Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 06:57, 15 December 2012

Purpose of this page			Using this page
This page is for discussion related to student assignments and the Misplaced Pages Education Program. Please feel free to post, whether you're from a class, a potential class, or if you're a Misplaced Pages editor. Topics for this board might include: Content issues created by real or potential student assignments Improving student assignment output quality per the RfC Questions about the trainings or any question from instructors or students Discussion of the Wiki Education Foundation or the Misplaced Pages Education Program. Students who have done great work and need {{The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar}} Of course, we should remain civil towards all participants and assume good faith. There are other pages more appropriate for dealing with certain specific issues: An issue requiring immediate administrator attention → Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents Vandalism by non-participating students from schools → administrator intervention against vandalism. Cut-and-paste moves/history merge → the cut-and-paste move repair holding pen. Students revealing sensitive personal information → requests for oversight. Please DO NOT make such requests here; reports here are visible to everyone. Course announcements from dashboard.wikiedu.org / outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org → /Wiki Ed course submissions Issues related to dashboard.wikedu.org / outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org → meta:Talk:Programs & Events Dashboard For a list of topics that students should avoid editing → Misplaced Pages:General sanctions#Active sanctions			Shortcuts WP:EDUN WP:ENB "Start a new discussion thread". Use an informative title: ==Informative title==. If a thread is related to an ongoing discussion, consider placing it under a level-3 heading within that existing discussion. You should generally notify any user who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{ping}} to do so, or simply link their username when you post your comment. It is not required to contact students when their edits are only being discussed in the context of a class-wide problem. If no comments have been made within 30 days, your post and any responses will be automatically archived. Please sign all contributions, using four tilde characters "~~~~". If discussion is already ongoing elsewhere or if there is a more natural location for a discussion, please continue the discussion there, and put a short note with a link to the relevant location on this page. If you cannot edit this page because it is protected, please place your comments on this page and they will be addressed. Managing threads If you'd like to make sure a thread does not get archived automatically after 30 days, use {{Do not archive until}} at the top of the section. Use {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} within a section to have it archived (more or less) immediately. A brief Archives page lists them with the years in which those now inactive discussions took place. If you encounter new editors who appear to be students in a class project, but they have not identified their class, you can place Template:Welcome student (or, where appropriate, Template:Welcome medical student) on their user talk pages. Wiki Education Foundation only supports classes in Canada and the US. Classes in all other countries are supported by other organizations.

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Finance plan for the new nonprofit?

Are the Phase II and Phase III finance plans done? I believe the due date for both of them was November 15 and that the date for WMF to provide money for Phase II was December 1st. I am interested in seeing the plans. Thanks! --Pine 00:00, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The deadlines have been extended and all the plans should now be in mid-December. I've not been involved in the finance planning so can't tell you much about that, but check back after the 16th and I'll point you at whatever is available at that time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:37, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

OK thanks. --Pine 19:36, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hey, Pine! The Working Group will not be putting together a detailed budget, after all, as this seems more appropriate for the new Board/Executive Director. That is how most organizations work, but we hadn't really considered that when going into this huge undertaking. The idea is that we will give recommendations (and the Initial Board is going to comprise members from the Working Group anyway) about scope of the organization, priorities for the beginning, etc., but the people who are actually running this new organization will get to distribute their own funds. As for seed funding, we will be writing a grant proposal to WMF for some money to help during the transition (with lawyers to incorporate/write bylaws, to hire an ED, and for any travel required to put together the new org structure), and I think our goal is to turn that proposal in by the end of December. Hope that helps answer some questions! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Jami. I'm not sure that I understand. How does anyone know how much cash and other in-kind support the organization needs for its seed grant unless there's a Phase II budget? --Pine 18:53, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe they will be requesting money to essentially pay an Executive Director for a few months. It's actually very typical for a grant proposal to go to the GAC like this. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Student papers in mainspace - is that really a good idea?

I recently stumbled across the idea behind this project - professors assigning students to write Misplaced Pages articles as part of their coursework. I came across it when one of the resulting articles was nominated for deletion. I have a real problem with the whole concept. I raised my concerns here Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Medicine#Brain-disabling psychiatric medical treatment, and several people have responded, including one who pointed me to this page. It seems to me that posting student term papers into Misplaced Pages mainspace violates several Misplaced Pages principles, including WP:ESSAY, WP:SYNTHESIS, and WP:OWN. (What happens to a student's work - and their grade - if someone comes along and does a major edit or rewrite, which is perfectly possible in mainspace?) A very good suggestion was made at that discussion, namely, that students should post their articles to WP:Articles for Creation instead of directly to mainspace. They would have much better control of their material there - they could "own" it - and only the articles which were really encyclopedic and about notable subjects would get promoted to mainspace. What do you all think of the AFC idea? --MelanieN (talk) 21:03, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Violating Misplaced Pages policies is not a good idea, and no one condones it. See Misplaced Pages:Education Working Group/RfC for more reading. Biosthmors (talk) 21:12, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

AFC always has a massive backlog - I don't think it would be a good idea to increase the workload there. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:13, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Better to increase the workload in mainspace? --MelanieN (talk) 21:26, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

The ideal setup is that students draft content in their userspace, then consult an experienced Wikipedian (the ambassador for the course) before moving any content into articlespace. The edcuation program is trying to get more profs to adopt this method. The Interior (Talk) 21:39, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

There's a major difference between professors assigning students to write Misplaced Pages articles as part of their course work and professors having students posting term papers in mainspace. Most classes participating in the education program or otherwise using Misplaced Pages-based assignments recognize the difference between a Misplaced Pages article and a term paper and instruct their students accordingly. (I'd like to say all classes do, but in an open ecosystem that ideal will never be reached.) Many professors that I have worked with in the program have not only recognized the difference between an encyclopedic article and a research paper, but have been excited about having their students participate on Misplaced Pages specifically because of that difference. One class I worked with last semester dedicated around five hours of in-class time specifically to how to write in an encyclopedic style and to covering Misplaced Pages's important cultural norms and policies. That's way more training of that nature than any normal new non-student editor would receive.

In much the same way that not all new non-student editors are able to successfully create high (or even acceptable) quality content, not all student assignments are successful. Sometimes individual students' articles are bad. Sometimes this is because individual students have failed to pay attention to the instruction they have received, and sometimes this is because the quality of their instruction was poor (or, in some circumstances, both.) If a student posts an article that violates our normal content policies in a major way, then it should be handled in pretty much the same way as if a non-student posted an article that violated our normal content policies. If the problems are fixable via normal editing processes, then they should be fixed via normal editing processes in the same fashion a problematic non-student contribution would be fixed. If the problems aren't fixable via normal editing processes (for instance, if the topic is non-notable or is an unsalvageable violation of WP:ESSAY) then the articles can go through our ordinary deletion processes, including WP:AFD, WP:SD, etc. If the same student has recurring competence issues, then they can be blocked or banned in the same way as any other editor. I would suggest approaching someone's ambassador before going through most of these steps, in the same way that I would suggest approaching the mentor of an editor who had one before going through most of these steps. In the linked thread, you ask how someone can be aware that they're dealing with a student and thus that they shouldn't 'bite or be uncivil' to them if their articles are simply posted in mainspace. Biting and civility are not student specific issues. You don't have to know that you're dealing with a student in order to be civil to them or to avoid biting them, that's just what you should do with everyone by default.

Most instructors are perfectly aware that the content their students submit to Misplaced Pages can be edited by people other than their students. (Again, I'd like to say all, but in an open ecosystem some will always slip through the cracks.) Generally, professors keep this in mind when coming up with their grading metrics. For a decent number of professors, interaction with the community is an actual *desired* result. Since it's pretty easy to track (either via direct diffs or via one of the tools designed to do so) the exact contributions any particular student has made, subsequent editing by other users does not represent a substantial obstacle to grading individual students. Even if a student's article goes to AfD it can very easily be userfied by any administrator, which would allow for the instructor to still see what exactly each of their students did.

I generally agree with The Interior that it is a best practice for undergraduate students with no prior Misplaced Pages experience creating a new article to do so in a sandbox, and to run the article by their ambassador before moving it live. There are some professors who have had significant success without the use of sandboxes (like Brian Carver,) but mostly when dealing with graduate students. Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:17, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

• I also disagree with the use of mainspace for these student essays. I had a recent experience of finding plagiarism in articles added by students belonging to the same course. I alerted the teacher, and he said that checking for plagiarism was not something he did. He suggested I handle it myself, and said he would give students who had posted copyvios an F. That left me in an awkward position. I don't want to be responsible for students failing (whether they deserve to or not), and checking for plagiarism is part of the teacher's job. To check all the articles would involve several days work spread over weeks, because I'd have to send off for the books via interlibrary loans, whereas the teacher has access to them in the university library.

  When 30 students are told to edit articles (not invited to volunteer), the teacher is essentially the editor of all 30 articles and ought to make sure that Misplaced Pages isn't harmed. Volunteers not connected to the university shouldn't have to sort out the problems. SlimVirgin 17:59, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

  I agree that the teacher should not assume that volunteers will do their work for them. Can you tell me the name of the course you're referring to? It would be useful to know which teachers have this attitude. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:05, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

• Hi Mike, it was an anthropology course at Mount Allison University, and the exchange with the teacher is here. SlimVirgin 18:25, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, SlimVirgin. That illustrates exactly the kind of thing I am concerned about. According to the assignments for that class, the article draft was created in the sandbox and was to be moved to mainspace in week 7. The students and professor expected - nay, demanded - that the draft remain in place in mainspace, unmolested by other Misplaced Pages editors, for the remaining 5 weeks of the class. During that time it was supposed to be peer-reviewed (by another student who knows nothing more about Misplaced Pages than the original student) but otherwise they wanted to WP:OWN it. When you tried to bring the article up to Misplaced Pages standards during that time, the professor reacted with indifference and the students with outrage.They made it clear that they didn't care about Misplaced Pages standards and expected you to "refrain from removing any more of this student's hard work" until the end of the semester. (The students even seem to be required to submit DYK and GA nominations for their articles - talk about burdening the system!) I think it is very inappropriate for the Education Program to use Misplaced Pages mainspace as the scratchpad for students while they complete their projects, and expect Misplaced Pages to leave inappropriate material posted in an international encyclopedia for a month or more until it suits their academic schedule to have it taken down. Sandbox or AFC would be the appropriate place for this kind of activity. --MelanieN (talk) 19:49, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

MelanieN, there might some confusion about the Education Program's role here. It doesn't encourage profs to do what these courses have done, and in no way does it promise profs/students a mainspace scratchpad for their work. What it does is try to influence educators using wikipedia to do so in the most beneficial, and least harmful, ways. I'm alarmed at this idea that student work should stay up just because it is student work. That's wrong, and professors who feel this way need to be strongly advised to stop treating wp as a publishing platform. It's good you've brought your concerns here. This is not how it is supposed to work. The Interior (Talk) 20:15, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I see there was an inconclusive discussion earlier about setting up a separate foundation for the Education Program. If that happens, might it give them a better place for this kind of activity? Certainly it would be great to recruit a new generation of bright young editors to the Wiki projects, but I'd like to see a better way to accomplish it. --MelanieN (talk) 20:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I think "might it give them a better place" would be better reworded "might it give Misplaced Pages better management". According to my understanding of where the WMF is going, it doesn't seem to want to make managing the education program a main priority. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Biosthmors (talk) 20:37, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Melanie: I don't actually see any place where this professor has complained about their students work being edited. Could you post a diff to where they said something like this? (I actually see them thanking someone on their talk page for reverting a copyright violation.) Obviously if this is what their expectation was, their expectation was wrong. Any professor who expects their students' work to go unedited has not listened to what anyone involved in the education program has told them. Professors who have this expectation should have this expectation corrected. No one should feel under any obligation to listen to a professor who wants to WP:OWN their students' articles any more than they would feel about any other editor who has WP:OWN problems.

Misplaced Pages has tons of problematic editors. Most of them are non-students, but some of them are bound to be students. Problematic editors in the education program can be dealt with just like problematic editors outside of the education program. Protocol for dealing with copyright violations should be the same, student or non-student. If you're uncomfortable dealing with problematic students, post here when you find 'em, and let one of us deal with it. I have absolutely no problem being responsible for a student receiving a failing grade if they have plagiarized - I've done so before, in non-Misplaced Pages contexts. All of these students know why they shouldn't plagiarize, and know what to expect if they get caught doing so. (I'll be looking over the students from the linked class myself as I have time, though unfortunately as I have pneumonia and am in finals, that'll be limited this week. Normally, I'd have a lot more time available to do so.)

Remember that these students are new editors, and the content they produce should be compared more closely with the content that is produced by new editors not in the education program than with experienced editors. Mistakes are inevitable, but I think the overall quality of content of new student editors is higher than the overall quality of content of new non-student editors, and I don't think that new student editors are problem editors at a higher rate than new editors are in general.

For those of you wondering why I think assignments like this are not only appropriate, but actively worth advocating, take a look at the list of articles on Brian Carver's user page to see one reason. All of those articles have been improved by students from one professor's classes - and they're all encyclopedic, and many are of high quality. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:39, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

The professor didn't complain about Misplaced Pages editing; in fact, he invited SlimVirgin to go ahead and deal with any copyvio issues she identified (while shrugging off any responsibility he might feel about students plagiarizing their papers via copy-and-paste). It was another student (the "peer reviewer") who reverted SlimVirgin's edits and told her to leave the article alone. --MelanieN (talk) 01:40, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thanks for the clarifying diff. From what I can gather from what I've read about this so far, it definitely sounds like this was a poorly executed assignment. There have definitely been more of these than there should have been, especially in areas covered by WP:MEDRS. If no one else beats me to it, I'll approach the professor in a couple weeks asking them to modify their instructional design if they use a similar assignment again. There are definitely poorly executed assignments, and it's unfortunate and hopefully the number will reduce over time as more people use better and more refined instructional design. I still think that the benefits presented by the successes outweigh the failures though, and don't think that new student editors tend to perform any worse than new non-student editors, except maybe in terms of WP:OWN problems. I'll try to clear this classes contributions of any remaining copyvios in the near future. Plagiarism (especially close paraphrasing) is unfortunately a really big Misplaced Pages-wide problem, not at all limited to students (with the exception of the IEP.) In my experience, it tends to be less common among students, just because most professors do take academic integrity seriously. (I know of multiple failing grades awarded due to plagiarism in Misplaced Pages-based assignments, plus one student who may end up expelled - way more serious punishments than for the average Misplaced Pages editor.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:59, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Kevin, in the plagiarism cases you're referring to, was it the teachers or Wikipedians who found it? SlimVirgin 02:07, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I know of four cases offhand, across three classes. Two of the cases were caught by the professors involved. One of the cases I found and referred directly to the professor (I wasn't ambassadoring the course, but had previously talked to the professor for probably half an hour in person.) The last class was found by another Wikipedian, who sent it to me, and I forwarded it on to the professor. (I wasn't ambassadoring the course, but personally knew the professor well.)

As a student, instructor, and Wikipedian, intentional plagiarism is one of the few things that really sets me off. Things like close paraphrasing I can understand occasionally doing as a mistake, but shit like copying entire paragraphs makes me see red. If I become aware of any situation that involves a student at a US or Canadian university participating in a Misplaced Pages-based assignment who clearly commits intentional plagiarism, I will bring it to the attention of their professor. If their professor doesn't respond adequately, I will bring it to the attention of their departmenthead, and so on, until an appropriate response is received. And I guarantee that at any US or Canadian university, I will be able to provoke an appropriate response.

I understand why you would be hesitant to cause students to fail an assignment, and respect that. I'd feel that way too, if it involved something like them failing to follow WP:MEDRS. But plagiarism isn't something unique to Misplaced Pages, and any student in the US or Canada knows exactly what they're doing if they intentionally plagiarize. In the case of plagiarism, they're not innocent bystanders or anything of that nature. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:14, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I wonder whether they do know. In the cases I've seen they attribute the sources in footnotes, but then copy the source material word for word. Perhaps they think that's enough. The teacher didn't seem interested. I alerted him on November 23 on his talk page, and left some advice on his course page about in-text attribution, and got no response to either. I posted again on November 26 and this time emailed him to alert him to the post. He responded by suggesting I deal with the copyvios myself. I replied with more details, and he didn't respond. Perhaps he is atypical, but I've seen so many similar complaints from Wikipedians that I hesitate to assume that his course is out of the norm. SlimVirgin 03:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

It is typical (I would say universal, but I hate generalizations) for first semester freshmen in college in the United States to receive an explanation of what plagiarism is, and how to avoid it. In most places, it's an explanation they will hear more than once, including in subsequent years. At my school, every syllabus we're ever handed makes mention of it. Every other university that I've dealt directly with (admittedly, only about half a dozen) does so similarly. A quick poll on my personal facebook has people from an additional dozen US and Canada based schools saying that they have all received similar explanations, and no one saying they're school doesn't cover it. I have a really hard time believing that any student at an accredited US/Canadian university truly fails to understand that plagiarism is not okay.

His response to you does leave a lot to be desired, but I think you do understate it a little bit. He does specifically say that any student who is found to be a plagiarist - either by himself, or through Misplaced Pages's reporting processes - will receive an F on their project. It would be preferable if he looked through his students work himself fully, or had one of his GSI's/TA's/graders do so (and I'd also prefer the punishment to be more significant than that.) You said on his talk page that you had found multiple copyright violations in his students work, but you didn't specify where. Are the copyright violations still in place? If so, please send them to me. I would prefer to aggressively pursue the matter with him, but if you'd like, I'll simply remove the copyright violations. (I'll also be doing checks on his students articles myself, but may miss something, and don't have instant access to most of the physical sources to check vs those.) The other issues you bring up (what you perceive as using Wikipedians to do his own work) aren't addressed by his reply, but he does at least specifically state that there will be consequences for plagiarism. (And I'm not saying that those aren't valid issues, just pointing out his reply isn't as bad as it could have been.)

As I mentioned earlier, even ignoring the copyright stuff, I'll be emailing this guy in the next few weeks and asking him to change his instructional design to a better system or discontinue his assignment. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:51, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I’ve followed this discussion with interest because I wanted to learn more about how the problems came about. I think there are two concerns here that the new Education Program needs to work on. First, the editing behavior of the students wasn’t up to WP standards, but not unexpected of new editors. Two, the sub-standard behavior was associated (adversely) with the WP Education Program, because there was a Professor and 41 students involved. However, when one examines the history, two things become evident. One, the Professor, although a Wikipedian for about a year had really only made edits to the Canada Education Program courses page and his user page. Although the professor knows how to edit WP technically, there’s little evidence that the Professor understands article editing norms. Also, there is little evidence, if any that the Professor was formally recruited by the WMF into the Education Program, but rather self-enrolled by merely adding his course to the course page. It would be interesting to learn how the Professor became associated with the Education Program. Second, although there are Online Ambassadors identified, there is little evidence that there was any serious mentoring of the Professor by the ambassadors. Since there was no identified Campus Ambassador, one must assume the Professor got zero face-to-face mentoring by an experienced Wikipedian. It can be difficult for even experienced Wikipedians to mentor even one new editor successfully, let alone having an inexperienced editor (the professor) responsible for managing the edits of 41 other new, inexperience editors in the context of highly constrained classroom time.

I agree completely with those above who say students are editors and every Wikipedian was a new editor at one time. I think it is also important to understand that the Education Programs are Outreach programs designed to improve content in WP because of the enormous untapped academic and scholarly resources within the higher education community. Many believe, as I do, that this type of outreach is essential for the future growth of WP. As this case shows, I think we all should take care not to indict the Education Program for problems like this, when there is little evidence that the Education Program had anything to do with causing the problems. --Mike Cline (talk) 02:58, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, there are some problems in principle with the way the education program has been handled. The universities are essentially freeloading if they're asking Wikipedians to do their work by checking student essays for plagiarism (or other quality issues), and anyone who ends up having to do it should really send the university in question a bill. The ethical issues are similar to those we face when dealing with paid editors, in that it's problematic to ask volunteers to clean up after people who are adding material on behalf of institutions or companies for personal gain.

We end up with a situation where the university benefits, the teacher benefits, the students benefit in theory (though I would question that in many cases), and the volunteers who are expected to fix up the edits don't benefit at all. So we either leave the edits in place and the damage remains, or we fix them and are made to feel overstretched and used. If editor retention is a major concern, that is a problem right there. SlimVirgin 03:06, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages as a whole does benefit though, even if individual volunteers don't. Individual volunteers on Misplaced Pages don't generally benefit from their volunteerism; they do it because it improves Misplaced Pages as a whole. The same arguments that have been made against the education program here could, for the most part, be used to argue that Misplaced Pages just shouldn't accept any new editors from any source whatsoever.

I do agree with you that there have been serious problems with certain aspects of the way in which the education program has been run so far. Some of them have been fixed, fixes are in progress for some of them, and some of them still haven't been addressed. The program has, unfortunately, placed excessive stress on certain groups of editors - especially the Indian Education Program - and that's something that's not sustainable. But, as a whole, I think that it's undeniable both that the program as a whole has improved Misplaced Pages's content, and that new editors brought in through this mechanism perform at least as well as those brought in through other ways. I do think that we should be more aggressive about preventing bad students (bad in the sense that they haven't received adequate instruction or haven't listened to it) from harming the encyclopedia - if I had an admin bit, I'd be going crazy on 24 hour blocks of disruptive students. (But sadly, I don't, and I doubt I would pass RfA.)

A lot of good work goes unhighlighted and unheralded. I'd encourage everyone here to take a look through some of the articles listed at User:Brianwc to see some of the higher quality content that the program has been producing. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the jury is out as to whether Misplaced Pages has benefited. In all the cases I have looked at (admittedly very few), the articles were harmed, either by very poor editing, or by what appeared to be good editing but which on closer inspection included plagiarism or unattributed close paraphrasing. (And when you find it in one part of an article, you have to assume it's elsewhere in that article too, but that is time-consuming to determine, especially when the sources are not online.) How many student recruits have become regular Wikipedians? And how many regular Wikipedians are feeling discouraged because of the time they've had to spend dealing with these issues? When you factor in the poor editing and the bad feeling, and the almost certainly tiny number of students who stay to become editors, I think it's difficult to argue that Misplaced Pages is benefiting.

My view is that the program is a wonderful idea in principle. But we have to insist on high standards from the teachers and the students (it's in the students' interests that we insist on high standards from them). Those high standards just aren't in evidence, though I will look now at the articles on Brianwc's page. Standards apart, the program also has to address the ethical issue of volunteers doing this work for nothing. That just isn't fair when others are doing it for personal gain. SlimVirgin 03:47, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Two pages you might find useful are Misplaced Pages:Ambassadors/Research/Spring 2012 burden analysis, which is an attempt to determine the burden placed on Misplaced Pages editors by a representative sample of students for a given semester, and Misplaced Pages:Ambassadors/Research/Article quality/Results, which is an analysis of the quality of the work done by the students. These metrics aren't perfect, and I can give you a couple of criticisms of them if you are interested, but I believe they're worth looking at. I also think that there might be a selection bias with commentators on education program work, in that if a student makes a mess of an article, as some have done, then a Wikipedian watching that page is likely to go find out what is going on and comment negatively, whereas if a student does moderately good or better work, the edits are likely to be unnoticed, as are most decent edits. I think to evaluate the program the whole set of courses and students need to be looked on, or there is a risk of coming to conclusions on the basis of anecdotal evidence. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:56, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Heh, I editconflicted with you trying to post the same set of links. Thanks for working on the first one so much Mike, I hadn't encountered it before a few days ago and have found it very interesting. @Slim: I insist on high standards for professors that I personally work with, and am setting up an on the ground structure in my university that should eventually result in a very high number of classes participating, and hopefully, universally acceptable results. Looking at Mike's table, one of my gut feelings is confirmed: that problems are generally confined to specific courses, instead of spread throughout the program evenly. I disagree with the framing of the ethical issue you perceive, but I do understand where you're coming from. I'm working on a blog-post type thing that will be dealing in part with it, so I'll refrain from trying to address it briefly for now. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:05, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the first link, it looks only at edits, and doesn't indicate how time spent on clean-up was determined. A person might make edits stretching over five minutes that took hours to prepare (looking up sources, for example). It also doesn't factor in time spent searching for copyvios, alerting the teachers, and posting in discussions like this one. The burden is not light, and it shouldn't be there at all.

