Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 18

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Students erased my goat and swore at me

A rogue student group, Wikiprojectgroup2, just responded to my page patrolling and an editing fix (I put their lede in the proper place) with this gem of a comment. They also blanked out their talk page after I offered advice on inline citations INCLUDING WIKILOVE OF A GOAT. They also "erased" Shalor's request to contact their instructor. Clearly these kids are not Wiki Ed affiliated, because they'd have learned better, and clearly not fans of barnyard animals. I know you're on it (thanks Shalor!), but I wanted to highlight that they're not just rogue students, they're also disruptive and mean-spirited toward helpful editors. I can take it, but I know this doesn't usually end well. -- Owlsmcgee (talk) 04:38, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

• I have a few ideas as to which college it may be, but nothing concrete. So far I'm leaning on it being the University of Iowa, based on my research. I'm going to ping the list of people involved to this because I want to make sure that they understand that they need to get in touch with someone about their class:

SarahMRedman, Martinhawk, Dvchicago, Izannap, Hawkeye2020, Asnders, Rmxn, Wikiprojectgroup2, Wingerterka, SergioFer, Alyssakirby

They have also been working on the following drafts: Draft:Art of Uruk, User:Wikiprojectgroup2/Foundation figures

To the students: Please have your educator(s) reach out to us at Wiki Education at contactwikiedu.org so we can help them. One of the accounts has been blocked and looks to be unlikely to do so and there have been complaints about your editing. While not all of you may have been doing things that others found objectionable, it's very important that you edit within guidelines and the modules and course program that Wiki Education has can definitely help with that - plus it's free. At the very least I would like you to go through the training modules at this link, since they would be invaluable guides when it comes to editing and other matters. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:32, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Did you notice that WikiprojectGroup2 is soft blocked? Just for the username. An account can only have one editor. Doug Weller talk 15:50, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

• I did, but I tagged them in the hopes that if they logged in and saw this, that they would read the message and pass the information on to their teacher. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:57, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Apologies for the problems caused with this page and the student's behavior. I am the instructor for this class and have contacted Shalor to sort things out; I am also getting myself up to speed on Wiki Ed and will make sure to follow their guidelines in the future. Much of the responsibility here is my own; I did not offer the students appropriate guidance and the resultant problems could have easily been avoided. For what it's worth, the page was a good-faith effort on the part of the students to contribute to Wikipedia; I wouldn't call them 'rogue' but rather overwhelmed and frustrated by processes they didn't fully understand. That doesn't excuse the behavior, and the student in question has apologized to me and I believe a few of you here. Thanks to Shalor for contacting me and offering to assist me with Wiki Ed. Bjornpa (talk) 22:09, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Bjornpa, by "rogue" I just mean they weren't working within any kind of training parameter for student editors on the site. I'm glad that you're now connecting with Wiki Ed and I hope you will do similar assignments moving forward! For what it's worth, the students in your class (even those working on the Founding figures article) are making quality contributions, and no amount of course training can teach someone not to swear at strangers on the internet, I guess. Thanks for responding here and taking steps to square things away. -- Owlsmcgee (talk) 03:18, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you Bjornpa! I've sent your information to some of my coworkers who can help get things set up! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:20, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

"Digital Divide in X" articles

There is a class which is creating a large number of articles titled "Digital Divide in X". A lot of these seem to be WP:SYNTH or unnecessary content forks of articles that already exist about the technology and demographics of the country involved. I've PROD'ed The Digital Divide in Myanmar, but there's also Digital Divide in Bangladesh, Digital Divide in Germany, and others. Some may be OK to stand alone, but some of these clearly should be merged into other articles. As this affects multiple articles I'm posting here. – Train2104 (t • c) 00:02, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• I'll look into this! Thanks! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:38, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• I'm actually thinking of making a basic list page for the digital divide in different countries and having the students merge their information there. I think that there's definite merit in having this information on Wikipedia somewhere and having a list page would make more sense and possibly even be easier to find and navigate. There's the possibility of adding this to country specific pages on internet, telecommunications, and even education, but these aren't necessarily the best-best places since these are all contribute to the expansion or decrease of the digital divide, but they're not the digital divide per se. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:26, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
• I've started a draft at User:Tokyogirl79/List of countries and the digital divide. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:16, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Every country "has" a digital divide, so that list intro doesn't really make sense, but an outline article with descriptions of various problems unique to each country is a good idea. Should note that this class has moved the articles to mainspace en masse today. – Train2104 (t • c) 03:21, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

@Shalor (Wiki Ed): I began cleaning them up a bit before noticing this here. This just seems to be yet another case of a massive disconnect between English Wikipedia's priorities and the workings of the entire Wiki Ed team and its students. There were also many "artifact"/historical piece articles moved to mainspace today as well that probably shouldn't have their own article. I'm beginning to think the entire Wiki Ed program is a net negative for the site. Nihlus 03:28, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

• Hi Nihlus - the students were supposed to move these to a page on my main account, User:Tokyogirl79/Digital divide by country, as many of these had issues that would keep them being a good standalone article and in some cases were redundant to existing pages. I'll go through the student pages and see who moved theirs live and move them back. My ultimate game plan was to go through the page and do some cleanup before moving it live as a main list article. Also, can you give me a list of the artifact pages? I know that there was a specific class that was having some issues, as well as a class that was not affiliated with Wiki Education that was editing artifact and historical art piece pages. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:53, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Students adding links to the inside net of their uni

I have proposed this as a solution [1]. Please comment their with your thoughts. Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:28, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Ed Monthly Report for October 2017

Hi all. For those interested, Wiki Education's Monthly Report for October 2017 is now available on Commons as a PDF, on Meta, or on our blog. Please let me know if you have questions. --Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:47, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Naegleria fowleri

We've having problems with multiple students Fc2361 and Corbin3 at Naegleria fowleri adding largely unsourced material or having trouble with WP:MEDRS and reinserting edits. Basically standard end of the semester edit warring. Corbin3's page says they are editing for a class under Drsusan1968[2], but I'm not finding any evidence of a class dashboard. More eyes would be appreciated on this, especially any Wiki Ed folks to get in touch with the professor. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

@Kingofaces43: Thanks. Think I found a likely match in the faculty directory at Clemson. We'll reach out to see if we can get them on board. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:12, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

The education extension (Courses Module) is being retired

Subscribe to phab:T169676 for updates. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:27, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks for mentioning it here. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The most recent community discussion of this was in September 2016 at Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive_15#Proposal_to_stop_granting_ambassador_rights. That discussion links to other previous discussions. I advocated for winding these tools down then and I continue to support it now. My opinion in late 2016 was that the tools were obsolete and replaced by better alternatives. That is more true now. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:37, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Anassakata80 at Susquehanna

Anassakata80 claims to be a college instructor; clearly s/he needs help. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:43, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: Thanks. Reached out on his/her talk page. Didn't see an obvious match on the school's website after a few minutes of looking, so hopefully we hear back on-wiki. Let us know if you catch and other clues that would allow us to find his/her email? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:19, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• Hi Chris troutman - I've reached out to the professor and I'm getting her in touch with Samantha (Wiki Ed). Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tamara McNowers

Please see the above SPI and let me know if the named accounts listed are students involved in some assignment or something similar. I believe this noticeboard involves projects that are located in the U.S. or Canada. These users are editing from Europe. If I should post this question somewhere else, please tell me where because every time I get involved in this area of Wikipedia I find it confusing. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

@Bbb23: This noticeboard is for the Education Program everywhere, but most of the activity is about the US and CA (the area covered by Wiki Education Foundation). I don't see any activity from those users in the Programs & Events Dashboard, so it's unlikely they're working with anyone from the Education Program. @TFlanagan-WMF, VMasrour (WMF), and NSaad (WMF): does this look like a class on your radar? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:42, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Thanks for your quick response. The editors you pinged haven't edited en.wiki in a while, so I won't hold my breath for any additional responses. I've tried one other thing to figure out what is going on, but I may not get a response from that inquiry either. Ah well, blocking may be the only recourse.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:03, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: VandyChem5600 (talk)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Name

Tina Qin

Institution

Vanderbilt University

Course title and description

Assignment plan

Number of students

Start and end dates

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Helaine (Wiki Ed), Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, and Bluerasberry: --VandyChem5600 (talk) 18:27, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• Hi VandyChem5600! Which class are you teaching? If you want, you can email me at stoncraywikiedu.org as well. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion break - fixing the intake workflow

• Hi @Shalor (Wiki Ed):, with the retirement of the encyclopedia hosted courses modules coming, is there a new intake process the "new instructor" workflow should be using? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

• Typically instructors go through Samantha or Will to get everything set up, so I've pointed the educator in their direction. I know that Ryan knows a bit more about this, though. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:41, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

  @Shalor (Wiki Ed): I'm trying to determine if Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Setting up your course and the later pages are in need of updating to stop creating on-wiki schools, courses, etc? — xaosflux ^Talk 04:14, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Ryan (Wiki Ed): I think that this is something that we're going to discuss fairly soon. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:43, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Xaosflux: The page you've linked to is specifically about the course page extension that, according to another thread on this page, is being phased out. But ideally nobody would get to that page, because the root page for that training, Wikipedia:Training/For educators, has been changed to point to the instructor orientation at wikiedu.org. (Update: it looks like there is still a page that links to that slide directly here). In general, instructors in the United States and Canada only need to go to wikiedu.org to get started. The process is laid out pretty clearly there, and will result in staff getting in touch with them. Outside of those countries, instructors are free to use wikiedu.org resources like the training, but the classes themselves would best be on the Programs and Events Dashboard, which does also have its own set of training modules. To find support for classes outside the US and CA, it's still probably good practice to post to ENB. @TFlanagan-WMF, NSaad (WMF), and VMasrour (WMF): can probably say more about that process (and are generally good people to ping for courses outside the US/CA). Hope this helps. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:02, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm asking because the original poster on this section clearly came here asking for on-wiki user flags from a form here, which may need fixing? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:23, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. Honestly, though I found the preload for the text above, I'm not sure what page would has a link/button using it. Perhaps you know of a better way to search the wikicode of pages for one still be using that template? Meanwhile, my colleague reached out to the user by email to try to pin down that page. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:24, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects for one. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:09, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Aha. That sure looks like the likely culprit. As a Wiki Ed employee, I try to be mindful of editing community pages based on my own perspective of what's best for people in the Education Program (since Wiki Ed is not all of the Education Program). But IMO I think continuing to have them is likely more confusion than help -- especially if the course page extension is completely phased out. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:35, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks Ryan (Wiki Ed), I've updated that page to remove the old links. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:01, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Citation Hunt concerns (reduxe)

As a followup to my previous thread on this subject, I just found these edits to Gabon on my watchlist, presumably made using Citation Hunt by a student in the course Southern Oregon University/Introduction to Clinical Psychology (Winter 2018), which added a Wikipedia mirror. Looking further at edits by other students at this course, I found this edit to Methodism, which added a reference to a book whose text is copied from Wikipedia, and this edit to Anglo-Nubian goat which cited a webpage that used Wikipedia as a source (i.e. another circular reference). These edits to Sixty Minutes were fine but ultimately unnecessary, and these edits to Washington County, Indiana were also reasonable. However, I still think an accuracy rate of two out of five is still very concerning (and I only checked edits that were far out of the purview of the course). Graham87 16:47, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Ian (Wiki Ed), the content expert for this course. Graham87 16:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Graham87. Thanks for flagging this. Since Citation Hunt is pretty widely used (edit-a-thons, 1lib1ref, etc.) are you seeing a marked difference in student work as a whole vs. average new users? Adding citations is a common way to dip one's toe in the water on Wikipedia, of course, before making more substantial contributions, and Citation Hunt facilitates doing just that. Since there are thousands of students editing Wikipedia, with some number of them using this tool, we would expect -- as with any new users -- to see a few mistakes and/or students that simply didn't follow instructions. If there are extensive problems with a particular class or group of students, that's a perfect scenario for pinging Ian or Shalor. In this case, Ian will be following up with these students to make sure they understand WP:RS before making major contributions to mainspace.

