — and they would only be rendered until the course ends. (It would be possible to make the continue rendering for some fixed period after the course ends, if that's preferable.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:39, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose, mainly because of the opposition to an excess of potentially unnecessary banners at the top of the page. Speaking for myself, however, a glut of hidden banners is almost worse than a glut of out-of-date banners - who if anyone is going to remove them? Primefac (talk) 15:34, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
    How is a #glut of hidden banners worse? Surely it's the best of both worlds as the archive bot will remove them; after all, they're a section, now. Mathglot (talk) 20:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
    A bunch of hidden banners gives no information to anyone. At the very least, an archived section (in some form) tells that in the past there were students who edited the page. One shouldn't need to edit the page on the off chance that there is a hidden WikiEd banner to tell them that. If they're a section that will be archived, then there is no need to have them be a top-of-the-page banner or hide it when it's done. Primefac (talk) 11:53, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think it's important that there be a permanent record somewhere visible that a student edited a course. The appropriate place for that would be a talk page section, or the archives if it's a busy talk page. We already know how to handle archiving, and this shouldn't be any different for WikiEd courses than it is for any other talk page notice. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:49, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose, don't want these going away after the course ends, as often text needs to be checked months after that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Primefac and Sdkb -- not much to add to the points they've made. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Option 3: Put the template in a new section, and updated it as needed

  • First choice over Option 1: to quote myself from the TFD close, the consensus at this point is to convert it to a talk page message of some variety. This allows for the message to be archived when it has gotten stale (and avoids the necessity of someone remembering to remove the banner after it has expired re: Option 2), but in thinking about it having it as a message box still allows for ease of updating by whatever script still exists (updating a parameter is easier than updating prose. Primefac (talk) 15:34, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Second choice, after option 3a below. But has problems with consumption of vertical space, and swamping other discussions in the worst cases. Mathglot (talk) 21:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Support as first choice per Primefac. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:51, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Second choice. This relatively easy to implement and doesn't make en.wiki behavior too different from the unchanged behavior that will still be in place for other languages, and I think it will be unlikely to cause too much confusion--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:35, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Second choice (this allows for normal archiving). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Support (equal preference with option 1). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Option 3a: Put the template in a new section, auto-collapse, auto-archive after <period>

This is similar to option 3 above, but requires:
➢ the individual sections to be enclosed in an auto-collapsed header such as {{WikiEd banner shell}};
➢ an auto-archiving bot to be added to the page if not there already, with a default archiving period.
  • This is my First choice given the Tfd outcome (which did not go the way I hoped, so working within it). My preference for archive period, is assignment |end-date= + 182 days).
The auto-collapse avoids the large amount of vertical space after the header and before the discussion sections on the page, or mixed in and swamping them (see major offenders: Talk:Social media, Talk:Artificial intelligence, Talk:Gender equality. See discussion below for how they would look if collapsed.) The auto-archiving prevents the sections from sticking around after they're stale, and Sage or a tweaked Primebot could add auto-archiving for TPs that lacked them. Mathglot (talk) 21:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
  • This is my first choice as well, assuming the auto-archiving is set to the same as the rest of the talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:57, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • The issue of bots setting up auto-archiving maybe shouldn't be bundled into the proposal, although I see the issue with the bot-generated spam (though note it was already an issue before they turned into talk page sections, except before they were talk page banners). The collapsing of talk page sections is problematic in general (eg it doesn't work on mobile), so I don't really like this solution. It just hides the problem from the most active editors (who are probably desktop editors) and distracts from the need for better solutions. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • First choice. (IMHO the only viable option.) If the talk page section could be placed in chronological order that would be ideal. Otherwise, why should everyone else follow the chronological order guideline if WikiEd can violate it? (I recognize that WikiEd does not intent to violate anything, and I am a strong supporter of WikiEd. I phrased it in that way to reflect how the average Wikipedian probably views out-of-order talk page sections.) Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 23:52, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Option 4: Don't use the template at all

Option 5: Other (specify)

  • WikiProject template, similar to that used for Articles for creation. It does contribute to the excess of potentially unnecessary banners, but as it can be collapsed with the WikiProject banner shell I believe that issue is reduced, while it would have the additional benefit of making it easier to determine within Wikipedia existing systems which articles have been contributed to as part of WikiEd, something that I believe would be useful. BilledMammal (talk) 14:54, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Sage (Wiki Ed), I think this could use an {{rfc}} tag at the top in order to garner more opinions from a wider range of editors. Primefac (talk) 15:34, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, re Rfc.
Secondly, this is a dry, technical topic, that may scare off or fail to interest many of the regulars here, and we really need good participation. How would you feel about adding an Intro section (possibly collapsed to save vertical space) above the "Survey" section, reprising what the main issue was in the first place, a brief summary of the Tfd result and why it turned out that way, and possibly pointers to some TPs (old revs, if already bot-adjusted) illustrating RW examples of the issues this is all trying to solve; maybe before/after revs, or a side-by-side example, or something. Not sure exactly what should go there, but basically, whatever would break this out of its dry, technical world, and demonstrate the reality of it and why it matters and how this may affect ENB regulars in a way to pique their interest in responding.
Maybe I'm all wet; SandyGeorgia, could you help me out here with your reaction? I think you have your feet on the ground wrt this kind of thing: as already worded above, is the write-up sufficient to explain clearly what this is about, why it (should) matter to you, and to gain your interest in responding to it? If not, do you think an Intro paragraph or two as proposed would help, or can you think of anything that would? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:49, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Oops, Sandy I just realized that you were aware of the original Tfd, so are unlikely to be confused about all this even without additional summary or explanation. Tryptofish, same question as I posed to Sandy above: can you help with your thoughts? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:10, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. To be brutally honest, I've read all of the options – and I don't care! I understand the ways that editors can find the notices annoying, but they've never seemed like a big deal to me. Maybe something in the way of a talk page section message, rather than a banner, would be good, but I kind-of think the most useful things to do are to: (1) cut down on students constantly updating the thing during the course, and (2) let it be archived after the class is over. As to how to do that technically, meh. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:18, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
To your point (1) - I think students making 80 edits over two minutes is extremely problematic (my bot can't even get that level of action); cutting that down would be nice. To your point (2), Options 1 and 3 are basically "have them be a talk page section" which would then be archived after it's over. Primefac (talk) 19:30, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
This case of so many edits in a short period was the confluence of some technical aspects of what the Dashboard currently does: whenever a user updates an assigned article on the Dashboard, their account is used to update the assigned article's talk page with the template — either adding the template if it's not already there, or updating it with the current set of assigned editors. Since these edits occasionally fail (for example, because of edit conflicts), the Dashboard also attempts to perform the same update for every other assigned article for that class. In most cases, this basically means that whenever one student editor updates their assignment, it results in the occasional extra edit to also update another talk page on behalf of another editor whose edit failed. Unless those templates are being removed so that the template code can't be found on the page when the next assignment gets added for that course, the system doesn't end up making any rapidfire edits like we saw in the edit war with PrimeBOT. (This is the only part of the Dashboard's editing system that uses this sort of strategy; it makes me a little nervous precisely because of the potential for warring with bots, but on balance I think it's worth it to ensure that talk pages get tagged with very high consistency.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:51, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm glad you pinged me as I haven't been able to keep up. And I'm a bit confused about the options listed. Can examples of each be added? That would help those who are new to the discussion, and even me (old to the discussion). I prefer a talk page section be added to the top of the talk page, updated as needed (eg if new students sign on), and that can then be archived as all talk page threads are, according to whatever archive method is used on that particular article talk page. But I don't know what is referenced with "hide it after course ends". No! If I come to an article two months after a course ends, I need to know who all the student editors were, so I can check all those edits, and then decide whether or not to archive the section. Is that covered in one of the options above? I don't want to hide them in banners, which is more talk clutter; I want to archive them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Sandy. You might like Option 3a above, which I added simultaneously to your comment here, so you might not have seen it yet. You get to pick your own preference for <period>, which might handle your concerns about what happens two months after the course ends. I happened to pick "assignment end-date + 6 months", without having seen your message. Mathglot (talk) 21:59, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Sandy, so you can see what Option 3a might look like in action, I've added auto-archiving (6 mos.) and a collapse message to Talk:Social media in education, so it now has eleven collapsed student assignment sections in it. As a lot of those collapsed courses are older than 6 months now, as soon as the bot passes by it should go down steeply from eleven to a much lower number. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 22:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
That's what I'm on for :) I am crazy busy, so if this gets a formal RFC tag, would someone kindly ping me ? Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:57, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: it's an RfC now.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:53, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Yep, my plan was to let it get started over the weekend so the discussion could take shape somewhat first. I'll make it an RFC now.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:51, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

glut of hidden banners

Why wouldn't either of these work? The downside—if there is one—is the section headers appearing in the ToC—as they do on this page, above and it's ugly but that's also the reality of how they will appear on Talk pages where converted templates are present, and is no worse than what would occur *without* this solution. I presume the Archive bots are not perturbed by some template code sitting above a level-2 section header, and will properly grab the section and archive it anyway. (If not, it should simply be fixed to do so, at worst with a param to allow it, if this is somehow not the desirable functionality by default, though imho it should be.)

A bunch of Wiki Ed banners here

Some intro text about what's going on here.