The universities are paid to host these courses, the teachers are paid to teach them, the students are paid in the form of course credits, but then unpaid volunteers are expected to make editorial decisions about whether to retain the work, which can involve hours or days of clean-up, or to allow damage to a valuable public resource if the clean-up isn't performed. This is a similar ethical situation to a company polluting a river, but not paying for clean-up, or paying only in part while relying on volunteers to do a lot of the work. Kevin, I take your point that the poor editing may be limited to certain courses, but I hope they aren't allowed to take part again once that has been established. But whether the edits are good or bad, the ethical issue of the burden on volunteers remains. SlimVirgin 04:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

There's currently no mechanism through which we can prevent a class from editing Misplaced Pages. We could theoretically group-block them, but I don't think Misplaced Pages has ever blocked categorically a group of people who haven't done individual wrong - even the sanctions related to scientology or to the men's rights movement don't block whole groups of people in such a fashion. There's also the problem that we have no way of knowing when a class is even editing Misplaced Pages in the first place, if they don't use the course page setup. As an example of this, to my bewilderment, I found out this semester that a class at Berkeley had been using Misplaced Pages-based assignments for at least three semesters without any formal support, without using the course page setup, and without me (or any of the other people involved in education program stuff at Berkeley) having any idea that they had been doing so.

I have refused to support classes before if I thought their professors didn't have an adequate comprehension of what would be required for a successful assignment, and I've actively (and successfully) discouraged multiple professors from using Misplaced Pages based assignments, but unless we close public registration, we can't actually prevent a class from using a Misplaced Pages-based assignment. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:34, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

They could surely be prevented from saying they're part of the education program, and from using its facilities. I thought everyone who was part of that program had to register their courses. SlimVirgin 04:39, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

The education program, with the exception of the new course interface (and I'm not actually sure offhand if that's actually even launched yet) doesn't really have any 'facilities' to speak of. It offers reuseable handouts and some other resources, but we couldn't stop them from using them. It offers ambassador support, but pretty much all of the really bad classes don't use ambassador support and thus wouldn't be effected by that anyway. They could be prevented from saying "We're part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Education Program," but I don't think that would be a very big deterrent to anyone who still wanted to participate. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:43, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

(ec) SlimVirgin, I don't think I follow your argument -- can you clarify? You say the burden analysis looks only at edits, but the column headed "Response" describes the response that other Wikipedians made to that edit. For example, if the edit introduced poorly formatted text, the Response column might say "Clean up formatting issues". That column is intended to summarize the burden laid on the editing community from the students' work. It's true that I couldn't determine how much time was spent by other editors on reviewing the posts and then doing whatever they did, but I think in most cases it's not hard to tell what the burden was. Where there is copyvio, I agree it can take hours to find and fix, and the table doesn't quantify that, so if that's your point I agree (though not much copyvio was found -- I think only one student of the seventy-odd in the burden analysis was adding copyright material).

However, I think the comparison should be to new editors in general. We agree that if a course provides nothing but negative outcomes and burden for the volunteer community, that course is a net negative and shouldn't repeat (though as Kevin says the education program has no power over these classes -- it's just a support group); and that if a course provides good articles and no burden, then that course is a net positive. Where do you draw the line in between? I think that a few formatting errors and bare reference links would be a small price to pay for a worthwhile paragraph or article, for example.

I don't know exactly where the line should be drawn, but I think it's a discussion worth having. For the students in the assessments linked above, for example, I think two courses are clearly negative, and another three or four are dubious. The majority of the classes seem to be a net positive to Misplaced Pages, though; I'd say at least two thirds were net assets. The ones that aren't assets -- yes, we should be in contact with them and explain the problem to those professors, and discourage them from running classes until the problems are fixed. I don't see how we force them to stop, though, unless we block the students. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:03, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

@ Slimvirgin, this is an interesting and important discussion because of the implications related to the fundamental principles of WP. Let’s just say for sake of discussion that there was community consensus that everyday WP editors shouldn’t be burdened with correcting the missteps of students/professors who are using WP in the classroom. What could or might the community do about it? On one hand, the community could attribute the problem to Outreach Efforts and insist that WMF Outreach to groups such as Academia be halted. This wouldn’t eliminate the problem, but it certainly would remove any type of encouragement that would amplify more instances of the problem. Another possibility would be to sanction and prevent (through bans and blocks I guess) anyone associated with a student/professor classroom project from editing WP if that editing was for classwork credit. I don’t see how these sanctions could be preemptive, but they certainly could occur at the first instance the sanctioned class of editors started editing. A third possibility, which would have to be enforced with elements of the second, would be to clearly state in our WP principles that editing by students and use of Misplaced Pages in the classroom is discouraged and will be reverted when discovered. These might be plausible remedies, but highly unlikely because they are in fundamental conflict with the founding principles of WP, the Five Pillars, and WMF strategic goals. WMF Outreach programs became necessary because of downward trend in content quality, scope and editor retention. Without Outreach to new communities of potential editors and new content, WP will slowly wither. The 3rd pillar of the five is very clear that WP content can be edited and used by anyone without exception. Are we to say that’s true with the exception that academia can’t use WP as a tool in the classroom because of the burden. Wouldn’t it then be a slippery slope for anyone to start sanctioning other uses of WP if they thought those uses burdened the WP editing community. I don’t think Outreach efforts are going away, nor do I think that the community will tolerate anything that fundamentally violates our Five Pillars, so that leaves us with a dilemma. The dilemma being how do we accomplish Outreach into communities such as academia that will generate a net positive result for WP without compromising our basic principles? --Mike Cline (talk) 05:16, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I find it troubling that SlimVirgin and MelanieN are raising the same issues that many medical editors have been raising here and everywhere for several years, and getting the same pat answers and faulty data analysis in response. (See Colin's data analysis, which differs from the WMF data analysis-- I have been told that WMF's analyses fail to look for or account for plagiarism at all.) Plagiarism and copyvio by students are still rampant, we have many instructors who have never edited Misplaced Pages and can't explain Misplaced Pages policies to their students anyway, we have classes editing articles without tagging article talk which would help us know which professor to contact, we have term-end crunch revert wars, we have established editors having to clean up multiple essays at the end of every term, we are not gaining new editors via outreach because the students are only here for a grade and rarely continue editing after the class ends, the students don't know correct sourcing or indeed most Misplaced Pages policies ... in other words, all still the same, and yet Slim and Melanie are getting the same pat answers we medical editors have been given for several years now. Student editing under profs who have no knowledge of Misplaced Pages forcing students to edit a project that they have no long-term commitment to is a problem and it's getting worse, not better. Why is the approach/response here unchanged and why is the problem downplayed in light of Slim's and Melanie's concerns? I was previously given to believe it's a big problem in the psych realm but there were less problems in other content areas: from the examples here, that doesn't seem to be the case. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing my wayward character that broke the header. I'm also troubled by the notion, oft-repeated here, that student editors should be handled no differently than other new editors. Other new editors are not here for a grade, are motivated to become better editors, will not disappear once their grade is in (often leaving questions unanswered about sourcing, plagiarism, etc), are not being given incomplete and faulty instruction in how to edit from professors who have never edited rather are more prone to seek accurate guidance from knowledgeable established editors, are not likely to have peers who will edit war for them, are not as likely to be part of large collaborations to reinforce each other's work, will be quickly dealt with if they plagiarize, and their faulty edits are not protected by WMF-staff-supported programs that seem to value recruiting new editors (which would have merit if it was working, it's not) over the goal of retaining established editors and making good use of their time and knowledge. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

@Mike, you don't seem to have been hearing what we are saying. In your list of (heavy-handed and obviously unsuitable) options for dealing with the problem, you left out the option I and others keep suggesting here: retain the student program, expand it, encourage it - but not in mainspace! Let them create and improve and "own" their class projects, but in AfC or sandbox or some newly created area. After the class is over (so that the ownership issue goes away and we can deal with the articles straightforwardly, without being given a guilt trip about some poor student's classwork), let the articles be reviewed by a regular Misplaced Pages editor and the good ones promoted to mainspace. Or promote them all to mainspace but take away the "student" tag, so that we can handle them as we would any other new article. What we have now is a situation where articles are being created that are in some kind of "untouchable" special category, and we are being told to keep hands-off until the end of the semester. That makes perfect sense from an academic standpoint, but it's an impossible situation in articlespace. --MelanieN (talk) 15:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Melanie, I don't think anyone here is suggesting that it's OK for student articles to be untouchable in any sense. That's unacceptable, and I think Mike Cline, Kevin, The Interior, and everyone else who's commented here would agree. I would think the Wikipedians who work with the Education Program completely agree with all the criticisms that have been made of the individual student edits that have been pointed out as having copyvio, or being badly written, or inappropriately claiming exemptions from cleanup -- why would we not agree? If you find anyone defending bad student work, please post links here and I and others will try to help fix the problem. As far as I can see, the question is what should be done about it. The EP is a group of editors who are trying to improve these interactions with students; it's very helpful to hear about problems because then we can go investigate and try to teach the prof and students how to do things better next time. Is there more you think we should be doing at this point? We'd like to stop the problems as much as anyone does; more so, probably, as we've invested time in trying to make these classes successful. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:49, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

True, no-one HERE is suggesting that student articles are off limits - that's not policy. But that IS the expectation of the students, as illustrated in at least one case above. And the students have a point: this is their work, they will be graded on it, they "worked hard" on it; how are they supposed to feel when some stranger comes along and starts removing parts of their paper, or nominating it for deletion? Of course they object - which just illustrates my point that student work-in-progress does not belong on an open-source wiki.
I think one possible approach would be to recognize that some professors are doing a much better job on this than others. There are examples of both in this very thread. Some professors are carefully training and supervising their students, and by all accounts the results are praiseworthy. Other professors are simply throwing the students at Misplaced Pages, with minimal training and no supervision, sloughing off the supervision onto student "peer reviewers" and regular Misplaced Pages editors. The chart above could help to identify the "problem professors"; so could individual instances when they come to light. How about telling the "problem professors" to keep their students' articles in sandboxes or some equivalent area, while leaving alone the professors that are doing a good job? And BTW I think it should NOT be a requirement of any class that the student articles all be nominated for DYK and GA; that's just ridiculous, and if actually done would create an enormous burden on already understaffed areas. --MelanieN (talk) 16:14, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

We might be converging on agreement here; I agree with almost everything you say. I'd just add that we can tell the problem professors what to do, but we have no power to enforce it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

We agree that some professors/classes might be causing problems. I have not heard your thoughts on the notion that student work-in-progress (good or bad) simply does not belong in the articlespace of an open-source wiki. --MelanieN (talk) 16:36, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Work in progress, by students or anyone else, doesn't belong in the article space of an open-source wiki. I can't imagine any experienced editor disagreeing with that either. I don't interpret this to mean that students should never edit mainspace, though; I think they need to only post material to mainspace that is good enough to post. Some classes (take a look at the Rice University ones in the lists above, for example) typically work in sandboxes till the work is good enough to go into mainspace, and then they move or copy it in. I think that's a fine approach. Some classes have been successful with editing articles directly, because the students have made good edits. I think that's OK too -- I wouldn't want to (and couldn't) forbid a class from taking that approach. If a class does that, and in fact the edits are bad, they should be reverted and the professor should get feedback -- and if that class received support from the EP, the EP should look to see if anything went wrong with the support provided. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:48, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I, like Mike, agree with most of your previous post. DYK/GAN shouldn't be a requirement of an assignment; some professors are doing well, some poorly; professors who do poorly should be encouraged to use sandboxes. Although we have no current power to enforce it, if someone made a proposal, I would consider supporting some sort of specialized community sanctions whereby any class that has had X number of students commit out and out copyright infringement would have their contributions forcibly relegated to sandboxes. (I'd also probably support a suggestion that any class that edits on topic issues covered by WP:MEDRS that has had X number of students use woefully shitty sources have their contributions sandboxed, if necessary forcibly via community sanctions.)

I don't agree that student work categorically doesn't belong in articlespace. Much student work happens in article space without any problems associated with it. Students and professors cannot have the expectation that their work stands untouched, and if they have that expectation, it should be corrected. The faculty I have worked with in the past have always been 100% aware of the possibility of community interaction with their students or of other people actively changing their students' work, and most of them have viewed it as an active positive about using Misplaced Pages-based assignments. I see no incompatibility between student work and articlespace. If students are creating new articles then, like any other Misplaced Pages editor creating new articles, they shouldn't be moved in to articlespace until they are in 'good enough' shape. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:58, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I have just been pointed to this discussion from my involvement with Wikimedia UK. I have been active on Wikiversity for over two years. I do not understand why the material which is unsuitable for WP is not moved to or developed on Wikiversity?Leutha (talk) 08:57, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. SlimVirgin 16:40, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

keeping track of students

I can usually glean a useful sentence or three from entire student essays; if these largely unuseful essays were left in Sandbox, with a link to the sandbox posted on article talk at term-end, it would take me much less time to pick out the one or two useful sentences then it takes me to remove all of the blather and explain why on talk (explaining, that is, to students and professors who will never read the explanation or learn from it). But, a bigger problem is still that most often classes never tag article talk, so we have no way of contacting the professor even when plagiarism is found or the students have not been instructed in correct sourcing. The way I usually realize I'm being hit by student edits is when they all start appearing on my watchlist shortly before Thanksgiving, they never engage on talk, and they revert their faulty edits back in to the article time and again, desperate that their grade not be affected. Even then, I can't always locate the professor, or get the student to engage on talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:49, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Beginning next term, classes in the education program (and probably a few others as well, if we can catch them early) will use semi-automated course pages with the new extension (which is live now). That should make it easier to figure out which classes students are part of and who the instructor is, find which articles they and their classmates plan to edit, and head off class-wide problems early (and in worst-case scenarios, shut down classes that are hurting more than helping the project).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Can there also be an effort to get them to tag article talk pages? That would allow me (at least) to better guide their efforts as they work, make sure they are using adequate (medical) sources, make sure their work stays on topic (they frequently write essays with content that wouldn't belong in the article even in the correct tone), and avoid me having to spend every Thanksgiving repairing articles. If the students are to learn something and have a good experience, getting some guidance along the way might help. When their first edits show up in article space the week before Thanksgiving, timing for helping guide them isn't optimal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

The idea with the extension is to make it so no special effort is needed to track which articles students are working on (since the ones with the significant problems are typically also the ones that don't get tagged because the people involved aren't as well-trained or connected with experienced editors as most). So I think most classes won't be using talk page banners at all. (Only the Canada ones are this term, for the most part, as the US ones moved to a more basic course page layout.) But a watchlist entry will appear whenever a student signs up to work on an article you are watching (and there is a log entry for the page showing when they added it and which class they are in, so if you miss it in your watchlist but later realize a student is making edits, it will be easy to track down the relevant details).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

My apologies, but I didn't follow that at all. When a student signs up on a course page to edit a topic that I watchlist, how will my watchlist be triggered until/unless the student edits the article page, which typically doesn't happen until term-end? For that to happen would seem to involve some major new software. The topics I watchlist are hit massively by psych and neuroscience courses that I don't even know exist. Unless there is some software change, you seem to be saying I have to watchlist every course project. Confused, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

The short answer is: yes, new software! :-) There's a new extension which is (as of a few weeks ago) deployed and functional on en-wiki (although not in use by any classes yet, since it deployed too late to be useful this term). See Misplaced Pages:Course pages for the (in development) description of how it works. Basically, users with the enrollment code for the class can sign up on a course page as students, and then add articles they are working on with a form. That creates a log entry for the page, which will appear on your watchlist if you are watching the article. So there's no need to watch course pages; if a student signs up for an article on your watchlist through their course page, you'll see an entry in your watchlist (just like you would if someone protected the page or did something else that creates a log entry).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

That's cool! Thanks for explaining. So, the next problem is and will be-- students frequently create new articles that shouldn't be articles (either AFD'd or text coulda/shoulda been added to an existing article). Since I won't have those watchlisted, I won't know about them until someone tries to link them back to an article I do watchlist. And, this won't help solve the significant number of courses that are now using us as unpaid TAs without ever registering a course page. The notion that MOST (posts to the contrary on this page notwithstanding) of the profs do not check for plagiarism, be it checking diffs or talk pages-- but expect us to go out and find the sources and do it, and Every Single Student article I have dealt with has plagiarism-- is one of the most irksome aspects. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:14, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Hopefully, we can add features to the extension over time that will make it easier to handle classes. Of course, for stealth assignments that have no course page, it's hard to do anything comprehensive, but at least we can point people to the extension once we discover them and say "if you want to do an assignment, you should use this". (Course pages are an absolute requirement for participating in the Education Program.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Is there a template for pointing profs to the extension? Or better yet, since most of the students I encounter never edit a course page, so I can't locate a prof anwyay, is there a template for querying an editor if they are part of a course and asking them what course, what prof, etc, and also pointing them to the extension? I have sometimes later located the prof because other editors happened to know it was student editing, and pinged my talk to let me know; if we had a template to bring these folks on board earlier, it would help. Maybe-- considering that the students rarely engage on talk anyway ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:33, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

There's not a template for either situation yet, but those both sound like good ideas.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Note that while these aren't geared toward exactly the purpose you had in mind, we have these: {{welcome teacher}} and {{welcome student}}. Maybe the best approach would be to edit those make them useful for situations where you're trying to figure out what the student or professor is up to. I'm not sure how widely they are used, but I know at least that User:Pharaoh of the Wizards uses them pretty regularly.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Two questions

First, as the point of the program seems to have been to find new editors, can someone say how many students have stayed on to become regular Wikipedians?

Also, I'm confused about the status of the program. It seems to have official status. An enormous amount of money has been spent on it, I believe it has its own namespace, its own templates, and Foundation employees dedicated to overseeing it, and it extends a protective mantle over its participants (which is one of the reasons the students can't be compared to regular new editors). Yet when I asked above whether poorly administered courses could be excluded in future, Kevin said no, anyone can set up a course and there is no way to stop them from registering as part of the program. So the question is: given that this program has some form of official recognition, why are the people overseeing not able to deny registration to institutions that perform under par? SlimVirgin 03:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't have numbers regarding editor retention, although I'm sure someone does. I would not call that one of the primary points of the program anyway though. (As a sidenote, I am an example of a student who stayed on to become a regular Wikipedian.)

I'm sure, as I said above, that we could prevent someone from saying "We're part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Education Program." And now that the new education extension is launching for the next semester, they could be excluded from being able to use that. And they can be denied ambassadorial support. But outside of those three things, there is no existing mechanic to prevent a course from using a Misplaced Pages-based assignment. Most of the most problematic courses already don't have ambassadorial support (that's generally part of the reason why they're problematic.) And since the education extension is brand new, not being able to use it is not going to serve as a huge disincentive. And like I said I don't think that being unable to say "We're part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Education Program" is going to be very much of a disincentive, either.

Do you have a useful suggestion as to how poorly performing institutions could be handled? It's definitely a problem in need of an answer. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:52, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not talking only about the new extension. The courses all use special templates that were created for them, they have access to ambassadors, they have Foundation staff who support them and who ask editors to review GA nominations for them. They could be excluded from access to any of that paraphernalia if not registered with the program. Allowing anyone to register seems to be giving the program a bad name, and it's not in the students' interests that they be allowed to add two paragraphs of poorly written (or plagiarized) material to an article they have no interest in, and call that an assignment. It's surely in everyone's interests that the Foundation (or the program or whoever is running this now) not facilitate that.

As for how to handle poorly performing institutions, I would suggest (a) asking everyone editing as part of the program to post their essays on user subpages as suggested above, and (if they want to) ask Wikipedians to move material to mainspace once the course is over; and (2) where there are persistent requests to move plagiarized material over, that teacher will be asked not to register any more courses with the program. SlimVirgin 04:23, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to split your points into bullets since the replies vary; I hope I captured everything from your post.

• Special templates: Are you referring to things like {{WAP assignment}}? If so, the only thing I can see that could be done for a poorly performing institution is to remove any template that had the imprimatur of the education program and replace it with a generic template indicating that the article is being edited by students; of course that could (and should be done). If you're also talking about the resources that were put into creating the templates, I don't know who built them, but I would be surprised if foundation staff have done much template building (unless it was someone like Sage Ross).
• access to ambassadors: Well, we can't stop ambassadors from helping anyone they want to help, but I agree that a poorly performing institution should not be listed as a possible course for ambassadors to help; there should be no facilitation by the EP.
• Foundation staff who support them: I can think of two or three ways to interpret this. Foundation staff do things like create brochures for classes to use -- see here for example. They provide training to campus ambassadors who are usually staff members or students at the institution in question. If an instructor at a poorly performing institution asked for support from the Foundation I would regard that as an opportunity to improve the situation. Someone with more knowledge of what the Foundation actually does with individual campuses should probably answer this, but I agree that no Foundation resources should go to uncooperative poorly performing institutions.
• ask editors to review GA nominations for them: I haven't seen this, and I don't think it should be happening for any student classes, let alone poorly performing ones. The professor I am working with this autumn instructs her students only to submit to GA if they are willing to commit to following up after the end of the semester, and working with the reviewer to complete the changes to the article. They don't ask for any acceleration of the review. I think that's the appropriate way to do it. If an ambassador wants to review a student's GA ahead of others listed, that's up to them, of course. You didn't mention DYK but I might as well add that I'm not in favour of students applying for DYK at all, and certainly not for course credit -- I think shepherding a successful DYK nomination requires more experience and time commitment on the part of the student than the students and professors typically realize.
• allowing anyone to register: I believe there's a statement all professors are asked to sign before they can participate, outlining expected norms of behaviour for them and their students. I can't locate it; perhaps someone else can post a link, assuming I'm right and it's still in use. If I'm right about this, then there is a filter on registration. I don't know if there's any enforcement at this point -- that is, if an institution fails to adhere to the students, are they denied registration next year? I agree that something along those lines is necessary.

I don't agree that all students should be asked to do all their work on user subpages. It's a good plan for new articles, and for students with less confidence (or ability), but many students do just fine with direct editing of articles. I agree that any class that does poorly should be asked to do work in sandboxes first. And I agree that persistent plagiarism is about the worst possible red flag we could see. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed response. We seem to agree on a lot. I used the term "paraphernalia" because I'm not familiar with all the things that have been made available to the program. I see templates, portals, coordinators, Foundation staff, and ambassadors. I'm arguing that this support network should only be made available to universities that register courses formally with the program, that to register they have to agree to abide by certain rules (one of which would be to avoid damaging the encyclopaedia or increasing the workload of Wikipedians not involved with the program), and that if they violate the agreement they're not allowed to register courses again.

Here is Sage requesting GA reviews. This is at a time when we already have GA backlogs and few reviewers. I don't think it should be up to ambassadors (as you wrote above) to decide whether to ask for GA reviews for students ahead of others; they should be asked not to do this for all the obvious reasons. Ditto with DYK. And I think teachers should be asked not to use student peer reviewers, because they seem only to tell each other how good their work is, when it really isn't.

I feel that what's missing here is looking at it from the students' point of view, and what's in their interests. It's in their interests to get a good education, which in the case of students who are struggling with writing and research skills means good teaching. It isn't in their interests to be left to get on with writing an article for Misplaced Pages, being allowed to add plagiarism and use websites as sources, being told by student peer reviewers that they've done a good job, or being taught how to write by anonymous volunteers on the Internet. So it's in everyone's interests here (Foundation, universities, students, Misplaced Pages and Wikipedians) that we work toward higher standards.

As for using sandboxes, I'll reply to that in a different thread. SlimVirgin 00:08, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike and SlimVirgin. In terms of retention as a goal of the program, from the Wikimedia Foundation perspective, turning students into Wikipedians has never been a focus of the these projects. It's been clear from early on that even most of the students who do solid work simply don't have that Wikipedian bug inside them, and the retention rate has been fairly low from the beginning. The goal instead has been mainly to improve content. To that end, we do consider retention of professors as a key goal: as they build up experience, become very familiar with Misplaced Pages's coverage in their area of expertise, and become invested in the community over the long term, that's when—through their students—we see the most improvement in Misplaced Pages article quality.

For GAs (and DYKs), we now explicitly recommend against making them any sort of requirement for students. Instead, we suggest them as possibilities for particular outstanding student work, with consultation with an experienced Wikipedian before nomination to make sure it's good enough to make a nomination worthwhile (for both the student and the community). This term, that ecology class did end up having GA nomination as part of the syllabus (whoops!), but since the student work was (to my eye) actually quite strong and they had some time left in their timeline, I figured why not make the best of it? From what I've seen, the reviews that did get done (which I don't think my post here had anything to do with) have led to nice further improvements in the articles, so they haven't been wasted effort.