One thing from our previous conversation about this was a possible tweak to the wording reminding students that they should click "next" if they don't feel confident about sourcing a particular claim. Sorry to say, I did not do a good job of following up on that on our end. I talked with my colleague, Cassidy (Wiki Ed), about it this afternoon. She will be coordinating some revisions to the timeline, where students encounter the tool, in the future, and added a note to discuss this during that process. It's something worth talking about, certainly, and to do some additional research to make sure it's something that might be tripping up students (we try to take great care in making changes to the Dashboard timeline, only adding text when necessary, since it affects thousands of people and we've found concision to be extremely important in communicating with students).

Curious as to your thoughts on the above. Apologies for dropping the thread last time around. Also pinging Doug Weller, Primefac, and Astinson (WMF), who commented in the previous thread. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Thanks for your comments. I don't really know how to measure WikiEd students' citation ability in this task versus average new users because I don't have a good sample for the latter. I admittedly have a very unusual watchlist as a lot of pages are only on there because I've found long-lasting vandalism on them, but I don't encounter many new users trying to add citations, except sometimes in medical articles. The only groups of new users who regularly do this outside of that area in my experience are 1lib1reffers ((who usually do a reasonable job), spammers, and Education Program students. But then, one of my very first edits was more or less adding a citation (a reasonable way to do that by the standards of early 2005) ... go figure. But the main difference between that edit and some of those performed by the Education Program students is that I knew a lot about the subject whereas some of them are editing way outside their field of study.

One common theme in a lot of edits by the Education Program students is their use of Wikipedia mirrors and sites that copy from them. Sometimes, as seen in the first edit I linked above, they seem adamant that Wikipedia plagiarised from those sites, not the other way around ... which is a thought process I don't recall finding in average new users.

Good to hear about the progress re changes to the timeline. It would probably go some way to stopping these sorts of edits. Wikipedia mirrors might be worth mentioning too, if possible. Graham87 04:33, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

University of South Florida/ENL6236 18th C Women Authors (Fall 2015)

Education Program:University of South Florida/ENL6236 18th C Women Authors (Fall 2015) was removed in August 2015, with the rationale "using new dashboard instead". There are three related talk pages that are orphaned and appear to have been missed during the transition:

• Education Program talk:University of South Florida/ENL6236 18th C Women Authors (Fall 2015)/Course description
• Education Program talk:University of South Florida/ENL6236 18th C Women Authors (Fall 2015)/Grading
• Education Program talk:University of South Florida/ENL6236 18th C Women Authors (Fall 2015)/Timeline

Should these pages still be deleted (CSD G8 may apply) or kept? If kept, should they be moved elsewhere? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:38, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Anyone? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 04:47, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Black Falcon: I deleted per G8, and in that they were single author edits only, and not "talking" about things. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:17, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Black Falcon: It looks like the content was successfully moved over to this Dashboard page, so I suspect there would be no objection to deleting them. Pinging the instructor, LLRungegordon, just in case. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Oops. (edit conflict). Nevermind. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:21, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, xaosflux and Rhododendrites! Cheers, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 05:40, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Tomboy article

Does anyone know if a group of editors have been assigned to Tomboy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)? It appears that they have. The problem is that some of the content is problematic and that the editors are not engaging on the article talk page. See Talk:Tomboy#Latest edits. Permalink here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 20:12, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

• Hi Flyer22 Reborn, I'm investigating the accounts. Offhand it looks like they may be editing from a university in Hong Kong, which isn't one of the areas we cover. I'll keep looking and see what I can find, though. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:52, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Shalor (Wiki Ed). As you can see on my talk page, ferret also pointed to the following articles:

• LGBT culture in Hong Kong
• Feminist movement
• Gong nui
• Amsterdam Gay Pride
• Gender inequality in China
• Objectification
• Gender inequality
• Women in government

If the class is editing from Hong Kong, which I suspected, they are prone to making some additions that are Hong Kong-specific. I already reverted one Hong Kong-specific text at the Tomboy article and mentioned this on the article's talk page. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 20:27, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Flyer22 Reborn, Since it looks like this is not a university in the U.S. and Canada (the only student editors Wiki Education supports), I’m pinging the global WMF education team so they can follow up: @TFlanagan-WMF, VMasrour (WMF), and NSaad (WMF):. — Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

What happened to the outreach dashboard?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T188864
Resolved

While the North American website is fine ([https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/), what happened to the website for the rest of the world - https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org ? I was using it last year, but now it's offline. Please don't tell me the project was cancelled, particularly as it had irreplaceable statistics and information on my courses (ex. what articles my students were editing). Closing it down (without so much as a warning to people using it to back up data, etc.) would be very irresponsible (through perhaps not that surprising, considering the diminishing support for non-North American educational projects...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:40, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Don't know why it's down at this moment, but it's not down because of discontinuation/closing. I just used it yesterday, in fact. @Sage (Wiki Ed): Do you know what it could be? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:40, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Looks like it has been reported already as phab:T188864. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. It's back up and running, which is good, as I have two new wiki courses starting today, first in 30 minutes :D --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:03, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: USERNAME

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Sachinthonakkara

Sachinthonakkara (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   To explore wikipedia and its functioning.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   Lead, Pharmacology, Cyclic AMP, intravenous sodium bicarbonate to name a few.

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   One of my expansions/revision for the article saline(medicine) was tagged with copy and pasting.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I don't edit wikipedia often, but check on its contents regularly. I can avail two hours per week for wikipedia.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   Well there is not anything such as a copyright, its all about money and negotiation; and if published in a legal manner it becomes a copyright; but the contents posted on wikipedia can be authenticated by checking the log in IP or user profile and educational background of the person.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   Post a warning message and post a link to the terms of use and license that are applicable for the contents posted on wikipedia.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    It can not be defined as such because every country as has its own rules and regulation; Copyright violation can not be implied on countries with lower economic status or GDP; these things are applicable only to developed countries. To put it in simple words copyright violation is plagiarism, but is nullified when the person has better memorisation capability, than relying on individual skills or serendipity. Copyrights are mainly applicable on inventions rather than discoveries.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

Sachin T. Jose 01:14, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Campus Ambassador application: Sakir Hossain Laskar

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Sakir Hossain Laskar (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   Wikipedia is the place where you find any thing about anything and you can rely on it, I want to be part of something like this

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Aligarh, India, My university is Aligarh Muslim University

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I am a sophomore student of Department of Economics, Aligarh Muslim University at BA(Hons)

program # In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

1. YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

2. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

Discussion

 Not done see above, this system is being retired. @Sakir Hossain Laskar: did a page or link lead you to this? If so could you tell me where? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Notice of Village Pump discussion

A user has opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Community review for new article topics of WikiEd classes? which you may wish to take part in. BethNaught (talk) 19:07, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

It may be better to move the discussion here. I do think something more needs to be done so students get feedback *before* NPP editors object to articles. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:09, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikimania 2018

Will there be any education related presentations or workshops at Wikimania this year? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:20, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood: The submissions process is closed and private this year. I suppose there will be no information until after the program is announced. If there is information then I do not know how to access it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I thought the preconference would be a good opportunity to train up some locals from the SA chapter, if such a thing is done. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Health articles from class

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quantum Tunneling in DNA has been opened on an article from Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Northeastern University/Advanced Writing in the Health Professions (Spring 2018). Looking at the articles listed on the class page, I expect several other pages will have problems. @Ian (Wiki Ed) and Amyc29: for discussion. power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:23, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I have just deleted another article on the list Medication error in the Emergency which was a fork (or copy) of Medication errors in the Emergency Department. The latter article was recently merged into Emergency department and the recreation happened soon after that. SpinningSpark 18:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up Power~enwiki. I’m aware of the challenges this class has been facing and have been working with Amyc29 (off-wiki) to help get the students back on track when they run into problems. I'm not sure what happened with the "medication errors..." article - the student must have misunderstood my feedback. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:03, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

User:Lemorianquiroz and Draft:Manuel l quezon speech

Does this user belong to a known class? There isn't any welcoming or anything on their talk page. They created an article at Manuel l quezon speech (that I've moved to draft) which was a copy of Manuel L. Quezon with a bit of extra text in, at the bottom of which was "Gates EAPP Group 2". ansh666 04:16, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Not really sure who'd be best to deal with this, so @Ryan (Wiki Ed), Ian (Wiki Ed), and Shalor (Wiki Ed): anyone know anything about this or the below section? Thanks, ansh666 06:55, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

• @Ansh666: It doesn't look to be one of our students as far as I can tell. I've left them a student welcome message on their talk page and asked them to get their professor to contact Wiki Education. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:25, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

  Hm. Given the subject area and such it could be a class in the Philippines. Thanks for looking into it. ansh666 17:11, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Shanghai Health Medical College

Another course, it seems, making nonsense stubs, one of which (Qgfxgbnjigfgjkjtfcgh, now deleted) stated "Network marketing course from Shanghai health medical college". Most pages have been deleted under G2 (test). Anyone know of this course?

Possible accounts:

• Liaibai (talk · contribs) - Liaibai
• TYJjoin (talk · contribs) - Tyjnion, Dhhdjhhhjn
• Zhiyting (talk · contribs) - Qgfxgbnjigfgjkjtfcgh
• Megamaz (talk · contribs) - Where was the print press invented?
• Dewdewdrop (talk · contribs) - 刘沈璐
• Summeryusx (talk · contribs) - Ysxsx, Panjinqingqq, Mingdpodaorongmom
• Wingszzh (talk · contribs) - Hsjxbxbh
• 潘高雅123 (talk · contribs) - SJJDUDBDUDBDJFNDID
• 张佳琪 (talk · contribs) - Shdusjxhak@jw
• SriaFina (talk · contribs) - ¥@？
• 孙铭远 (talk · contribs) - Dhdubdbcudbdhdudb
• Hero kirito (talk · contribs) - Qingdaohua

The list keeps growing. Thanks, ansh666 05:40, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi User:Ansh666, Since it looks like this isn't a university in the U.S. or Canada (the only student editors Wiki Education supports), I’m pinging the global WMF education team so they can follow up: @TFlanagan-WMF, VMasrour (WMF), and NSaad (WMF):. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:45, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for looking into it. ansh666 17:12, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

NOTICE: EducationProgram extension is being deprecated

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T125618

Please help translate to other languages.. Thank you!.