Example converted wiki ed assignment section Five

Aliquam vehicula sem ut pede. Cras purus lectus, egestas eu, vehicula at, imperdiet sed, nibh. Morbi consectetuer luctus felis. Donec vitae nisi. Aliquam tincidunt feugiat elit. Duis sed elit ut turpis ullamcorper feugiat. Praesent pretium, mauris sed fer

Meanwhile, maybe Sage can tweak something, so that when the last converted wiki ed assignment has been archived by a bot, the banner shell can be removed as well. Mathglot (talk) 20:18, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Note that if a collapse reduces the number of total uncollapsed sections to below the TOC threshold, the table of contents will appear within the collapsed section, as is currently the case at Talk:Social media in education. (But you may miss seeing this example if the archive bot gets there before you do.) This could either be seen as a "feature", or mitigated by adding __TOC__ after the page header, when adding the collapse template.) Mathglot (talk) 22:36, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
User:Σ, based on your knowledge of archive bot internals, can you comment here on whether there is any interaction between lowercase sigmabot III and archivable Talk page sections that happen to be within the scope of a hidden text attribute, and if so what happens? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
User:Cobi, same question, regarding ClueBot III. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:14, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Results

Thank you, everyone who participated! I think we have a pretty clear result. The consensus is that assignments should be added as new sections, updated as needed during the term, so that they can be archived (either manually or by bot) after they are no longer relevant. There's also support for rolling in auto-collapsing as well, although I'm not certain about how to do that technically (and the facts it doesn't work on mobile, and isn't often used for normal chronological bottom-of-the-page talk sections makes me a little hesitant). I'm going to go ahead with implementing option 3, and we can revisit this in the future if needed.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:15, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Sage, keep me updated on how things are going and what (if anything) needs updating with the dashboard template. For example, if the students/script are adding the section headers, then I can remove that from the template (makes archiving easier was well). I don't think we need to worry about autocollapse, it's a pretty "short" template and it will be contained in its own section anyway. Primefac (talk) 14:36, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
User:Primefac: I'm deploying the update shortly. I'll change the template to remove the section header, as the dashboard will take care of that (including the course name in the header).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:20, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Looks like it's working as intended. Here's the behavior for a new assignment: diff.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:03, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Lookin' good. I think the main thing to think about next is timestamps - a section like that won't get archived without a timestamp. Primefac (talk) 19:38, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Unnecessary Speedy Deletion

I have been referred here by user: Bbb23 who was entirely unhelpful. My encyclopedic article was put up for "Speedy Deletion Review" where I contested the Speedy Deletion. The article was written objectively, using accurate sources that were properly cited. The user who responded to my contention disagreed with the standing of my article solely because they felt it was non-encyclopedic as well as questioned my reasoning for posting the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cpetrov (talk • contribs) 00:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

@Cpetrov:, you are apparently referring to this: User talk:Cpetrov#Speedy deletion nomination of Nechako Housing Commons. As User:Bbb23 tried to explain to you, your article Nechako Housing Commons was deleted under speedy deletion criterion G11 – Unambiguous advertising or promotion. "Nechako Housing Commons" refers to a dormitory under construction on the campus of the University of British Columbia. It's highly unlikely that this would be considered notable enough under Wikipedia's guidelines to have a stand-alone article written about it.
You misunderstand the importance of sources, which you may have properly cited (I cannot tell, as the article is no longer there)—yes, sources are important, but before you get to sources, the topic itself must be notable, or you can include all the sources you want, and it wouldn't make any difference. A non-notable topic may not have a stand-alone article about it on Wikipedia. Conceivably, you could add a brief mention of the dorm in the #Campus section of the article University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus), but frankly, I doubt it would even meet the threshold of importance within the BC University system to rate even a mention.
If you wish to try, I recommend going to the Talk page of the article (you can find it at Talk:University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus)) and add a section there concerning what you plan to do at the article, and see how other editors react. Hope this helps, Mathglot (talk) 03:07, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
P.S., did you write your article under another user ID, or perhaps when you were not logged into your account? I don't see any edits of yours at that article in your contribution history.   Explained below. Mathglot (talk) 03:12, 30 January 2022 (UTC) Edited. Mathglot (talk) 03:35, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
@Mathglot: You wouldn't be able to see the user's contributions as the article was deleted.--Bbb23 (talk) 03:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
Cpetrov, the standard of sourcing required for residential halls of tertiary institutions is very high. Several houses of the University of Canterbury with > 50 years of history and book-length histories published have been deleted. Stuartyeates (talk) 18:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the helpful information. I will not be submitting the article again, I appreciate your explanations, all. (Cpetrov (talk) 19:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC))

Freedom Convoy 2022 Assignment

This article, under discretionary sanctions and covering a controversial ongoing protest with broad media coverage, has been assigned as the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. This appears problematic, and so I am raising it here; if this is the wrong location, my apologies.

In this context, I would also like to ask what circumstances Wiki Ed rejects the use of a specific article in an assignment? BilledMammal (talk) 05:18, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I mean, the first and most obvious question to ask is - can any of the students working on that page even edit it? It's under ECP and I have yet to see an Ed student with more than 100 edits when they start out. Primefac (talk) 08:18, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: someone's also grabbed Anti-LGBT rhetoric. SN54129 11:12, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, that probably won't go over much better. Why do these Ed courses pick the most heavily-watched and highly-charged topics to try and throw totally new and inexperienced editors into? WikiEd instructors should be telling folks to find a stub and improve it, not to write garbage drafts on never-notable people or edit in heavily-patrolled areas (where their contributions will be little if any if they're even kept). Primefac (talk) 11:18, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
We absolutely do discourage them from editing controversial and well-developed articles. The instructions clearly point them to start and stub class articles. The vast majority do, but some topics are incredibly attractive (bubble tea, is particularly bad). Sage is working on a way to warn students away from certain articles at the assignment stage, but it's still a bit in the future.
In this case, if I had seen it I would have suggested another article. I do get notifications when students assign themselves articles which have been tagged with DS warnings, but it looks like this one wasn't. While I wouldn't tell a class working on LGBT topics they couldn't edit an article like this, I don't know if it is as good a choice for a media studies class. I will get in touch with the instructor about this one. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:41, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Genuinely glad to hear this :-) Primefac (talk) 14:44, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
@Ian (Wiki Ed) I've got to ask: why bubble tea? I mean, I know bubble tea itself is popular, but the article? for undergraduate classes? -- asilvering (talk) 21:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
@Asilvering I wish I knew. I think it's mainly people in general writing classes who are free to work on anything, rather than, say, a class on food chemistry. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:57, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
The fact that bubble tea is popular among student editors doesn't surprise me at all, although it does sort of make me chuckle. At the start of the quarter as a way to warm up the room I asked each of my students to tell me something yummy, and maybe 1 in 8 said bubble tea. What I'm noticing is that for a lot of my students, their choice of article is strongly linked to the things they love and miss, often related to their home, and that goes double for my international students -- a favorite dish, their region/hometown, a park they enjoyed as a kid, their high school..... As they say, where you edit is where you live :) Kaylea Champion (talk) 05:20, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I didn't consider that, but I would be surprised if they could. BilledMammal (talk) 10:31, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
@BilledMammal: I get notifications when students assign themselves articles like these, and I would have steered them away from it had it not been subject to ECP. Aside from the difficulty of contributing to a controversial topic like this, there's the fact that it's being actively edited and the event itself is still ongoing. But as it turns out, when a student assigns themselves a protected article, the Dashboard sends an email to them and their instructor letting them know that the article is protected and they won't be able to edit it. What they choose to do next is up to them. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:30, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Glad to hear it, thank you. BilledMammal (talk) 14:48, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Undisclosed Jamaican school writing project

Further information: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents § Undisclosed Jamaican school writing project

Uncle G (talk) 19:27, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

New Growth Features - Mentorship

Hello all, please see Wikipedia_talk:Growth_Team_features#Student_editors_being_assigned_mentors. — xaosflux Talk 12:07, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

INFO3504-LGBTQWikiEditing at CUBoulder

Concerns have been raised about inappropriate categorization & disruptive editing from participants in this WikiEd course at ANI and SPI:

I think some guidance is needed here. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 20:34, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm sure most of us are familiar with the disruptive editor who bulldozes across Wikipedia making the same edits to many articles despite them being reverted, they just carry on and refuse to communicate. Sadly this well intentioned idea came across like that, resulting in ANI and SPI reports. I haven't looked into the history of this page much to see if something has been suggested, but surely if accounts participating in things like this had a banner at the top of their talk page saying they are participating in a project and to contact [insert editor in charge's name] regarding any problems it would certainly result in a more welcoming response from the community? FDW777 (talk) 20:53, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
Accounts involved in a class typically do have a banner mentioning that they're in a specific class (probably automatically added by something?), but I think in this case it was an editathon--I don't know what that would entail if it were related to Wikipedia Edu stuff specifically as the only editathon I've been regularly privy to the existence of is probably more likely to be taken on by people more "into" Wikipedia than most students in classes I see? - Purplewowies (talk) 06:11, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Just confirming this is an edit-a-thon and not a Wiki Education course. Participants in one of our courses do have banners on their user pages, and a welcome notice from a Wiki Education staff person on their user talk page. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:52, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Project Submitting Drafts to Update Articles on Species

There seems to be a class that is submitting drafts to Articles for Creation of expanded articles on species, mostly endangered species. The only problem, and it is a minor problem, is that they are submitting drafts of new articles to AFC, but that is not what AFC is for. I am tagging the existing articles for the drafts to be merged in, declining the drafts, and asking the submitters what the class project is. Does anyone know what the class project is?