For classes that want to be part of the US or Canada Education Program, professors go through screening and assignment design consultation (typically with Jami Mathewson of WMF and/or Regional Ambassadors who are familiar with best practices for Misplaced Pages assignments) before they are admitted. Of course, anyone can do something like this on their own, and we are trying to develop as robust a set of self-service support resources as we can. But in terms of active support, that's limited to Education Program participants. We have many cases where the Education Program declines to work with professors, or doesn't let them continue after a first term, if they aren't willing to follow the guidelines or modify their plans to fix problems.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:22, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this info-- now I know where to focus my efforts (on the problematic professors). But, again, it's hard to identify them when the students rarely tag article talk and there is often no indication of what class, what prof, etc (although it eventually comes to light sometimes). We need a polite template for querying new editors who suddenly drop in a big sandbox edit and have no other interaction with the Project whether they are part of a class (we already discussed that). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

See above. We do have a basic welcome template for students. That could be edited to more specifically address common issues with new users who seem to be students but you can't tell what they are working on or who they are working with.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

education program focused admins?

How would y'all feel about the idea of education program specific admins? There is no technical mechanism to do this, so what I mean by it is pretty much someone going through RfA making a pledge to only use the toolset in situations specific to educational assignments - e.g., revdeling student copyright violations, histmerging moves mucked up by students, and issuing preventative blocks against education program editors, enforceable via revocation of the bit if significantly broken.

The reason this idea occurred to me is because I have encountered a number of situations related to the education program where being able to use an admin toolset would've been useful (and due to some on the ground stuff I'm in the process of setting up, I expect I will encounter many more in the future,) but don't think that I would currently pass an RfA as a standard candidate, and I also don't desire to use the admin toolset broadly anyway. I'm sure I'm not the only person who does a lot of education program who is in a similar situation.

I know there would be a risk of someone who made such a pledge going berserk, misusing their tools, and, say, banning a bunch of random people, but I think the standard for "we trust you not to go berserk, and trust you to clean up education program stuff" isn't as high a standard as "we trust you to appropriately use administrative tools in every area of Misplaced Pages." (This is a very tentative idea; I've not decided whether I like the idea myself or not yet, but wanted to see what other people thought. I'm not intending to do this myself for the foreseeable future, so this isn't intended as some sort of weird pre-RFA canvassing.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:23, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

There's no way of limiting how a person uses the tools, so I don't think this would fly. SlimVirgin 04:27, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Except for viewing deleted pages, all admin tools create log entries, don't they? So if someone went through an RfA saying "Arbcom or any crat should revoke my tools if I use them in non-edu related areas without undergoing a reconfirmation RfA first" and proceeded to break their word, taking their bit away would be pretty easy. And I do think the standard for "we trust you not to go on a tool-fueled rampage" is definitely a different one from "we trust you to exercise administrative powers across Misplaced Pages." To use myself as an example - I have a multi-year editing history, have interned for WMF, have done paid consulting work for WMF, and could demonstrate that I have the technical expertise necessary to use the tools successfully. I think I'd be voted down in a general RfA because I think there are enough people who wouldn't trust my judgment to, say, gauge consensus on AfD's - but I think that most of those people wouldn't be terribly worried about me going on an arbitrary banning spree, and would trust my judgment to use the toolbox to clean up edu program stuff. (Although to reiterate, I am not intending on actually doing this, just floating the idea in the ether - and I'm not sure it's a terribly good idea myself, either.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:40, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Taking a bit away is never easy, regardless of what the nominee claimed in the RFA. And the notion that we grant the bits for restricted reasons has been perennially shot down. No go here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

You should quality for admin soon anyway. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflicted with Sandy and James on this) Two big problems with this, I think. First, RFA voters generally have always resoundingly rejected people who apply on the basis of "I have a special need for the tools in this one small area, I promise never to use them anywhere else, so could you guys overlook the fact that I'm otherwise not a passing candidate and give me the tools?" Second, there is no way for the community to hold a "special" admin to their promises, short of hoping Arbcom accepts a case and then waiting three months or so for them to cough up a remedy. Crats absolutely won't desysop on the basis of "Hey, if I violate my promise you can go ahead and take my bits", the community has no mechanism for lifting bits itself, and Arbcom's emergency-desysop procedures are for just that, emergencies, not garden-variety "admin misusing their tools" happenings, which they still expect to go through a normal, lengthy, case. This isn't to say, Kevin, that I (or Sandy, I would assume) think you'd go crazypants and start blocking everyone and deleting the main page, but the reason RFA has such a high bar is that the powers come in a lump and are extremely sticky, which means that the community generally wants admins to be able to do it all at least competently, if not well.

That all said, I do like the idea of dedicated EP "cleanup" personnel. It would take a lot of the burden off the community, which strains under the weight of EP classes' learning curves, if you had people waiting in the wings to mop up spots where the learning went wrong. I don't think this calls for specially-appointed admins, though, so much as perhaps recruiting ambassadors who are willing to monitor and clean up their classes' messes (it seems like this ought to already be part of the job description, but it doesn't seem to be), or perhaps non-ambassadors who volunteer to go through EP work in hazmat suits so the rest of the community doesn't have to. If someone does the rest of the work, it's not too hard to find an admin to actually mash buttons for something like a histmerge. It's the finding the pages involved, figuring out what goes where, figuring out how it was messed up, etc that takes the real time. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

It would take a lot of the burden off the community, which strains under the weight of EP classes' learning curves,... Don't you think a more accurate statement would be ... burden off the community, which strains under the weight of EP classes' all new editors' learning curves,.... Problematic student classes indeed concentrate things in a way that makes them more visible, but collectively I suspect there's just as much burden on the entire community associated with the learning curves of all new editors, its just not as visible or concentrated in one spot. Point being, I don't think there's any more or less burden associated with education related editors. New editors place a burden on the community, why because the community has norms that requires it to welcome new contributors and deal with them in positive and constructive ways. And we all know the learning curve can be high--we all experienced it in some way. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:26, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

@ Mike Cline, re "all new editors"; no. You don't seem to be digesting what many editors are saying here. A special class of new (and non-returning) editors has been created in this program. And the burden of attempting to educate someone who is only here for a grade and is unlikely to return is higher than the burden of educating a committed, engaged but struggling new editor. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @ Sandy, I think you are wrong in this sense. Indeed not all new editors have the same motivation, but I can say with certainty that the motivations of new editors cover a wide range of potentially burdensome problems. Many new people chose to edit to push geo-political, cultural, linguistic, economic, commercial, social, religious, etc, etc, positions all the time. Their motivations aren't to become a better editors, their motivation is to pust their agenda in WP. In the EP we have the opportunity to mentor student editors throughout educational career when we build sound ambassador programs on a campus. I even think that saying Motivated to edit to get a grade is wrong. We've been designing curriculum at MSU to use WP as a tool to achieve serious learning objectives in writing skills. The students get a good grade because met the learning objectives, not because they edited WP. In the long run we hope to tap into that motivation for a better grade and learning by using WP as a tool into higher quality content, scope and maybe new dedicated editors. If WP is indeed free and open for anyone to edit and use, we cannot exclude or apply different norms to any class of editor because of their motivation to edit. We just need to build processes and support structures (much like has been done with BLP) to ensure that whatever the motivation to contribute is, those contributions benefit the encyclopedia. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:02, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we have those editors, and they are (relative to the students) easily handled by normal Misplaced Pages processes, noticeboards, blocking, etc. The average POV pusher is not in a protected class like these students are, and whatever time we spend educating the average disruptive user occasionally pays off when they turn into good users. In the case of students, they rarely return to editing, they are a protected class (by their peers reverting for them and by some participants on this board), and we get little return for the investment in helping them learn policy, since they rarely ever come back. We "cannot exlude or apply different norms to any class of editor"? We already do. We should be applying MEATPUPPETRY policies to class editing-- they edit in collaboration. We make an exception for normal polices for students, and this board generally supports it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:09, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers, y'all. I don't follow RfA closely enough to have been aware that such things had previously been suggested and rejected. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:45, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

a flash from the past

There were a bunch of articles (or sections added to articles) started for one psych class in Spring 2012, all on the Big Five:

• Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five

• Big Five personality traits

• Big Five personality traits and culture

• Change in the Big Five (in Change in personality over a lifetime)

• Five-factor model (in Dimensional models of personality disorders)

• Personality and life outcomes - about the Big Five.

Many of these (and others) were nominated for DYK at the same time. I think there was agreement then that professors should not require students nominate articles for DYK or GA. (I don't have the diffs as Educational Program discussions aren't collected in one area.)

Here is a sample Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Dimensional approach to personality disorders which demonstrates how exhausting the process was. As you can see, the article was kept but continues in a disreputable state (as do all the other articles mentioned above). No one has cleaned them up. I've stayed away from the EP courses since so I'm not familiar with the current situation.

Hopefully this kind of thing no longer happens. Best, MathewTownsend (talk) 19:50, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, these articles suck. They sucked the first time you posted them, and they suck now. Yes, no one has improved them. Misplaced Pages has four million articles. Most of them suck. Most of them sucked a year ago. Most of them will still suck a year from now. The fact that an article that sucked last spring still sucks says absolutely nothing about anything. Is there a purpose to this section? Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:13, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Is the point not that students editing as part of the education program should be asked not to use mainspace? They could post the articles on a user subpage, the teacher could evaluate them, and then – if the student wants his or her work to be moved to the encyclopaedia – the student can ask a Wikipedian to check it for policy compliance and move it if it does comply.

We already ask paid advocates to edit via this route, and there is a board where they can ask that their drafts be checked before being moved to the encyclopaedia. If the same approach were taken with education-program students it would solve a lot of the problems we're seeing. It would also mean the students weren't being forced to release their work, which is another ethical issue I haven't seen addressed. This way, they could ask that it be deleted from their userspace once the course had ended. SlimVirgin 03:38, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

yes SlimVirgin, that's the point. Seems like the Education Program could at least do no damage. If all those articles were in a sandbox or somewhere not in the main space, then perhaps the subject matter overlap would be noticed. And the program's articles that "suck" wouldn't be in the mainspace confusing readers. (Once they're in the mainspace it's almost impossible to get them ADFed.) MathewTownsend (talk) 17:40, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Someone should just go ahead and redirect those titles to whatever the main title is. SlimVirgin 00:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

There's more articles than I've listed e.g. Honesty-humility factor of the HEXACO model of personality (also has sections about the Big Five) and HEXACO model of personality structure. I haven't done a search for all the articles. (I know "Big Five" is linked to many articles.) But I think what Colin says above is important: "consider that often the added text is already present on Misplaced Pages in a better place in some other article." This seems to be one of the problems here. Overall the subject may be important but it's not integrated into existing wikipedia articles covering the same subject. Or many scattered aspects of a subject are broken up into separate articles. Students (and professors) need to be aware of what articles exist on wikipedia related to the subject before they start adding new ones, I think. MathewTownsend (talk) 20:22, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Concerns re: recent discussion on this board

Hi all, I'm one of the coordinators of the Canadian Education Program. Some of my colleagues and I are currently reviewing recent discussion on this board. While I appreciate the engagement, and the clear desire to improve the Education Program, there are concerns about the way some editors have gone about presenting their criticism. In particular (and this is not intended to be threatening) there are concerns that parts of this discussion have violated WP:CIVIL, WP:GOODFAITH, WP:BITE and perhaps (most concerning) WP:PERSONAL and WP:HARASS. I would appreciate if those involved could post links to the primary concerns, in particular:

• Evidence that an editor said that course material should not be altered during the semester,
• Evidence that copyright violations would not be addressed,
• Evidence of requirements that students nominate for DYK and GA,
• Any examples of students refusing to abide by policy after being properly notified.

I recognize that this is a discussion board, and that opportunity should be allowed for extensive comment; however, for this thread, if you wouldn't mind, please keep answers as brief as possible. Please refer to as many concrete examples as possible. Please also refrain from adding additional anecdotal criticism.

Thank you for your help with this.

Sincerely, Jaobar (talk) 16:30, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Jaobar, I don't see the things you are talking about. This discussion has been pretty civil, and I certainly don't see any example of personal attacks or harrassment (unless some of the people on the project take personally any criticism of the program). It was clearly stated that STUDENTS, not Wikipedians, have been saying that course material should not be altered during the semester. There is plenty of evidence about copyright violations, including at least one case where the professor refused to look into copyright violations or take them seriously; even so, several people here have volunteered to follow up on the copyvio problem. Here is an example of a course which requires that students nominate their articles for DYK and GA: . Another example requiring both DYK and GA: . Other examples of DYK requirement: . --MelanieN (talk) 17:50, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, this example that you point out actually shows the initial plan drawn up by a tutor who wasn't entirely familiar with some of enwiki's rules and norms; we had a chat, and the course set off in a slightly different direction. (No DYKs came out of it). So, I think "the system" worked that time, although much of the subsequent discussion on that course was unfortunately off-wiki. bobrayner (talk) 21:59, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Jaobar: I suspect that part of the reason you posted is related an email I sent to a colleague of yours a couple days ago. I've reviewed the email I sent, and although the tone of it was probably grumpier than was necessary (and it probably wasn't a good idea for me to write a grumpy email while on a lot of cough syrup/while with pneumonia, though that certainly doesn't excuse a grumpier than necessary tone) I don't think that it violates any of the policies you linked - and I stand by its contents. I'll be in private contact with you in the immediate future to explain further the particular situations that led me to send it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:20, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

--------

Greetings. As of this evening, I see little evidence to justify the previous discussion. Hopefully this will change by tomorrow.

For example, User:slimVirgin stated "I alerted the teacher, and he said that checking for plagiarism was not something he did. He suggested I handle it myself, and said he would give students who had posted copyvios an F." So far I see no evidence of this. Please point me to this conversation.

User:MelanieN, as far as I know, all individuals with profiles are considered editors, not just Wikipedians. Please point me to examples of students (editors) requesting that course material remain unaltered during the semester.

As far as copyright violations, I see one thread where concerns were raised, to which the professor responded. I also see claims of 4 alleged copyright violations. I am hoping that this potentially damaging set of discussion posts (damaging to the Education Program) has not been the result of an over-reaction. Please provide evidence. Jaobar (talk) 04:49, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Jaobar, SlimVirgin has already provided the diffs for what you're asking. Here, for example, she links directly to the conversations in question. MelanieN also provided diffs about the matter of students trying to keep content un-reverted in mainspace. I know there's been a whole lot of words spilled on this page recently and it's a lot to read, but if you're going to come from a place of "I demand you prove these things have been said", it helps to not fail to read where the proof has already been provided. No one is here to make personal attacks, to insult you and your colleagues, or anything else terrible and anti-wiki. They're here to discuss issues they've had with students and professors from the program, with an eye toward reaching solutions, and you're responding to that with an attitude of basically "You are all doing a horrible thing talking about this, and I expect you to cease and desist before I'm forced to do something you wouldn't like". A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 05:10, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I provided you with conclusive evidence of a student repeatedly infringing copyright via email earlier today, before your most recent post. As I said in my email, I'll be getting some other diffs to you that show such problems in the relatively near future. All of the other diffs that you have requested are already present on this page as far as I can tell. (Although I would certainly invite other people to provide additional evidence of student copyright infringement here, as requested.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:22, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I have just sent you an additional email containing conclusive evidence of another student in the same class we previously discussed committing outright plagiarism. Not even excessively close paraphrasing, but directly cutting and pasting large blocks of text without attribution from a source that is not freely licensed. I have pneumonia and am in finals myself, so my further emails to you will be slow, because I don't want to name and shame a student as a plagiarist without ensuring 100% that they are first. Information about other students will be forthcoming as I have time. Kevin Gorman (talk) 09:28, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

--------

Jaobar, I am happy to encounter an education program professor who has actually edited articles; having engaged Misplaced Pages, I'm sure you realize your demanding tone isn't helpful here-- a board where we are seeking solutions to a a problem that is deep and wide.

I have said it before, here and elsewhere, but I'll repeat this for your benefit. It is not my job to be an unpaid TA for a professor who has never edited any article, doesn't check or know how to check edit history, doesn't look at article talk, and wants me to blow the whistle on a student, causing the student to get an F for plagiarizing. Those professors-- who haven't given adequate instruction to their students and are using established Wikipedians as unpaid TAs-- shouldn't be unleashing their students' work on Misplaced Pages. If they are too lazy or unknowledgeable about how to check an article history to find my very clearly marked edit summaries indicating removing plagiarism, see talk or to follow the link to talk, it's not my job to notify them or to be fingerpointing at any specific examples here. If we were dealing with editors who would be sticking around, I would be dealing with the plagiarism as I would any other editor; since these students leave as soon as their course is done meaning there is no educational benefit in helping the student learn how to be a real Wikipedian, I have no reason to pursue the copyvio matters, other than removing the plagiarism as soon as I find it. I do not intend to be pointing out where I've found plagiarism; it is the professor's job when grading to look at edit history, where they can find clearly marked edit summaries. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:34, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi all, thank you for your comments. I will respond in greater detail soon. I will say quickly that my polite comments above are requests, not demands. As I'm sure you understand, my goal here is to help ensure that all parties involved come away benefitting from this process. So those offended by my tone (without trying to sound condescending here), please assume good faith. Jaobar (talk) 21:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

@Jaobar: What Fluff said, in spades. When you request evidence, and I and others show you the evidence you asked for, and you repeat "please point me to examples" and "so far I see no evidence of this" as if we hadn't replied - well, it's frustrating, and it doesn't promote good communication. But just for the record, let me "show you" one more time: Here's the professor telling SlimVirgin that he doesn't check for plagiarism, but if he finds a confirmed example he will give the student an F: Here's a student reverting SlimVirgin's edits and telling her to leave the page alone: I also provided two examples of courses requiring DYK and FAN (in one case the requirement was preliminary and was later withdrawn, according to bobrayner) and two examples of courses requiring DYK. I don't know what more I can do. --MelanieN (talk) 21:43, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Perhaps YOU could provide US with diffs showing what you were talking about when you said that "parts of this discussion have violated WP:CIVIL, WP:GOODFAITH, WP:BITE and perhaps (most concerning) WP:PERSONAL and WP:HARASS". And if you don't care to or can't provide examples, perhaps you will agree to assume good faith on the part of those discussing here - as you expect everyone here to do toward you. --MelanieN (talk) 21:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Jonathan, the gist of the discussion is that plagiarism (copy-paste editing from sources cited in footnotes) was found in several articles being edited as part of a Canadian course, and the teacher has left it to Wikipedians to deal with it. My view is that teachers should check for plagiarism themselves, for a number of reasons, including (a) it's part of the job, (b) unpaid volunteers shouldn't be burdened with the extra work, (c) where the sources are books, they're probably in the university library, whereas we might have to rely on inter-library loans (which apart from the hassle factor could take weeks to arrive), and (d) volunteers shouldn't be responsible for deciding, in effect, which students get an F. As one of the program coordinators, what's your view on this? SlimVirgin 02:08, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

User:SlimVirgin and User:MelanieN thank you for your responses. I have reviewed the comments in dispute (so far I have only found a few such comments, some from students who were still learning - something to keep in mind), and am in the process of discussing what has transpired with colleagues in the Education Program. I can tell you frankly that whatever your viewpoint on the issues being discussed, the results of this conversation have not had a positive effect at all, in fact, one could go so far as to say that this conversation has been destructive. So perhaps reconsidering strategy is in order. But that's just my opinion at this point. In terms of comments of concern, a close reading of some of the language, and the potential implications for those in a university setting may reveal the cause for concern. Here's one comment from User:Kevin Gorman that concerns me:

"As a student, instructor, and Wikipedian, intentional plagiarism is one of the few things that really sets me off. Things like close paraphrasing I can understand occasionally doing as a mistake, but shit like copying entire paragraphs makes me see red. If I become aware of any situation that involves a student at a US or Canadian university participating in a Misplaced Pages-based assignment who clearly commits intentional plagiarism, I will bring it to the attention of their professor. If their professor doesn't respond adequately, I will bring it to the attention of their departmenthead, and so on, until an appropriate response is received. And I guarantee that at any US or Canadian university, I will be able to provoke an appropriate response."

I am also requesting that you refrain from continued (and continued) criticism of the professor in question - i.e. User:SlimVirgin from the prof's talk page today "I think the issue is that it would help if you would be more pro-active about this, rather than leaving it to Wikipedians." The professor gets the point. Jaobar (talk) 17:19, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm relieved to know one professor gets the point (although I see nothing wrong with Slim's most politely worded request); I'm curious to know why you disagree with Kevin Gorman. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:27, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps Jaobar is concerned repeated posts could dissuade the professor from engaging in positive and ongoing discussions via email, etc. I think we might need another level of diligence to not to be perceived as WP:BITEy by professors. Academics have a culture of "fine, this journal doesn't like me I'll go publish in another", so we might have to be more delicate, since there is only one project with our reach. I heard from the professor I'm working with that they've perceived unwelcoming vibes from the project. So I want to be welcoming and have the maximum potential to influence the direction of the assignment to the benefit of Misplaced Pages. Biosthmors (talk) 17:44, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not quite seeing the problem with Kevin's comment. Absolutely it was blunt, and I understand why any student might be alarmed to see it, but plagiarism here for the purposes of a school assignment should carry the same penalty that plagiarism anywhere else for a school assignment does. Students should be aware that academic standards apply here as well as on paper.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, Jaobar, so please correct where I'm misreading you (because I assume I am), but to me right now it looks sort of like you're hoping to keep EP-related Misplaced Pages stuff a sort of "not the real world" sandbox where students/professors not adhering to the rules doesn't count. What some of the people here are trying to communicate is that to them - to many of us - it does count, and that while seeing someone appear out of the blue and dump a copyvio in an article is bad, it is in some ways worse to see someone appear because they were sent here and go on to dump a copyvio in an article. So to you it seems unnecessarily aggressive for people to go to students and professors and ask them to fix their mistakes and not commit more of them, because why are we persecuting these people who are donating their time and efforts to Misplaced Pages? To others, it seems like asking non-student editors to clean up and maintain students' work is an unnecessary drain on everyone else who's donating their time and efforts to Misplaced Pages.

There's probably a point to be made here about how to engage with students and professors in a non-offputting manner, but that point is weakened when the reason the offputting manner is being deployed is because the more understated manner doesn't seem to have worked. Misplaced Pages does have a reputation for being prickly to newcomers, and it's something we can stand to work on, but the people who feel pricked need to meet us halfway as far as at least attempting to fit in. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:14, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Having just had a conversation with Sage about this, I want to clarify what I mean when I say I don't see a problem with the comment, because there's actually a lot going on in Kevin's statement, some spots of which are more objectionable than others. So, my initial reading of Kevin's comment was that the gist was basically, "I intend to treat plagiarism from students on Misplaced Pages the same way I would treat it in the real world: report it so they are held accountable for their misconduct." I agree with this idea - as I said above, if students are doing academic work on Misplaced Pages, they should be aware that they are being held to the same standards of academic honesty here as elsewhere.

What I realized after talking it over with Sage, however, is that there's another level that can be read in Kevin's comment, basically saying, "I not only intend to report plagiarism from students on Misplaced Pages, but I intend to pursue the matter until I can be sure they are punished, no matter how high I have to go to accomplish that." I don't think that's an appropriate stance to take - the responsibility of someone who encounters student plagiarism is to report it to the professor, not to be Dirty Harry about making sure the student "pays" for it. If reporting the matter to a professor doesn't get the problem dealt with, in my opinion the problem has ceased to be with a student, and begun to be with the professor, because it is the responsibility of a professor who assigns extracurricular work (in the sense of "sending students to work on something that's a separate, non-school entity") to make sure that work is done in a manner that isn't damaging to the entity they're sending students to work on. If, for example, a veterinary professor was assigning students to volunteer at an animal shelter, it would fall to the professor to make sure that the students he sent weren't causing problems there. It's the student's responsibility if one of them decides go all PETA and release the dogs, but once the professor knows about that behavior, he would be responsible for making it clear to his class that that wasn't ok, and if he refuses to do that, the shelter would be correct to hold the professor, not just the students, responsible for future jailbreaks.