Over the years many issues have been discovered from our engineering colleagues regarding the Education Extension, including security concerns. For this reason, and with a viable alternative platform available, we are starting the process to deprecate the extension and having it uninstalled where it has been activated. This includes this wiki Special:Courses.

This means that the following steps will be taken:

1. New programs are discouraged from using the extension and encouraged to use the Programs and Events Dashboard.
2. Current ongoing programs will be supported, until the month of June, 2018.
3. On June 30, 2018, the Education Extension will be shut down.
4. If you are still running an education program that uses the Education Extension, please take the appropriate measures and also reach out to your colleagues and communities so they are also aware.

It should be noted that data of previous programs that ran on the Education Extension will remain safe, and we are working on documenting how to access that data.

Thus, we invite all Education Program Leaders (and users of the Education Extension) to take the online training for the dashboard so that you can benefit from this tool and make your work easier.

Did you know you can also use the P&E Dashboard at edit-a-thons, writing competitions, and other Wiki-based activities? More training courses for the dashboard are available here, so take a look!

Do you need to communicate with us about this?

• If you have comments or questions, please reach out to the Education Team at educationwikimedia.org, or the Programs and Events Dashboard group at dashboardwikimedia.org.
• If you use Phabricator, you can also go to: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T125618.
• You are also welcome to share questions and comments on outreach.wikimedia.org.

-- On behalf of the Education Team 19:56, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

• We have begun removing flags from accounts that have not used the Courses system in quite some time, and will continue to deprecate the access permissions for anyone not associated with active courses over the coming months. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:16, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Remaining users as of today:

• Course coordinators, 22
• Course online volunteers, 75
• Course campus volunteers, 73
• Course instructors, 96

— xaosflux ^Talk 20:32, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks for this. I have proposed deprecating this extension more than once in the past few years on this notice board. I also advocate for using the meta:Programs and Events Dashboard.

I have the following requests:

1. Can a representative of the "Education Team" identify all members? I assume this is <10 people and not a burden to request.
2. Can a representative of the "Programs and Events Dashboard group" identify all members? Again, I am assuming this a small group.
3. Can someone from the education team describe the extent to which they can detect use of the software tool being deprecated? To the extent that use detection is possible, can someone from the team say how many people are currently using the software tool? I am guessing that there is zero current use but I am not sure.
4. WMF staffers developed some policies in which users with account designations from this tool (course online volunteer, course campus volunteer, course instructor) get special consideration to make userright requests at Wikipedia:Account creator. Getting this right has historically been contentious and WMF staff policymaking is part of the reason why the process became so complicated. I probably would be asking too much to request a WMF staffer to untangle and provide updated policy suggestions to re-write the policy, but as a stop-gap against damage, may I request that any "education team" representative offer barnstars or badges to users who have the soon-to-be-deprecated user right? Until and unless there is a policy rewrite, I would like for the badge to grant legacy permission for indefinite account creator userright, because the old education userrights offered that policy privilege and this use is still in play outside of the deprecated software. This is still a contemporary problem, as just last week in NYC yet again event organizers experienced Blocked editing at high profile event. The education userrights play a role in resolving these tensions, and in the longer term, the conflict between the camps which do wiki events versus the camps that start blocking events will only increase if there is not more planning.

Thanks for any response. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:14, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Obviously I'm not WMF but as far as "account creator" goes - are you referring to the core media wiki access, or something specific to the PED? For our side we have been pretty lenient at WP:PERM/ACC lately, especially now that auto-expiration is a thing, and our guidelines at Wikipedia:Account creator specifically allow for this. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:43, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

And if we want it to be longer periods, noone is really stopping us - it should just be 'reasonable'; for the most part I'm willing to flag anyone non-expiring that has had a temporary flag a few times without issue - it is subject to removal usually if they are inactive for a year. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:45, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I just made a proposal at Wikipedia:Account creator. Could you endorse this? Previously the policy said that the userright is available for those with the userright being discussed for deprecation. If you would endorse the policy change, then the privilege which the education userright grants would no longer be needed. I have tried to change this in the past and gotten resistance. Your endorsement and support would help. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:53, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

At this time, classes from the US and Canada use the Dashboard that is located here and educational institutions from the rest of the world have access to an alternative Dashboard here (without Wiki Ed). If I understand correctly, those things will not change. Is that correct? (I want to make sure that there is no decrease in coverage of countries from the rest of the world.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:23, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: This proposal will not have the direct effect of changing the meta:Programs and events dashboard. Indirectly probably there are plans to change something but I am aware of neither conversation nor plans nor who in the WMF might be discussing this.

About the tools you reference - it would be more accurate to say that the tool at wikiedu is for the Wiki Education Foundation staff to support classroom projects using their paid staff, and their funding restricts them to the US and Canada. They make their same software available for anyone to use at wmflabs, so this is the one for the rest of the world.

In my opinion the P&E dashboard software at wmflabs is awesome and I cannot imagine the software being proposed for deprecation to be of use to anyone, except as I am highlighting that it comes with some userrights socially baked into certain English Wikipedia policy. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:31, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Good, thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi everyone! I'm part of the Education Team. It seems that part of the discussion is focused on the rights that education extension users had, something that i'm not totally familiar with. My first thought is that with the deprecation of the Education Extension, those rights would also be gone? (but it's not something we have discussed in the team). VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi @VMasrour (WMF): most of the permissions associated with this extension have been specific to the extension, so yes they are no longer needed as there will be nothing to use them for. Part of the discussion above is the general concept of mass account creation for events (part of rate limits in mediawiki core) that are not specifically related to the extension at all, but something that has been a general problem for "event coordination" overall. The scenario is that when any sort of "event" occurs where the coordinators provide internet access, new editors get hit with the rate limit for creating new accounts from the same IP address. Technically, with SUL this is a global problem - but each WMF project can designate 'account creators' or other types of groups that can override this limit. I think some effort to doing this through the PEM dashboard has started - but it still doesn't seem as efficient as using the native Special:CreateAccount process - or it is at least not well advertised. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:36, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Yes, it's my understanding also that it's a larger issue than just the Education Extension. There recently was discussion regarding the issue of account creators in es.wiki also. While i know that it's fairly common for Dashboard users to face the issue of having to register large numbers of users at once for events, i'm not positive on how to work through this issue. VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

@VMasrour (WMF): As I am sure you know, Wikipedia community social policies are challenging to establish and to change. Along with this education extension there were non-technical social policies established in which anyone with the technical user rights from this extension could get the social permission to have account creator userrights. Even after the P&E Dashboard begin to replace the old education tools, those old userrights were still named in policy and even right now they are used in community processes to grant userrights. I do not like the idea of an old userright deciding who gets a userright they need but this is what the policy is. Just last week a Wiki NYC event with a venue / catering / staff labor cost of about US$5000 got blocked as described at Wikipedia_talk:How_to_run_an_edit-a-thon#Blocked_editing_at_high_profile_event because of insufficient infrastructure for posting events and disputes about account creator rights. About a year ago a user threatened to take away my account creator rights because I do not use them on wiki, even though I use them in the sense that I present ~50 wiki workshops a year and am a trainer and backup for other people doing account creation.

It is not reasonable to keep these deprecated userrights indefinitely, but at the same time, I do not want the removal of these userrights to disrupt anyone's ability to access other resources which the rules say can go to people with these userrights. Event organizers can do anything reasonable do manage wiki security at events, but many requests associated with account creator rights are unreasonable. Typical events have 1-2 experienced Wikipedians, some subject matter experts, and 30 professional people in the room. Too often patrollers attack these events with blocks to the IP or participating editors. I wish there was a way for the experienced Wikipedians and the volunteers doing security to exchange information and have live talks about problems but the social infrastructure does not exist. It can be really stressful when someone makes a 1-minute evaluation to shut down a $5000 event where a lot of people have invested their time and labor. I am anxious that deprecating these userrights will lead to further pressures on event coordinators. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:17, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Thanks for taking the time to describe the very real issue. I myself have faced this type of issues firsthand, and my impression is that the current policy is not what we need, especially when this can affect negatively the perception of people that we are just barely attempting to introduce to the community. I've shared those concerns with the team that is leading the Community Tech project of a "new Dashboard", and we'll see what can be done in that regard. VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 18:57, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

@VMasrour (WMF): Thanks, I think you understand the issue. There is more discussion at Wikipedia:Account creator.

One possible solution is registration through the Programs and Events Dashboard and also preserving the ability of new users in programs to create articles contrary to the way that Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial took away this ability. There is a lot of mixed up policy around all of this. I do not think there is informed disagreement, but rather lots of confusion and incomplete information among people who do have access to information about the perspective of others. If it were possible to create accounts through the programs and events dashboard (whether new one in development or current one that everyone uses) then that would solve lots of problems, because then anyone who sets up a program would not have to also negotiate to get account creator rights or worry about their event getting IP blocked. Also, all participants who register in this way might get a tag on their userpage so that if there are any complaints live during the event, then immediately the wiki patrollers could identify the person managing the program and communicate directly with them to address the problem. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:01, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

• OK, a question: When I encounter new users trying to edit an existing article, and they say they are students doing it on assignment, where am I now supposed to send them for information or help? I have been sending them to Wikipedia:Education program but I was just informed that is being shut down. I don’t know anything about dashboards or extensions or other technical details, I just want to know: where can such students get help? --MelanieN (talk) 01:40, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Wikipedia:Education program is not being shut down. Software which probably no English language editors have used since 2015 is being shut down in favor of newer software at meta:Programs and events Dashboard.

Students should not be directed to register classes, but you can ask their teachers to register classes. If they are in the US or Canada then direct them to email the Wiki Education Foundation, and independent nonprofit. If they are in another country then ask them to email the Wikimedia chapter in their country, most commonly the UK if they are a class on English Wikipedia. For edge cases or in case of no other support instructors should register their students by setting up a meta:Programs and events Dashboard. This interface is something like a Facebook or meetup.com group, except for wiki accounts. 99% of professors love this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:07, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, Blue Rasberry. I will give this feedback to the person (an education ambassador no less) who told me the program was being shut down. And I will suggest to the students that they can give this information to their instructor. The kinds of cases I come across are ones where there has been no formal registration or communication with Wikipedia by the instructor - where some new user, asking for help because of problems or resistance to their editing, mentions that they are editing as part of an assignment. I suspect that for every instructor who formally registers with Wikipedia, there are ten who simply tell their students "your assignment is to..." write or edit a Wikipedia article related to their course work. I think from now on I will 1) suggest the student can give the link to their instructor and 2) refer the students to willing ambassadors who can help them negotiate Wikipedia in the meantime. --MelanieN (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

@MelanieN: If you see a class that doesn't look to be on the radar of Wiki Education or someone else in the Education Program, you can also just post a note here. If it looks to be one in the US/CA, we'll try to track down the instructor to reach out directly. If the institution is not in the US/CA, we typically ping @TFlanagan-WMF, VMasrour (WMF) and NSaad (WMF), who can often put the class in touch with program participants in their geographic area. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:01, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

• Group counts remaining as of today:

  epcampus - 42

  epcoordinator - 20

  epinstructor - 58

  eponline - 51

— xaosflux ^Talk 13:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

• All user groups have been depopulated. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:39, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Other cleanup

Xaosflux has been depopulating user groups of the Education Extension userrights. Thanks for that. Here are some other tasks associated with deprecation. So far as I know there is no task list or assignments for anyone to do any of these things.