Some of the articles have been:

This is basically good, because it is adding content to the articles, although AFC submission via draft is not the way that AFC is meant to be used. Who is the instructor? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:11, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't look like they're connected with Wiki Education in any way. If you find out more details of the instructor and university, please let us know! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:56, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Undisclosed art-class (fashion/textile) project

Affected articles such as:

students are mostly adding opinions/synthesized ideas and other editorial content. What few facts they include are typically redundant and/or uncited. I finally found this comment, confirming that it's a school project, and left a note for that editor to ask their instructor to at least look at our resources. DMacks (talk) 07:11, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Ping User:Roxy the dog, who has apparently also come across some of their mess. DMacks (talk) 07:13, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Indeed yes, that was my impression, a class of some sort, but I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. It has been going on for a couple of months, and a page got protected imho to little avail, as they are sporadic in their editing. I’m in hospital atm, will respond more later on when I get home. Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 08:25, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
If you're able to find any information about it, we're happy to reach out to the instructor with more guidance. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:21, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this all day, and I dont think there is much to be done unless one of them responds beyond deleting a template warning with a snarky dismissive message, but lets see if it develops. All the affected articles I saw were on my watchlist, but the course is looking at the fashion/clothing industry historically and ethically. That's a rather pompous assessment from a bit of casual reading though !! I would add to the list of articles if anybody wants me to. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 19:36, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
I have taken the liberty of editing the opening post by adding a slightly more indented list of a few more affected articles. There are more. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 20:37, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Lead article -> 3 accounts -> each hits 2 other articles also -> more accounts uncovered -> more articles affected lather/rinse/repeat. I've resorted to level3, treating it as a widespread pool of accounts all working together who refuse to interact and no evidence of improvement. So if we wind up with MEAT-blocks, that will either solve it or induce someone to come to the table to discuss, great. Not sure it's worth a CU to see if there's a central IP to stem it right away, or wait to see if autoblocks help. No objection to keeping a single list to which we all contribute. DMacks (talk) 05:25, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
I'm getting some vibes that it might be based in Los Angeles. That's a lot of schools to consider:( DMacks (talk) 07:48, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
After seeming to subside, they are now back at work, creating drafts:
Blocks:

Template:Course wizard and Template:Course page

Are these and their subpages still used? I am cleaning up uses of the cmbox class. While these pages use the class when they should not and should either be using inline styles or no styles at all, from what I can tell they are made for the old system of course integration and so TFD or redirection in some way is a valid way to deal with these as well. Izno (talk) 19:16, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure they're not, but when Sage (Wiki Ed) gets back from the vacation he mentioned in the prior thread, he can confirm. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:55, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
(Most specifically, these 12 pages.) Izno (talk) 09:30, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
Izno: None of those are used anymore, as far as I know. Redirection or some other form of cleanup would be fine.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:02, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
Sage (Wiki Ed) Just to clarify, the 12 of interest, or the whole batch of Special:Prefixindex/Template:Course wizard and Special:Prefixindex/Template:Course page? Izno (talk) 18:30, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
Izno: I had only checked the 12 before, but those whole batches for both templates are not used anymore as well, I believe.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:48, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
Cool, thanks! Izno (talk) 18:54, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

User talk:Mariela.genovez

Blocked for spam. Claims to be in a class. How can I get her teacher to liaise with the WikiEd people? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 20:43, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Here's another one. Not blocked yet. User talk:Victuhrino --Deepfriedokra (talk) 20:48, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
Feel free to encourage their instructors to reach out to us: teach.wikiedu.org. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:28, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks looks like this a part of WP:ENB#Undisclosed art-class (fashion/textile) project --Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:41, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Undisclosed assignment from Kenyon College

Several editors have been making similar edits to Knox County, Ohio and Columbus, Ohio. Several of the editors edit war for each other, and the edits are WP:UNDUE and disruptive. One editor wrote this is a class project, and the IP editors are all from Kenyon College:

Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:16, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

I have requested the pages to be protected. --VVikingTalkEdits 21:43, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

If you find out the instructor's name, we're happy to reach out! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:59, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:THQ § Acceptable Structure of a Wiki Article

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:THQ § Acceptable Structure of a Wiki Article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:03, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps someone from WikiEd could try and help Sleepymochi out. I don't think they're participating in a WikiEd course, but I'm not sure. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:07, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Another Species Draft

I just reviewed another draft that intends to add information to an existing article on a species:

I have asked the submitter whether this is a class project. Sometimes we have class projects in which an instructor asks students to submit drafts of expanded versions of existing articles. We want them to update our articles, but they are wasting their own time and ours by using the wrong procedure using Articles for Creation, which is not for improvement of articles. If anyone knows anything about a project to update species articles, please discuss it here. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:47, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon I've used some version of the following to ask about things I suspect to be student assignments

Hi. I was wondering if you are working on the [...] article as part of a class assignment. If you are, could you ask your instructor to get in touch with my colleague Helaine at helaine{{@}}wikiedu.org (if you're in the US or Canada) or drop a note at the [[WP:ENB|Education noticeboard]] if you aren't? We provide free resources that they can use to help making editing a lot easier for students.

In some cases, Helaine has gotten responses from messages like this. It might help.
I do wonder though, where they're getting the idea that they should submit something to AFC to expand an article.I suspect it has a lot to do with the world thinking Wikipedia's editorial practices are a lot more professional than they actually are. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Issue with Dashboard FAQ question: "How do I apply for support from Wiki Education to run a Wikipedia assignment?" in terms of keeping deadline info up to date

One can see the question and response by going to: http://dashboard.wikiedu.org/faq?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%22apply+for+support%22

The info in the response is for the previous Spring 2021 term.

To receive Wiki Education support for your Wikipedia assignment, you must apply for a spot in our program each term. The deadline for the Spring 2021 term is November 15, 2020. We will notify applicants whether we have a spot by December 11, 2020. If you're on the quarter system, please let us know if you need to know before December 11 for a Winter Quarter course. The deadline for Spring Quarter courses is February 21, 2021.

The current information for the Fall 2022 term is now at: https://wikiedu.org/teach-with-wikipedia/ so maybe it could just go something like:

To receive Wiki Education support for your Wikipedia assignment, you must apply for a spot in our program each term. Current deadline information can be found here.

If most of the classes are on a semester schedule, and there aren't that many on a quarter or other type of schedule then maybe one could just add:

To receive Wiki Education support for your Wikipedia assignment, you must apply for a spot in our program each term. Current deadline information can be found here. If you are not on a semester schedule but a quarter or other type of schedule please feel free to contact us.

And then the paragraph in the response "What if I'm on the quarter system?" could be deleted.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk · contribs) 03:28, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the note! I've updated it. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:54, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Researcher with an h-index of 7

According to Web of Science, Pascale Guiton has an h-index of 7. And I see no reason why they meet WP:PROF. The article appears based off of WP:primary sources when that is against the ethos of Wikipedia. Here, independent sources should form the basis of articles. Any thoughts otherwise, User:Ian (Wiki Ed), User:UncommonLeaders, or User:Jordanm12? I see the article is a result of this course. Ian, if the professor, student, or volunteer Wikipedians do not move forward with a deletion process within a week or so, would you please do that? Thank you. Biosthmors (talk) 01:27, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

@Biosthmors I don't believe that it would be appropriate for me to nominate an article for deletion using this account. Since this is an alt account, and a PAID one at that, I do not believe that it's appropriate for me to use this account to nominate any article for deletion, participate in a deletion debate (except to provide background information to people participating in the debate) or to advocate for the inclusion of any content in article space. I would certainly encourage anyone creating an article to use strongly sources than are used in this article.
I also could not do it using my volunteer account, because doing so would amount to me using my volunteer account for the benefit of my employer, something I consider highly inappropriate. If it were an edit I would make anyway as a volunteer, I would consider it. But in a volunteer capacity, I would not nominate an article for deletion without doing an exhaustive WP:BEFORE search. I'm also not a deletionist; I believe that deleting yet another article about a Black woman from Wikipedia would do more harm to the project than leaving this one. And if I were to consider it, I wouldn't base it off an h-index, not for a person who has two first-authored papers that have been cited over 100 times, and four over 50. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:44, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
While I understand your objections, I think it would be appropriate for the Wikipedia Education Program to handle any issues that the program causes in mainspace, and that can include moving to delete articles that are created because of the program but should not have been. BilledMammal (talk) 04:05, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
@BilledMammal I am happy to clear up any problems caused by student editors - including speedy deletions - but this is an article that has existed in mainspace for over a year. As a Wikipedian I feel strongly that outside organisations - like Wiki Education - should not exert editorial control over content. I'm pretty sure that idea would be a non-starter with the community. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:17, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
I don't think it's reasonable to ask others to nominate this or any other article for deletion for you. If you believe that the subject is not notable - a very reasonable belief in this instance - then you should nominate it for deletion. Or don't and move on; the project isn't (usually) massively harmed if it has a few articles that some editors believe should have been deleted.
You might get some more specific advice about the norms and expectations of scholarship in biology if you ask at projects that are frequented by biologists. WT:PROF isn't a bad place to start. ElKevbo (talk) 03:18, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
While I'm also doubtful of the subject's notability (and unfortunately less-than-notable academics seem to be a not uncommon product of Wiki-Ed courses), I full support Ian's position here. It's not really their place to evaluate articles in their capacity as a Wiki-Ed person; that's the community's responsibility at large. I don't see why they would get involved in AfDing Wiki-Ed articles unless there was some obvious emergency concern, like blatant COPYVIO. Ian's job is to be an ambassador of the Wikipedia community's standards to people in education courses. As part of that, they can and do advise course participants of what our written inclusion criteria are and when the community has determined that a given article does not meet this criteria, but it would put them in a mighty awkward position to then become involved in the AfD discussions, or make content choices on behalf of the students. If an individual editor thinks a product of a Wiki-Ed course is not notable, than nominate it for deletion yourself. -Indy beetle (talk) 20:13, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
Just chiming in to support Ian's nuanced position here. No prejudice against anyone else nominating it at Afd for any valid reason, but agree that that should not be Wiki Ed's role, except perhaps in an extraordinary circumstance, which this isn't. Mathglot (talk) 02:16, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
Biosthmors Purely by chance I've been looking at this very article and I agree that it does not appear to meet the criteria for inclusion. It seems like the students on this particular course are being invited to write articles on people they are closely connected with, eg. their lecturers or fellow academics. I can't find it in me to speedily delete it or return to draft (because the author has completed his assignment now and is unlikely to return here) but I would certainly support a deletion nomination. Deb (talk) 07:32, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
I don't see a connection in this case? The course was organised at the University of Washington. Pascale Guiton is at the University of California. – Joe (talk) 07:49, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
I didn't say there was one in this case, but there are several examples that clearly do have a connection. There's some evidence that they are getting the information for the articles directly from the subjects. Deb (talk) 07:57, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Something good, for a change