The other issue here is the idea of off-wiki consequences. Misplaced Pages usually frowns on "reporting" editors to real-world supervisors, teachers, etc. It can have an incredibly chilling effect to basically threaten someone's livelihood/future for something they did on a website. However, in the case of EP classes, I think it is reasonable in some cases to pursue off-wiki consequences for student misconduct. There need to be limits - certainly no calling up anyone's mom or internship or something - but if a student is editing on behalf of Class Y at University X, they are accountable to that class, and possibly to that university. If you're doing an assignment for Class Y here, and you perpetrate some serious academic dishonestly, like plagiarism, it is appropriate (in my mind) for your professor to be informed. It is not appropriate for a Wikipedian to try to take on the role of the professor and actually deal with the dishonesty by disciplinary means of some kind, like contacting a dean. But again, it's not appropriate for an editor to do this because it's the professor's job, not because students somehow shouldn't be held accountable for misconduct. We really, really need professors to be working with us on this. We, the community, can't end the EP, or fire a professor from the program, or even fire a student who doesn't get it. That means that when we report problems to the EP, or to a professor, we need them to be willing and able to address the issues, because they're the ones who can handle it. We can't; we can only clean up the messes that are left behind. In the future, in cases where a professor isn't taking responsibility for his students' conduct on Misplaced Pages, there needs to be a way to deal with that, because otherwise you end up with desperate Wikipedians trying any and all measures, some wise and some overkill, to do the professors' jobs and make the pain stop. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

To clarify, my comment was made before I was aware of any particular class with problems. It was not intended as a threat directed towards anyone in particular, and isn't (or at least the escalation bit) something that I ever anticipate having to pursue. I have in the past and will in the future report students' plagiarism to their professors. Every professor who I have approached has understood the issue, and has addressed the issues appropriately. I understand that some people have concerns about any sort of off-wiki consequences for on-wiki actions, but when Misplaced Pages is edited in the context of an academic assignment plagiarism should absolutely be taken every bit as seriously as it is for a 'real-world' academic assignment. If professors choose to fail, honor code, or otherwise punish students who have blatantly plagiarized, then I have no problem with it - students understand plagiarism, and if they choose to commit blatant plagiarism anyway, they deserve whatever punishment they get. If they choose not to do so, then as long as the professors take action to ensure that the plagiarism doesn't recur on Misplaced Pages, I have no problem with that either. (And I understand that due to the privacy policies at most schools, I'll never be made aware of whether or not a student is punished. I'm completely fine with that, and would be dismayed if I was made aware.)

When I suggested that I would have no problem escalating beyond the level of an individual professor, I did not anticipate ever having to do so. I still don't anticipate ever having to do so. I literally cannot imagine approaching a professor with conclusive evidence that one of their students has plagiarized work and not having them take some sort of action. However, if there is ever an education program class that has a massive issue with plagiarism and an unresponsive professor, then I will absolutely consider contacting other people at the participant university, including the professor's departmenthead, if (and only if) it appears that that is the best way to mitigate damage to Misplaced Pages and to the education program. I do not anticipate ever having to do this. If a situation arose where I did do this, I would bring the issue here for discussion first. I view this situation - which I never anticipate happening - as analogous to contacting the abuse department at an ISP or the network administrator at an K-12 school with evidence of abuse of their network (both of which are things that I have seen done on Misplaced Pages with regularity,) or analogous to publicly calling out paid editing shills (which is also something that happens regularly, and not infrequently results in negative international news coverage directed towards the shills.) And to reiterate: I cannot imagine this situation ever actually occurring.

The damage that will occur to the education program if the perception of Misplaced Pages's broader community continues to be that education program participants are unresponsive to the concerns of the broader community will be incalculable. I think the education program has the potential to be massively beneficial both for academia and for Misplaced Pages, and if its potential is limited because Misplaced Pages's broader community views it as a liability and places severe restrictions on it (such as sandbox-only editing, which has recently been suggested on this page,) I'll view it as a tragedy. One way to mitigate this perception is for education program participants to make clear that issues like blatant plagiarism are not acceptable, and will be dealt with strongly. If my words or this particular situation drive away one or more professors from the education program, that's unfortunate, and I would regret it. But professor recruitment is not an issue with the education program at present - any professor who drops out of the program can be replaced with two more next semester. At this stage in the program, it's infinitely more important that the education program is run as a tight - and well accepted - ship, then as a gigantic ship. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

• I just became aware of this noticeboard, and I'm pleased that is exists, because I have been having many of the same concerns that some of the other editors here have been pointing out, about class projects where the students appear not to understand some important things, and where it can be frustrating to try to explain it to them. Let me add an observation about the question of to what extent we should regard student editors the same as other new editors. I agree with some comments that we should avoid WP:BITE, but I think there's another side of the coin. WP:OWN also applies, and so no class should ever expect that "their" page will be off-limits to the rest of the editing community. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:32, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• I'm bewildered about what's happening here. People are pointing out legitimate concerns, only to be met with an attitude from the teacher and coordinator that suggests they believe they ought not to be questioned. I asked Jonathan here whether teachers or Wikipedians should clean up student plagiarism, and received no response. Instead he told me off for my previous questions to Grant. Here is my exchange with Grant so people can judge for themselves (and this is the only contact I have ever had with him):

• Nov 23: I told him that I'd been reverted when removing inappropriate student edits, and had found plagiarism in another article on his course. No response, though he did edit elsewhere.
• Nov 23: I posted on the course talk page advising students about the importance of in-text attribution when quoting or closely paraphrasing. No response.
• Nov 26: I told him I'd found more plagiarism on his course. This time I emailed him to alert him to the post. He responded here advising me to deal with it myself, saying he does not check for plagiarism, and that he would give students an F if someone else pointed it out to him.
• Nov 26: I explained that I didn't want to name the students, and advised him to make sure they know about the importance of in-text attribution. No response.
• Dec 7: I alerted Grant to the discussion here. No response.
• Dec 10: I followed up a post from Kevin asking that he (Grant) be more proactive, and again suggesting he stress to his students the importance of in-text attribution. No response.

If the education program wants us to treat them like any other Wikipedians, they have to behave that way. That means sticking to the policies, acting promptly when plagiarism or other serious issues are pointed out, and interacting with other Wikipedians. There can't be a separate enclave with special privileges. Jonathan, I'd appreciate a response to my question. Do you believe that the teachers or Wikipedians should look for and clean up plagiarism in student articles? I'm not talking about that particular course now, but for any of the courses you coordinate. SlimVirgin 02:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

User:SlimVirgin, my intention was not to tell you off, my apologies if my comments came across that way. I was merely trying to alleviate some of the pressure being placed on the professor. In terms of your other question, do I believe that all editors should abide by Misplaced Pages policies (and students by academic policies), of course my answer is yes. I am a huge fan of Misplaced Pages and what it stands for (that's why I volunteer) and wish that I could find more time to edit and grow as a community member (perhaps someday). Do I think that teachers should be responsible for correcting all student mistakes moved to the mainspace? Not an easy answer. We are teaching the profs to have their students work in sandboxes and correct their work there before it is moved into the mainspace. Not every professor has time for that process. Furthermore, the EP is not directing professors how to run their classes, we are merely providing guidelines. Ideally the students would be doing the work, and we are doing our best to encourage this. The system will not be perfect, and Wikipedians will get stuck with some (in some instances too much) of the work. While I can understand the frustration, another part of me sees this as just part of the wiki process. But perhaps that's just me being idealistic. Anyhow, it's late, hope that response was decent enough for now. One thing I'll mention quickly, keep in mind that the Wikimedia Foundation's EP is no longer the only game in town. The Association for Psychological Science, the American Sociological Association, and soon the National Communication Association will all have their own independent education programs. This is great recruitment for Misplaced Pages. With lots of new profs joining the system, established Wikipedians are going to have to figure out a way to deal with the unique challenges associated with class Misplaced Pages projects. There will be frustrations with newbies, and those of us working closely with the profs will do our best to encourage them to continue their double-duty (keep this in mind, course content + Misplaced Pages training... who's calling profs lazy?). Constructive strategies need to be advanced, and strategies that are pushing people away, however well-intentioned (i.e. see above), should be reconsidered, in my opinion. Jaobar (talk) 07:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Any collaboration between academia and community is, by necessity, a two way street. Both parties need to feel like their needs are being respected and that their grievances are being listened to. Currently, a large number of Wikipedians feel like those involved in the academic side of the education program are not respecting their needs, or listening to their grievances. You are worried about the retention of people like professors who are being attracted in through these programs; a lot of people here are worried about the retention of long time Wikipedians who are having to shoulder large amounts of the burden these programs can generate. Some people are going to be pushed away from Misplaced Pages over this no matter what happens; almost all strategies that any of us are advancing will involve some number people being pushed away from Misplaced Pages. Some of my strategies and approaches may mean that we retain slightly fewer professors than we otherwise would've. Some of your strategies and approaches will mean that we retain fewer well-established Wikipedians than we otherwise would've. Everything is a balancing act. Right now, I'm a lot more concerned about strategies that drive away Wikipedians than drive away professors, because for one thing, it's a hell of a lot easier to recruit professors than talented Wikipedians. I would ask you to step back and reconsider a lot of what you have said in your public comments on this board. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

A good point about wanting to maintain Wikipedians, though I'm still confused why 'mopping up' is perceived as a waste of time. Perhaps someone can explain to me why that is, I'm looking to learn. Jaobar (talk) 19:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Because if one sees errors, plagiarism, poor formatting, etc. in an article one cares about, and you think the person making the edits has harmed the article and doesn't even care about the same Wikipedian culture they are now an "invader" to your culture and value system and it can pain one. One can now feel like one has been punished to and compelled to do completely unnecessary and painful to look at grunt work. Biosthmors (talk) 19:51, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Goodness, it's all over this page. Have you been reading the other sections? Sorry to repeat, but ... Typically, when one is bringing a new editor up to speed, that new editor adds content in small pieces, they learn as they go. Typically, we aren't taking an entire sandbox dump of mostly unusable text that has to be checked for sourcing, copyright infringement, plagiarism, prose, grammar, style, etc. Typically we aren't dealing with walls of text that are duplicated elsewhere and don't belong in the target article, even if well written and sourced. When we are hit with a wall of faulty text from a new editor, all at once, dumped by surprise into an article from sandbox, it can take as much as 12 to 20 hours to check and clean it up. All of us have other articles (always with higher page view stats and more relevant to our readership) that we would prefer to be working on then some of the horribly obscure topics chosen by students. If we just revert the whole faulty mess (rather than doing the work to pick out the two or three salvageable sentences), we are accused of BITE. This is considerably harder and more work than dealing with a few lines of text added by a typical new user, where there is some payout in bringing the new user up to speed. If we take the time to explain each change, deletion, edit on talk, we know the student won't even come back to read it-- they never return after they get their grade. In other words, our time is diverted from working on pleasurable articles to cleaning up walls of text from which little can be salvaged and from which new collaborations will not result. All for nothing, since we aren't gaining new or better editors as a result. I don't mind mentoring new editors who will stay on and share in the burden of maintaining medical articles to standard; I do mind doing a prof's job for him or her. And I want no part in being the person responsible for a student's F; the prof should be following article talk and edit histories to know when plagiarism is removed. It's not my job to ruin some poor kid's life; the prof should be checking talk or edit histories when grading. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandy, would you agree that this is an accurate description of a poor experience with student editing, but that it doesn't necessarily describe all interactions with student editing? I've had some experiences that your description reminds me of, but also more positive experiences.

Generally I think it would help if people's language on this page reflected the variability in the classes and their expertise. It must be frustrating for, say, Sandy, to see the best of the classwork done by students touted as if there were no negative experiences; equally, I would think it is frustrating for someone like Kevin, who works with one of the best classes, to see descriptions of student work such as Sandy's above, which don't represent every case.

Sandy, you didn't say it did represent every case; you just described what a negative outcome looks like in response to the question asked, so I am not finding fault with your phrasing, just hoping to encourage everyone here to remember both the good and bad outcomes that have been seen. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:10, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is fair to say my frustration describes and should be limited to medical and psych articles (which have been heavily hit, btw-- perhaps in higher percentage than in other areas? I have no way of knowing ... ). I am aware of the one class of law articles that Kevin pointed out, and it does seem they are mostly good articles, but I haven't been exposed to the other successes we hear about. My entire experience has been negative ... and prolonged (these problems go back several years now). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

To answer your parenthetical question, this link, to one of the analyses, shows (I think) every course title that ran in Spring 2012. You can get an idea of the range of topics from the list. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:32, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Requiring students to use sandboxes

There seems to be a lot of agreement above that students should use sandboxes. One of the brochures for the program (here) suggests that students move their work out of the sandbox as soon as possible, shortly after they start writing it. I'd like to propose that this advice be changed.

Even experienced Wikipedians often work in sandboxes, and if it's a contentious article we might ask for consensus before moving it in place. It would be a good idea to regard all student essays as contentious in the same way, and to ask that they wait for a Wikipedian to move it into the encyclopaedia. As well as protecting Misplaced Pages, this would have the added benefit of not requiring them to release their work, which is something we should definitely not be forcing on them. Misplaced Pages functions on the basis that we're all here as free actors, and that if we choose to edit, we know our work is being released. But the students are not free actors, and are not choosing this for themselves, so editing direct to mainspace is neither in their interests nor in Misplaced Pages's. SlimVirgin 00:24, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

With many of the professors who I have worked with (or am in the process of working with,) interaction with the community is one of the explicit goals of the assignment. They understand that Misplaced Pages is a community of practice, and they want their students to actively engage with it wherever possible. Classes I work with do generally require students to use sandboxes if they are creating new articles until they are in 'good enough' shape to go live (in the same way I personally start my new articles.) Students in classes I advise are generally given the option of sandboxing work or working directly in main space if the articles they are working on already exist. I am also utterly perplexed by your suggestion that all student assignments should be regarded as contentious. Proportionally, very few student assignments are contentious. Some certainly are, but the vast majority of student assignments go by without a problem.

I definitely support students frequently working in sandboxes until their work is of mainspace quality, and would definitely advise all professors to advise the use of sandboxes until that point. But I don't support a categorical requirement that students work only in sandboxes, and frankly, if one was implemented for the official education program I would stop participating in the official education program and yet keep doing the exact same educational outreach at Berkeley that I've been doing all along. (I would strongly consider supporting a forcible sandboxing requirement for classes that have proven problematic, but only for classes that have already proven problematic. Although now that I think about it, I guess I'd consider supporting one for articles covered by WP:MEDRS, too...)

Also - every professor I have ever worked with has said, before assigning a Misplaced Pages based assignment, "If you're uncomfortable releasing your work under a free license, come talk to me after class and we'll work something else out." I can't say that's a universal among program participants, but it's something that is a universal among classes I work with. I'm not sure what you mean by saying that "Misplaced Pages functions on the basis that we know our work is being released" in this context - surely, students are at least as likely to be aware that they are releasing their work under a free license as the average new editor is, even if their professors don't explicitly mention it, since they go through the same signup process and see the same disclaimers on average page that new non-student Wikipedians do.

I also object to the clear distinction you draw between students and Wikipedians. I've participated in several education program classes, and I do a hell of a lot of other editing besides. When I rewrote most of Universal v. Reimerdes as part of a classroom assignment, I had already been editing Misplaced Pages for the greater part of a year iirc, mostly in a non academic context. Would you say that I should have waited for a "real Wikipedian" to approve of my edits to that page before making them? Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Kevin, I think you're an exception in many ways. Most of the students I've looked are struggling with these assignments (I suspect out of boredom as much as anything else), and have little or no experience as Wikipedians, and nor do their teachers. SlimVirgin 00:53, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Before I weigh in on Slim's proposal below, I'll add some general here. We keep hearing that students are or should be no different than any other "newbie", but they are. Most new editors begin slowly, adding a piece here or there, and we can educate them as we go, before too much damage is done. In the case of students, they often work in sandbox and then WHAM, a few days before term-end, the article (with no prior notice in most cases) is hit with a huge edit that typically comes from a sandbox and contains typically plagiarism, copyvio, poor sourcing, poor grammar, off-topic content, poor layout, previous correctly cited and written text removed in favor of poorly cited poorly written text, the works. Trying to educate a student all at once on a mess like the typical-- knowing the student will be gone in a few days-- places an unnecessary burden on the established editor. Usually there is only a sentence or two salvageable, but one is "bitey" if one just reverts the whole darn mess. The established editor instead has to spend up to 12 hours checking, removing, explaining on talk -- all to end up with just a sentence or two of new text. The notion that students evolve like regular editors and should be treated the same as any other newbie misses these points. A sandbox proposal has to deal with the problem of being hit with a huge wall of poorly written poorly sourced plagiarized text all at once. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:05, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

{{ec}I would agree that I'm am unusual, as far as students go, but I'm not the only person who has been in a similar situation, and any proposal intended to cover everyone has to cover unusual cases, too.

Have you looked through some of the articles listed at User:Brianwc? (I keep mentioning him just because he runs one of the more successful classes I can think of off the top of my head.) Would you agree that most (or all) of the articles listed on that page are of appropriate quality to be in Misplaced Pages's main space? Almost all of those articles were written by students without any previous engagement with Misplaced Pages. Some of them were sandboxed and some weren't, but even those that were sandboxed were pretty much all moved live without the feedback of a 'real' Wikipedian. That's 147+ pretty high quality articles in an area of Misplaced Pages that previously was under-covered (american internet law) that were created by students without pre-approval by 'real' Wikipedians. As far as I know, no student in his class has ever run in to any significant problem with a terribly below par article, an article getting AfD'ed, plagiarism, or anything of that nature. And most of his students prefer the assignment to a traditional term paper - he runs anonymous surveys after each class that look in to this, among other things.

In many ways, I probably see the most successful results of the education program, and you probably see the least successful. I think that we should both keep in mind that our experiences are not representative of the program as a whole, and that the real average experience is probably something in between what I perceive and what you perceive. Certainly, some classes run in to massive numbers of problems, and some run perfectly. But it seems to me that it would make a lot of sense to focus any proposals on classes that are on the less successful end of the program, instead of making generalized proposals that would effect all classes equally.

I have some instructional design materials used for past Misplaced Pages assignments that I think you would find interesting to look at, and that I think might make you feel differently about (at least parts of) the education program. I have permission to share them, but not permission to release them under a free license as posting them publicly on Misplaced Pages would require. Would you like me to email you copies of them? Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:13, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Kevin, that is at least the 3rd time on this page you have suggested people look at "some of the articles listed at User:Brianwc". If you have other good examples, I suggest you switch to them next time. Johnbod (talk) 04:21, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

You mean the second, right? Unless we're using something other than base ten. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:17, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Kevin, could you track down the figures for the number of education-program students who have become regular Wikipedians? You said they existed somewhere. I have no idea where to find them. SlimVirgin 02:01, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I'll ping someone at WMF about them. I'm pretty sure I've seen them before, but don't know where they are. But to point out again: that's also not the primary purpose of the GEP, from my viewpoint - and I'm pretty sure it's not a primary purpose of the GEP from their viewpoint, either. I'll ask someone from the education team to drop by here and explain the purpose of the GEP is from their viewpoint. (I'll also write up it's purpose from my viewpoint and from the viewpoint of the educators that I work with at some point in the next day or two, and post it here.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:23, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that would be appreciated. SlimVirgin 02:57, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I asked a similar question a few months ago, and was told unequivocally that editor retention is not the primary goal for the education program. I would be surprised if we are getting any significant amount of students staying on as productive editors; it's not zero percent, obviously, but I doubt it's anything like high enough to be worth it if that were the only goal. I'll let someone from the GEP answer for the WMF, but from my point of view the goals include adding quality material, particularly in underserved areas such as public policy, and increasing understanding of Misplaced Pages in the academic community. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I pinged Sage. He'll be stopping by this thread on Monday with some additional details. Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I've explained a bit in the "two questions" section above. I will try to find recent data on student retention (which is not a focus of the program) and professor retention (which is a goal).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:28, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposal

Specifically, the proposal is that students editing as part of the education program be asked to write their material in sandboxes. If they're editing part of an existing article, they can copy and paste that article into the sandbox and work on it there. Teachers are asked to provide a grade based on the student's changes to the sandbox version. This would mean that plagiarism and poor quality work would be entirely for the teacher to deal with.

Once the course is over (or once the material has been graded), if the students want to, they can ask that their work be moved into mainspace by a Wikipedian – who would say no if any plagiarism or poor use of sources is found, without having to search to find it all – and at that point if the students want to pursue DYK, GA or FA, that would be fine. With the course over and the article in mainspace, they'd be working on it as regular Wikipedians. The process would provide a good transition for them, from students forced to be here, to Wikipedians choosing to stay.

If it's an existing article, they could ask on the article's talk page whether there are objections to moving in the new version and wait for someone there to do it. Or the education program could set up a board similar to the one we use for paid advocates, where students ask that their work be moved over. This would mean the students would not be forced to release their work, and could request its deletion from their userspace when the course ends. SlimVirgin 00:50, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of this, per my post above explaining the problems with these huge edits from sandbox, with the caveat that they should STILL notify the article talk page in advance that they are working in sandbox. It is the burden of going through an entire, usually faulty, sandbox article that is overwhelming. If we knew in advance they were working in sandbox, we could guide them, it would be a better experience for everyone, and we may end up with more salvageable, correctly sourced and written text. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:03, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)For reasons I outlined above, if a requirement like this was put in place, I would stop participating in the 'formal' education program, and just do educational outreach on my own. For the classes that I personally work with, this would degrade the value proposition of the assignment for both the professors and students from their perspectives. I categorically oppose any requirement that treats student work differently from non-student work that applies to all educational assignments equally, although I would strongly support requirements (even much more strict requirements than this) that were applied only to classes that already had problems. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:13, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

(ec with Kevin) The main change is that the students would be asked never to edit mainspace at all since I believe (campus ambassadors correct me if I'm wrong) that the advice given to professors new to the program is currently to use sandboxes initially.

SlimVirgin's proposal is consistent with the view that student edits to mainspace are on balance negative, in terms of both quality of articles and burden on editors. I am not convinced that this is true, but if it were true I would support this and would in fact have a hard time supporting the EP at all. I think this is the core issue, because if the edits are a net positive, we should work on ways to improve the positive and decrease the negative edits.

I think there is a risk of selection bias with critics of the EP who have encountered poor student work. Imagine someone whose only exposure to IP edits is vandal reversion; such an editor is more likely to support banning IP edits. Sandy in particular has medical and psychological articles on her watchlist and those appear to be areas in which students are doing very poorly. (Sandy, I'm not suggesting you haven't considered that point; I'm using you just as an example.) Someone whose only exposure to student edits was one of the more successful classes would be unlikely to come to this noticeboard to ask what could be done to restrict student editing.

Before we determine if a restriction such as SlimVirgin proposes is worth it, we have to try to decide (as we try with IP edits) whether the student edits are a net benefit to Misplaced Pages. Sandy and Colin have pointed out flaws in the analysis linked above: it's not easy to determine how much work is needed to revert an edit, so quantification of the burden is hard; and for medical articles and psychology articles, added text with a technical-looking reference may not be reverted because it's not recognized as a bad edit if no qualified people are watching the article. Pointing out that these mistakes in the analysis are possible doesn't allow us to fall back on anecdotal support for our positions, though. I would like us to really try to come to a consensus on whether the net of all student edits in a given semester is a positive or negative for Misplaced Pages. It seems to me that has to be the first step.

(Added after ec): I agree with Kevin that I would absolutely support this method, or stronger methods, for classes known to have problems. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, I spent many hours tracking down the plagiarism for just a handful of articles on the course I mentioned above. It is extremely time-consuming. Some students are copy-pasting from websites, then going back later to tweak the writing a little so that if you do a Google search for the whole sentence it doesn't appear. And when it comes to books not previewable on Amazon or Google, you have to get them via inter-library loan. Very few Wikipedians would care enough to do this (and I hope anyone who has spent a lot of time on issues like this sends a bill to the university).