1. Update documentation about the education extension on any Wikipedia
   1. English Wikipedia?
      1. Wikipedia:User_access_levels#Course_coordinator,_instructor,_online_and_campus_volunteer
      2. Wikipedia:Course pages
      3. Help:Education Program extension
   2. Other language Wikipedias?
2. update documentation on other Wikimedia projects
   1. outreach:, which WMF staff created in part to document use cases based on this extension
   2. mw:Extension:Education Program
3. Further and continuously confirm succession to the replacements
   1. meta:Programs & Events Dashboard
   2. meta:Community Tech/Programs and events dashboard

If I had to guess I would say that about 100 URLs with documentation need updating. Probably Wikimedia Foundation staff created about half of this documentation. I would lightly request that Wikimedia Foundation staff make an attempt to clean this up, although in a perfect world, I wish that staff funding for documentation management of this sort could go to a Wikimedia community chapter in the developing world to accomplish the same purpose and build out infrastructure. I took a look at some traffic and it seems like collectively this documentation gets 1000s of views a month, so for as long as this information is up, we have a liability to the users who are investing their time and interest in a deprecated software system. I would like to help but the scale of this administrative project is beyond the labor I have to offer. If anyone has an idea for addressing this then speak up. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:03, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for November 2017 now available

Wiki Education's monthly report for November 2017 is now available as a PDF, on-wiki, and on our blog. Let me know if you have any questions. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:16, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Ashesi University College

I note today the creation or expansion of a relatively large number of user pages all noting their attendance at Ashesi University College. I suspect a new class has started wherein the professor is asking the students to edit Wikipedia. Some of the edits have been problematic (users creating user pages in article space (see User talk:Nana Boadiwaa for example)), and more problematic edits may be coming. I recommend that someone attempt to identify and contact the teacher to nip further problems in the bud. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 12:49, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Notes

Note further problematic edits today:

• Special:Contributions/Lanniey07
• Special:Contributions/Mawu Nyo A
• Special:Contributions/Sharon Oje

I strongly recommend that someone attempt to contact the leader of this student group to have them set some ground rules for their students. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 11:57, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for December 2017 now available

For those interested, find our December 2017 monthly report on Commons, on-wiki, and on our blog. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:17, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

and another

User_talk:Dlohcierekim#Revert_deleted_user_page per this discussion. User:Mailegu kontratu created an essay in Dutch(?) that I deleted per U5. User:Theklan wants it restored to her sandbox. I'm not sanguine about educators not participating via Wikipedia Education and using Wikipedia is a webhost.--Dlohcierekim (talk) 19:55, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, it was in Basque, I am sysop and bureaucrat there and this is part of a Education Program directed by Basque Wikimedians User Group. If you don't want to give me access to this assignment, is up to you, I think I have asked it politely where it needed to be asked. -Theklan (talk) 20:02, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Another seemingly unregistered class

See Draft:The Fog (Mad Men), this comment, and the edit summary here. Probably also responsible for Six Month Leave given similar structure, and possibly also Three Sundays on the same general topic. ansh666 18:32, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Oh yeah, students: Joshua Larmon (talk · contribs) and possibly Amiajmeri98 (talk · contribs) and Thechelsssjamesss (talk · contribs). ansh666 18:35, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

See also Lorikuns (talk · contribs), who claimed to be working on a Mad Men article for a school project]. —C.Fred (talk) 18:49, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks! I think I've discovered the professor and we'll reach out to them about signing up with Wiki Education. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:55, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

  Thank you! ansh666 07:11, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Student unfairly blocked, needs an unblock

Some editors here may be interested in reviewing how a case of a new student editor being blocked is being handled: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Student_unfairly_blocked,_needs_an_unblock. (Hint: I am not impressed, IMHO it's a major WP:BITE and I am really disappointed how many people are in favor of BITING newbies...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:32, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Myself, I never want to see a student editor, acting in good faith, have a bad experience as a result of a class editing project. But after looking over what happened, I see a significant missed opportunity. Better guidance from the instructor about how to edit, before the editing began, could have averted the entire situation. I know the WikiEd staff do excellent work in reaching out to instructors and trying to offer assistance, but if the instructor does not take seriously the obligation that they have to their own students, it's the students who wind up with the short end of the stick. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:19, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

As Tryptofish says, that is usually the problem. Any other editor would end up blocked in such a case. With all the problems caused by poorly instructed student editors, it is not apparent to me that blocking them is unfair. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:27, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education isn't involved in this course; Piotr teaches in Korea and is thus outside our support region. But speaking personally: I have worked with Piotr for many years; he's a longtime Wikipedian who taught with our program when he was in the U.S. and was instrumental in helping us design many of our support resources. He's been teaching with Wikipedia for a decade, and helped write much of the original WP:SUP guidelines. I really respect his knowledge and expertise, and I don't think it's fair to assume he didn't provide good guidance or poorly instructed his students. The reality is that not every student learns the same way, and a situation where there is excellent instruction and good faith student editors can still result in students making mistakes. Instructors like Piotr who patiently help students learn from their mistakes are the best teachers, and I hope we can all recognize that's what he's trying to do here. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:21, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

This is entirely my fault, but I didn't pick up on the fact that he was the instructor when I wrote my earlier comment, sorry. I certainly do realize (and in fact know from my own experiences teaching) that students sometimes simply don't follow the instruction they have been given. In this particular case, though, it looks like it went on long enough before the block that the student should have touched base with the instructor, having in fact gone to the Teahouse. In any case, it is all too common that other instructors fail to adequately prepare their students. And it is very important to realize that Wikipedia editors are not responsible for looking out for the students' learning experiences. It's very nice if an editor chooses to do so, but otherwise, student editors should be treated the same as other new editors, no better and no worse. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:37, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Related AN/I discussion

Could someone take a look at this discussion? Thanks! and sorry to bug you all so much over small things... ansh666 19:45, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Apparent project not coordinating

I've just had a helpee come in on Wikipedia-en-help on IRC, and he tells me that he's working on a class project that isn't coordinating with SUP. Quoth him, "It's czech univercity in prague, BIE-EHD subject and the teacher is Mr. Evan" [sic]. Is there any way to both verify this is indeed legitimate and maybe reach out to them or the students? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 10:06, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

@Vojtěch Dostál and Gabriela Boková (WMCZ): Can you help? --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:34, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Looks like this one. I don't known what SUP is but we'll try contacting them --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 21:05, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

WP:SUP, for reference. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 00:48, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Jeremy :) --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 12:50, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Required classwork

User:Dawson - jennifer tells me that she is required to create a particular article for a class, but her draft is redundant to End-of-life care. Can someone with more experience with the education program guide her? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:50, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi @SarekOfVulcan: It looks like this student is in a course in West Africa (the college appears to be Ashesi University). I'll ping the WMF Education team, @TFlanagan-WMF, VMasrour (WMF), and NSaad (WMF):, who might be able to put her in touch with program participants in that geographic area. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:26, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

This relates to the issue I raised above (see Ashesi University College). A great number of students from this university have begun editing in similarly problematic fashion. I have attempted to communicate with some of the students to ascertain the user ID of their teacher, to no avail. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 18:23, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. We're finding out who we need to contact there. VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Flixtey, do you know these students? Can you reach out to them? NSaad (WMF) (talk) 12:17, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Literacy and Social Justice

Several of the page creations from Santa Clara's "Literacy and Social Justice" class ([3]) are broadly problematic. @Shalor (Wiki Ed): any thoughts? power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:58, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

• I'll take a look and see what I can do about the pages. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:22, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: oishik0412

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Oishik0412 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   Sir, I'm very curious to start my career as early as possible and I find everything best about this organisation like it's growth and work environment. Being a fresher I don't have any experience and I need a platform to prove my knowledge and skills. I'm more focused on achieving success in my career than making money. It will also give a great start to my career.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   I am based in Bhubaneswar and I plan to work with KIIT University.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I hold a good academic background.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I am currently a campus ambassador for three organizations. They are WERP-India, Couponbaazar and Y4D Foundation. I hold good record in the field of cultural and sports activities.

Discussion

 Not done per the very large banner at the top of this page. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:40, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

@Xaosflux:, Which large banner? Cheers · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:23, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood: click edit again, then look up to this. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:26, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux:, If you mean the notice with the animated stop sign, I see it, but it is not immediately obvious that it refers to the above application. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 11:55, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood: I expanded it to be explicit, thanks for the note. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:03, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

That should help, time will tell. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:00, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I looked at the edit notice with this specific issue in mind, and it seems to me that it might be further modified to get the message across. It starts with the note about the module being removed, which I think will make most newbies tune out before they get to the next sentence. I recommend changing it to:

No new applications for group memberships (Course coordinators, Course campus volunteers, Course instructors, Course online volunteers, Campus ambassadors) should be submitted. The "courses" module is being removed (phab:T125618) along with the user groups associated with it. Thank you.

That puts the main message first, and in bold. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Updated. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, but I think you put the wrong part in bold. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:42, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Oops, fixed - actually I caused a LintError too! — xaosflux ^Talk 01:27, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! It looks good now! --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Class that may need contact

I just came across Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology 2018. It seems to be operating outside of the system. Also, they should not be calling themselves a WikiProject, because that's not what they are. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:12, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

At Action potential, one of the students tried to revert improvements made by other editors after the original edits by that student. There seems to be a real lack of understanding about how things work here. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Earthdirt who appears to be the teacher of the class. Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 13:36, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Indeed Tryptofish, please let me know if you see any particular problem with what my students are doing, we've had a pretty good introduction to Wikipedia ways and edit reverts, but it's new to them and as the end of the year draws near so does desperation. Also, I'm happy to stop using the project system if you can just point me to a resource for what I am supposed to be using. I used to be a rather active editor, however for the past several seven years my only real participation has been through this project. in 2012 the proper way to have a class project was to start a project page and include it under Category:Wikipedia_school_and_university_projects. I'm sure things have evolved since then but I'm not sure how. This years' project will close in a week so I'm hopeful the good they will do will far outweigh any addition mayhem one or two of them cause. In community, Earthdirt (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi Earthdirt, and thanks for reaching out about this. The best way to go about it is to follow the information at Wikipedia:Education program. By registering there, your class will be assigned a staff person from the Wiki-Ed group, who will serve as a liason (I had hoped that one of them would have replied to my initial post here, as they usually do, but I guess they have been busy with other things), and there is a nice system of tutorials for your students to get familiar with how things work here. As helpful reading, I'll also put in a plug for WP:ASSIGN. The only student I interacted much with was the one who edited at Action potential. At first, he didn't seem to understand why other editors were making further edits that modified his own edits, but things seem to be working out well now (see the page edit history). Also, I'm not sure if this: [4] was one of yours. I haven't followed anything else. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:07, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Tryptofish I very much appreciate your help and patience with CThompson02's image, we'll discuss the issue in class tomorrow. I think it's a pretty good image and your suggestions were spot on. The image "File:Repolarization of a Nerve Impulse.svg" is not one of my student's, it violates several best practice conventions for images on Wikipedia. Also FYI: I was informed by a Wiki Education staff person that my project is not eligible to work officially within their system because in because it's 9-12 AP level and not university. In community, Earthdirt (talk) 18:44, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm glad to help. I didn't realize that they only do universities. Oh well. Maybe you can still use some of the tutorial materials on your own. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:11, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi Earthdirt, we can point you toward the Programs & Events Dashboard where your students can access trainings and support. This Dashboard also provides a helpful structure for keeping track of your students’ edits. Tryptofish: apologies we didn’t jump into this thread sooner; as Earthdirt mentioned, our support is tailored towards university and graduate programs. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Now I understand better. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Edits from a class not working with Education program