A student editor helped uncover an apparent copyright violation: [3]. I'm sure there are lots of other good things that student editors contribute, but I just felt that it is worth making note of here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of Shein's Contributions to Global Climate Crisis for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Shein's Contributions to Global Climate Crisis is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shein's Contributions to Global Climate Crisis until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:30, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Notifying you as this is a student editor. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:30, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
information Also noting that a user has suggested bundling Fast fashion's impact on the climate crisis in China on the same grounds to the AfD. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 21:25, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

No sig means assignment templates converted to sections don't get archived

Hello! Are you a student in CMN2160B at U. Ottawa, and you're wondering why you were pinged here? It was a mistake, my apologies! Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 22:42, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Sage (Wiki Ed), The sort-of Rfc on Wiki Ed assignments decided in favor of Option 3: Put the template in a new section, and update it as needed. However, this option did not include the addition of a standard user signature, which is required for bot archival. So, it seems to me, that this whole development has replaced what the majority of users originally saw as an undesirable accumulation of dashboard templates inside the Talk header that rarely got removed (but which were often collapsed), with a scheme where each assignment template gets its own section header as an independent discussion section, but no signature. Upshot: they stuck around forever before the change, they stick around forever after the change (but take up a lot more vertical space than before). Remind me why we did this, again? Or, did I miss a piece of the story? Mathglot (talk) 10:40, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Mathglot: They can still be manually archived. Maybe the archive bot could be updated to detect the new format as a valid archive-able section even without a signature? I might be able to add a signature from the first user who adds the template, without breaking the ability for the Dashboard to update the template to reflect subsequent changes (like other usernames being added or removed). Cleanly handling the removal of the section including a signature (for when a course is no longer planning to work on that article) would be a bit complicated, though.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:42, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
I seriously doubt the archive bot would be updated to do that, as it's not its charter to do so and would open it up to all sorts of special requests, but feel free to check at User talk:Σ. If you can add a signature just from the first user who adds it, that would guarantee eventual archiving, although if the course were 4 months and archiving delay was 3 months, it would be archived before the course ended. Ideally, you should add a signature either: 1) every time the assignment template updated (there doesn't have to be any content, just the sig is enough), or 2) just update the sig line, keeping only the last one. Here's what it would look like for the top assignment section at Talk:Communication if every update was signed (example constructed from actual updates of the top assignment template):
mockup of course assignment section with {{unsig}}-style signatures added

Here's what the top section at Talk:Communication would look like, if every update to Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/University_of_Ottawa/CMN2160B_(Winter) were signed in the style of Template:Unsigned:

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2022 and 22 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zc012 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Yingzhuo Yang, Ayeesha.t. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zc012 (talk • contribs) 17:53, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ayeesha.t (talk • contribs) 20:42, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Minhhang1406 (talk • contribs) 21:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yingzhuo Yang (talk • contribs) 07:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jiang jiteng (talk • contribs) 21:39, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jiang jiteng (talk • contribs) 18:27, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Minhhang1406 (talk • contribs) 04:35, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Minhhang1406 (talk • contribs) 04:35, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cecilia226 (talk • contribs) 08:13, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Darkbolt21 (talk • contribs) 18:49, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Or, another way to do it: just keep the last update, and drop the "unsig" code and use your own:

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2022 and 22 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zc012 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Yingzhuo Yang, Ayeesha.t. — Assignment last updated by Darkbolt21 (talk • contribs) 18:49, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Note the wikied-dashboard class in the <span> tag above; this facilitates the bot finding it, and permits users to adjust visibility, if they so choose.

There would be no real reason to use the "unsig" style wording, you could use a standard sig of the same style as ~~~~ with your own lead-in text, so instead of "Preceding unsigned comment added by..." you could have, "Assignment template updated by...". Further, instead of signing it every time, you could just replace the sig each time (Assignment template last updated by...") which is all that the archiving bot cares about.
The current situation seems untenable to me. We went through this whole process to get rid of assignment templates from the page, and the current procedure does not do that, but rather, it makes it worse wrt to vertical page height, scrolling, and unwanted visibility of templates that stick around forever.
Yes, of course, they can be manually archived, but before we started all this, they could have been manually removed from the header (in a much simpler operation than manually archiving a discussion) but people were complaining then that templates stayed on the page forever (even if collapsed) and it wasn't good enough to be able to manually remove them, so we went through the Tfd, and then the "Rfc", and bots were unleashed on existing pages to convert them, and dashboard procedures were changed to match, and after all that, it's not better, it's worse and doesn't respond to the initial motivation that started all this.
We need to go the last mile, and tag the individual discussions with sigs so the bots can archive them. (Unless someone has a better idea.) Either a sig-every-assignment-update approach, or just a replace-the-last-sig approach works for me. The only thing that doesn't work, imho, is what we have now where converted assignment sections stay on the page forever. Mathglot (talk) 22:24, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Adding signatures

I'll work on this next week. (I'm on vacation to attend my sister's wedding until then.) Thanks for bringing this up, Mathglot.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:38, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure imitating the output of ~~~~ or ~~~~~ (including whatever prefixed boilerplate you want) will work. If in doubt, check with User:Σ. Enjoy the wedding! Mathglot (talk) 01:05, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. Something will need to be done about existing sections too, I think, to make sure they can be archived by bots. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:52, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
If we don't really care about the actual timestamp, I can have a bot go through and put a ~~~~~ at the end of the extant template uses. Primefac (talk) 14:47, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
That'd be fine with me. Maybe a short note to make it clear it's not the actual timestamp (like unsigned. 17:38, 5 May 2022 (UTC)) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:38, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: Okay with that, but if it's not too difficult, could we use |end_date= from the assignment template for the bot-added timestamp? Assignment templates, like this one at Sichuan cuisine for example, typically have a course end date listed as |end_date=. If there's no user sig or {{unsigned}} already there, can we use end_date instead of time now? If some talk page has a template for a 2016 course assignment and archiving algo=365d, it would be annoying to have it around for another year after the bot run. Mathglot (talk) 20:46, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
And then there's this assignment template added in March 2015 to Talk:Artificial intelligence with no |end_date=. It's still present and not bot-converted to date. Not sure if the bot could easily find that one. It does have |term=Spring 2015, but I don't know how commonly used that param is (or was); maybe Sage (Wiki Ed) might know. Where used, the param value is often seen as "Season YYYY" as in this example, but I believe it's completely free-form text. Mathglot (talk) 05:30, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Signature count and style

As usual, there's more than one way to do it, so I invite comments on what the signature text should look like, and whether it should leave a new sig every time (half a dozen or more updates to an assignment are not rare), or just keep one sig showing the last update, whenever it was, and by whom, replacing all earlier ones. Mathglot (talk) 04:17, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

  • Keep the last sig only – I vote for keeping the sig representing only the last update to a given assignment template, as shown in the bottom example in the show/hide section under #No sig means assignment templates converted to sections don't get archived, above. No reason to keep all of them, and it will just uselessly expand the page even further. All other edits to the template are in the page history.
  • Use this text – As for the text, I vote for the text in that same example; like this:
<span class="wikied-assignment" style="font-size:85%;">— Assignment last updated by [[User:Example1|Example1]] ([[User talk:Example1#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Example1|contribs]]) hh:mm, dd Month, YYYY (UTC)</span>
which resolves to: — Assignment last updated by Example1 (talk • contribs) hh:mm, dd Month, YYYY (UTC)
If you have an opinion on the signature text or how many signatures should be kept, please share it below. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:30, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
I agree that it should just be the "last updated by" signature. The other way wastes too much space, and there is still the editing history. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:17, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, this is helpful. I'll try to implement it like the above example.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:03, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
Note: I updated the css class name in the sample code above to class="wikied-assignment" (was: "wikied-dashboard") because it is more flexible this way, if you want to have assignment templates addressable separately by css from other wikied constructs. Mathglot (talk) 06:23, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Signatures are now live