The work I did doesn't show up anywhere, and I suspect there's a huge amount of this going on. Bad edits appear on a Wikipedian's watchlist on an article they care about. They see it's education-program related, and therefore "protected." That means they're hesitant to revert outright, which is what would normally happen. And so they spend hours or days looking to see what can be salvaged, getting increasingly annoyed with the program and the Foundation. So what starts off as an outreach/editor retention program ends up discouraging the editors we already have. None of this is quantifiable. Necessarily, we have to rely on anecdotes. But there comes a point when anecdotes become data. SlimVirgin 01:46, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

@ Mike: just as the law class pointed out by Kevin is probably on the better end of the spectrum of student editing (see my post to Kevin on my talk about the law articles he asked us to look at, above), Mike is right that what I encounter is probably on the worst end. Every Blooming Psych Class out there thinks that editing some obscure bizarre symptom of a tic disorder is sexy, but the reason those articles are stubs is because there is very little that can be said about klazomania, for example. Oh, gee-- compulsive shouting-- that sounds like a fun article! Then they find there are no good sources, so they load it up with junk. It looks better in the end than what was there, but what was there before was brief but accurate. This is happening across all psych articles, though-- I just happen to get the most bizarre because my watchlist is heavily weighted to Tourette syndrome. If the blooming profs would just ask, or get their students to tag article talk, we could point them to good sources in advance. See more on my talk, response to Kevin. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:04, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I had a look at your talk page and agree that something targeted at either classes with problems or MEDRS/PSYCH classes (or both) might be a reasonable approach. What that something is, I don't know, but I agree sandboxes are a good suggestion. Like Kevin, though, I'd like to let the successes keep going as they are. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what SlimVirgin is saying, and experiencing lots of deja vu (as it appears does Sandy). However, I'm not keen on the totally-sandboxed approach. Part of the appeal of Misplaced Pages is instant publication to a huge audience. That's also the problem, though. I think it might also encourage students to entirely replace articles or sections rather than incorporate their changes into it (which often isn't a bad thing if the existing material is poor, but isn't the wiki way). It doesn't encourage the students to interact with other editors as they are isolated in their sandbox in userspace. Not that they do much interacting already, though. This means they aren't really working on a multi-user collaborative wiki, but merely writing a private article using some weird wikilinked markup language.

I don't think there are sufficient Wikipedians to act as gatekeepers for the publication step, nor would many of them have the resources (access to sources), time or inclination to do the role. Certainly in psych the ratio of students to wikipedians is very high, and if they cite some Canadian student textbook as their source then the chances anyone else has access to the source is essentially zero. I think most Wikipedians with standards would be unhappy about unleashing unpolished student prose on the world, and so would feel obliged to copyedit, wikilink and double-check the sources and possibly more. It would be quite a time-consuming task and one most Wikipedians would rather do on subjects they wrote themselves, or when working with a real Wikipedian who is requesting peer-review and actually intends to stick around for a while. In fact, it would be like a Wikipedian turning up at Peer Review with something they'd written, and instead of being guided into how they could improve the article and steered towards a better approach, they would then bugger off and expect the reviewer to finish the job for them.

We need to come back to the fundamental purpose of Misplaced Pages: to be an encyclopaedia, and the fundamental design of Misplaced Pages: a collaborative wiki. Misplaced Pages is not homework. The education program, if it is to serve WP's purpose, needs to align student edits and teaching supervision with that purpose and design. It seems clear to me the idea that volunteer Wikipedians would engage with the students in some synergistic way is busted. At the extreme, we have had classes who expect Wikipedian's to "mark" the work and thought that edit-retention would be a groovy way to judge whether a student had done good work, without the prof lifting a finger. I hope that's gone now. But I don't see evidence that supervisors are swiftly checking for plagiarism, nor that they would even know how to revert an article if they found some. It isn't trivial sometimes if left for a while and subsequent edits have taken place. If it is the case that Mike's team's analysis of student work/burden didn't check for plagiarism or MEDRS sourcing then I continue to think the jury is out on whether this programme is delivering any benefit to WP. One assumption I see repeated is that if the student added something that wasn't revertible then it must have improved the article. But sometimes all the student added was noise.

I don't really see how the student edit system can work unless the teacher and other supervisors are also Wikipedians. They need to be swiftly checking for plagiarism, for quality sourcing, for appropriateness of text. They need to know what makes a good article and what makes one suck. They need to have some personal appreciation for how to develop the existing wiki text into a better work. They need to know how to collaborate with other Wikipedians. Unless that happens, we've got the weird situation where the teachers are asking the students to do something they are personally incapable of doing, never mind doing to a higher standard so as to be able to judge. -- Colin° 09:32, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to correct one misapprehension. Colin is right that the quality and burden assessments have limitations, but I think it's not accurate to say that if a student edit is not reverted it's assumed to be positive. The quality assessment was a static assessment of the state of the article after the student's last edit. The content added by the student was evaluated to the extent that it was part of the article. If the student edits were poorly written or irrelevant the article would be expected to score lower. Assessors weren't required to check for plagiarism; when I assessed I occasionally did check, but usually did not (I never found any). I doubt if any assessors were MEDRS knowledgeable, so edits that violated MEDRS may have been scored as positive. For the burden assessment, every word of every student edit was looked at to see if it was beneficial as well as to see if it was reverted. I know little about MEDRS so I asked at WP:MED about some edits I thought might be in scope and got opinions on how to score those edits. However, there was no checking for plagiarism.

I think the limitations of the assessments are (a) they won't detect any plagiarism that might exist; (b) for complex cases they can't tell how much effort other editors put in to clean up student work; (c) they have difficulty with specialized topics such as medicine and psychology where an average editor can't easily assess the value of an edit. Of these, (a) is potentially the worst, since it is undetected, and I think we should try to estimate how widespread a problem it is. I've been thinking about SlimVirgin's comments on her experiences with finding and correcting plagiarism, and I think it would be worth checking a larger range of student edits, from the same sample set used in the burden and quality analysis, to see how much plagiarism was added there. If that analysis finds a significant amount of plagiarism or close paraphrasing I agree we have an issue that we have to fix. I'll try to set aside some time over the next couple of weeks to do a little of this analysis and will report back here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

To truly check, you have to go back to the first edit where the text was added, which might be back in sandbox somewhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:25, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, sorry my comment about the "not revertible == improvement" wasn't meant to be a comment on your team's quality analysis but was unfortunately positioned in my paragraph that it would look that way. I still think there was a tendency to equate more text = more comprehensive which isn't necessarily so. Wrt MEDRS, there's nothing special about that guideline so am puzzled if some of the problems medical wikipedian's see aren't widely repeated. I tend to think of MEDRS as mostly the application of WP:WEIGHT to a domain. Of all the kooky ideas people come up with wrt a subject, which ones deserve mentioning in this article? PubMed is wonderful but it means that folk have access to the primary literature and basic research in medicine from which essentially any conclusion or POV can be supported. Add to that the fact that academic writing (which the students are learning, and very often are told to practice on WP) cites the primary literature and frowns on citing the secondary literature (because it indicates the research wasn't thorough and the student writing and thoughts would not then be original). Add further that the undergraduate students are essentially ignorant of their subject. Mix together and you get a machine that generates superficially worthwhile text that when inserted improves its score. Then consider that often the added text is already present on Misplaced Pages in a better place in some other article. We end up with a higher score when in fact the reader is worse off. Colin° 19:49, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: Colin's second paragraph, a case in point: this Canadian psych class that ended in April. Most of the students were working in sandboxes; most of the sandboxes are still there, but haven't been touched by anyone. Will anyone ever mainspace those pages? I won't, because a) I don't know the topic, so can't easily figure out what material should be added to mainspace, and b) most of the sources are offline, and where I can access them they'd be incredibly time-consuming to check. I recently mainspaced another student article on a topic I'm at least somewhat familiar with and with online sources, but it still took a lot of time to spotcheck and clean up, and even now it's not a very good article. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:57, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Remember too that the person inserting the text takes responsibility for it meeting our policy requirements. That's a heck of a burden that I certainly wouldn't want to pick up unless these students were laying golden eggs. Colin° 19:54, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I think you have it exactly right. It's ridiculous to have teachers asking students to do something they're incapable of doing themselves. Everything else flows from that, and until someone gets a handle on this the psychology articles will continue on their downward spiral towards ultimate crapiness. Malleus Fatuorum 20:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

• In response to Kevin's and Colin's concerns, we could modify the proposal so that the students themselves move their articles over, if they want to, when the course has ended. This would mean:

• no live publishing during the course;
• students start new articles in userspace, and if editing an existing article copy and paste it over;
• teachers assess the changes made to the sandbox;
• when the course is over (or when the article has been graded), the students can decide what to do with it; they can request deletion or if they believe it's policy compliant can move it into mainspace;
• students moving material over when a course has ended are doing so as regular Wikipedians, not as part of the education program; they alone are responsible for their edits at that point, and we treat those edits as we would any other.

SlimVirgin 03:02, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Assessment of sources in articles edited by students in spring 2012 semester

I've started a student source assessment page. I've included instructions for how to add assessments, and done a few to make it clear what the approach is. I plan to work on this as I have time but would appreciate any feedback on the format and approach, and would also appreciate any help -- this is going to take me weeks if I do it on my own.

I'm including an analysis of all the sources in the given articles, regardless of who added each source. This is to avoid a subsequent debate along the lines of "well, the students only copied text from 2% of sources, and I bet that's better than the existing ratio". I'm only going to be checking sources available online, but I think this will constitute a large fraction of the work done. If anyone is able to check any of the offline sources, of course that would be very helpful.

So far I have found two errors, one by a student and one by an experienced Wikipedian. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Doing your source analysis on the existing text and existing sources will be an impossibly difficult task IMO. Also bear in mind for many subjects (e.g., psych) the "existing text" is heavily contaminated by previous student exercises. Limiting your sources to those only available freely online is a fatal flaw and likely to greatly underestimate the extend of the problem. The very fact that the students pick hard academic subjects, edit stubs nobody is watchlisting, and use paywalled or offline sources means that the copyvio issue is not being picked up by volunteer editors -- we need to shift what huge burden back to the educators. The question is whether these invited editors are improving Misplaced Pages and/or how we can ensure they do. I don't think that comparing student changes with existing material is helpful, or comparing students with newbies. A lot of Misplaced Pages is crap. We don't want more of the same crap. We want them to make Misplaced Pages better.

I'd be happy to help look at student additions + sources for medical subjects for a small sample of articles, provided my wikifriends can get me the sources. I'd also want to include in any new analysis whether the "new material" was really new and whether a new article was justified and encyclopaedic. Colin° 14:16, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm limiting my own analysis to resources available online, but if others have access to offline sources it would of course be better to look at those too. Thanks for the offer of help -- I will go through the list and suggest a couple of articles on your talk page.

I've been thinking all day about your comment that it's not helpful to compare students with the usual kind of new editors, and I'm going to disagree. (Sandy (somewhere else on this page) was right to say that there are important differences -- I agree with her basic point.) Consider the debate that re-emerges peridodically about IP editors -- should we forbid IP editing? Vandalism is far more often by IPs than by registered editors, but IPs as a group do more harm than good. We continue to allow IP editing because the community believes (a) it's important to uphold "anyone can edit", and (b) despite clear evidence of damage, IPs do more harm than good. I am concerned that if we are finally able to agree on some quantification of both the quality that students provide and the burden they inflict on the community, we will then disagree about whether the benefit is worth the price. I think the more data we have about how students compare with most editors, the better position we will be in to decide how best to engage with them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Students are not the same as any other new editor because: (a) they are forced to be here, unlike anyone else; (b) they are forced to release their work, unlike anyone else; (c) the only interest they have in their article topic often lies in the course credit, rather than in the topic itself; (d) they have little or no interest in Misplaced Pages, and any nurturing of them as new editors is likely to be time ill spent; (e) they have been made to feel part of a privileged group that does not need to follow policy/best practice. SlimVirgin 04:32, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Do you always speak in such sweeping generalizations? It makes so much of what you say inaccurate that it's hard for me to tell whether to take you seriously and engage or whether you are just here to spout off. Your point (c), for instance, is simply false, as I've seen in over 175 unique instances over several years. My students select the article that they would like to create or improve and so have an interest in the topic. Similarly for your point (d); it's simply false. While the vast majority of my students report having not edited Misplaced Pages before, nearly all of them express the view that they have wanted to do so in the past but have felt unsure about doing so, particularly based on technical ability to deal with the markup, or have simply wanted to edit but never gotten around to it. And your point (e) is also simply false. I urge my students not to contribute until we have finished many weeks discussing Misplaced Pages policies and I feel certain that they understand the community norms they are going to be expected to abide by. I've also met dozens of other faculty that participate in the Education program and know that each of them takes Misplaced Pages's policies seriously and only participate in these sorts of efforts in order to make a positive contribution working within the existing framework. When you broadly sweep all these people's hard work aside and make these statements that are simply untrue, I find it insulting. If you want to talk about specific cases where faculty and students have not lived up to the commitments asked of them, that could be productive, because there certainly are instances of problems, and I'm committed to finding ways to improve those situations. But if you just want to slander everyone with falsehoods, don't expect further responses. Brianwc (talk) 22:21, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry you found that comment too sweeping; you're right, I should have said "in the cases I've looked at," as I've tried to make clear in other comments. Your class has been raised several times as an exception (to the point where we've been asking for a second example of a class that produced good material). I've just looked at Misplaced Pages:USEP/Courses/Intellectual Property law (Brian Carver), and it's clear that if all classes were run like this, we'd have no problems. But they're not (far from it), and it's just a fact that Wikipedians who aren't involved with the education program are having to sort out issues that the teachers should sort out, or make efforts to prevent in the first place.

Still, even in your class (a) and (b) are likely to be true, and that makes a difference to people's attitudes. Did many of your class become Wikipedians? If not, that's fine (no reason they should want to), but please look at this from our perspective. We do this because we enjoy it and we think it's important. We enjoy nurturing potentially good articles and potentially good editors. Having to deal with the education program can be very demoralizing. The students don't (for the most part) interact, they don't seem that interested, they don't stay on, and their articles are often not improvements on what was there already. And so spending time on that is not a nurturing process for us. It is just a time sink, with no benefits at all, except for the teacher and the students (in terms of a course credit, but in the cases I've looked at, not clearly in terms of their education). Is it fair to expect Wikipedians to spend time on this? And yet we can hardly ignore it when articles appear on our watchlists that have been damaged. So we feel we're caught between a rock and a hard place. SlimVirgin 23:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

"Our data shows that students improve Misplaced Pages articles an average of 64 percent" and other nonsense

Sorry the following text is so long. The two formal student analyses are given so much weight by the Education Program that I think it is worth investigating them seriously. I hope you can bear with me.

I've been investigating the impressive soundbite: "Our data shows that students improve Misplaced Pages articles an average of 64 percent." which is listed at the Common misconceptions about the Misplaced Pages Education Program as a fact rather than a misconception. But it is the latter. The figure comes from the Public Policy Initiative assessment. Their results are shown here: Student Contributions to Misplaced Pages. They summarise this as

• Over the course of the project a total of 140 articles were randomly selected from the WikiProject United States Public Policy Course tab and assessed. 84 were pre-existing and 56 were new.
• There was 64% increase in all articles, the average score went up 5.8 points (9.0 before, 14.8 after)
• There was a 50% increase in pre-existing articles. The average score went up 4.8 points (9.7 before, 14.5 after)
• New articles had an average score of 15.4 which translates to an average B rating in the Misplaced Pages scale.

The exercise was repeated for Spring 2012 United States and Canada students(results here) with a different set of student work. They summarise this as

• On average, existing articles improved by 2.94 points—from 11.26 to 14.20—while for new articles students averaged a score of 13.55.
• In rough practical terms, the average class started from either nonexistent articles or (typically) weak Start-class articles, and ended up with C-class articles or strong Start-class articles.
• Altogether (new and existing articles combined), on average students improved articles by about 6.5 points, which is 0.7 points more than the average improvements made by students in the Public Policy Initiative.

Scoring

The articles were assessed on a point scale here that looked at Comprehensiveness (1-10), Sourcing (0-6), Neutrality (0-3), Readability (0-3), Formatting (0-2) and Illustrations (0-2). The total score can range from 1-26.

These scores are essentially subjective though there is guidance on what sort of score would be expected for each metric category. However, there is a tendency to bump up the score for any perceived shift in an area. Adding a point for Comprehensiveness when actually the increase in topic covering was negligible or even unchanged (just more noise). The score for Sourcing might improve because the added text was sourced but overall the article was still in a poor shape and its sourcing score should have remained. Adding one image to an unillustrated article could shift the score from 0 to 1 when in fact it should still have scored 0 on the scale. This natural bias to want to indicate the change on a crude scale can only be avoided by having the pre and post articles reviewed by different people. And since there is a big variation in scores by the reviewers, one would need a very large number of reviewers to average the results.

The articles are reviewed by non-subject experts. It is very difficult for a non-expert to judge the comprehensiveness, sourcing and neutrality of a topic. This is highlighted by some of the scoring for medical articles.

Since the scores are looking at different aspects of an article, adding them all together produces quite an arbitrary quality score. A different score could arise by a different weighting of the various scores or by including other metrics. For example, neutrality is a score point but not generally an issue with many of these articles. Far more likely an issue is WP:WEIGHT (which is part of NPOV) which concerns the balance of the article wrt topic issues. Are we writing too much about one aspect and not enough about others? The assessment didn't look at plagiarism which is a huge problem and very hard to analyse with out good access to the sources and a lot of time. The assessment didn't look at Misplaced Pages's comprehensiveness on the topic outside of the one article.

Looking at the raw data for Spring 2012 United States and Canada students one can see a large variation student improvement scores depending on what they start with. It is very easy to score a high delta when working on a stub or start class article but much harder for C or B class articles. None of the students worked on GA, A or FA class articles. The average point improvement ranged from 4 down to 0.5 depending on what class you begin with.

Results

For existing articles, the PPI assessment found a 4.8 point improvement and US&Canada found a 2.94 point improvement. However, all I think one can honestly retrieve from this is that both are above 0. If many students had picked C or B class articles to begin with, then the improvement would probably be less than 1 point on average. If they had all expanded stubs and starts, the improvement might be 50% higher. If the scoring system had been stricter or differently weighted or included other factors, the numbers would shift again.

For new articles, it makes absolutely no sense to compare total scores. Of the 26 points, half (sourcing, neutrality, readability, formatting) make no sense for a non-existent article. The other points (comprehensiveness, illustrations) could be rated at 0 for non-existent articles though this rather assumes the information wasn't on Misplaced Pages anywhere before the article was created. Which in fact is a big problem for new student articles and article expansion, and something the assessment didn't look at. Therefore the statements that there was a 5.8 point and 6.5 point improvement in all articles seen by these two assessments is nonsense. The former figure is behind the "students improve Misplaced Pages articles an average of 64 percent" which is a mathematically naive calculation totally at the mercy of the mix of new and existing articles in the dataset: the percentage improvement tends towards infinity as you remove existing articles from the dataset.

I agree that "percent improvement" doesn't make much sense with this assessment. I'll remove it from that "common misconceptions" page. (Even beyond the mix of new and existing articles, quality isn't measured linearly by that scale; the early points are easy, while moving a few points up at the high end may actually be a much bigger contributions. From my perspective, the assessments are mainly useful for a) figuring out whether or not articles improved, and b) getting a rough, high level view of how much student work improves articles. The calculated numbers (average improvement and so on) aren't straightforward to interpret, but the shifting histograms for existing articles (and considered separately, the final quality histogram for new articles, to show the quality distribution of the new articles students write) tell the story pretty clearly.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Conclusion

These analyses have essentially concluded that students wrote stuff about a topic. When expanding missing or short articles, they could write unreadable, inaccurate, unsourced text and still improve their score. When expanding long articles, they could have written "Jason is gay" and not changed the score. Their text could be completely plagiarised and still improve the score. Their "new material" could already be present on Misplaced Pages and still improve the score.

I think the Education Program should be asked to remove their "improved 64 percent" statement as mathematical nonsense, and the other numbers should be treated with scepticism. Further analysis of the student edits is required:

• Was the text copy/paste or otherwise plagiarised.
• Was the "new material" actually new for Misplaced Pages.
• Is this new article actually encyclopaedic or just a student essay.

I am concerned that the student work appears most effective when the create new articles or expand stubs. Sooner or later, the psych undergrads are going on run out of ways of entitling their essay on the Big 5 or colour perception as a "new article". The effect is a fragmentation and duplication of information on Misplaced Pages. The emphasis on a self-contained piece of writing goes against the hyperlinked collective work that makes Misplaced Pages strong. That the students also fail to interact with other editors or join projects exacerbates the silo effect. Add to this the problems MathewTownsend notes above when trying to AfD these unneeded duplicate articles. For an example of these issues see Talk:Myoclonic epilepsy#Big problems with this article where student edits would have been scored very highly on the above assessments but in fact had extensive copyvios, duplicated existing better material or were completely off-topic. Colin° 13:48, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Contribution analysis aside, it's pretty clear from experience that it's much easier for newcomers to make tangible, unambiguous improvements in areas where Misplaced Pages has poor or non-existent coverage. It's important, of course, for the topic to actually be poorly covered rather than covered well under a different title or a section of a broader article; to that end, the training and guidance material for both students and professors emphasizes the importance of exploring Misplaced Pages's related coverage beforehand to make sure students are duplicating what's already been covered, and this is part of what many Misplaced Pages Ambassadors do, helping the class figure out where their efforts can fit into the project. (That's also one reason why professor retention is a key goal; as a professor becomes more and more familiar with the coverage in the area their students will work on, he or she can better guide students to areas where Misplaced Pages really does need expanded coverage.) However, there is something of a benefit even when students somehow find a new place to add material on a well-covered topic: it points out the difficulty of finding that coverage, and lets us improve our redirects and internal linking. (Not that this makes it worth all the effort, but if students aren't finding what they wanted to write about, some readers are probably also failing to find it when they go searching.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Hm. I don't know. We could beat ourselves up about poor search results or redirects but I suspect students just aren't looking. Take the Myoclonic epilepsy example. Previously the article was a stub like this. Now myoclonic epilepsy is just a category in a hierarchical system of organising epilepsy disorders, not a disorder one actually gets diagnosed with. So there's not a huge amount to say about it. The students repeated existing work on myoclonus, progressive myoclonus epilepsies and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. The first two are wikilinked from the existing tiny article, so there's not much excuse for not spotting them. The latter was completely irrelevant to the topic and has its own article -- not hard to find either. Wrt to plagiarism in that example, the student thought that by citing the source that was sufficient to get away with just copying the material. So clearly the three students working on that article weren't really prepared to work on it. Is that a problem with that class or just those students? I certainly don't think we can blame ourselves for it or that it points out flaws in the existing material and linking. Colin° 16:24, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that students should not be encouraged to write new entries without the requisite knowledge (which should also be known by their professors). I wonder how often a professor gives an insightful comment at a student-article AfD, by the way? One good thing. ASMR/Autonomous sensory meridian response was getting hits despite not existing. Now thanks to a student's interest (and my help) we have a (probably) OK article that has been getting over 700 hits daily for the past three days. Biosthmors (talk) 16:35, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

(ec) True enough. I've seen a fair number of cases where the process of removing duplicate work led to improvements in findability, and others like you describe where students (apparently) simply didn't look. If you notice classes where this is common, leave a message here so someone can reach out to the professor.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

There's a missing step here; one thing is whether the existing content is limited, another is whether sources exist to write about a given topic. If the profs would encourage students to reach out-- not only in choosing a topic, but in asking which sources can be used to expand a topic-- it would save everyone a lot of time. I'm constantly frustrated that in some cases, good sources exist, the students often have university library access, but they generate off-topic content from whatever sources they come across. I could have pointed them in advance to good sources. I eeked an article out of student work at klazomania (an obscure topic about which basically nothing is written) by allowing selective use of primary sources. That article looks like a good student result: it's not. What it actually is is dozens of hours of my time spent cleaning up an article on such an obscure topic that only one sentence in one review exists and that barely warranted more than a definition; I could have better spent my time elsewhere, and the students could have better spent their time expanding something useful (to our readers) from high quality sources. Except for the hits it gets because I point to it as an example, it will never get more than 20 hits per day. One way forward in this dilemma is to get (at least in the med realm) the profs to understand MEDRS, and get them to include as one of their first steps in the assignment for students to list the sources they plan to use on article talk, and do that relative to WP:MEDMOS (suggested article organization). For example, I plan to use X source to write about Diagnosis of condition Y. That will allow us to head off a lot of wasted time at the pass. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I think there are cases where a professor, or students, would benefit greatly from asking for feedback on article selection, or sources, ahead of time. Certainly in the case you mention you could have saved everyone some time. I don't think this is something we can build in to course syllabi, though, because there won't always be a knowledgeable and available Misplaced Pages editor to respond. In fact, I see this problem with a lot of suggested solutions to issues that have arisen with student-editing; we can't assume ambassadors (or other editors) will do anything in particular, because they're volunteer labour. Ambassador performance has been enormously variable -- ask the professors. They can be a great asset (and often are), but any process that relies on Wikipedians interacting with classes in a certain way is going to be unreliable. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I think ambassadors should attempt to help professors refine sylabi. I mean, isn't that what they signed up for, to increase communication and the benefit to both parties (academia and Misplaced Pages)? If they're not willing to do that, then remove them from being an ambassador for incompetence? Biosthmors (talk) 00:48, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