Emily1567956 came onto #wikipedia-en-help and explained that the draft she was writing is for a business course at a university. The draft is Draft:Tom Howley Kitchens. While I do not know who the rest of the students are, judging by the somewhat promotional tone of the draft, other students may be writing drafts of similar quality, likely misguided by an instructor who is not too familiar with how Wikipedia works. @Emily1567956: You are welcome to comment on this discussion. Would you mind helping us contact your instructor and bringing them to this page? Thanks. Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 11:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Elineotto (talk · contribs)

Keeps creating what we keep deleting. They posted to Teahouse claiming school project.-- Dlohcierekim (talk) 10:09, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi Dlohcierekim, I’ll ping VMasrour (WMF) and NSaad (WMF), who may be able to connect the student with an education program in the Netherlands, where this user appears to be editing from. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:39, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. She's trying so very hard she's become very trying.-- Dlohcierekim (talk) 16:44, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. I'm reaching out to WMNL to see if they are in touch with the user/school and can give her/them the necessary orientations support. VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 22:01, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for January 2018 now available

Wiki Education's Monthly Report for January 2018 is available as a PDF, on-wiki, and on our blog for those interested. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:37, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for February 2018 now available

For those interested, here are the links to Wiki Education's Monthly Report for February of this year as a PDF, on-wiki, and on our blog. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:05, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for March 2018 now available

Wiki Education's Monthly Report for March 2018 is available as a PDF, on-wiki, and on our blog. Please let me know if you have any questions. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:19, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Horribly confused

I'm the Wikipedian-in-Residence at Amon Carter Museum of American Art and I've been asked to teach what until yesterday I thought was going to be a simple how-to-edit-Wikipedia session for some local high school and middle school teachers a week from today. Yesterday, I learned that the organizers (who are unfamiliar, themselves, with Wikipedia) also want to give them information on how to use Wikipedia as a teaching resource and are looking to me to at least link them into how-to. I looked at WP:WEP but when I click through on it, it refers to things which have been deprecated (course modules, instructor user right), which makes me think that program is dead. But on the other hand, some of the recent previous posts here seem to suggest that there may still be an "official" way for teachers to go about this. I found https://wikiedu.org/teach-with-wikipedia/, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation, and https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/United_States, but they all seem focused on college-level courses and I can't figure out how and if they coordinate with programs here on en-Wikipedia. Or if any such programs still exist here... Can someone tell me what's going on or provide a starting point. I'm lost. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:40, 12 July 2018 (UTC) PS: Pinging a couple of folks I hope may help (just in case no one is still watching this noticeboard): @Cassidy (Wiki Ed) and Shalor (Wiki Ed)

Hi TransporterMan, You are correct that Wiki Education (aka the Wiki Education Foundation) provides support only to higher education courses. Alternatively, Wikimedia's Programs & Events Dashboard is a useful tool to utilize in your case. You can read more about it here. Best, Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:47, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for April 2018 now available

Hello. For those interested, you can read about Wiki Education's activities during the month of April 2018 on Commons, on-wiki, and on our blog. Please let me know if you have questions. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:29, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Replacement of the secondary account

Would you be able to close my secondary account which is linked to my primary account (Goodtiming8871) on my user page? I was unable to find the request page for closing the old secondary account on Wikipedia. I created the new secondary account today which is Goodtiming1788 as per the kind recommendation by another user in Wikipedia. I created the new subsidiary account: Goodtiming1788 as it is a comparable name to my primary account Goodtiming8871 Goodtiming8871 (talk) 00:55, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for May 2018 now available

If you're curious about Wiki Education's activities during May, check out our report on Commons, on-wiki, or on our blog. Let me know if you have questions. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:02, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's Monthly Report for June 2018 now available

For those interested in Wiki Education's activities during June 2018, please find our Monthly Report on Commons, on-wiki, or on our blog. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:48, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Request for publication funding

I am seeking support with signatures at the bottom of this page, or alternatively criticism or any comments on the talk page.

• meta:Grants:Project/Rapid/bluerasberry/publishing wiki education research in healthcare

Hello, I did a research project about students in a medical program doing English Wikipedia editing in the Wikipedia education program. I have a research paper about this which I have submitted to a journal.

Open access publication fees are $3000, which is typical. The Wikimedia Foundation "rapid grants" program offers $2000 of support for certain small projects. I am requesting this $2000 in grant funding from the WMF to help cover the open access publishing fee. I have the rest.

Beyond my asking for this I also encourage other people doing academic publishing, especially at the intersection of Wikimedia projects and medicine, to publish in traditional journals and seek WMF support to pay the open access fee.

Anyone requesting funds from the WMF does so publicly and has to solicit community comments. If anyone has any comments - in support or in criticism - whatever you have to say is useful and develops the conversation about publishing Wikimedia activities in academic journals. I appreciate anyone who can either sign their wiki user name in support of the funding on the front page, or anyone who can post any criticism to the talk page about my proposal, the broader circumstances of WMF funding, or of wiki engagement in this publishing. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:58, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Great job on the project and for getting this far with publication, Bluerasberry. I'd like to know, is publication intended in a fully open access journal or a hybrid journal in which there are both open access articles and articles available only to subscribers? If the latter, would it be possible to publish only to subscribers and publicize the findings by other means? T0mpr1c3 (talk) 18:28, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Middle/Studies in Culture (Fall 2018)

It looks like Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Middle/Studies in Culture (Fall 2018) is a duplicate of Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Middle Georgia State University/Studies in Culture (Fall 2018) (and tidied up accordingly) based on the fact that @Grlucas is the tutor, but given the scary notices about editing such pages I don't know what the procedure is for such a deduplication? Le Deluge (talk) 08:28, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

User:Helaine (Wiki Ed) - can you confirm which page should be used? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:57, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

It looks like the original page was created with the incomplete name (/Middle/ instead of /Middle Georgia State University/) and Helaine renamed the page. The original (now-deleted) page linked to a non-existent page of the Dashboard - this is always a good hint that the page was renamed or otherwise deleted. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:33, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education hiring an experienced Wikipedian

Wiki Education is hiring an experienced Wikipedian for a part-time (20 hours/week) position. The focus of this position is to help new editors (students and other academics) learn to edit Wikipedia. The main focus of the position is monitoring and tracking contributions by Wiki Education program participants, answering questions, and providing feedback. We're looking for a friendly, helpful editor who likes to focus on article content, but also with a deep knowledge of policies and guidelines and the ability to explain them in simple, concise ways to new editors. They will be the third member of a team of expert Wikipedians, joining Ian (Wiki Ed) and Shalor (Wiki Ed). This is a part-time, U.S. based, remote or San Francisco based position.

See our Careers page for more information. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:00, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Should I be writing a general curriculum vitae or a Wikipedia version? –Vami_IV✠ 17:40, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

@Vami IV: probably a bit of each - I'm interested in how you're able to meet the criteria listed, and I'd like a sense of who you are and what you consider your most important/relevant achievements. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:07, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

5000 edits required? Dang, I still have 1726 to go... (well 1725 after this one) Cooljeanius (talk) (contribs) 00:55, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello. I may be interested, if I qualify and if I can start in September. I'm in the USA. Your thoughts? Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 01:31, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

@Rowan Forest: Based on a quick look at your editing history, I'd certainly be interested in seeing an application from you. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:00, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry to ask such a crass question, but what's the compensation like? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:16, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

@Rachel Helps (BYU): I'd rather not post this on-wiki, but you can email me at ianwikiedu.org -- Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 10:42, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Me again - is there a deadline for submissions? I'm looking at a deadline for the 16th, close of your business hours. –Vami_IV✠ 03:29, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's monthly report for July 2018 now available

For those who are interested, Wiki Education has published their report of activities for the month of July 2018. You can access that report as a PDF, on wiki, or on our blog. Please let me know if you have questions. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:31, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Charlottesville high schools

There have been a bunch of new editors on pages created by Leofstan. For example, Burley High School (Charlottesville, Virginia) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Is this an organized UVA event? power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:21, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Power~enwiki:! Yes, this is an organized UVA event. I am a special collections librarian at UVA and I created a number of new pages about area schools in the last few weeks in prepartation for this project, where we are uploading facts to Wikipedia from sources that are held only here at UVA Library. We just concluded our event, which you can learn about here: Wikipedia:WikiProject University of Virginia/Surfacing Black Life in Charlottesville August 2018. Leofstan (talk) 20:25, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I looked at the Wikipedia:Meetup page (as well as the UVA site) and couldn't find anything. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:26, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Peabody Institute Editing Assignment

Hi everyone! Students in my music research class will be adding content to c-class music articles starting today and over the next week. Students are being asked to update citations and enhance content that is missing based on their assessment or talk page discussions. We're going to finalize our course rubric in class tonight; our assignment is a little slight for the dashboard as it's only happening over 2 weeks, so I'm posting info here! Pages we are working on include:

• Bela Bartok
• Musical form
• Triangle Musical Instrument
• Contrabassoon
• Clara Schumann
• Lion King
• Shakuhachi
• Clef

--Deloebrenti (talk) 19:15, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's Monthly Report for August 2018 now available

Our Monthly Report for August is available as a PDF, on-wiki, and on our blog. Please reach out if you have any questions. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:34, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Help needed with setting up educational course page

Need a Course Page for a Student project, starting this week

Hi, I am running a student wikipage creation project at LIUC, Castellanza, Italy. This is the fifth year we've run this, and in the past it has resulted in some excellent new pages (not without some issues!). 3 years ago I had an educational course page but I've had no response to set up one in the past 2 years. I applied for one on this noticeboard and flagged the request on the student draft talk pages, but never heard back about it. Is there anything anyone can do to help me here, so I can just flag the draft pages up as an educational project on the respective Talk pages? Many thanks! Limelightangel (talk) 11:11, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Limelightangel, The Programs & Events Dashboard should have all that you need. I'll ping NSaad (WMF), who manages the Wikipedia Education Program for courses around the world, who may also have some more guidance. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:46, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks Cassidy (Wiki Ed), I've set up the course, but the students draft pages have already been created via the Article Creation Wizard. Is there any way to now copy these 8 draft pages in to the new course location? Limelightangel (talk) 09:03, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Limelightangel, The short answer is no. The Programs & Events Dashboard doesn't provide locations for article drafts or do any on-wiki edits, so it'll be up to them to navigate the article creation process from where they are... presumably in Draft namespace. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:33, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Potentially problematic course

I know there's nothing we can do to change the minds of some professors, but is there more that we could/should do above and beyond my comment here about a user "poaching a student's edits"? Primefac (talk) 14:34, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

@Primefac: I'm confused by the userpage of the professor. Is that Drmies? Natureium (talk) 16:38, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it’s the account he uses for teaching. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:45, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

That page is confusing? Anyway, Primefac, I think you completely missed my point, sorry--maybe I wasn't clear. First of all, there is no calculus about this edit and that edit being this many points--but what JC7V7DC5768 was doing was exactly the kind of thing that I would ask the student to do, in the next class session. JC7V7DC5768 is a pretty decent editor, so they made that edit, and Wikipedia appreciates it--as for me, I made the comment I made in hopes that next time they'd see it was a student editor, and would consider gently steering the editor toward making that kind of edit, cause that's good for the student and for Wikipedia. I can't blame JC7V7DC5768 for not doing that, far from it; like I said, I'd have given them points if I could, or a sticker. But when I run into articles that I see is part of some project, I sort of slow down and step out of regular editing mode, since I know it's easy for me to find something else to do on Wikipedia--for a brand-new editor it is not.