Thanks everyone! Signatures are now live: example. (They were actually finished a few weeks ago, but the Dashboard changed IPs recently and had been affected by a global IP block until today, so I wasn't able to confirm that the signatures were working properly until now.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:15, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Sage (Wiki Ed): I came to this discussion via User talk:Primefac#PrimeBOT Task 24 question and I ended up there because of an archiving related question at the Wikipedia Help Desk. My question is why are the WikiEd posts being added to the top's of talk pages when new posts are typically added to the bottoms of talk pages. Could this somehow affect the archiving of a talk page (particularly manually archived talk pages) if people are assuming that the older posts tend to be at or near the tops of the talk page? -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:39, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Marchjuly: Currently they are being added to the bottom, not the top. Here's an example of the current behavior. In the past, they were being handled more like WikiProject templates, and were being put in the top section (and were not being archived).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:09, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Also, just as a minor note Marchjuly, the location of a post on a talk page does not affect the behaviour of the archive bots - if a post is older than the minimum time, it will be archived, whether at the top or the bottom or somewhere in the middle. Primefac (talk) 21:42, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks Sage (Wiki Ed) and Primefac for clarifying things. FWIW, Talk:Dentistry (including the Wiki Ed related post) was manually archived. I'm assuming that the course in question was Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Northern Colorado/Hearing Loss Prevention so the Wiki Ed post is no longer relevant, right? -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:22, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, that's right. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:10, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Two students in Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/UC_San_Diego/HIEA_140_China_since_1978_(Spring_2022) have "improved" articles about Chinese technologists by copying-pasting large quantities of translations from Chinese references. (I've reverted and asked for revdel). The editors of the articles in the above discussion are also students in this course. Ian (Wiki Ed), I think the instructor needs a heads-up about this. The dashboard shows the students to have been a bit lax in training in this course. These two editors spent 52 seconds on the Plagiarism module in one case and didn't do it in the other.

I do want to add that relative to the size of Wiki Education (341 courses running at the moment with over 6000 students) we see only a small number of problems each semester. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:48, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@StarryGrandma Thanks for letting me know. I've revdel'd the appropriate revisions on those two articles. Per IAmChaos's note above and their message here, it's apparently something went wrong in the chain of communication. It's probably too late to have much impact on this semester's work, but we will get in touch with the instructor to try to explain what's going on, and try to avoid similar problems in the future.
Copyvio-via-translation isn't something I've really though about. It presents an interesting problem - it's something that probably should be addressed in our trainings, but doing so creates a potential WP:BEANS problem. Definitely something to address carefully. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:48, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Yet Another Species Draft

I just reviewed another sandbox submission to expand an article on a species:

I encounter these drafts from time to time that are submitting an expanded version of an existing article. It is almost always on a species. We have a lot of articles on species, because there are a lot of species, and many of them are stubs and can be usefully expanded. The question, again, is whether anyone knows if this is a class project, and who the instructor is. Expansion of articles is good, but Articles for Creation is not Articles for Expansion. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:26, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

All I can tell you is it isn't a student who's participating in a Wiki Education class project. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:04, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Resurrected from the archives (#KMUOS)

See Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive_21#Project_#KMUOS. @Doug Weller: One of the accounts involved in that previously, Special:Contributions/Asma_Alblooshi, has reappeared recently, and begun again with creating articles which are either terribly sourced and terribly written; or which are outright copyright infringements in (sloppy) translation... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:17, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian I'm a bit loathe to block, but there's a real problem here. I would say ANI is the best venue. He might even get offered mentorship. Doug Weller talk 14:46, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
I blame WikiEd. W?F annually collects $35M in profit but nothing is done to stop this disruptive editing. Had I been hired to run WEF I'd've had campus ambassadors on the ground in every country to confront, if not coopt, these instructors. But no, we threw away our volunteers and the entire effort in late 2014. Imagine if WEF were held monetarily responsible for the disruption to our community? (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) Chris Troutman (talk) 22:21, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
@Doug Weller Is there any reason not to pblock from mainspace like was done for at least some of these students before? I notice this editor is creating some as drafts, but some also directly in mainspace. -- asilvering (talk) 15:45, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac pinging primefac who has dealt with these types of -athons and blocked problematic editors. PRAXIDICAE🌈 15:51, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
I'll wait for a response, thanks. Doug Weller talk 16:02, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
If a pblock is considered less bitey than just blocking, go for it. Primefac (talk) 13:53, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
Done. The first article I looked at was a copyright violation, so I deleted it. No time to look at their other articles and drafts. They've been doing this for a while.[4]. Doug Weller talk 14:44, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Undisclosed art-class (fashion/textile) project is back

Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 22#Undisclosed art-class (fashion/textile) project is ramping up again. I'm going to take a one-warning-then-block approach. DMacks (talk) 14:37, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

If you ever get any info about the instructor, please let us know! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:00, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

German translation class

It looks like there is a German-English/English-German translation class going on right now, set to end by the end of this month I think, and run in many previous years. Led, I think, by OberMegaTrans. I noticed it because Draft:The Little Water Sprite just came through AfC without the translation being acknowledged. Flagging it for attention because I can't look into this right now myself but suspect there are many articles created by this group with similar problems and just didn't get caught in AfC. -- asilvering (talk) 15:28, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education is hiring

Wiki Education is currently hiring for the role of Wikipedia Expert. Check out the job listing here.Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:04, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Possible computer class

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § Weird raid, or class gone horribly wrong?. wizzito | say hello! 21:24, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Umiversity of Alabama at Birmingham/Honors Organic Chemistry I (Fall 2022)

seems to contain a typo. Best. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 08:47, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! When these don't get caught until after student editors are already enrolled, we usually just ignore a typo like this, as it fixing it would break a lot of links and is fairly tedious to clean up.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:35, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Last year, a course at Howard University on Black Women and Popular Culture resulted in significant off-wiki harassment of an editor due to canvassing from the instructor.[5] [6] As it happens, this same course is running again this year with the same instructor. I was wondering what has been done by WikiEd to address the numerous concerns editors had about the 2021 course, and what steps will be taken to prevent a repeat of that disaster? Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 19:23, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Ian (Wiki Ed) and I have been in close touch with the professor. We both joined her class virtually this week, gave them general guidance, and answered many of their questions. We made sure the students and professor know how to ask us for help going forward, and we will stay in close touch with them over the course of the assignment. We understand the stakes here, and know how important it is that this class project works out well for both the students and Wikipedia.Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:35, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear that and hope things will run smoother than last time. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 12:58, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Article talk page cleanup

I was wondering if there is a {{cot}} type template that can be used (or created) for encapsulating the Wiki Education assignment: (as seen here) posts. They can be confusing and hinder readers navigation. Apologizes if this is the wrong venue - FlightTime (open channel) 00:11, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Not at the moment. Genuinely out of curiosity, though, what is confusing/hindering about them? Primefac (talk) 09:44, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: The average editor/reader goes to a talk page looking for a particular thing or to start a discussion, it seems confusing to have to determine 5 or 6 to maybe ten posts at the beginning of the listing. Users who are active in the classes on post the template and probably do not return to the talk page, I'm not even sure if at the end of the classes, are the templates removed, are they excepted to be archived, anyway, it just seems to me a talk page would be easier to navigate for regular traffic if there were a dedicated section to add these templates. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:10, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
I think that if, per the date in the post, the class assignment is still in progress, then it's probably best to just leave them there. Once the assignment is over, though, I think it would be fine to archive the posts manually. It also seems to me that Template:Educational assignment is a more useful way of providing the information on a talk page, because it is part of the top material, rather than a new talk section for each class (which is, indeed, rather kludgy), and it can be set to display in the past tense. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:43, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Fine. - FlightTime (open channel) 00:57, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
Regarding using it as a banner - that was done in the past, but the template was converted to a section-based message following this TfD. You (Tryptofish) are also correct that the messages can (and should) be archived when the course is over. Primefac (talk) 16:55, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
As a patrolling editor, how do we know when to archive, or should this be the responsibility of the student, or for that matter the instructor. - FlightTime (open channel) 17:00, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
If the course is over, archive it? Some of the pages will be auto-archived by a bot too, so that's something to consider. Archiving should be the responsibility of the student, but given that half the time we can't even get said students to engage with the community when there are issues, I doubt making that part of the course would reap any reward. Primefac (talk) 17:03, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
Well, we all have things to do, I think it should be a requirement for the course instructor to clean up after their class. - FlightTime (open channel) 17:13, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Acceptable error rate for an instructor's students?

When multiple students of the same instructor insert factual errors into medical articles, and the problem continues months after the instructor has been asked to improve QA processes, what do we do? Not naming names yet as I shouldn't name names when I'm grumpy. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:44, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

If no one is responding to reasonable queries and requests to improve behaviour, start handing out short-term blocks. Primefac (talk) 08:12, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Partial blocks may be more helpful, as they would allow the student to participate on school project pages. Alternatively if it's the same article, just semi or ecp it temporarily? CMD (talk) 08:30, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Also a valid option. Primefac (talk) 09:16, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
The instructor's students work on multiple articles so semi or ec protection would not be an ideal solution. Primefac are you saying the instructor could be blocked because of the crappy work of their students? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:11, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
No, I am saying if the students are not responding to reasonable queries and requests to improve their editing, they should be blocked from whichever page, namespace, or project they are disrupting. The instructor of such these student(s) should also be notified, of course, and if there are WMF/WikiEdu-related sanctions for "letting someone run a course without proper oversight" we should seek those as well. Primefac (talk) 17:09, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
If it's a WikiEd course notifying the staff who is supervising the course is also an important step as they can get in touch with the instructor. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:15, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
@Clayoquot Can you email me which class this is? I have used partial blocks on students before when they just don't listen - blocking a student from mainspace doesn't interfere with their ability to draft their assignment, but greatly reduces the damage they can do. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Instructor usernames?