All I'm trying to say is that it's not scalable to build a process on Misplaced Pages out of compulsory tasks performed by volunteers. We can't commit to a professor that Joe Editor will show up, because Joe is a volunteer. Ambassadors can be (and almost always are) very helpful in many ways, not just refining syllabi -- but the class on the other side of the computer screen is a real class, with real students getting real grades, and I don't want to design a process that harms those students when ambassadors drop out, as some always do. Ambassadors should be part of the solution but they can't be critical to it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I'm just saying if an ambassador is unwilling to communicate with a professor, then they are no longer acting as an ambassador, and they should be removed from whatever list of ambassadors they are on. Ambassadors should be "fired" if they are not performing up to a basic level of performance. No? Biosthmors (talk) 01:42, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's definitely the case. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 07:21, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, it doesn't have to be an ambassador necessarily, but I think there does need to be an experienced Wikipedian involved at some point early in the process, if we're assuming that the students will have a viable and mainspace-able product. To give you an example, last semester I reviewed some student proposals for articles they wanted to work on. The prof had already agreed the articles involved needed work and that sources were available - everything you'd expect a responsible prof to do - but I vetoed two right away. Why? One involved articles in the race & intelligence area, the other articles around abortion. As a Wikipedian, I knew throwing students in discretionary-sanctions areas was likely to end in disaster, but a non-Wikipedian prof would be hard-pressed to figure it out in time to avoid issues. I thought that was part of why point 2 of the Participation Requirements was imposed? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Well enjoy neuroscience and race, an article from "my class" this semester! (I hope it's good. Grimace.) Biosthmors (talk) 06:51, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, I agree that's why point 2 is there, and perhaps I overstated the case. You're right that advising the professor to avoid abortion articles is the sort of thing a Wikipedian will know instantly, and that's a good reason for getting an ambassador involve. What I am really arguing against is any situation where at some point in the class, it becomes necessary for the ambassador, or some other Wikipedian, to complete some tasks in order for the course to be a success -- e.g. review GAs, review articles, submit or support DYKs. Professors who develop direct relationships with Wikipedians, as some have done, can ask for favours as any other Wikipedian would, but I don't want a situation where the professor turns to the EP and says, for example, "You promised someone would do a peer review on all twenty-five of my students' articles by the end of the semester". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 07:21, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Biosthmors (talk) 07:28, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Medicine

Can we get a notification at WikiProject Medicine (and here) on the classes that will be starting for Spring 2013 and will (or are likely to) fall under the scope of that project? Productive communication with those professors now, before the assignments are ossified, could have tremendous payouts in reduced headaches for next semester. Best. Biosthmors (talk) 19:30, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure. Also, a group of Ambassadors and Wikipedians will be consulting professors on their assignment design, and one of them is very involved in WikiProject Medicine. I will ask him to make note of any professors he works with who fall under the scope. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Jami! And an incomplete and growing list is OK (and preferred) by me. Thanks again. =) Biosthmors (talk) 19:45, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Chapel Hill and Federal Writers Project

FYI: there is a discussion about new articles created as part of a classroom project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There are a number of recent pages about participants in the Federal Writers' Project which appear to be outside the scope of WP. I've offered to contact the instructor and if needed transwiki import the pages to Wikiversity. It may also be desirable to contact the instructor about any potential future projects to insure that new content is within our guidelines and to offer assistance. --mikeu 20:37, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Good articles

We recently got flooded with biology related Good article nominations, most of which seemed reasonable I will admit. I was just wondering if we can expect anymore anytime soon. We are already overburdened with nominations from regular editors and like many other projects lack reviewers so wont be able to handle multiple courses at once, especially if reviews are expected in a couple of weeks. I recall a discussion some time ago (not sure where) about a pre-screening process for student articles that they should go through before nomination. I have done a very superficial review of some of the recent articles that have been submitted and left a few tags. I am thinking that if the tags are not addressed in a timely fashion (say a week) it can safely be assumed that the nominators won't respond to a review so the articles can be quickfailed. Would there be any objections to this approach? AIRcorn (talk) 23:02, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that's more than fair. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:35, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Would it not make sense to ask that students not nominate articles for DYK and GA? Wikipedians are already stretched, and these articles can be highly problematic – much more so than articles from ordinary new editors, in part because the students don't intend to hang around, and in the vast majority of cases seem not to care about Misplaced Pages (and that's fine; there's no reason that they should). I saw one article recently nominated for GA that contains plagiarism. But finding it is time-consuming, so there's a higher-than-usual risk here of articles containing it being awarded GA status. SlimVirgin 03:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that neither should be required, but I was considering proposing DYKs or GA status as an extra credit possibility for extra motivated student editors in "my class" starting Fall 2013, assuming I'm still active. Biosthmors (talk) 03:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Biosthmors, I think you should definitely not award extra credits for that. Doing so means students are motivated to nominate work that they may know is substandard (e.g. copied from elsewhere), and it also means that that credit depends entirely on overstretched volunteer labour. (I am speaking in general here; I know nothing about your particular courses.)

Please don't take this post the wrong way; teachers and coodinators are clearly feeling they are being criticized too much to judge by some of the responses above. But I really think this whole business of relying on volunteers needs to be considered from an ethical perspective. If you're depending on volunteers who have stepped forward to volunteer for the program, that's fine, but relying on ordinary Wikipedians who haven't made that explicit commitment strikes me as very problematic.

I think we also ought to evaluate whether the program is educating the students in their chosen topics (and not just teaching them how to edit Misplaced Pages). SlimVirgin 03:56, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it is a good idea at all to have credit or marks relying on a GA assessment. The process is highly variable in terms of reviewer quality and timeliness of reviews. It is not really fair on the reviewers to pressure them with contributing to a students grade either (I recall a situation where a reviewer was told that if the article didn't pass the student would fail). AIRcorn (talk) 04:09, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I remember that one, too. I believe the student told the GA reviewer that s/he would fail the course without the GA. Lovely position for the GA reviewer to be in. It was all at the very last minute, too (problematic considering the GAN backlog). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

If a similar issue recurs and you don't feel comfortable dealing with it, please bring it to my attention personally. People actively involved in the program have definitely been discouraging the use of GA's as grading points, and if any professors are still doing so, I'd like to reach out to them personally and try to explain the problems involved in doing so. If a situation arises where an article nominated for GA is obviously unacceptable but the student says their grade depends on it, after reaching out to their professor with an adequate explanation, I would also be okay reaching out to the student, explaining why their article won't pass, encouraging them to discuss the matter with their professor or grade appeals process people, and then, ultimately, failing the GA. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:54, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I won't make it a class-wide announcement then. By the way... create WP:Assignments for student editors? Let's document this wisdom in an essay? Biosthmors (talk) 06:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Ethical issues

There are a number of ethical issues involved here, and I wonder whether the ethics committees of the universities have been consulted. Some of my concerns are:

• forcing students to write their essays in public, and expose themselves at a vulnerable age to public criticism;
• forcing them to write in mainspace and release their work, which means they can never detach themselves from it (if they have plagiarized extensively, this could have consequences for them later on, and their real names are known to classmates and teachers);
• relying on overstretched and often reluctant volunteer labour;
• requiring Wikipedians to name individual students when discussing poor edits or plagiarism, with teachers saying they can't fix the articles without individual examples;
• teaching students how to edit Misplaced Pages, rather than about their chosen topic, and perhaps not teaching them about WP thoroughly so that they inevitably make mistakes;
• not paying sufficient attention to the differences between learning scholarly writing and learning how to edit WP; they are very different activities, especially in the humanities, where student essays are supposed to teach people how to develop an argument;
• relying on Wikipedians to award GA status and thus an extra course credit, with students complaining that without it they will fail.

To what extent, if any, were the ethical issues discussed with outside bodies when the program was set up? If those discussions didn't take place, does that need to be rectified by (for example, and this is just a suggestion) inviting comment from the universities? SlimVirgin 04:58, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Slim. Please understand that I'm replying not only in an entirely personal capacity here, but can absolutely only speak for the classes I've been directly involved in myself - in other words, even more narrowly than I normally can. Because I think a lot of these points you bring up deserve specific discussion, I'm going to sign each of my responses, so that anyone can start a more narrow conversation about any particular point I say, rather than having to thread their questions/answers/comments at the end. I've written this without proofing much, but I'm hoping it contains some useful insights, both for you and other people. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• To deal with your first point: the fact that student work is open to public criticism has been something that has brought up in numerous discussions I've had with professors. It's generally been brought up as a good thing, not as a bad one. To many professors, one of the most exciting things about Misplaced Pages-based assignments is that it allows their students to interact with a community of practice, and to receive criticism and praise from outside observers. Much of academia outside of undergraduate education is focused around communities of practice, and a lot of professors think it's important to begin to develop the ability to deal with this sort of interaction in undergraduates. This hasn't been cleared by a formal ethical committee or anything of that nature, but multiple respected departmentheads and instructional design people have seen no issues with it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• To deal with your second point: all professors who I have worked with, and all professors who I have talked about working with, have agreed that it's important to give students the ultimate choice about whether or not they'd like to release their work under a free license (which is a necessity when contributing to Misplaced Pages.) One of the first things said in every class I've helped out with directly or witnessed has been "Come up to us after class if you're uncomfortable releasing your work freely, and we'll come up with an alternative assignment for you." A couple students have taken advantage of this offer, but not many. Most students (and again, I mean most students in classes I have worked with or observed) are actively excited about the idea that their projects, instead of being discarded at the end of the semester, can be openly released and potentially benefit society in a significant way. I would agree 100% that it would be an absolute best practice to give uncomfortable students a way to opt for a different assignment. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• The advice in one of the handouts is that they should go live soon after they start writing, but I wonder whether they're giving informed consent to that. For example, are they told that they lose all control over it once it's in mainspace, that their nicknames might lead to real names, and that if they add a lot of plagiarism, it has the potential to mark them in public as dishonest? I suppose I doubt that a fully informed student would reject the option of having their work deleted after the course, which they could request if they stick to a sandbox. SlimVirgin 17:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• Again, I can only speak for the classes that I am personally involved in, but in the classes I am personally involved in: yes, they are. Before students make a single edit on Misplaced Pages (let alone one in mainspace,) they've had the license terms explained to them (including the fact that anyone can change their work on Misplaced Pages and reuse it elsewhere,) they've been given the option of using pseudonyms (and warned about reusing pseudonyms from other sites,) and have been educated about the potential lasting real-life complications that plagiarizing on Misplaced Pages can entail. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:02, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

• But are they told: "You can ignore all this advice, write your essay on a user subpage – where you retain control over it – have it graded there, then request its deletion, or move it to mainspace at that point only if you want to"? SlimVirgin 16:36, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

• They are fully informed of the implications of contributing to the main space of Misplaced Pages, and are told they if they are not fully comfortable with the implications of contributing to the main space of Misplaced Pages, an alternate assignment will be made available to them that will not result in them receiving a lower grade when compared to their classmates who have chosen to contribute to Misplaced Pages. They are not given your option, because in many cases, in the view of the professor, that would defeat the pedagogical aims of the assignment. We are definitely now in the realm of pedagogy, and, ultimately, pedagogical decisions must rest in the hands of professors and not Misplaced Pages or the WMF. (I do know that I tend to be far more involved in instructional design than most Wikipedians involved in this sort of project are, because I don't believe educational assignments can fully succeed without the involvement of an experienced Wikipedian in assignment planning at an early stage. So, again, don't take my answer as an answer that applies to anyone but the set of classes I deal with.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:56, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

• Your third and fourth points are both complicated, and I don't think I can give them an answer here that would do them justice. I think your fourth point, especially, is a point that needs more discussion to occur. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

  I'll chip in on the third point, "relying on overstretched and often reluctant volunteer labour". I don't think there should be any such reliance. Courses should be designed so that the outcomes are positive even if there is no interaction by the community at all. I think interaction is desirable, and it should be positive when it happens, but the professors should not assume it's going to happen. That includes expecting GA and DYK nominations to be reviewed, for example. Ambassador volunteer effort is a little different in that it is explicitly committed to the course, but not every course ends up with an active ambassador. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 07:14, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• Your fifth point is interesting, and is one that is frequently brought up in my discussions with professors. Classes I have facilitated or discussed facilitating have kind of fallen in to two realms: half of them want to ensure that the Misplaced Pages component of their assignment doesn't actively distract from the main topics of their courses, and want to (and do) take steps to ensure that their classes remain about their original subjects, instead of turning in to Misplaced Pages 101. The other half of classes - and this kind of ties in with your sixth point - have actually seen learning about Misplaced Pages as an important part of the subjects of their course. College definitely exists to teach students about their fields of study, but many professors also believe that one purpose of college is to teach students life skills that cannot be directly linked to any one class, such as how to understand and interact with new media sources such as Misplaced Pages. Professors who hold this view point tend to view "learning how to use Misplaced Pages" as an active and important goal of their Misplaced Pages-based assignments. (Many professors also feel that by teaching their students how to contribute to Misplaced Pages, their students will be able to be more discriminating consumers of Misplaced Pages in the future, better able to separate the wheat from the chaff in the future (and view this as an important thing.)Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• I think my last bullet actually addressed a lot of your sixth point to, so I'll just skip on to your seventh. In every class I have facilitated, or discussed facilitating, this has come up. Any successful professor participating in the program must necessarily understand the difference between scholarly and encyclopedic writing. Many professors believe that teaching students how to write well must extend to non-scholarly forms of writing, and believe that teaching students how to write in an encyclopedic fashion is an important benefit. Although nothing has come to fruition yet, I'm in active discussion with a group of people who teach reading and composition courses at my school about trying to integrate Misplaced Pages-based assignments in to their curricula, specifically because they realize that encyclopedic writing is very different from scholarly writing, and think that they would be doing students a disservice if they did not teach them how to approach both sorts of writing. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

  (Kevin, did you misnumber these?) Just a note to concur with Kevin; the five or ten educators I've communicated with about this have all been very clear, and very positive, about the fact that encyclopedic writing is not what students usually are asked to do. In fact this was the core reasoning behind a suggestion I've heard from a couple of academics that on-campus knowledge about editing Misplaced Pages should reside in writing centres, which I gather exist at a lot of US universities, rather than within specific academic disciplines. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 07:14, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• The point of a student essay is to show that you have learned about a topic within your field – which involves reading its secondary literature – that you can produce a good piece of expository writing, and (in the humanities) that you can advance a position. That involves making your way through the set reading list, then structuring a reply to an essay question the teacher sets to test your knowledge of that source material, a reply with a beginning, middle and end, and one that accurately addresses the question.

  It's difficult to see how students are taught those skills by being told they can choose their own topic (vaguely within field X) and their own sources, which are often websites, then adding a few paragraphs to articles that already exist. SlimVirgin 16:24, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

  I think we have to allow the teachers the leeway to make a pedagogical decision here. If they understand what kind of writing Misplaced Pages requires (and so far I've not encountered any teachers that did not understand this) it's their decision as to whether that's an appropriate way for their students to learn the material. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:27, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• Your last point, I agree, is an issue. No course should require students to nominate their articles for GA status, and any course that does so should be actively discouraged from doing so. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• Everyone here seems to agree on that point, so where can we make clear to the teachers and coordinators – not only that they not require it, but preferably that they don't encourage it either? SlimVirgin 16:24, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing these issues up, and I hope my answers shed some light on your questions. One thing that is worth keeping in mind is that, ultimately, professors and universities are responsible for their decisions regarding assignment design and similar issues. I definitely think we should establish a clear set of best practices, but many of the points you brought up should be (and frequently are) thought about and discussed by the faculty involved in these assignments before they commence, and some of them may be more in their realm to decide than ours. Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Regarding your second point (and to some extent your first), I got the ethical willies when I discovered that students in at least one class are REQUIRED to edit under their real names. See User talk:Biosthmors/Intro Neuro#AFC or not?. Is that appropriate? --MelanieN (talk) 17:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

No, that's definitely not appropriate. Not only is no one on WP required to use a real name, people are actively discouraged. That would particularly apply to young people. Do you know who the professor is? SlimVirgin 17:19, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

User:Biosthmors is the ambassador, it would be best to work through them. Biosthmors defended the practice. --MelanieN (talk) 17:33, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Slimvirgin - First I would challenge your characterization that this is a list of ethical issues, but rather is a list of pedagogical issues that every instructor must deal with. These discussions are difficult in a way because the WMF is indeed transferring management of the US/CAN EP to an independent entity. The planning for that entity is still on-going, but it involves a diverse group of seasoned Wikipedians and academics. But out of that planning has come the realization that the use of WP in the classroom as a teaching tool is here to stay for one reason: the movement within academia for Information Fluency is strong and WP is a tool perfectly suited to advance it. The new EP recognizes that and captures that in this statement within its strategy: Enterprise Purpose. I personally believe the early years of the EP haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to using WP as a tool in the classroom. As we move forward with the new EP, we have to find and employ the most effective pedagogy using WP to help professors, librarians and other academics achieve their learning objectives without overburdening WP itself. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:12, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I despair when I read glowing language like this discussing the program goals, so out of touch with what so many established editors are experiencing, particularly when these kinds of posts end with one minor recognition of the serious "overburdening" of established Wikipedian editors. If these programs are going to grow, the few medical editors we have trying to deal with bad medical information are more likely to give up, as I did for almost nine months. I want to add meaningful content, not be an unpaid TA to some professor who doesn't know Misplaced Pages and expects me to do his/her teaching job and clean up after students. If any of those students stayed on as valuable editors, perhaps being an unpaid TA would be more enjoyable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:24, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree it is often a tremendous burden to those who care about article quality, which I do. I want to reduce it. WP:Education noticeboard#WikiProject Medicine anyone with knowledge? Biosthmors (talk) 18:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

@ SandyGeorgia – My post above nor this comment isn’t intended to be personal, but personalizing comments is sometimes necessary to achieve any sense of understanding. First, the comment above was intended to challenge Ethics vs Pedagogy and you didn’t address that. What you did however in both your lead and edit summary is clearly express frustration. I think I recognize and appreciate where the frustration comes from—I despair when I read glowing language like this discussing the program goals, so out of touch with what so many established editors are experiencing, particularly when these kinds of posts end with one minor recognition of the serious "overburdening" of established Wikipedian editors.. So I would ask, on a personal level: What specifically would ease your despair, ease your frustration? Over the next few months, my fellow MSU Campus Ambassadors and I will be working with two MSU professors to plan the use of WP in their courses for the Spring term. What should I be doing with these professors that I haven’t already done in previous terms to ease your despair since I am so out of touch with the issues facing the EP? As for glowing language and program goals, I am all about solutions. Recognizing problems is the easy part, it is the solutioning that is challenging. So help me support next terms MSU Misplaced Pages related classes without overburdening the Misplaced Pages community by telling me how to ease your despair.--Mike Cline (talk) 18:25, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I think (hope) I've expressed on this page already many ideas I have for ways to improve the sense of despair I have, and I'm editing Bio's page (Misplaced Pages:Assignments for student editors) now, with what I hope are suggestions that will help. I guess the lingering despair is that no matter how much we "squawk", when the next term-end approaches, we find more of same. And there is more than we (medical editors) can keep up with, and it is keeping us from more meaningful work. I'm afraid that the page that Bio just started, and that I'm editing, will end up being another unread handout. My greatest despair is not about the students; it's about the professors. If the students were appropriately guided by their profs, mentoring them to well written articles could be such a joy-- the kind of work I used to enjoy above all on Wikipeida. So, I guess my bottom line answer to you is, how are you going to get the profs to read or care about "the rest of us" out here and the effort we are putting in to giving feedback for improvement? I guess if you could get one thing across to profs, it would be ask them to engage established Wikipedians before choosing topics, sources, etc, so that less of our time would be wasted. And while I appreciate and respect your comments about personalizing discussions, I feel compelled to add that seeing Joabar's attitude on this page really added to the despair :( :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:33, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, Mike, I think what maybe hasn't been coming across to the professors adequately (and therefore not to the students either) is that we're not their...well, "support staff" is the best term I can think of. That is, we are providing them a venue to do work, and we're happy to accept and polish up their work, but we're not here to finish their work if they're too inexperienced, behind on their assignments, irresponsible, or whatever to do it themselves. Community energy is a finite resource, and they should be mindful that they (or any other person/group/project) aren't entitled to a share of that bigger than anyone else - perhaps even a smaller share, since the whole point of an organized program is that it should be able to support itself, cleanup- and supervision-wise. That, I think, is main source of the community fatigue/despair about the EP; we (non-EP-associated editors) see ourselves as being put upon by these neverending tides of classes plunking down half-done (in the best cases) or unacceptable (in the worst) work, with what appears to be little regard for the fact that by doing so, they are diverting resources away from everything else that needs to get done. This is absolutely not to say that the message should be "Pfft, the community ain't gonna help you" or "you and your newbies aren't welcome here", but the message does need to get through to them that if they want to make use of the community when its help is needed, they need to not exhaust the community by asking it to do tasks they should be doing for themselves. And like Sandy, I think the burden of that falls on the professors. They are the ones sending often-unprepared students to us, and they are the ones who sometimes seem to think we're here to do their grading and analysis for or alongside them, so they need to be the ones holding their students' hands when hand-holding is needed. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:45, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

@Fluffernutter – I couldn’t agree with you and Sandy more. It is all about how educators chose to use WP as a tool in the classroom to further their learning objectives and information fluency of their students. As the volume of scholarly work on the efficacy of WP in the classroom increases, so will its use in the classroom increase. It is a tide that won’t turn. We can ride the tide or fight the tide. Our job (actually our opportunity) as Wikipedians is to guide academia in a manner that maximizes the benefit to WP (the optimistic approach) or minimizes the adverse impact on WP (the pessimistic approach). I certainly hope the new EP will take the optimistic approach and find ways to harmonize the efforts/norms of the Misplaced Pages community (EP and non-EP volunteers) with the norms and learning objectives of our academic partners. If we can’t make WP a useful tool in the classroom without adversely impacting the growth of the encyclopedia, then we will have failed. It all comes down to providing the right resources, in the right places, at the right time to improve the day-to-day interface between the classroom and WP. I know experienced Wikipedians that would probably be utter failures in serious academic teaching and I know excellent Professors who aren’t cut out to be Wikipedians. The new EP has to find ways to harmonize these extremes in an overall productive way for WP. We have plenty of successes to build on and plenty of mistakes to learn from, so let’s get on with building a better EP while not forgetting the mistakes of the past. --Mike Cline (talk) 20:52, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

"I know experienced Wikipedians that would probably be utter failures in serious academic teaching and I know excellent Professors who aren’t cut out to be Wikipedians." I shudder to think where I would fit there! :-) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:07, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

(comment from above) "In fact this was the core reasoning behind a suggestion I've heard from a couple of academics that on-campus knowledge about editing Misplaced Pages should reside in writing centres, which I gather exist at a lot of US universities, rather than within specific academic disciplines." I've never heard of "writing centres" at US univeristies. Is this true? And is this where editing wikipedia is taking place? MathewTownsend (talk) 22:28, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Mathew - Here's a link to a typical university writing center that explains what they do . Essentially Writing Centers are laboratories that mentor students in writing skills outside of any coursework the student is taking. Students don't go the the Writing Center for credit, they go to the Writing Center to get help with their writing related course work. Basically it is a form of organized tutelege. --Mike Cline (talk) 04:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Please share your wisdom at a new essay

Instead of having all these thoughts shared and then lost to an archive, please share them at WP:Assignments for student editors (WP:AFSE or WP:A4SE). Best. Biosthmors (talk) 16:42, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Also Misplaced Pages:Recruiting those in academia (WP:RECRUIT or WP:RECRUITING). Biosthmors (talk) 19:22, 11 December 2012 (UTC) Moved to Misplaced Pages:Recruiting subject-matter experts. Biosthmors (talk) 23:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm very glad you've started these essays, and I've put AFSE on my watchlist and I'll contribute to it when I can.

About recruiting faculty, I'd like to make some comments here. I think I have some insights into it, having long been a professor at a large US university, who did large amounts of undergraduate teaching, so I have a lot of first-hand experience with what really is attractive or unattractive to faculty members professionally, and these things seem to me to relate very directly (but not obviously) to a lot of the concerns expressed on this page. There's a kind of split personality in the higher education industry, especially in the sciences, with respect to what advances one's career. To whatever extent one's university requires teaching, you have to do it, but you get essentially zero reward for it, no matter how much of a time drain it is (and it's huge: just consider what it takes to clean up a bad page here, and multiply it by the numbers of students in the class). The rewards are all in research, and particularly how much grant money you bring in. The university wants to boast about what a dedicated teacher you are, but they'll penalize you if that teaching effort means that your grant proposal doesn't get funded.