Second, I never accused poor JC7V7DC5768 of poaching anything; again, they're not in my class, haha. If they were, they'd have gotten an A for their midterm progress report. And the student is not getting penalized for anything, of course--but they will have to look elsewhere to make significant edits. That's all I was saying. No, the moment we get complicated with detailed rubrics and all that, that is the day this is no longer fun to do. It's already hard enough because, as you can see, half the class is pretty much sitting on their hands...

JC7V7DC5768, are you still reading this? I hope you understood my point. You're a fine editor, and that quick check to see what's going on (you already took the time to look into it) will make you an even finer editor, and will bring out the collaborative aspect of the project. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 21:19, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Well... yup that's egg on my face. Yes, I did misread, and no I didn't even look to see that it was Drmies behind the edit. Thanks for setting me straight! Primefac (talk) 23:13, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Drmies Thank you for the feedback. You are a fine editor too. Keep up the good work. JC7V-constructive zone 21:39, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

@Drmies: Is there a reason you're not instructing your students to use Draft space, or maybe this student didn't take that advice? I ask because even after the edits JC7V7DC5768 did, when I came across it through NPP I still spent some time exploring notability (in general I don't start examining the creator of the page until later in my process so I hadn't known it was created by a student editor). Obviously she is notable and I marked the page as reviewed, but that's at least two editors who maybe could have spent time doing something else to benefit the encyclopedia. It's unlikely someone would have found it in Draft space and spent time improving it thus giving your student more of the educational opportunity you and she were hoping for. And for the record I think Primefac, Naturium, Ian, Drmies, and JC7V7DC5768 are all fine editors Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:49, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Non sequitur, Barkeep: from the behavior of my students you cannot determine what I tell them, I'm afraid, but you can look at the syllabus--of course I tell them to start in draft space. They're also students, and some of them miss class and don't listen and whatnot. At least this one listened to the extent that they picked up on an item on one of Rosiestep's lists, and didn't just picked a stupid drag racer or a bridge no one cares about... What I was asking for is some situational awareness. If a group of students make a mess of something (years ago a whole bunch of them were editing Marie de France-related articles, blissfully unaware of our guidelines), then we should step in, of course. But the moment we realize something is a student article, we should tread lightly and keep an eye on things, preventing BLP and copyright violations and such of course, and assist the editor rather than do the work for them. That editor can be more important in the long run than the one article. Drmies (talk) 22:39, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. As a teacher myself I understand students don't always follow the suggestions given by their teacher. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:44, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

@Drmies: Very probably this is something that I don't need to tell you, but just in case, WP:ASSIGN has a lot of useful information, including a section for students (or at least for those who follow directions). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Shoot--you just reminded me I got some work to do on my syllabus. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 01:17, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Chemical Game Theory

Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/Penn_State/Chemical_Game_Theory_(Fall_2018)

From a quick glance, most of the references to the term "Chemical Game Theory" are in papers by Darrel Velegol. Now Darrel Velegol Velegol (talk · contribs) is running a class with The goal of this course is that our class team will publish a page on Wikipedia on Chemical Game Theory. This seems far out of line with Wikipedia policies and educational program policies; instructors should not be running classes to promote their own pet theories which have not seen wider adoption. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:56, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

@Power~enwiki: I emailed the instructor and explained the potential COI issues, and his response was encouraging. We will continue to work with him on this. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:01, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, Ian! Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 06:47, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

OLES2129

Caught this from Brainspotting being created yet again.

Seems to be a class?

• User:129.78.56.229/OLES2129/draft
• User:A.ivkovic/OLES2129
• User:A Fish in Avocado/OLES2129
• User:Aaji0085/OLES2129/draft
• User:Aimee.ball/OLES2129
• User:Alattab/OLES2129
• User:Alexb99.ab24091999/OLES2129
• User:Alishajorji/OLES2129/draft
• User:Amine lattab/OLES2129
• User:Ana.A54/OLES2129RoryJackThompson
• User:Apr12m/OLES2129/draft
• User:Ausyd0814
• User:Bbaaiillss/OLES2129
• User:Bcush99/OLES2129/draft
• User:Bidgee/OLES2129
• User:Catk6193/OLES2129/draft
• User:Ceiba chodatii/OLES2129/draft
• User:Chenzhenwill/OLE2129
• User:Chocobit98/OLES2129
• User:Cococarnival/OLES2129
• User:Cola Wong/OLES2129/draft
• User:Colinlixiangji/OLES2129
• User:Denihox/OLES2129
• User:DoctorDrDandy/OLES2129
• User:Drakmonde/OLES2129
• User:Dzungnm/OLES2129
• User talk:Echidi/OLES2129/draft
• User:Edvinat/OLES2129/draft
• User:Elloyd47/OLES2129
• User:EoinFeeney1/OLES2129
• User:Ewanmaddog/OLES2129/draft
• User:FinbarrCR12/OLES2129/draft
• User:Freyr71/OLES2129
• User:Gary7612/OLES2129/draft
• User:Giselle136/OLES2129
• User:Glss123/OLES2129
• User:Hayaothman98/OLES2129
• User:Hton8436/OLES2129/draft
• User:J.Hohne/OLES2129/draft
• User:Jasononly/OLES2129/draft
• User:JemMcL2018/OLES2129
• User:Jthr5091/OLES2129
• User:Kninss/OLES2129/draft
• User:Leefye/sandbox/OLES2129
• User:Lboikov/OLES2129
• User:Manon1998/OLES2129
• User:Maxmeares/OLES2129/draft
• User:Mwhi9373/OLES2129/draft
• User:MichelleHao1998/OLES2129/draft
• User:Mncmt/OLES2129
• User:Narbble/OLES2129
• User:Oscarlau75/OLES2129/draft
• User:Oles2129usyd/be bold
• User:Pjos6744/OLES2129
• User:Richierich44/OLES2129
• User:Ruoyudong26/OLES2129
• User:Scarlettsouthey/OLES2129
• User:Scao3820/OLES2129/draft
• User:Sophnette/OLES2129/draft
• User:Ssha0495/OLES2129/draft
• User:Steph.P.S./OLES2129
• User:Sv.oles/OLES2129
• User:Sydgal/OLES2129
• User:Tbas6059/OLES2129/draft
• User:Thunderstorm 787/OLES2129/draft
• User:Top516/OLES2129
• User:TSENG1996/OLES2129
• User:Unamaduraverde91/OLES2129
• User:Whatsup98765/OLES2129
• User:Xijunbuxiqing/OLES2129
• User:YIFAN Andrew Wang/OLES2129/draft
• User:Yiningning/OLES2129
• User:Yizhi Wei/OLES2129/draft
• User:Zhenghanzhou/OLES2129/draft

pings

• User:A.ivkovic
• User:A Fish in Avocado
• User:Aaji0085
• User:Aimee.ball
• User:Alattab
• User:Alexb99.ab24091999
• User:Alishajorji
• User:Amine lattab
• User:Ana.A54
• User:Apr12m
• User:Ausyd0814
• User:Bbaaiillss
• User:Bcush99
• User:Bidgee
• User:Catk6193
• User:Ceiba chodatii
• User:Chenzhenwill
• User:Chocobit98
• User:Cococarnival
• User:Cola Wong
• User:Colinlixiangji
• User:Denihox
• User:DoctorDrDandy
• User:Drakmonde
• User:Dzungnm
• User talk:Echidi
• User:Edvinat
• User:Elloyd47
• User:EoinFeeney1
• User:Ewanmaddog
• User:FinbarrCR12
• User:Freyr71
• User:Gary7612
• User:Giselle136
• User:Glss123
• User:Hayaothman98
• User:Hton8436
• User:J.Hohne
• User:Jasononly
• User:JemMcL2018
• User:Jthr5091
• User:Kninss
• User:Leefye
• User:Lboikov
• User:Manon1998
• User:Maxmeares
• User:Mwhi9373
• User:MichelleHao1998
• User:Mncmt
• User:Narbble
• User:Oscarlau75
• User:Oles2129usyd
• User:Pjos6744
• User:Richierich44
• User:Ruoyudong26
• User:Scarlettsouthey
• User:Scao3820
• User:Sophnette
• User:Ssha0495
• User:Steph.P.S.
• User:Sv.oles
• User:Sydgal
• User:Tbas6059
• User:Thunderstorm 787
• User:Top516
• User:TSENG1996
• User:Unamaduraverde91
• User:Whatsup98765
• User:Xijunbuxiqing
• User:YIFAN Andrew Wang
• User:Yiningning
• User:Yizhi Wei
• User:Zhenghanzhou

-- Jytdog (talk) 01:51, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

pages created so far:

• Brainspotting
• Donald Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland
• Architecture of Angola
• Jirga (film) (page overwritten)
• University of Cincinnati College of Nursing (was purely SPS; redirected to University of Cincinnati)
• Kecak Dance Pura Dalem Taman Kaja

some drafts

• Draft:Fisheries-Induced Evolution
• User:Alexb99.ab24091999/Gender novel and Draft:Gender Novels
• Draft:Effects of human sexual promiscuity
• Draft:Aesthetic judgement (being put through AfC)
• Draft:Australian_Open_2019
• Draft:Franz von Gernerth
• Draft:Carlos F Barbas III (being put through AfC)
• Draft:The Red Queen's War (not tagged for AfC)
• User:Hayaothman98/sandbox/Hello Molly
• Draft:Military history of Nigeria during WWII
• User:Lboikov/OLES2129/Integrating modern technology with traditional Chinese medicine (not tagged for AfC)
• User:Maxmeares/OLES2129/draft (this is a draft about rat farming) (not a typo) (not tagged for AfC)
• Draft:College Info Geek (not tagged for AfC)
• Draft:Martin Speake (not tagged for AfC)