Just noticing that UICLing's username seems to violate WP:ISU? Not sure if it's worth bringing it to their attention or not, but this might be something to watch out for in the future when telling instructors what kind of usernames follow Wikipedia policy. Umimmak (talk) 21:08, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

For those interested in copyright issues, the single-use warning template {{Uw-copyright-new}} has long been available for use on user talk pages to provide students with some basic info on Wikipedia copyright policy in a bulleted message format. A proposal is outstanding at this discussion which would upgrade this template to provide conditional bolding based on some new parameters. In addition, this template has recently been upgraded to mention "Wiki Ed content expert" (it used to say, "campus ambassador"). See example #5 at Template:Uw-copyright-new/sandbox/doc#Examples for an example which may be of interest to editors here. Your feedback would be welcome at Template talk:Uw-copyright-new#Adding bold style to bullet items or text. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:48, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

The upgrade in functionality for optional bold styling has now been released. See the doc page for details. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:40, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Organometallic drafts

Within the past week I have seen drafts on Draft: Organomagnesium and Draft: Organoberyllium submitted by different editors. My first guess, until looking at the histories, was that they were submitted by the same person. For the information of non-chemists, magnesium is immediately below beryllium in the periodic table, making them closely related chemically. So my question is whether there is a class project. I have asked both authors. If this is a class project, we would like to know who the instructor is, and would like to know whether they would like assistance or guidance. I don't see anything "wrong" with either draft. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:05, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not a course I'm aware of, but if you find more information, let me know and we can reach out to the instructor to get them more support! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:22, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
User:Jtn0925 says that it is a class project:

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jtn0925&type=revision&diff=1120763851&oldid=1120761322&diffmode=source directed by Professor Robert Gilliard. That is all I know. I don't know if I will be seeing Organocalcium and Organostrontium. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:15, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello, yes this is a class project for Main Group Chemistry. We are given an assignment to talk about a certain topic and post it on wikipedia. The project/course should end by the middle of December if you like to have clarification. Jtn0925 (talk) 18:20, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! We'll reach out to the professor, and @Jtn0925:, feel free to encourage your instructor to work with us: teach.wikiedu.org. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:55, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Really problematic actions by students in Traditional Chinese Medicine class

Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Student_editing_on_Traditional_Chinese_Medicine.

I have alerted the instructor, the WikiEd expert, and I have put the class up for deletion. This is pretty bad. The students keep adding poorly sourced content in violation of WP:MEDRS and WP:FRINGE and it does not seem that the instructor was aware that these guidelines needed to be adhered to.

jps (talk) 03:36, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I've closed the MfD for the class, as that is not going to help address the issue here because the class is not dependent on the page's existence. Discussion as to the MEDRS issues at hand can continue here. signed, Rosguill talk 03:49, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
How do we stop a class when something like this happens? jps (talk) 03:51, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Getting in touch with the Wiki Ed coordinator and instructor is a good first step you've already done; while we're waiting for them to respond, you can make your case regarding problematic edits and move towards building a consensus around the degree to which they are problematic, as well as what remedies are appropriate. You can also respond to the edits themselves as you would to any other editor. signed, Rosguill talk 04:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
I'd like to reiterate what you said in the MfD discussion: what's important here is that there needs to be a clear process to say that a Wiki Ed class is purely detrimental to the encyclopedia and that the precedent set for this sort of thing is important. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Looking at the course description for this current term and the prior term it was taught, the course's goal, Students are expected to pick an organism used in TCM herbal medicine and edit (or create) a Wikipedia article on this organism to provide information on its historical use. could be beneficial to the encyclopedia, provided that the students are properly briefed on how to cite medical claims and distinguish medical advice from historical description. The issue at hand is that students have either not received this instruction or have failed to apply it. signed, Rosguill talk 04:19, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
I hope that this is the case, but the discussion on the instructor's talk page suggests that he wishes to include alternative medicine as a legitimate practice on Wikipedia. That thread is what convinced me that the class is detrimental. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:31, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Student editors of Siena College are undergraduates who are not at a level of knowledge about TCM, human diseases, plant chemicals and their actions, and WP:MEDRS to competently contribute, WP:CIR. The course instructor could help students relate TCM practices to plants (probably too narrow for a course), but interpreting anti-disease effects in humans is far beyond the capability of undergraduate students in a WikiEd course. Meanwhile, the students are editing the health effects sections of numerous articles, providing inaccurate content and weak, non-MEDRS sources that are significantly disruptive, and require considerable monitoring and repair by experienced medical editors to restore. Zefr (talk) 05:13, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I absolutely would love it if a group of competent editors could properly contextualize TCM claims in Wikipedia. But this is very difficult because most sources that portend to do that are absolutely abysmal and parochial and completely unreliable even as they appear to be reliable superficially. Look at the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Papers published there make claims that end up as dead ends about what the precise arguments are when it comes to various plant uses. The fact of the matter is that there is no one standard use of any plant that has been rigorously identified because there is no corpus of right/wrong approaches in TCM as claims of efficacy are all decided upon by practitioners instead of some governing body or standard authority or ideal type. Because there have not been reliable summaries of which claims are more generally attested to than others, and a lot of the arguments that some plant or another were used for one purpose or another are sourced so weakly, it ends up begging the question "who makes this claim?" This seemed to be totally absent in any contribution coming from this class. jps (talk) 09:04, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

How do we push a "stop button" when something like this happens? I understand that WP:NODEADLINE might apply, and thankfully the damage seems somewhat contained, but this felt a bit like being alerted to a series of small fires and, on going around putting them out, you found out that the team of petty arsonists was still active even as you were sounding the alarm. How do we stop this sort of thing? It can't just be, "get consensus". We need a process that can move to quickly pull the plug.

jps (talk) 09:09, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree with jps and Zefr. Although the goal of recruiting more editors from the younger generation is a worthy one, it's counterproductive to do this without regard to WP:CIR. Hardly any of the student edits I've seen on the articles I watchlist have been improvements. They're typically poorly written, poorly sourced, and either off topic or undue. It's not the students' fault that they lack competence. The problem is that the instructors are failing to do their job of overseeing what the students are doing and educating them about how to edit competently. At U.S. colleges instructors look good if they can say that their students are contributing to Wikipedia, so there's a strong incentive to direct student editing - but little incentive to do the hard work of teaching them how to do it properly. It's up to us to provide that incentive.

Another problem is that instructors often want students to tackle topics that are far too sophisticated for them. They should start them out on something they can understand well, like popular culture pages or maybe their own college's page. Instead, they choose medical topics, scholarly topics, and highly contentious social topics. Unless this is fixed, it'll continue to be a net drain on the encyclopedia.

There could be a procedure whereby any editor can directly warn an instructor if their students are repeatedly making incompetent edits or responding badly when those edits are reverted. If the instructor doesn't correct that, either by educating the students or by redirecting them to simpler topics, then the matter can go to some noticeboard that would have the authority to impose a ban on the class and instructor if consensus supports a ban. NightHeron (talk) 10:21, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

This class should not have been approved

I can understand that when setting up such classes for the first time, it may not have been appreciated that this would have been a problem, but I'm sad to report that this problem could have been easily foreseen. Two years ago the same class ran with fewer students: Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/Siena_College/Traditional_Chinese_Medicine_(Fall_2020) Note that the contributions from that class were equally as problematic:

These diffs include literally every student in the class who made a mainspace contribution. Given the bad outcomes from the first time this class ran, why was it allowed to run again?