As a result, there is tremendous pressure on instructors to find ways to save time in teaching. For classes showing up here on Misplaced Pages, instructors will be one of two types: (1) tenured or tenure-track, looking for ways to teach a class without needing to spend a lot of time on it, or (2) non-tenure track faculty, who have huge teaching loads and disgracefully low pay levels. The very limited rewards for teaching tend to depend on being able to point to something flashy, a sort of sound bite, rather than anything that really reflects student learning, so being able to say "I taught a class on Misplaced Pages, and each student wrote an article!" sounds great at year-end reviews. But if you can set the students loose on Misplaced Pages and not have to spend a lot of time supervising them, that feels like icing on the cake, whichever of those two faculty groups you are in.

Above, other editors very accurately talked about instructors using editors here as unpaid TAs. That's exactly what's happening, and the incentives to do so are pretty hard to resist. Unfortunately, that's the real incentive for professors to use this program. They won't tell you/us that, but it's what they are thinking. That professor who said that they wouldn't bother to check student pages for plagiarism, but would flunk any plagiarists that we find, is Exhibit A, and really makes my blood boil.

Sorry, I know this sounds very dyspeptic, but I'm certain of it. That said, I've interacted with professors here who were very clear in telling students at the beginning of the semester that the students need to understand Misplaced Pages's rules, and that Misplaced Pages's rules always trump the class rules. I also recently gave one student a barnstar because she was so conscientious about editing correctly (and in thanking me, she actually said that she would never want to have left anything that I would have to clean up!). So, I've definitely had some good experiences. But I've also had the same bad experiences that others here have described. I think we need to understand these things in order to be able to figure out how to deal with them. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Insightful, thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 23:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes this is why I have concerns with this program. I want to write content myself rather than spend all my time fixing / correcting students. If the prof is not engaged (ie has edited Misplaced Pages significantly themselves) than they should not be bringing their class. Dr. Murray was a Misplaced Pages and because of that he succeeded. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:09, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

SUNY Fredonia?

It appears there is a class editing from SUNY Fredonia (see Talk:Dementia). I didn't see it listed at Misplaced Pages:United States Education Program/Courses/Present. Does anyone have details on the class/professor? Biosthmors (talk) 21:51, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I've never heard from this professor or that university. Sorry! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I've welcomed each of the four editors who left suggestions at Talk:Dementia to get details on the instructor. Biosthmors (talk) 23:35, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Query regarding psychology and other health-related content

Forgive me if this is addressed above - there is so much to read here. I encounter a bit of student editing in these categories. Are they subject to more student editing projects than other categories? (A lot of the feedback above seems to be coming from editors involved in those areas.) That is, is Misplaced Pages's health-related content a particular focus of this project? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:23, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

There have been increasing numbers of psych classes involved because of the APS Initiative. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:53, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

OK. I'm trying to get a sense of the proportion of content affected by organised student editing that is health-related, as that topic seems to be disproportionally represented in the above discussion. Does anyone know? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The courses link in the SUNY section above might help. Biosthmors (talk) 05:34, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That's what I was looking for. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:53, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

As Nikkimaria pointed out, the APS Initiative has brought a lot of Psychology professors to Misplaced Pages. Those who are interested in getting Ambassador support and completing the requirements of US/Canada Education Program have worked with us this semester. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Did all of the psychology professors listed at Misplaced Pages:United States Education Program/Courses/Present come here via the APS initiative? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Not positive that it was all of them, as some psych professors have worked with the program for a long time. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

a possible problem

Some of the instructions professors give seem like they are contrary to wikipedia practices.

For example, for Misplaced Pages:USEP/Courses/Cognition and the Arts (Greta Munger) Assignment one:

Partners will update sections of Psychology of art page to reflect recent psychological research.

Isn't there a danger such instructions will send a flock of new students to that article who will introduce material that won't follow WP:MEDRS? e.g. recent primary research? MathewTownsend (talk) 18:46, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Mutliple problem such as the one you highlight are appearing in psych articles. First, that advice breaches WP:MEDRS, WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RECENTISM. But more significantly, there have been psych articles where it is apparent that students are being used to promote a POV-- possibly a professor's research or POV. Sorry, too many articles over the last few years for me to remember where I saw this occurring, and I don't think I'd be comfortable pointing the finger anyway ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:52, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

As you may remember, I toyed recently with the idea of improving one particular psychology article until I was stalled by the contributions of a no doubt well-intentioned student who found it difficult to grasp the distinction between primary and secondary sources. It may well get me blocked again, but come the new year and a new semester I plan to have a good old hack at that article, come what may. Where has this strange idea come from that undergraduate students are in any sense experts? If they were experts they wouldn't be on an undergraduate course. I have a BSc in psychology, and in no way consider myself to be an expert, but at least I completed the bloody course and passed my final exams. Malleus Fatuorum 20:26, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Some questions

I wonder if Mike Cline, or someone else from the program, could say more about the draft strategic plan. It talks a lot about stakeholders, so I suppose the obvious question is whether Wikipedians are regarded as stakeholders. I was also wondering about the status of the plan to become a separate thematic organization since the RfC ended with an unclear consensus.

I'm also curious about this: "The availability of a qualified volunteer workforce exceeds project requirements." What is the volunteer workforce?

Final question. The draft says: "The program's operating budget is robust and enables the program to deliver quality services to all its stakeholders/partners as well as grow its volunteer resources." Elsewhere it says: "Benefactors value the program as a professional, innovative way to improve education and are providing high-levels of financial and marketing support." Are more details available about the operating budget and who the benefactors are? SlimVirgin 19:26, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I have answers to all the above and will post when time permits as I am engaged at the moment. --Mike Cline (talk) 20:19, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I'll be particularly interested to see who this "volunteer workforce" is, when you have a free moment. Malleus Fatuorum 20:29, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I've been watching this form on Meta.Wiki MedWiki Med/Bylaws etc. They were turned down for funding, but will probably get it in the end. More bureaucracy. MathewTownsend (talk) 20:56, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Mathew! Actually, that's a different group of editors seeking to form a separate Thematic Organization. The Working Group of the Education Program will not apply until later this month. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 01:53, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

@Slimvirgin – Answers to your questions

Stakeholders-the new EP sees all Wikipedians stakeholders in the EP. Of course there is a special group of stakeholders in the community known as Campus and Online Ambassadors. Wikipedians as stakeholders will be represented on the EP Board as well as through open lines of communication between the EP staff and the WP community, Chapters and WP projects.

The plan for thematic organization: Plans are moving forward and the working group is incorporating RfC results and other specific requirements from the WMF into a final Phase I proposal. Our deadline for this is December 16. When this proposal is submitted to the WMF next week, we will be updating the Wiki version as necessary. The decision to move forward from that point on lies with the WMF.

Availability of Volunteer workforce: This is a measure of success. If the new EP is successful, the availability of qualified ambassadors would exceed demand. If the new EP is successful, the availability of willing (and happy) WP volunteers from projects and various WP processes would exceed demand. In other words, the WP volunteer editor corps and ambassador corps would be more than happy to support the requirements of the EP because it is generating results that are growing WP in a positive way. (This does not address yet the tactics necessary to make this a reality, it is merely a desirable measure of success).

Operating budget: The goal is to create a self-sustaining organization that is capable of delivering and growing the products and services it provides to the EP participants (both in Academia and in the WP community). This statement recognizes that we must marry all the great tactical ideas to make the EP more successful with the reality that executing those tactics cost money.

Benefactors: Who they are specifically is unknown, but the working group has done some preliminary work in identifying a variety of potential donors via grants and other mechanisms. Fundraising will be an element of the new EP’s annual business cycle. If the EP is successful, potential and current benefactors will view the new EP in a very positive investment and willingly support the organization and its goals with funding.

As to a specific operating budget, some preliminary work has been done, but a fully vetted budget will be a Phase II task, primarily because certain decisions about by-laws, operating model, EP staffing, incorporation location, etc. will drive some budget requirements and the working group (and the WMF) believe a budget at this time would be a bit premature, but it will come early in Phase II.

Above all, I want to emphasize that all the decisions and supporting language to come above will be posted on-wiki for the whole community to peruse. And the intent once the new EP is functional is to sustain the highest level of openness and transparency possible with the WP community.

I trust this answers the questions sufficiently. Additionally, questions like this are always welcome. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:23, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

As several people have been pointing out at length above, the main onus of getting contributions from the programme up to an acceptable standard is being carried not by the online ambassadors, who normally lack the specific subject-knowledge and anyway don't seem to see this as their role, but by normal editors active in the subject area. Please don't kid yourself that there is an "excess" of volunteer labour of this sort, or that the workforce is "happy". There isn't and they aren't. Johnbod (talk) 22:33, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Please don't kid yourself that there is an "excess" of volunteer labour of this sort, or that the workforce is "happy". This response is not unexpected but does represent a misunderstanding of the statement. What is being described is a future desired end-state, not a statement or assumption of fact about the current state. It is a measure of future success. In 2015, if indeed the new EP has created an environment where we have sufficent willing, able and content volunteers from the WP community supporting the program, would anyone be disappointed? I think not! --Mike Cline (talk) 04:51, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I notice that under "Benefactors", wikipedia and it's volunteer editors aren't mentioned. The "online ambassadors" are a diverse group with varying levels of competence/incompetence. They are a minute portion of the volunteer editors that end up cleaning up, ADFing and in other ways dealing with the mess left by the EP. I don't notice the online ambassadors having an appreciable effect. And there are still many courses without online ambassadors. MathewTownsend (talk) 23:00, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

What's obvious to me, and I suspect to many others, is that the WMF has accumulated more money than it knows how to spend wisely, and this project is not a wise choice for many reasons. Malleus Fatuorum 23:20, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

• Mike, thanks for the replies. If you're including Wikipedians as stakeholders, I ask that you make that explicit in the document, because it will change quite a bit of it (that stakeholders are strategically aligned, etc). Can you let us know who in the Foundation will be looking at your proposal next week, and how Wikipedians can make representations to that group? SlimVirgin 02:28, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
  • The WMF Global Development Group has responsibility for Education Programs and is the WMF sponsor for this project. Specifically Frank Schulenburg and Annie Lin are taking the lead at the WMF. --Mike Cline (talk) 03:29, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Indeed the Misplaced Pages Community is not explicity listed as a member of the stakeholder groups in the strategy document. However the WP Community and other groups are implicity included as members in the Working Group charter, Board Composition proposal and Phase II objectives. I see no reason why we can't explicitly identify all the stakeholder groups in the Strategy and I will work to include that in the language.--Mike Cline (talk) 03:38, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks, that would help. We're obviously being affected by this, significantly more so than some of the other groups you list, so it's important to be clear that we're stakeholders. I think the students ought to be included as stakeholders too, and that student unions ought to be involved in helping to decide best practice for safeguarding students' interests. SlimVirgin 03:50, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry, another question. Has the education program engaged in any sort of consultancy process with outside bodies? I'm thinking about departments of education, the universities' ethics committees, teaching unions, students' unions, and academics who specialize in ethics in education. If not, would you be willing to set up something like that?

  My concern is that everyone who is being consulted is involved and wanting to move forward with the program in its current form, including the people from the Foundation who are overseeing it. Some disinterested professional input is needed to identify and resolve the ethical issues, which are significant. For example, there have to be guarantees that all students are told they can work in a sandbox and have their essays deleted once the course is over, so that they are not required to release their work or interact with strangers on the Internet. There have to be guarantees that they are not being forced to use their real names. And Wikipedians need to know that we're not expected to act as unpaid teaching assistants, identify plagiarism and determine who fails a course. SlimVirgin 02:56, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

  • There are really three different answers to this question, and all are based on my experience as a Campus Ambassador at MSU, a participant in the working group process and exposure to several university systems at the corporate level. Additionally, the question is based on the presumption that some previous activity in the EP was somehow unethical and I challenge that presumption at face value as I see no evidence that such activity is indeed unethical (by whatever standards the ethics in question are estabished).
    • Having mentored a number of classes at MSU, promoted those efforts with senior academics, libraians and administrators who are now becoming advocates of the efforts, not one word have ever been raised about the ethical implications of EP activity. And without going into unnecessary details, the administration is actively supporting ways to institutionalize these efforts within the university. If there were indeed ethical issues, one would indeed suspect they would have been raised by now.
    • On the working group, we have a number of seasoned academics from a variety of disciplines who have contributed to the strategy formulation. Throughout that process the issue of ethics as described has never been an issue. One would think that if these ethical issue were indeed universal as they are purported above, then these seasoned academics would have raised them during the strategy development process.
    • From my experience for the last 16 years servicing a variety of corporate clients in government, education and commercial sectors, what is ethical and what is not is very contextual and localized. Within higher education, if there is a universal set of ethics that includes the issues you raise above, then we need to somehow be made aware of them. Otherwise, the issues raised are unethical only in the opinion those saying they are. So this is one concern which in my view needs alot more substantiation than we've seen so far. --Mike Cline (talk) 04:22, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
      • what is ethical and what is not is very contextual and localized. Within higher education, if there is a universal set of ethics that includes the issues you raise above, then we need to somehow be made aware of them. I hope we don't have to make university professors of WP staff aware of the universal ethical norm against plagiarism; I think that's one of the main concerns that brought most of us here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:16, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
  • And Wikipedians need to know that we're not expected to act as unpaid teaching assistants, identify plagiarism and determine who fails a course. These kinds of phrases that come across as demands are troubling because everyday editors make unreasonable, ill-informed and selfish demands on other editors. The community deals with those demands in a variety of ways, but it all boils down to the ultimate set of sanctioned expectations: Misplaced Pages:Five pillars. I am fairly confident that the new EP has no intention to encourage, sanction or enable the kind of expectations you seek to avoid. Can the EP prevent them absolutely, NO. Just as the WP community can't prevent all the unreasonable, ill-informed and selfish demand editors place on members of the community every day 24/7. --Mike Cline (talk) 04:22, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

• It would help enormously if the EP would refrain from reminding us how crap and unreasonable newbies and "everyday editors" can be when anyone criticises student editors or the assignent design. The students are recruited and, to some degree, compelled to edit. There is an obligation on those doing the recruiting and designing their assigments to ensure the work those students do actually benefits WP and is not detracting from the purpose of our encyclopadia. We know for a fact that earlier assignments very much had expectations that "everyday editors" would "mark" the work and would polish the poor edits into something worth keeping. We know that earlier assignements involved DYK and GA and even FA components, which expected "everyday editors" to become involved. We also know that many students are adding plagiarised text and that the teaching staff are not activly checking or removing it -- because it is quite clear many of them don't edit on Misplaced Pages outside of EP pages. We know, because we see it regularly, that students are still unprepared and unsupported to produce content worth keeping or that even can be kept. We are certainly being asked to be "unpaid teaching assistants" because the actual teaching assistants and profs are not Wikipedians. I can't stress enough how fundamentally wrong this teaching model is. -- Colin° 09:32, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

One thing I'd like to stress is that although it is my firm belief that we should strive to create a model set of guidelines that are both ethically and pedagogically sound, decisions about what is ethical or pedagogically sound can and must be handled at the level of the individual university, not centrally. University instructors assess these issues as part of their jobs and in accordance with the policies of their universities. We can provide guidance in these areas, we can't provide mandates. If a university instructor decides that requiring their students to edit in the main space of the encyclopedia and actively engage in the community of practice that Misplaced Pages presents represents a meaningful pedagogical benefit and doesn't see any ethical issues with it - and their university doesn't see any ethical issues with it - then we cannot and should not try to dictate otherwise to them. They are the people most qualified to make these decisions, and it's (literally) their job to make them. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:40, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

That makes no more sense than Mike Cline's rambling comments above. It's not for university professors to decide what is or isn't appropriate for inclusion in Misplaced Pages. And as for "meaningful pedagogical benefit", maybe that reveals the misconception at the heart of this misguided project. Malleus Fatuorum 06:16, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I was responding specifically to the ethical concerns SlimVirgin raised about students, and not to any of her other points. You'd probably have better luck understanding people's comments if you pay attention to what they are talking about. Of course it isn't for professors to decide what is appropriate for inclusion in Misplaced Pages. Just like it isn't for us to try to dictate pedagogy or professional ethics to them. Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:29, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

You might be able to communicate more clearly if you took your blinkers off and saw what's actually happening, or think is happening, as opposed to what you'd like to see happening. Malleus Fatuorum 07:00, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

SlimVirgin has raised a really important point, and I'd like to expand on it because I am not sure that everyone is recognising the significance. As we all know, all WP contributions must be irrevocably released under license. However, for that release to be valid there must be informed consent on the part of the contributor. We all have a choice - to contribute or not - and links are provided to make clear the terms under which we contribute. But, if a student is required to contribute, and to mainspace, as a requirement of their studies then the consent under which the release is made is coerced. SlimVirgin has point out this is an ethical issue, and she is 100% correct - such behaviour from an academic would not be seen as ethically acceptable by the ethics rules governing any institution with which I am familiar. (For the record, I have held academic positions and been required to gain ethical clearance for my research. Generally formal clearances do not arise for teaching situations, but the principles are applicable.) The ethical problem is an issue for the EP programme - I would advise providing guidelines for consideration by educators contemplating wikipedia-connected assignments - but the more important issue for us and the foundation is the invalidation of the release under which the contributions were granted. It might be necessary in such a case to remove and oversight improperly released contributions, frustrating the aim of improving article content. Student editors must be free to not release their work into article space, and to have sandbox contributions deleted if that is their wish. The rigorous protection of such options goes a long way to ensuring that any contributions that are added to article space come with a release granted by free and informed consent. They must also be free to pseudonymity, in line with standard policy. These issues may not have been considered before now, but they are important and deserve proper attention now. EdChem (talk) 10:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

The free licence requirement applies to your talk page, sandbox and anything else you do on WP or Commons. If you don't intend to release your writing under that licence, or to the public, you have no business being on Misplaced Pages. The copyleft nature of our licence requires any derivative work to be published "alike" which means any student building upon one of our articles cannot impose restrictive licencing terms or keep it unpublished. Misplaced Pages exists to be an encyclopaedia, not to be someone's homework or a private cloud server for unpublishable student essays. If students don't agree to the licence terms or to having their work published (or aren't capable of writing something worth publishing) then they need to do their homework offline. Colin° 11:16, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandboxes edited by no one but the editor can be easily and uncontroversially deleted. A student editor has no choice about making contributions, and the issue isn't whether they agree to the release, it's whether that agreement is free and uncoerced and thus results in a valid release. If a student can't choose not to contribute to article space then how can anyone argue that they are volunteering to surrender their copyright entitlements. Free and informed consent is fundamental to a valid release under license, and coercion invalidates consent. EdChem (talk) 11:40, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

@Colin, EdChem, Malleus-Those of us associated with the EP are always on the lookout for best practices that will benefit WP. The concerns raised here will help us do that. That's why this noticeboard is here. However, I don’t think this is a fair statement. You might be able to communicate more clearly if you took your blinkers off and saw what's actually happening, or think is happening, as opposed to what you'd like to see happening To a certain extent, we all are operating with blinkers on because we can only comment on what we know from our experiences and through validations of what others have said-positive or negative. The fact that I’ve had very positive experiences with the EP without any consternation from the WP community does not mean the negative experiences didn’t happen elsewhere. Conversely, because there have been negative experiences doesn’t invalidate the efficacy of the positive experiences. Additionally, I challenge the notion that anyone associated with the EP is denying or downplaying the impacts of the negative experiences. We sincerely want to mitigate the negative and encourage the positive impacts moving forward. Where I do think that there is some serious denial going is in recognizing the changing tide within Academia about the use of Misplaced Pages in the classroom that will continue unabated whether there is a formal EP or not. I have read literally dozens of professional journal articles completely independent of the EP that are touting the efficacy of WP in the classroom. This abstract for just one article provides a good summary of what’s going on out there in Education land.

As I said above we can chose to ride the tide and leverage this in ways that result in significant benefit WP or we can chose to fight the tide, but we can’t stop it. University students and professors are going to be participating in the WP experience regardless. --Mike Cline (talk) 12:30, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

1. Corrado Petrucco (July–September 2010). "Misplaced Pages as a Training Resource for Digital Competencies". International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence. 1 (3). IGI Global: 29.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link) CS1 maint: year (link)

It would really help if sometimes the EP just took the criticism on the chin. The defensive responses here and the steaming pile that is the Common misconceptions about the Misplaced Pages Education Program page are the wrong way to deal with real concerns. The EP seems to want to continue to delude itself that Misplaced Pages article scan be improved when none of those involved (students, classroom ambassidors, professors) are actually experienced Wikipedians who care about the encyclopaedia beyond the end of term. The "can't stop the tide" attitude is unhelpful and just not true. If desired, it would be trivially easy to ban universities from running courses on Misplaced Pages. If Misplaced Pages decided student-assignment editing was harmful (or, for example, such editing from establishments that don't join the program) then a block and a letter to the management would swiftly end things. So, please, no threats that this is going to happen whether we like it or not. Colin° 13:11, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Colin, I am extremely flattered that you think my personal observations about the trends around Misplaced Pages in Education come off as a threat. I didn’t realize I had that much influence. Other the other hand If desired, it would be trivially easy to ban universities from running courses on Misplaced Pages. If Misplaced Pages decided student-assignment editing was harmful (or, for example, such editing from establishments that don't join the program) then a block and a letter to the management would swiftly end things. might be technically true, but wouldn’t that be totally contrary to the strategic goals of the movement. Goals by the way that represent the collaborative efforts of a very large and diverse population of Misplaced Pages editors as well as outside experts and advisors. You may personally disagree with the strategic outreach goals, but those goals represent broad community consensus about the future of the movement. In light of those goals and the broad consensus around them, I doubt seriously that implementing your trivially easy solution would be trivially easy at all. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:22, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, do you remember a few months back on the EP RfC when I said that your management-buzzword presentation style wasn't really helping you? You're doing it again, here. You're replying to people with genuine concerns by basically using consultant-ese to say, using lots of words, "yes, I agree that you're totally wrong!" and "Ok, you have an opinion, good thing your opinion doesn't matter!" You may not even realize you're doing it, but you are, and it's making the EP look as though it has no interest in being accountable to the community. What we want from EP-involved people who post here is engagement - not superficial engagement, where you pay lip service to "Oh right, you said something about X being a problem, let me acknowledge that while I go on talking about how great X is", but actual engagement, where you say, "Ok, so your concern is X? X is definitely not something we want to see happening, since it makes creating an encyclopedia harder. Here is how we are working toward making sure X doesn't happen."

You don't need to grovel and promise we're right about everything, but you do need to at least make an attempt to respect and address the opinions people are offering. Kevin is doing it. Sage is doing it. Most of the other EP-involved voices we're seeing here are doing it. But you appear to be working very hard to not do it, and that's torpedoing everyone else's efforts. Wikipedians are, in the main, a blunt bunch. We rely on straightforward, written text to get our work done. Platitudes and buzzwords get in the way, so we expect people to say what they intend to communicate because otherwise it's a waste of our time, and we have better things to be doing on wikipedia than having our time wasted. The more we see you attempting to gloss over every complaint or comment anyone makes with meaningless handwaving, essentially nodding while giving us the finger behind your back, you're hurting our perception of EP. It is not considered clever or skillful here on Misplaced Pages to use deliberately obfuscatory language to evade actual conversation; it's just considered unconstructive. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I totally agree. Each time I read another bout of badly-written patronizing management-speak from Mike, I am nudged further and further away from my initial basic sympathy towards the Education Program. Mike is just about the worst ambassador for that program, especially to the Misplaced Pages community, that one could imagine. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:34, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I have to pile on here; this kind of language/post is particularly grating to me because of my professional background in strategic and long-term planning, where I had to do same for corporate goals. I can see just what is going on here and this planning/management speak dismisses and demeans all of us while implying we are too daft to see it for what it is. What it is, basically, is long-term planning bullroar. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:24, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, I think it's ultimately up to the community to decide whether the education program should continue to run these courses on the English Misplaced Pages. If a community RfC were to decide against, or wanted to change how things were done, that consensus would be respected. The problem for you is that these issues are going to get worse every semester, as yet another group of Wikipedians is left feeling used and abused. So it would make sense to face things head on and seek solutions.