-- Jytdog (talk) 14:38, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog, Looks like this course is editing from the University of Sydney. Here’s their page on the P&E Dashboard. I’ll alert the instructor Fransplace to this discussion. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:43, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! None of those students linked back there. 266 students! Yikes. Jytdog (talk) 18:35, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Cassidy (Wiki Ed) and Jytdog! I haven't received alerts about these. I'm receiving emails from students (on Brainspotting and another). Students are asked to be logged into the Dashboard any time they're editing but some forget. I'm in discussions now with the student who wrote the "Brainspotting" article but can't see what was deleted. Fortunately we have her drafts on Word docs and I might be able to see what the problem is. We are working very hard to monitor what students are doing and are putting their text through Turnitin before they upload to the Mainspace. There are always going to be students who do the bare minimum, don't listen and don't follow strict instructions, but considering that there haven't been too many problems. There are 296 students BTW, not 266 - just to show how many haven't followed the instructions to link to the Dashboard at all (and you've noted that none of those students you picked up Jytdog didn't link back there). We're doing our best and are really grateful for your advice, help, etc. Please let me know what we could be doing better and keep nudging us if you see something wrong. This is the first Wikipedia course at my university and is credit bearing. We'd like to make it the best it can be so that we can continue to show the legitimacy of Wikipedia. Fransplace 22:12, 17 October 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fransplace (talk • contribs)

Hi again Cassidy (Wiki Ed) and Jytdog. My fellow teachers and I are trying to teach students to navigate processes, create and edit articles to ensure that the most accurate information is accessible to people that are looking for it on Wikipedia. I have a copy of the student's draft (submitted to our institutional "Turnitin" software before she created the Wikipedia page) and it showed no notable similarity with anything online. I can see that previous articles deleted in 2009 and 2017 contained information that was supported the developer of the method, Grand (affecting the objectivity of the article etc) and other sources considered to be unreliable. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Brainspotting_(2nd_nomination). Even though Grand was also one of the sources used by our student, her article included peer-reviewed academic sources from the fields of Cognitive Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, and Integrative Psychotherapy. I would like to suggest, in the interests of improving general knowledge about this topic and the quality of information that is available online and on Wikipedia, that we allow the student to revise what she has written, add more academic sources and put a greater emphasis on making sure the article balances the pros and cons or acceptance and rejection of the claims as both exist. Would you be willing to consider this approach and if so, will you allow a new page to be created and reviewed by Wikipedia editors before being moved to the mainspace? Fransplace 00:51, 18 October 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fransplace (talk • contribs)

This terrible thing was moved to mainspace; i thought for sure that was a paid editor, and I moved to draft space and cleaned up the COPYVIO and BLP violations some. it is now at Draft:Wildfox Couture. The creator is listed in the class page as one of the editors. This class is way too big, it seems. Jytdog (talk) 19:57, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

This class may have been instructed to submit their new articles to Wikipedia:Peer review, where there are 30 new entries by new editors in the last few weeks, some with no elaboration on why they are requesting review. Jthr5091, User:YIFAN Andrew Wang, and User talk:EoinFeeney1 are certainly in the class and submitted articles for review. If 100 students were told to submit to peer review, it will likely overwhelm the small group of editors who are actively writing reviews. Dialectric (talk) 12:34, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

@Fransplace:: Please instruct students to stop requesting Peer Review; they should offer peer feedback instead on the talk page of the relevant article. Many of the peer review requests are not filled out correctly. The ones that are, and continue on October 23 to be added to the Peer Review page, are overwhelming the system and will not receive feedback. They also make it likely that other editors who have submitted valid peer review requests will not be noticed.

I spent half an hour last night tagging malformed peer review requests from your students, and then an administrator would have spent another 10 minutes responding to what I did. Now, today, I would have to do more of it for a fresh batch of malformed requests. I am not going to clean up for you any more. Will you clean up? You should look through the WP:PR page for any red-linked articles—e.g. "Popz", "Aerialtronics"—this means the article does not exist. You may request deletion of those by adding " {{csd|Malformed peer review request; not in Article space}} " to the top of each page.

Peer review policy is that only articles in Article space may be submitted. (This is a well-hidden point at Wikipedia:Peer review/Request removal policy, "Removal", Item 1.) This means that Draft: and User: pages cannot be submitted, but many students are. Others are having their articles moved back to Draft: because they are not adequate for Wikipedia (e.g. [5]), which both breaks the peer review page and makes the text ineligible for peer review in any case.

The students are also making articles that are duplicates of each other: Algeria and poverty, Poverty in Algeria, and Vietnamese Confucianism, Confucianism in Vietnam, are two I've noticed.

This has been quite disruptive. I haven't watched the education noticeboard for years, but it reminds me of the constant baby-sitting and cleaning up that was required some years ago because students were sent unprepared to Wikipedia, or were asked to do things which were not appropriate. Outriggr (talk) 01:01, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Aesthetic judgement was mainspaced by its creator. I have just tagged it for G12 as it was a 90% copy of this article from Boston University. The rest of these should be run through Earwig. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:37, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC last night, I mentioned the explosion in peer requests for new articles to User:DGG who referred me to User:Ryan (Wiki Ed), who showed me this page. The peer review instructions include "An excellent way to get reviews is to review a few other requests without responses and ask for reviews in return." I did two reviews and two editors reviewed my article. A third editor reviewed my article and I reviewed his/her article.

The night before, I spent 8 hours peer reviewing and editing Untitled from Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol. I created a talk page for User:Fisa2702 (note the redirect to the article). I created User Talk:Fisa2702 to ask for reciprocation. Although Fisa2702 and the article isn't listed in this section, several of the sources have University of Sydney Library URL courtesy links.

For someone who has a genuine interest in an article and is not doing it as part of a school assignment, reciprocity is a good bet. I do a peer review. I get a peer review. I could have used the eight hours I spent peer reviewing a student project on a peer review for a bona fide article. The editor who had a new article and reviewed my article first has improved his/her article substantially in the nine days since I initially reviewed the article. The time I put into that article will result in an improvement to wikipedia. The time I put into Untitled from Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol is probably wasted as that article will probably be abandoned when the class is over.

I don't have a solution to this mess, but I think a notice at peer review pointing to this page would be helpful. Certainly, if I had seen such a notice last night, I could have made an informed choice about where to allocate my time.

On a lighter note, I glanced at Fisa's sandbox and noted the justification for the vendor source, which is unreliable. I think the justifications are funny -- I like the one for the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- because it is a .org site! Vyeh (talk) 11:25, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I would advise that a university's first try at a credit-bearing WP class should be for a small number of students. There will always be misunderstandings of our our article guidelines and workflow practices that need to be sorted out; with a small class, these won't have widespread detrimental effects upon the rest of Wikipedia. (Personally, I am very reluctant to suggest doing a WP exercise for credit in a large class at all, but I recognize that it might be possible with careful and adequate supervision by people experienced in running smaller courses here.) One of the problems in class editing on WP or other public platforms as opposed to conventional methods, is that errors in planning and supervising assignments affect more than the students in that particular class. :Our problem now is not just dealing with these students, but encouraging the instructor running the class to try again, but plan better. It's not just classes--for any level of academic writing ,WP is not really a transparently natural platform; it offers great advantages especially in motivation, but it takes a knowledge of how to use it effectively. DGG ( talk ) 18:07, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you everyone and apologies for clogging your system. Students were instructed to add the template to pages that were already in the mainspace but clearly some didn't follow instructions. We weren't aware so many would enrol in the unit and have collected feedback from our local chapter to make sure we don't have these issues next time. The students who have breached copyright/plagiarised are being disciplined through our institutional system and we apologise for that too. Thank you again for your constructive feedback and know that we're working bit by bit on getting students to resolve the issues with their work. Fransplace 05:52, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

• User:Fransplace a student in the class just emailed me, very politely asking me to undo something I did that corrected policy violations. They asked me to undo because (according to the student) 40% of their grade depends on the article and b) articles are due on November 10. I am not sure if the student misunderstood the assignment, or if you are actually grading the students based on what "sticks". If you are grading them on what sticks, you shouldn't per this. If you are grading them on what sticks, I hope you reconsider that and announce it to the class. if you are not grading based on what sticks, I hope you will re-announce that. Having ca 300 students edit warring like crazy to have their content stick (which is what happens when they think they are graded on what sticks) is going to be very ugly. Jytdog (talk) 16:39, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Tibouchina

Does anyone know about the classes being run by this user? User:Tibouchina I just ran into some questions involving the work of this user's class at WP:FTN, and I don't see if any connection has been made to this project. Perhaps someone could reach out and offer help?

jps (talk) 02:02, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks jps, We’ll reach out and connect them to Wiki Education's Dashboard and systems of support. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:58, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

More peer reviews from a new class

Browsing WP:Peer review, I found that Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/Brooklyn_College,_CUNY/THEA_7214X_-_Global_Theater_History_and_Theory_I_(Fall_2018) is another source of student peer reviews. The direction is "Officially 'nominate' your article for peer review on Wikipedia, so that your classmates (and possibly others) can give you feedback on your work. Instructions are here." An example from that class is Wikipedia:Peer review/The Jew of Malta/archive1.

It seems clear that something has shifted in the practices that are recommended for educational assignments recently. Formerly, I've seen many "peer review" assignments posted to talk pages of articles. That method scales, even if it leaves those talk-pages rather lacking in context. Creating dozens or hundreds of peer review requests at WP:PR does not scale. Of all the paid people involved here, can someone fix it? Outriggr (talk) 02:07, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Courses usually have a "peer review" assignment where students review each other's work, but they don't use our peer review. The instructor for this course may be confused. StarryGrandma (talk) 04:05, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I've reached out to the instructor for this course, and she is asking her students not to make any further posts to WP:Peer review.

Wiki Education does not recommend that the students it supports go through WP:Peer review. Instead, we encourage them to review one another's work in their sandboxes.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:53, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education's Monthly Report for September 2018 now available

You can find a report of Wiki Education's activities for September 2018 on Commons, meta, or our blog. Please let me know if you have any questions. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:25, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

A stray student editor who has never been greeted by a Wiki Ed liaison.

Hi everyone, I found a stray student editor who has never been greeted by a Wiki Ed liaison! I'm trying to connect them with the right people so that they can be successful, since I worry that they might be in the painful situation of having unrealistic expectations from their instructor. I left a note Shalor's talk page, since they're the only Wiki Ed liaison that I've ever encountered. You can see that message here: User_talk:Shalor_(Wiki_Ed)#I_found_a_stray_student_editor_(they've_never_been_greeted_by_a_Wiki_Ed_person_etc.). From there you'll see a link to their initial call for help on the tea house which is where they've indicated that their work is for a class assignment.

Thank you for the important work that you do. I want Wikipedia to be accessible to everyone who wants to contribute and I'd hate to see course expectations that contradict Wikipedia's expectations frustrate a new student editor out of their success. Sincerely, Shashi Sushila Murray, (message me) 06:01, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Draft Essays on Communism

Two essays on whether communism is dead or alive are in draft space and have been nominated for deletion as essays: Draft:Is Communism Dead? and Draft:Is Communism Dead or Alive. Both of them use the same sources, Danziger and Priestland. This is strongly suggestive of a class project. The two essays will probably be deleted, but if this is a class assignment, the instructor should be given better advice. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:46, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Robert McClenon, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Wiki Education staff is currently trying to figure out if these two users are partaking in a class project. If they are, we will absolutely connect the instructor with our resources and best practices advice. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:25, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

WishList Proposal for Script to Guide Students

Have proposed HERE.