jps (talk) 10:50, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@ජපස Yes, you're correct - it shouldn't have been approved without further communication. The 2020 class was approved with the understanding that their work would stay in sandboxes until it was approved (an experiment we were trying after, well, this happened). My plan to look carefully at what they'd done never happened (it was a chaotic term) and the class ended up being closed by someone unfamiliar with the issues around Fringe topics. Had I done what I wanted to do, there would have been a flag on the course record telling Helaine to have a conversation with the instructor about sourcing and the MEDRS/Fringe issues before running the class. I apologise for that. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:28, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't know where to put this now, with the subsection, so I'll just treat this as the bottom of the thread.
Wiki Ed staff work during the week. I presume you'll see a response soon. There's no "stop button" because what would that even mean? Blocking 27 students from editing, half of which haven't even made any edits yet? Wiki Ed has requested that some classes stop editing in the past, but they have no authority over a professor, either. Since, with a class, everybody tends to want to get it right, I tend to urge people to give them a few days to learn/communicate/set boundaries. It would be wise for the professor to ask students to stop making edits until they've had a chance to go over some things. If specific students continue to add inappropriate information after they've been instructed otherwise, we just have to treat them like any other editor who's adding information that isn't up to standard.
@Sdeyrup: This isn't a standard Wikipedia welcoming committee. :) TCM is an extremely hard subject to edit. I used to work with a lot of classes covering subjects ranging from racism and covid to abortion, and even I would be reluctant to encourage someone to work on TCM topics. It's not just because of the specific policies affecting its inclusion in articles, and the tricky balance between TCM-as-medicine vs. TCM-as-culture vs. TCM-as-history, but because of a long history of hundreds/thousands of people coming to Wikipedia to promote or otherwise add problematic claims about it. It's made some of our science/medicine editors rather sensitized to the subject, and I get why a class focused on it (even if students did everything right) might put folks on high alert. This is not something you could've known beforehand. I have two recommendations that I think would put minds at ease: first, and most importantly, have students work in sandboxes, but tell them not to move the content into articles for now. That takes away the urgency you may be seeing in comments here. Perhaps Wiki Ed staff or other Wikipedians can take a look at the contributions first, and then, once they're up to snuff, they can be moved into articles. Second, once the course is over (or in the meantime), have a go at editing some of the articles. I know from experience that during a class there's some pressure on the professor to do it right, but again, even the foremost experts would have a challenging time with this subject on Wikipedia. Give it a go after the class is over. Wiki Ed are extremely helpful, but digging in yourself does help when advising students down the road. FWIW. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:12, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind, thoughtful remarks, Rhododendrites. It seems clear that I shouldn't run this project again with future classes based on the overall responses above. Luckily, the course ends in a week, so this should settle things down. I do worry about the state of Wikipedia to some extent when people who are editing science topics say things like, "If herbs had scientific evidence of affecting diseases, the extracts and processes would be patented and called prescription drugs", since this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. It assumes a static nature of science, where everything that will be known/discovered already has been. Essentially, this viewpoint seems to indicate that there can never be new drugs in the future, or that drugs can't come from natural sources (also incorrect, see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.9b01285). Anyway, I appreciate you providing me with the important context. I know at least understand why the above editors were acting in such an aggressive, and, in some cases frankly rude, way to an educator who followed the Wiki Ed guidelines and suggestions. Thanks again. Sdeyrup (talk) 14:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
There is probably some sort of way one could set up a compendium of every use for plants ever suggested. This really cannot be Wikipedia, however, because we have absolutely no way to vet which sources are reasonable and which are not. I am sure that individual researchers who took on this task would have their own thresholds, but Wikipedia is absolutely forbidden from doing this sort of thing. The only thing we can do is follow reliable sources and the reliable sources for the uses of plants in traditional medicine would necessarily be sources that were very careful in their attribution and scope. The sad fact is that given the way alternative medicine is shamelessly promoted as a money-making and anti-empirical activity, it is very difficult to find good sources on these subjects. That's why from a WP:FRINGE perspective we rely on WP:FRIND. WP:MEDRS is even more conservative due to the fact that it is so easy to find preliminary studies out there saying just about anything. Our only hope in a collaboration that ostensibly accepts all comers is to be downright rude when it comes to evaluating sources. To do otherwise invites content that varies from slanted to outright wrong. Lacking an editorial board who can separate the wheat from the chaff, we are left with a rigid and almost sneering view of the status quo as the only appropriate approach for us to take. This is almost certainly not ideal, but until an alternative can be found that does not suffer fools gladly, I'm afraid that is what we as a community has decided we need to be stuck with.
I have no doubt that there is a way to write certain facts about TCM that could be included in our pages. No doubt that ginseng, for example, is cultivated almost exclusively because of TCM. But it is very delicate to write about that because there really is scant evidence that ginseng has any efficacy for anything in spite of passioned claims to the contrary by TCM practitioners. We have no evidence that qi exists, but appeals to that idea are used all the time in arguing for the efficacy of this or that substance in the context of TCM. Wikipedia is not set-up to referee this at the level of the organism and so we demand some serious oomph when it comes to sourcing about such. This is no easy task. It sometimes may even end up that a desired "fact" really cannot find a good home at all at this website.
There might be other websites out there which could be useful. Maybe even some WMF projects that would lend themselves to keeping, for example, narrative accounts that you personally thought were worth bundling. But Wikipedia as a first-stop for internet-based research really can't be such a venue, I'm afraid.
jps (talk) 17:06, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Sdeyrup, I just emailed you to set up a time to speak ASAP. I think it's critical that we confer about what's going on right away. As I mentioned in my email, I think it would be prudent to ask your students to stop editing in main space for the time being until we can confer about the situation. Thanks to everyone involved here.Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Update: Sdeyrup and I just talked. He has cancelled the assignment and asked his students to stop editing right away. As Ian mentioned, this class was approved due to some internal errors on our part, and we're going to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. Thank you again to all involved.Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:58, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks to the Wiki Ed staff for getting the situation under control. Since editors asked about a (non-existent) "stop button", I want to point out that reverting is always OK. One should never (well, unless there's something like 1RR going on, which means that it's a topic that students should never be allowed anywhere near) hesitate to wholesale rollback student edits. (After all, getting reverted is part of learning what it's like to edit Wikipedia.) But another thing, speaking of topics that students should not be allowed near. The content here falls within the scope of "Complementary and Alternative Medicine", and that's a topic area where ArbCom has already enabled discretionary sanctions: [11]. I feel like I'm a broken record on this, but I wish Wiki Ed would steer classes away from any topic that is subject to DS. I watchlist the GMO area, and there's a class working in that topic now. I recently fixed this near-illiterate contribution: [12], and I gave standard DS alerts to two of the students in that class. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:47, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Just as general feedback...it's not fair to students or to the Wikipedia community to give them assignments in DS areas or other areas where extra caution is merited (biographies of living people, for example, or medicine). Those areas are all under special rules for good reason, and those rules can be confusing even to veteran editors, but we're just throwing the students into the metaphorical deep end when we allow students to edit mainspace in those areas. GeneralNotability (talk) 20:51, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
@Tryptofish @GeneralNotability: We have a system for steering student editors away from discretionary sanctions topics. However, it relies on Category:Wikipedia_pages_under_discretionary_sanctions, so it will miss things like Panax ginseng (and probably most GMO topics as well, in the case of individual species).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:58, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Sage, but the two GMO-related pages (Glyphosate and Glyphosate-based herbicides) are both on that list. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Also, part of the problem is that DS applies to a topic as a whole, not just to the set of pages tagged as having that DS. It's also possible for just part of a page to fall under sanctions (you would not believe how much dispute there is over the origins of hummus - and that particular dispute is in the Israel/Palestine conflict topic area). This is why the class's topic needs to be evaluated by someone with experience so that potential issues can be identified early; a class on traditional medicine is likely to run into the medicine topic area (subject to WP:MEDRS) and complementary/alternative medicine (a DS area) and so needs to tread very lightly, while a class on 17th century Mongolian poetry (as a made-up example) would be a lot safer. In the future, I'm happy to be a resource to answer questions or provide feedback if that would help you all. GeneralNotability (talk) 21:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Indeed. The system did create alerts for those two articles, and we should have steered the students toward different articles. The DS alerts often aren't relevant to the particular slice of a DS topic that applies to a given article (which is why we don't automatically send a warning message to the instructor and/or students), but as Ian told me in our work chat just now, "Glyphosate is a bit like Boba - we should always steer students away". Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:44, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
And be cautious about drinking either one of them. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks to all. To be clear, I think the WikiEdu model is great and I know y'all are understaffed and overworked. I consider this an edge case more than an indicator. If we can come up with the right way to approach these kinds of issues at this still fairly nascent level, I'm sure it will forestall greater problems in the future. Also, thanks to User:Zefr and User:Peter coxhead who have put the bee in my bonnet that there ought to be an essay/guideline called WP:ETHNOBOTANY. Anyone know any ethnobotanists who are Wikipedians? jps (talk) 21:57, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@ජපස That's an interesting idea. I'm not an ethnobotanist, but I'd call myself ethnobotany-adjacent (not limited to the 8 or so years I taught economic botany). Might be something to consider doing on in my volunteer capacity. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:38, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm more than ethnobotany-adjacent, but my professional work isn't primarily ethnobotany per se. I don't think there are any other active Wikipedians who are really ethnobotanists (there is one editor with fairly low activity who is probably an ethnobotanist; if they are who I think they are, they have some COI-issues). After many years editing Wikipedia, I'm still not sure if editors who are concerned with MEDRS want to require a MEDRS-compliant source to explain why a plant has the common name "wormwood", or if a regular dictionary will suffice for that (and I'm not sure exactly how Wikipedia should phrase discussion of a plant's common name that is based upon a medical/ethnobotanical use). Plantdrew (talk) 22:49, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
A reasonably good rule of thumb about when MEDRS does or does not apply is whether the content could potentially affect how a reader would think about their own medical choices. So, the name of a plant being wormwood does not fall under MEDRS. The plant being grown in certain ethnobotanical traditions does not fall under MEDRS. That those traditions have historically ascribed a medicinal property to that plant does not fall under MEDRS, but whether there is any validity to that assertion of medicinal actions does fall under MEDRS. And yes, I know that that last sentence spans a gray area. When in doubt, if a reader might think that the plant has a medicinal property, then err on the side of requiring MEDRS. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:16, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

List of articles and editors

I'm interested in running some quarry queries to obtain some statistics on the impact of WikiEd. Are there lists anywhere that store articles that have been contributed to as part of WikiEd and editors that have contributed as part of WikiEd? BilledMammal (talk) 22:06, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

For editors, see Category:Wiki Education student editors. For articles, you can get data one term at a time with pages like http://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/fall_2022/articles, but I'm not aware of anything that aggregates across terms. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:17, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
@BilledMammal All the data since here (though the older data - pre 2015 - is incomplete because of the way things worked in the old days). You'd need to filter it to just limit things to Fall 20xx, Spring 20xx and Summer 20xx, otherwise you'll end up with non-student work and some amount of duplication. There's API access as well, but all I know about APIs is how to spell them. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:31, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Bad course name

I noticed Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/university of kentucky/Japanese fiction since 2000 (Spring 2023). Bearcat moved the page manually, which will cause problems later. I believe that, since the class hasn't started yet, Wiki Ed staff can safely rename the page on their end. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:30, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

I went ahead and fixed it. Thanks for catching that. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:07, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
Another one: Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Texas AM University/Technical Editing (Spring 2023) was manually moved to Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Texas A&M University/Technical Editing (Spring 2023). Related discussion at User talk:Bearcat#Renaming wiki ed course pages and User talk:Pppery#Renaming wiki ed course pages * Pppery * it has begun... 19:20, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
@Helaine (Wiki Ed): in case you missed the above. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:36, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
HI, the instructor wrote the University as Texas AM, and I'm not sure they meant it to have the & in it. Thanks for the catch though. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:47, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
I've moved the local copy of the page back in that case (and fixed things up so it no longer populates a red category) * Pppery * it has begun... 20:58, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

looking for advice

I've been asked to teach a five-day course for up to 20 ninth-through-twelfth-grade students. It's to be an informal, ungraded class. I plan on instructing the students about core policies (V, RS, NOR, NPOV), basic editing, talk pages, collaboration expectations, and other core kernels of the Wikipedia-editing experience. We'll lean heavily on sandboxes, but I do plan to save some basic mainspace improvements before the class' end.