In my opinion this will be a significant help for the increasing student loads we are seeing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:08, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

This is interesting. I'd be interested in a script especially geared to preventing specific, common errors like the use of library proxy URLs. We could potentially install such a script automatically when students join a dashboard.wikiedu.org course. We want to build functionality like that into the Dashboard itself eventually — a general system for analyzing the content of edits before or immediately after they are made, to provide better 'just-in-time' feedback on Wikipedia's rules and best practices. But this would be a great way try out the concept and find out what works well and what doesn't.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:59, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions training for Wiki Ed professors

Something about Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions ought to be included in the Wiki Ed training for professors teaching courses in an area subject to sanctions.

I assume that Wiki Ed Content Experts are familiar with WP:AC/DS and when to apply it. But imho, new Wiki Ed professors should learn something about this in whatever training they take when onboarding to Wiki Ed. If the course they are teaching, as often seems to be the case, touches on one of the areas that ArbCom has designated as subject to Discretionary Sanctions (such as, anything related to gender, U.S. politics, the Balkans, and a dozen other subject areas), then the professor should be given a good deal more training about Sanctions, and what it implies for the students in their course. In brief, one thing it means is that it will be harder for their students to make sucessful edits to articles without being reverted, and secondly, that they will run a greater risk of being blocked if they edit war.

In addition, as soon as students in their class have declared an intention to edit on a Wikipedia article that happens to be in a topic area subject to disretionary sanctions, somebody should add the standard {{Ds/alert}} notice on their talk page. If I were head of Wiki Ed, I would say that this would be the responsibility of the professor, that as part of whatever wiki-related training they give to their students in class, that they introduce the topic of ArbCom sanctions to their students if the course topic is in one of the D/S areas. Further, once assignments are handed out to their students, the professor should be responsible for adding the appropriate {{Ds/alert}} template to the talk page of every one of their students with an assignment to an article that is subject to sanctions. Content experts, or somebody at Wiki Ed, should ensure that the professors place this alert template on user Talk pages with the correct topic code (for example, |pa or |gg for gender-related assignments; see list of codes), and should follow up and place the alert themselves, if the professor does not. Mathglot (talk) 20:21, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, Mathglot. Several terms ago, we ran a query on all the articles our student editors touched and cross checked it for the discretionary sanctions category, and discovered it was only a small percentage of students who actually are editing articles in that category. We've worked really hard to only include things in our trainings that are important for every participant in our program to pay attention to — things like what are reliable sources, for example. Every item we add to the training adds time required to complete it from our participants, and thus reduces the number who will give it their full attention. Since only a small percentage of students were actually touching discretionary sanctions articles, we decided to not include it in the training.

Instead, our Dashboard software automatically identifies any time one of our student editors makes an edit to an article in Category:Wikipedia pages under discretionary sanctions. It generates an email that goes out to the Wikipedia Expert (Ian, Shalor, or Elysia) assigned to that student. The Wikipedia Expert then personally evaluates the student's contributions and is ready to intervene on an individual basis when needed. We've found this to be a very effective way of addressing students editing articles under discretionary sanctions without unduly burdening everyone with longer trainings.

That being said, it's always good to know if something we think is working actually isn't! :) So please do let me know if you've seen problems in this area, and we can look at adjusting our processes. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

LiAnna (Wiki Ed), what you say makes a lot of sense, wrt only providing the information to the students that need it, and not overburdening their training; there's already enough stuff for them to learn about WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:CONS that are important with every edit. I likely have a skewed view of the percentage of students involved in D/s areas, since I have a large number of such topics on my watchlist. The fact that you already have a system in place with auto-generated emails to handle this is great; glad to hear about that. That said, from where I sit, skewed as my PoV may be, there do seem to be a fair number of courses dealing with feminism, women, gender-related issues, and so on, with sometimes a dozen or two students all actively editing in areas under sanctions, but I don't think I've ever seen the Ds/alert template on those students' talk pages. It's possible I just missed them, because I only spend a small percentage of my time on WikiEd students' talk pages. Your technique of having the Content Experts stay on top of it seems like a good compromise, as long as it doesn't unduly burden them to do so.

All of that notwithstanding, my first instinct if I happened to notice a student editor editing in a D/s topic area, would be to add the {{Ds/alert}} to their talk page, just like I would for anybody else, student or not. The D/s alert is unlike many other types of templated notices, as the template isn't there primarily as a time-saver over writing a more personal, non-templated message. Posting a notification about D/s on a user's Talk page is optional, but as I understand it, if someone is to be notified, the template is a requirement and not just a time-saving option. So, once a content expert has decided to intervene and advise an editor about sanctions, at that point, they must use the template rather than (or in addition to) a hand-written message to the user. Mathglot (talk) 12:05, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Mathglot. I fairly frequently see students taking on GMO topics. In the past, I would look up which Wikipedia Expert worked with the course, leave them a message about what I saw, and let them take care of it. More recently, I have been giving the student a DS alert, as Mathglot does. I feel a little bit bad about doing that, because it seems to me to be somewhat WP:BITEy, but I also think it can a lot worse if the student makes a mistake and ends up blocked at WP:AE. My experience has been that when I leave these alert messages, the student quickly changes their choice of article, which ultimately is a good thing, at least from Wikipedia's perspective. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

We definitely encourage you to treat student editors as you would any other new editor, so please add the template as you see fit. If you do see any problematic edits, to DS articles or any others for that matter, please definitely do reach out to the Wikipedia Expert assigned to the class, so our staff can help take care of it. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:00, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Proper use of Assignment template

The Template {{Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment}} is used in Talk page headers to create a horizontal box notifying viewers that the article is or was the subject of a Wiki Edu course assignment. This is useful information for editors, and I'm glad to have it. OTOH, it's a bit annoying, when these notices are stacked up, with no indication if they're all ten years old, all current, or what. For example, look at this version of Talk:Genderqueer. If you look at the last three boxes in the Talk page header on that page right above the ToC, and containing mortarboard icons on the left, you'll see what the "Assignment" advice box usually looks like. There are three of them there, but no indication of date.

I have modified that page to add the course dates ("Fall 2016", and so on), and so now in this version, the course dates are included. This is much more useful, now.

I went to the Template page itself, with a view to adding a new "date" parameter to the template for general use, and found the documentation there to be very sparse. It seems that the template writers have included a generous number of parameters for use in the code of the template, but unfortunately, nobody knows how to use the template properly, because it is nearly entirely undocumented.

It turns out that there are 18 parameters available, 12 named parameters and 6 'extra' numbered params. It turns out one of the existing params, the "date" param, fulfills the function I wanted to add with a new "date" param. Wiki Ed training should instruct students to add at least the |term= param when using the template. So, instead of whatever they are doing now, they might code on the article talk page:

{{dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment |course= Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/University_of_Slobovia/Sociology_171_Gender_Studies |assignments=[[User:UserName123]], [[User:OtherUser456]] |term=Fall 2018}}

and that would already be a big improvement, even without taking advantage of any of the other dozen or so parameters.

In addition, the doc page for the template should be expanded to document all of the parameters. I've added the description of the term param to the doc page as a model of how to do this. Mathglot (talk) 20:35, 20 November 2018 (UTC)   updated to link named/numbered params, by Mathglot (talk) 01:25, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Mathglot. Most of those unused parameters were copied over from an earlier template that was added manually, but this template is intended to be completely automated; all the edits that add it or update its parameters happen whenever users add or remove assignments on their dashboard.wikiedu.org courses. We could definitely add more parameters based on data that the Dashboard has. We do have 'term' for each course, but it gets used somewhat inconsistently; it's often simply "Spring" or similar. But maybe the most relevant thing to add would be the end date of the course, so that it's easy to tell which classes are done working on it (and remove or archive or hide the templates, if desired).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:49, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Sage, thanks for the reply. If the params were copied over from an earlier template and don't really apply to this one, you might consider removing the ones that you don't expect to be used, as too many params can discourage a new user from using the template at all. If the template is added automatically when users add/remove assignments, then if it defaults to "Spring" or similar, that would be ideal, because we can make it default the year to {{CURRENTYEAR}}. I agree that end date would be the most useful data item to have; but if it's a choice between having no term info, vs. only the beginning date and no end date, then please let's add the beginning date at least; readers viewing the template can draw their own conclusions based on a start date. The main thing is, to avoid worrying about courses that started (and therefore presumably ended) a year ago or more. The current year could easily be added, and that might be a good enough proxy for start date, as a first approximation. I could mock up a copy of the Assignment template in my sandbox, with the current year defaulting into the term field, if you'd like to try it out, and see how that works, by invoking it from your talk page or sandbox. A cleverer template could look at the course name, which often contains the term name as a season (Fall, Spring, etc.) coded right into the course name, as is the case with the current course at Talk:Genderqueer, extract the value, and combine it with {{CURRENTYEAR}} to give a complete value for term. But year alone would be a huge improvement over what we have now, and it's possible to do that automatically, with no user intervention. Mathglot (talk) 01:29, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Sage, you can try a mocked-up template which defaults term to {{CURRENTYEAR}} here. Mathglot (talk) 05:50, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Mathglot: I just rolled out an update to the data that is included in the template — start_date and end_date parameters — and I also updated the template to cut out the unused stuff, and updated the documentation. You can see it in action with the new params here, for example. Any new or updated assignments from here onward will include those params, so it'll be easy to see when the expected end date of the assignment is. (And we'll be able to assume that templates without those params are old ones. Sometime in early 2019, once all current assignments are using the params, the template could be updated to put it in past tense whenever the start_date param is missing.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:47, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Sage (Wiki Ed) & Mathglot. I think this revised template will be really useful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:05, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Sage, great job (and fast, too). This will help considerably, thanks! Also, nice bennie about adding "was" to the ones without start_date later on, and thanks for updating the doc, and removing all the unused cruft—much more streamlined now. Mathglot (talk) 23:16, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Sage, a couple of things: see comment about a new template at Template talk:WikiEd banner shell#Creation of new template. Secondly, I'd like to keep the "term" param in the course template, even if start_date/end_date default automatically. I see it's still in the code, so I've added it back to the doc page. Once the course is a year old, nobody will care anymore what the dates were. I'm thinking that we could let "term" param be used as a manual override for the dates. So at first, we could let the start_ and end_dates default as you described, and then if someone comes along after the course is over and cares enough to manually add a "term=Spring 2015" or whatever, then for display purposes, it would suppress the display of start and end dates, and just put up the term value instead. (If desired, a date calc could ensure that the end_date is in the past, before displaying the term value override.) In the case of Talk:Feminization (sociology), I've added "term" params manually to the collapsed courses, to show what it might look like with "term", but haven't added any "override" code to the course template yet, so if there are dates, they would display as well and not be overriden currently. You can see this in the case of the last of the three courses. Mathglot (talk) 09:19, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Mathglot: Thanks! That all looks good to me.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:14, 26 November 2018 (UTC)