I've been reading Wikipedia:Student assignments and Wikipedia:School and university projects, and a lot of the linked pages and resources seem like major overkill for what I'm doing. How much of those and the Wiki Education Foundation are considered mandatory for what I'm considering? I've a lot of on-wiki experience, and feel confident with the ad-hoc structure I'm already sketching out, but I don't wanna run afoul of any unknown requirements or SOPs. Thanks so much, — Fourthords | =Λ= | 03:28, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for asking about this. The basic question is whether edits added to mainspace actually improve the encyclopedia, and that doesn't depend on how many links you or your students followed. Many instructors of university courses take little or no responsibility for what their students add to mainspace, causing other editors to have to clean up or revert their students' unclear, ungrammatical, and misplaced or poorly sourced sentences. As an editor who's been frustrated by this, I have two requests. First, it would be great if you use this as an opportunity to teach students how to edit their own writing, correct their grammar and word usage errors, and make their sentences clear and readable. Second, they should avoid complex/controversial topics (politics, abortion, race and gender bias, etc.) and start with easier topics. For example, they could improve an article about popular culture or sports or their home city or town. NightHeron (talk) 11:08, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Any actual prose writing will likely be limited, and vetted before saving. I'm planning to create the accounts which students'll be using, so it'll be simple for me to track their edits during the week and after the fact, and tweak/fix anything I need to that might slip by. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 22:42, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Wiki Education Foundation doesn't support high school AFAIK, but you can use their resources. There are training modules at the programs and events dashboard, and the handouts are on Commons. If you're having them work in sandboxes, and you'll be the one evaluating when something is ready for mainspace, then you'll probably be ok. None of the support systems are mandatory -- they're just there so you don't have to reinvent the wheel or run into trouble. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:14, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification! Yeah, I'll keep them limited to sandboxes for the first two or three days of editing, and then I'm planning to personally approve any live mainspace edits before they're saved. Now, these'll be teens, so I can't promise I'll catch everything immediately, but I'll also (a) be reviewing all of each accounts' edits, and (b) remain in control of their accounts to halt any nonsense if it becomes necessary. Thanks for those specific links, too; I'll review them over the holiday! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 22:42, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Yes, many of the resources are designed for instructors who aren't Wikipedians themselves. As long as you're reviewing edits before they go live, many of the frustrations should be easily avoided. Rhododendrites is right that we at Wiki Education don't support high school students, but the Wikimedia Foundation's Education team has a great program called Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom (m:Education/Reading_Wikipedia_in_the_Classroom/Modules#English) that might be useful as a starting point in your context. Hope this helps! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:50, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks so much for the help! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 22:42, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Student comment at Talk:Genome

Hi all. I found a comment from a student in Istanbul at Talk:Genome. The student (Shadha AlGhurbani) mentions working on the article for an assignment, but I have not found any mention of a course page or relevant entry at WikiEdu fall 2022 courses. Can someone look into this? Mindmatrix 17:05, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

It looks like this student is in Turkey from their note on the talk page; pinging @Basak: who might be able to help? (We at Wiki Education, where you looked, only support courses in the U.S. and Canada.) --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:13, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you very much! @LiAnna (Wiki Ed):. I'll take care of this. Actually, there is Wikipedia Club at this university now, but we are not aware of any assignment. Me and the members of the Wikipedia Student Club would help this student.--Basak (talk) 17:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Dylan O'Donnell is class project

There is a discussion at the Teahouse about Draft:Dylan O'Donnell, which appears to be a class project taught by User:Limelightangel. See http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse#Improving_a_Draft.

There is apparently a deadline to get the draft approved and into Wikipedia by 31 December. Some of the regular editors at the Teahouse have restated that In Wikipedia, there is no deadline. There are questions about free-content and non-free-content images. Can someone with Wiki Ed please look into this? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:14, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @Limelightangel: to respond. (We at Wiki Education are limited in scope to the U.S. and Canada, where we know the higher education systems; Limelightangel is, I believe, in Italy.) --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:11, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Vector 2022

WikiEd advisors might be getting questions from students related to the recent switchover to Wikipedia:Vector 2022. The new layout might be confusing to teachers and their student when they first see it. Perhaps, WikiEd should, if it hasn't been done already, might want to let course participants know about the change and how they can switch back to the old version if they want. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:53, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Marchjuly. I know we updated the screenshots in the relevant trainings last week, and I've been using the new skin for the past several months to familiarise myself with it. I need to check if we've done anything to communicate with the instructors to warn them, but most students won't have started editing before the change, so hopefully it'll be ok. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Sounds good. There is currently an option for users to switch back to the old vector if they want, but it might be best to suggest to them not to do that if they've got no experience using it because it just may confuse them moving forward. Lots of users are unhappy with the change and tweaks may be made as a result, but I doubt a 100% revert will be made back to the way things were. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:54, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Course on Caribbean novels

Heads up that a non-WikiEdu course on Caribbean novels led by Redwellie14 has begun submitting their articles. They're following MOS:NOVELS... but seriously falling afoul of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. I hailed the instructor on their talk page but they do not appear to understand the problem. -- asilvering (talk) 17:40, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Affected articles I'm aware of so far:
I've dropped a Template:Welcome student on all the students I could find. -- asilvering (talk) 17:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I've made an edit to the header at the top of this noticeboard page: [13], that gives a link to the list of Contentious Topics (formerly called Discretionary Sanctions). The concern that students should not edit in these topic areas is a perennial concern here, so I think it is useful to be able to easily find what those topics currently are. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:39, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea but I've changed it to Wikipedia:General_sanctions#Active_sanctions because we don't want some students editing, say crypto, either just because it's a community rather than arbcom restriction. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:56, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. That's why they pay you the big bucks. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Announcing script RefRenamer: replaces VE numeric refs with reasonable ref names

Student editors, more than others it seems to me, use the Visual Editor, with the resulting opaque VE numeric ref name cruft we are all used to seeing, such as, <ref name=":0"/>, ":1", and so on. There is now a script by available to mitigate this problem after the fact:

Nardog's script RefRenamer converts all VE numeric names on a page to useful named references (default: Lastname-YYYY). There are many addditional options to customize how you want it done. This has worked flawlessly on pages containing more than a hundred numeric references; here's an example where it made about 136 changes at Generation Z (diff). It is powerful, effective, flexible, and accurate.

The script doesn't stop the VE problem from occurring, but it is a complete solution for converting refs on one page that students are working on using Visual Editor, to reasonable ref names. I don't expect student editors to use this—they have enough learning to do on their plate already—but content experts and others may wish to know about this, so they can rationalize all the ref names in one fell swoop after an article stabilizes or the course is over. Details at User:Nardog/RefRenamer. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Nice! Thanks for sharing this @Mathglot. And huge, huge thanks to Nardog! Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:28, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
@Mathglot, what a wonderful tool! Thanks. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:17, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Apparently, they are voting at Meta on changing VE reference naming style, which is directly related to this topic. You can register your opinion in the #Voting section (down the page; the "#Discussion" section is above it, for some reason) at: m:Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Editing/VisualEditor should use proper names for references. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:14, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Personality theory class concerns

Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Missouri University of Science and Technology/Personality Theory (Spring 2023)

Hello!

I am a little concerned about the content of this particular class. Many of the articles picked in the past were under the aegis of WP:FRINGE and given previous issues with fringe theories in class assignments (not to mention certain concerns over WP:MEDRS), I am concerned that this class might be straying into dangerous territory. Is there anything we can do to help prevent problems similar to those we had with the Traditional Chinese Medicine class?

jps (talk) 18:12, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi @ජපස. I looked through the past incarnations of this class, and I didn't really find anything that struck me as FRINGE. Their applications of MEDRS wasn't perfect, but I thought it was a good bit better than the average sourcing in psych articles: 2022 class, 2020 class, 2018 class. Am I missing something? Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I noticed that students from the class had worked on Enneagram of personality in the past. Perhaps they will avoid topics like that in the future? jps (talk) 17:54, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Topics like that also verge on the Complementary and Alternative Medicine discretionary sanctions aka contentious topics area, which all class projects should avoid. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I note that there is currently a dispute that has been kicked up to WP:FTN over the Enneagram of personality. So far, the class hasn't had any assignments for topics yet, but I notice that there isn't much attention paid to issues relating to WP:FRINGE and the discussion of WP:MEDRS is perhaps a bit thin in the course description. Just bumping this thread to make sure we don't get lost in case issues do arise (hopefully they won't). jps (talk) 15:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

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