You've acknowledged that Wikipedians are stakeholders. Your strategic plan says that by June 2015 you hope "he US-Canada Education Program, its stakeholders and benefactors are strategically aligned on goals, projects and innovations that support free knowledge and information fluency in education." The question is how you plan to achieve that strategic alignment with Wikipedians. Are you willing to work with us to fix the problems? SlimVirgin 16:19, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that one problem has been it's not clear who "can work with us to fix the problems". The WMF has had staff assigned to the EP, but they're not generally active Wikipedian editors who are embedded in the community, so they can seem unresponsive (though my personal experience has been that they work very hard and are dedicated). They also perhaps don't have as much autonomy as a Wikipedian editor does; they have bosses, as well as opinions. The Working Group has no authority to actually do anything except make recommendations, and if the WMF does decide to create the new entity that the Working Group was asked to design, then that organization won't be functioning fully till some time next year. The people on-wiki involved in and supportive of the EP, like Kevin and myself, have no power to do more than comment and communicate, and try to solve some problems ourselves. The professors involved are not generally used to conducting business or participating in this sort of discussion on Misplaced Pages. I don't think anyone is being deliberately unresponsive, it's just that this configuration of players is not a good way to get things done and get problems solved.

If the WMF does create a new organization as it has been planning to, then assuming that the community doesn't decide to ban all educational classes in the meantime, I think that organization will be a good focus for all of these criticisms. The working group recommended having several Wikipedians on the board of that group, including chapter representation. I don't want to go on too much about a rosy future with this new organization, partly because the WMF hasn't yet agreed to create it, and partly there's a lot to figure out yet about how it would work, but mostly because the problems being discussed simply can't be pushed that far down the road. However, I hope it will be helpful, when it starts functioning.

In the meantime I think the discussions on this noticeboard have been a huge benefit. I don't agree with every criticism that's been made, but I do agree with a lot of them and I'm learning a lot. SlimVirgin, specifically in response to your question, though it was directed at the other Mike C: I think everyone involved in the EP, myself definitely included, wants to fix the problems. I hope we can. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:52, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

@ SlimVirgin - Ditto with Mike Christie (I trust that's not too buzzwordy of a response) --Mike Cline (talk) 16:56, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

@ SlimVirgin - re by June 2015 you hope "he .. Hope is not part of the plan. These are desirable goals, that if the new EP is approved, a lot of people are going to work hard to achieve. It may seem like a trival bit of language, but its not. To achieve the goals, the new EP has to address the the mistakes of the past, but until then the EP is in the hands of the WMF and those volunteer Wikipedians that willingly support it, and even those volunteers, including me, can only do so much with the scope of our involvement. As a Campus Ambassador at MSU I and my fellow ambassadors can significantly influence how Misplaced Pages is used there, but beyond that, I can only provide advice and counsel based on my own experiences. What happens at PPodunk U. is effectively out of my personal control? I, as are many others are awaiting important decisions at the WMF because we think this can work? Keep asking questions as long as you are willing to accept my good faith personal opinion and factual knowledge in response. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:19, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

What I'm understanding from this is that the volunteers among you have no authority, and the Foundation staff seem unresponsive. Perhaps we could ask the Foundation staff to join in here more (Sage and Jami have commented already; is there anyone else apart from Frank?). One thing we need to do is get some Wikipedians on board as stakeholders; that is, the community needs representation on whatever groups/mailing lists exist to discuss these issues, so that the interests of the community are always factored in. I've been doing a lot of reading about this over the last couple of days, and that's the one thing that's almost entirely absent. So which bodies/mailing lists do we need to be represented on? SlimVirgin 17:52, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, other staff members assigned to the program are LiAnna Davis and Annie Lin. SlimVirgin 18:03, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

There have been multiple communications channels set up, and personally I don't think any of them have produced as much useful information as the last few days have produced here. I'd like to focus communication on this one board, now that it appears to be working as a discussion forum. There are ambassador mailing lists and an ambassador noticeboard, and related IRC channels (I am almost never on IRC so I can't point you to those); I believe there's also a Global Education Program office hours, though the only time I looked at the log most discussions were about other country's programs. Frank's group includes Annie Lin and LiAnna Davis; I believe Jami is a contractor rather than an employee. You can see those people and get to their job description pages via this link. Sage, Jami -- are there other venues you think are worth recommending? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:06, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to try to arrange for Wikipedians to be placed on the program's non-public mailing lists as representatives of the community's interests, and to sit on the program's decision-making bodies. Who should be approached about that? SlimVirgin 19:09, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

If you're talking specifically about the US/Canada program, I would start with Jami, whose remit is the US/Canada EP. She may refer the question to Annie but Jami is probably the first person to ask. I don't think I'm on any non-public mailing lists (or if I am they're very low volume, since I never see any posts) but Jami would know what exists. I am on a working group internal mailing list, which is probably going to be dissolved shortly as the working group is within days of end-of-life.

Again specifically with reference to the US and Canada, if the WMF decides to create a new organization, that organization would have a board with Misplaced Pages community representatives. There would be an interim board, which the WMF will decide the composition of; some members of the working group, myself included, have expressed interest in being on the interim board. That board's job would be to take the organization up to the point where it is functioning, and to elect the next board. The Wikipedians on that board need to be representative of the community; in addition, if you feel that the interim board needs to include Wikipedians not part of the working group, please suggest that to the WMF, again via Jamie or Annie.

As far as the Global Education Program is concerned, then I believe Annie Lin is the person you would contact. Annie's title is Global Education Program Manager; I've interacted with her almost entirely with reference to the US/Canada EP, but I think she is the right starting point for communications about the GEP. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:33, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Looking around, I can see the education list and the ambassador list, both low traffic. I'm thinking if we can ask two or three Wikipedians (not ambassadors or anyone involved with the program) to volunteer to sit wherever the decisions are made, specifically to look out for Wikipedians' interests and report back here as needed, that would help a lot. It's not something I'd be keen on doing myself, but if others here could indicate whether they'd be willing, we then just need to find out where we need the representation. Mike, would you be willing to add to your draft strategy document that the stakeholders include Wikipedians? And could a couple of Wikipedians be added to the working group mailing list? SlimVirgin 19:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Um, which Mike are you talking to? I assume it's Mike Cline, but just wanted to check.

I'd be OK with adding Wikipedians to the working group mailing list, but I can't do that unilaterally -- it should be discussed (I don't see anyone objecting). However, I honestly don't think it's worth it -- I think we disband on Monday, if I remember rightly.

I would also like to say that I think the WMF made a good faith effort to include Wikipedians in the working group process from the start -- the working group is half Wikipedian, half educator, and was open to anyone who wished to apply. I understand why nobody who was not a supporter of the EP applied, but I think the WMF was doing its best to get participation that would be representative of the community. It's a pity that we're not recruiting for the working group now -- if this conversation had happened at the time the working group applications were going in, perhaps some of the folks here would have been interested in applying. I believe that all of the Wikipedians in the group did their best to represent all viewpoints, though, not just a blindly pro-EP viewpoint, but of course broader representation is better. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:51, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, this is not quite the case... I applied to join the group, an application that involved a proposal that seemed to encourage the kind of management-speak of which I've been complaining, and that has (understandably) raised hackles with many. The selection process seemed to be in the hands of Frank alone. Who knows? Anyhow, I wasn't selected for reasons that remain opaque to me. I suspect they had something to do with vaguely critical noises I'd already made of the way in which the group was being set up and run. Anyhow. --18:43, 14 December 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbmurray (talk • contribs)

I was part of the selection committee for the Working Group (since, unlike Frank, I am not on the Working Group). I'm happy to talk with you about your particular case, but I can firmly state that it had absolutely nothing to do with "vaguely critical noises" or anything you have said about the program. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I did mean Mike Cline, but it was really addressed to anyone who can help. I've been looking around at the education program's history for the last couple of days, and I see two major issues. The first is the PR-speak that just about everything is written in. It's off-putting, it often seems meaningless, and it gives the impression that something is being hidden, so it engenders distrust and weariness. This has the effect of reducing interest among Wikipedians who don't want to get involved with that way of thinking. The result is the second major issue, namely that you end up with only like-minded people on board, so that the process becomes a form of what Chomsky called manufacturing consent. The consequence is that you're shocked to find there is so much opposition to what you're doing.

I think it's really important going forward to include Wikipedians who are specifically tasked with representing the community's interests, and to make clear to the education group that plain writing would make a much better impression on Wikipedians, and probably on the professors too. SlimVirgin 21:27, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

By the way, it's worth adding that I know it must be difficult to listen to criticism of a project you care about and have put a lot of work into, so I just want to say thank you to the people who are listening and absorbing it. I think it will end up being constructive, even if the process is a bit painful. SlimVirgin 21:32, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

@Slimvirgin, you may or may not have encountered this part of the proposal as it is a bit buried in the cave of working group documents: The Board Composition Proposal spells out the proposed representation and selection methodology for the Board of Directors of the new EP. Key within this proposal is the idea that when the new organization is ready to fill all the board slots the Misplaced Pages Community, not the EP, will select their members of the board. The Community will be represented by whomever they elect. I will work when I get home from my current business trip to get the Stakeholder groups more clearly identified in the main part of the proposal. (I actually don't make any decisions as I am not a working group member, as facilitator I am essentially just a coordinator of all the documentation to ensure the WMF gets the proposal they asked for.) FYI, this proposal workspace was linked and has essentially been open to comment by any editor on the talk pages since Sept 29, 2012 when the RFC was initiated as well as widely advertised within the community. Our intent has always been to be as open and transparent as possible with the community as the group developed the proposal the WMF chartered the working group to craft. As to what happens after December 16 as Mike Christie mentioned above, we will have to wait on the WMF. --Mike Cline (talk) 22:51, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike Cline or whomever: I've spent a great deal of time trying to figure out these online education programs, ever since I had a run-in with an editor on the "Online Ambassador Selection Committee" who twice tried to pass a plagiarized/close paraphrased article at GA (failed by me and subsequently another editor). I posted here on wiki and on meta (repeatedly until I made a pest of myself) but never could get any satisfactory reply as to how an editor who didn't understand plagiarism could be selecting online ambassadors. (She still is AFAK.) It seemed like the EP (or whatever it was called then) repeatedly changed venues, and mostly posted (what little they did post) on meta. They did admit finally that they had no power over who was choosing online ambassadors ultimately, and no quality control mechanism regarding this particular editor and her position on the "Online Ambassador Selection Committee".

I think almost no editors on wikipedia realize what EP is up to and what they are planning for the future. Wikipedians are almost (an understatement) completely uninformed about what is going on, due to the lack of transparency of these educational programs.

I don't see how wikipedians could possibly vote for a "member of the board" to represent them, or whatever it is you are suggesting. From my point of view, that is no where near sufficient representation for wikipedians over this massive education program that is so disruptive to wikipedia. And regarding the university "writing centers" someone provided a link to me above, that in no way prepares students to edit wikipedia, IMO. MathewTownsend (talk) 23:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a good example of the structural problems I mentioned above. I can give you responses to your comments, but I'm just another editor; I don't have any privileges over the EP that you don't have. I think almost everyone among the EP's supporters would like to see the problems you mention fixed, and for that matter I imagine almost everyone involved with the EP would agree they are problems. It doesn't seem to me, from the discussion on this page, that there's a debate going on about whether these things are issues or not: they are clearly problems and need to be fixed. Instead there's some discussion about how prevalent the problems are, and more discussion about ways to resolve them, and about representation. Or to put it another way, what is it that you would like to hear me and other supporters of the EP say that we're not already saying?

I don't think the EP can succeed without the editing community being represented. I'm willing to accept your comment that Wikipedians don't have enough information to vote for a board representative, but unless student editing is to be banned, I think the question has to be how to provide that information. I'm trying to answer questions as thoroughly as possible, so that people here do have that information. Do you feel that student editing should be banned? What other information would be helpful? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I've been trying in various places to find out who's in charge/actively involved, but I can't get clear answers. Group A refers me to group B, group B refers me back. Mike (Cline), I made some suggested changes to your board page. Are you willing to add a couple of Wikipedians to the working group mailing list, even if it's about to close down? Mike Christie said he has no objection but can't do it unilaterally. SlimVirgin 00:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin, that's exactly the experience I had - over many, many, many months!

@Mike Christie, I think that "student" editors should be treated exactly like any other editor. The community shouldn't have to tip toe around them. It's the EP's job and also that of the professors, to make sure "students" only place appropriate articles in the main space, and make appropriate edits. If they don't the community should respond the way they usually do to such edits. There shouldn't be special classes of "protected" editors on wikipedia, IMO. MathewTownsend (talk) 00:09, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, to all of that, with no caveats. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:25, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Jami beat me too this below @Slimvirgin. I actually can’t add you to the non-public working group list as that is controlled I believe by Jami at the WMF. However, as a point of process, the working group isn’t using that list as a massive discussion forum, but merely to keep members informed of task requirements, deadlines, proposals, decisions and meetings. Individual elements of the overall proposal have been collaboratively crafted by small task groups and then accepted/rejected by the larger Working Group. The on-wiki versions of these proposals merely document the proposal to-date. Comments/Suggestions, etc. about them really should be made on the talk page. As for the A to B to A thing, I can appreciate yours and others frustration. It is occurring because this discussion is actually dealing with three different but parallel projects. The first being the on-going, current EP wholly owned and operated by the WMF who recruited a fair number of unpaid volunteer Wikipedians (me included) to begin supporting their outreach efforts in Academia. The WMF can take credit for all the current failures and successes within the current EP (Global, not just US/CAN) They currently have the authority (and responsibility) to fix any on-going structural issues causing disruption in the community. The second project (the US EP Working Group) evolved from the WMF realization that for the EP to be successful long-term, it needed a much more structured, resource rich and focused effort to manage this type of outreach. To do that the WMF decided to explore the possibility of transferring elements of the US/CAN EP to a completely independent organization merely affiliated with the WMF. The working group (unpaid volunteers—experienced Wikipedians and Academics) were recruited by the WMF to formulate a plan (strategy + specific actions) necessary to legally create the new organization and ensure that if it was created, there would be an effective transfer of authorities and responsibilities from the WMF to the new US/CAN EP and that it would be structured in a manner that represented all stakeholders. We are within days of providing the final proposal to the WMF for their decision. The one thing the EP Working Group has no responsibility for is to create or implement specific solutions for on-going issues. That’s not what we were chartered to do. That those issues exist and understanding what those issues are is important and undeniable and knowing about them has informed the Working Group well. The third project, which at this point won’t occur until the new EP is approved, legally created and realistically staffed, will be the formal transition of authorities and responsibilities from the current EP to the new US/CAN EP. If and when that occurs, then the new EP organization will have the responsibility to begin establishing specific processes and organizing the appropriate resources ($$, volunteers, training, and collateral) to support EP efforts in ways that will significantly improve on and mitigate the current disruptive issues under discussion as well leverage the best practices from all the successful EP efforts. Those of us who are experienced Wikipedians, like myself, know that this will only occur with widespread community support and involvement.

This A to B to A frustration is a direct result of these three separate projects that (fortunately or unfortunately) are being discussed simultaneously within one thread, by participants with differing and varying degrees of involvement in each. “It’s hard to identify the players without a program’’. Long-winded, but I really wanted you to understand why the A-B-A thing is happening. --Mike Cline (talk) 01:41, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• Continuing from some points higher up in this thread: And Wikipedians need to know that we're not expected to act as unpaid teaching assistants, identify plagiarism and determine who fails a course. Amen to that! I think that, as time goes on, the English Misplaced Pages may actually want to make those things a matter of policy. I'm sensitive to the argument that we don't want to tell instructors how to teach their classes, but the flip side of that is that we don't want instructors to tell us how to operate Misplaced Pages, beyond what they can contribute to consensus like any other editor. We have every right to set policy about Misplaced Pages. It's fine if an editor choses to ferret out plagiarism (indeed, commendable), and it's fine if they choose to help the instructor in some other way, but that's a matter of choice, not an implied obligation. (And I strongly agree with what MatthewTownsend just said about, in effect, classes not WP:OWNing anything.) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:19, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
• I'm wrestling with the issue of student consent to making freely licensed contributions, because I do indeed see informed consent as a genuine ethical issue. As noted, universities (but generally not high schools or elementary schools) almost always have their own informed consent procedures, but perhaps we might be justified in asking instructors to use those procedures, and if they don't have such procedures available, offer an informed consent form for students on-wiki. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:19, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Tryptofish - I am gratified that someone agrees that the point I raised, expanding on SlimVirgin's thoughts, is actually worth serious consideration. I am disappointed that the WMF-representatives have yet to respond in any substantive way. I have had several experiences with student editors, both good and bad, but I wonder if it's worth my time to summarise my experiences and thoughts as both an editor and an academic. My thoughts to date are that they would be of interest to some Wikipedians here, that they would be welcomed, that I would be thanked... and that the net result would be nothing changes, which is disheartening (to be frank). Am i wrong to feel disillusioned as I do? EdChem (talk) 01:40, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

    Yes, interactions with students can be either good, or bad, or something in between. Editors who see all bad and nothing else are oversimplifying the situation. I don't know what to say about WMF, but I'm optimistic that the editing community will eventually work these things out. And it's never wrong to agree with me! ;-) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:51, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

    Feel exactly the same way, Ed; I bowed out of these discussions last time because I realized we were getting nowhere, and accepted that I'd just have to clean up my watchlist every November and May, and turn a blind eye to the scores of other articles from the same problematic classes. Looking for a group hug emoticon or some such thing for you ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:29, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, so what is emerging here is that there seems to be a WMF staffing problem, and that is impacting established editors and article quality. It's looking like that staffing problem's name is Frank, based on Jbmurray's feedback. What can we do about this? And I have another question: why the sudden change? We were always told that editor retention was an important goal, and now we're seeing some backtracking on that, as if it was never a goal. It was: This whole thing is beginning to look like a run-around so folks can keep their jobs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:56, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

A few comments

Thank you for all the comments that have been posted here. I think there are a few points that we, as WMF, should clarify.

1. Please keep in mind that the Education Program is global. Annie Lin, LiAnna Davis, and Frank Schulenburg all work on the strategy and global levels of the program — the reason you see only Sage and me responding here is that Sage and I are the only two staff people working on the U.S. and Canada programs. Frank, Annie, and LiAnna are all focused primarily on supporting the Education Program in the other countries where the program is in operation. Sage and I are keeping the rest of the team updated about the discussion, but Sage and I are the ones who work directly to support the U.S. and Canada programs.

2. Please also keep in mind that there are two times a year that we can make significant changes to the program: before the start of the fall term and before the start of the spring term. I'll talk a bit about the spring 2013 term later, but I want to make it clear that major changes to the future of the program will be something decided upon by the organization that comes out of the Working Group. I want to thank Mike Christie and Mike Cline, who are both members of the Working Group and who have participated in this discussion in that role. One key responsibility of the new organization will be to address many of the concerns raised here — and as someone who has been part of the Working Group, I will say we have definitely been discussing these issues.

3. In terms of the upcoming term:

• Psych-specific: As we mentioned last time this came up, we encourage you to work with the APS Misplaced Pages Initiative for any specific psychology article recommendations. Only a small percentage of the APS Initiative people are working through our program, so you would have a much better reach if you worked with them — many of their members do course projects without involving themselves in our program, but any material you suggest to them will go into the recommendations they give to everyone. They've been trying to get more Wikipedians involved in the initiative and would welcome any editors who want to make constructive suggestions about ways professors and students of psychology can help Misplaced Pages.

• Professors: I hope you all can keep in mind that for professors, doing a Misplaced Pages assignment is a significant time investment. The only professors who want to do this are professors who deeply care both about their students' learning and about the quality of information available on Misplaced Pages in their discipline. In fact, we screen for this as part of the selection process (more on that later). I don't know of any professor who sees the community as a free TA service; we provide Ambassador support for professors because it helps ease the burden of doing a Misplaced Pages assignment and leads to a better quality for Misplaced Pages, but professors choose to participate because they believe in the teaching aspect of their job and they care about improving the quality of Misplaced Pages in their discipline. Please assume good faith on behalf of the professors. They spend countless hours outside of what you see on wiki teaching their students about Misplaced Pages and about the subject matter, and they have real-world demands on their time that may mean they are not as responsive on wiki as would be ideal. I'd ask that you respect their dedication to teaching and to Misplaced Pages, and realize they are trying to do their best to improve the encyclopedia, too.

• Students: In no way, shape, or form have we ever, nor would we ever, suggest that students should be a protected class on Misplaced Pages. Student work is subject to Misplaced Pages guidelines. Period. Students should be treated exactly as other new editors should be treated. That works two ways: don't bite, but if they make mistakes, offer gentle, helpful corrections on their talk pages.

• Changes for the Spring 2013 term: We have been constantly updating the suggestions we give to professors; please see the new set of brochures for our latest recommendations. A few we are enacting specifically for the upcoming Spring 2013 term:
  • We have strongly discouraged professors from any kind of Did You Know or Good Article requirement, and made it clear that only advanced students should participate, and never for credit.
  • The new online student training was available after the beginning of the fall 2012 term, so not many students went through it. We are encouraging professors to require that their students complete the training as part of their coursework.
  • Several Ambassadors joined me last weekend in a training on assignment design. I'll have more details up about this later as I'm still transcribing all my notes into sensible summaries, but we are working to have a corps of Ambassadors around the U.S. and Canada who can work with professors specifically on assignment design that incorporates the best practices of our program.
  • We continue to refine our selection process for which professors work with our program. Some key considerations are how devoted the professor seems to be to student learning, whether they have adequate Misplaced Pages exposure (either via an Ambassador or their own editing), how much the assignment as designed will help Misplaced Pages, if the assignment type fits with their time expectations and student learning objectives, how much the professor understands the difference between an essay and a Misplaced Pages article, etc.

Please let me know if there are specific questions asked somewhere above that I have missed. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 00:51, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I want to reply to what you said about professors. I certainly do understand and empathize with them, because I was one for quite a few decades. But please give some thought to what I said at #Please share your wisdom at a new essay. As with most things in life, there is the ideal, and there is also the less-than-perfect reality. I'm not saying these things to be unkind to the professors who get involved here, but I want all of us to be working in the realm of reality. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:11, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Well said Jami. You beat me to it, but from a different angle. I trust what I said above doesn't conflict with this explanation. --Mike Cline (talk) 01:48, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

One big problem, it seems to me, is that the members of the Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Psychology/APS-Misplaced Pages Initiative don't seem to include people who are experienced editors of wikipedia. Most have never written an article that I can see and have at the most only a hundred or so edits to the encyclopedia. MathewTownsend (talk) 14:52, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I suppose I disagree that people need to be very advanced editors to believe in the Wikimedia mission and contribute to it in some way. The people working with the APS Initiative are trying to help improve coverage in that discipline, and they do want help and guidance from experienced Wikipedians. I encourage you guys to work with them to improve those materials as you see fit. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I very much disagree. One of the biggest problems (aside from the plagiarism, the failure to integrate information into existing articles instead of starting multiple piecemeal new ones, writing essays as articles, failure to follow WP:MOS, WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS, failure to format citations, or participating in the scut work of wikipedia that takes the time and polishes the article so it is fit to publish in the encyclopedia) etc., is this: most of these "student" articles are written as research papers filled with primary research which end up being WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Such articles may be perfectly appropriate in an academic environment but are not appropriate to an encyclopedia. I don't think the APS Initiative people understand what wikipedia is about.

If they did, there wouldn't be all this worry about biting students, alienating professors etc. The students and professors could be treated as are other wikipedia editors and would not require kid glove handling. Many of the articles that passed the "burden" test and were rated in another evaluation as a net plus to wikipedia are a mess. The EP is using faulty data to rate its impact on wikipedia. And what about all those articles in sandboxes that an online ambassador (above) said she felt uncomfortable moving to main space because she didn't know enough about the subject matter - and the one that she did move took her hours of cleanup and resulted in a very mediocre article? And if you check the professors and student's contributions, they flee wikipedia when finished. Whose going to clean up the mess that already exists? One of the courses from the initiative Misplaced Pages:Ambassadors/Courses/Cognitive Psychology (Greta Munger) has already been noted above as offering a faulty assignment to students, and is still assigning students to 'compose a one-sentence "hook," nominate it for "Did you know," ' and to "Nominate your article for Good Article status".

And the last assignment is "Try to address issues from Good Article reviews"! So that means some poor wikipedian completes a GA review (which is a bloody pain) and maybe the editor will try to address the issues? MathewTownsend (talk) 18:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

So you would prefer to continue to complain about them rather than accept their request to help them understand the better way to do things? JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

You sound as though you're again expecting Wikipedians to act as unpaid teaching assistants. SlimVirgin 20:08, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I think editing wikipedia taking time and dedication to learn. I don't think editors can pop in with a few hundred edits and expect to understand how to edit here. I just don't think it can be done. It makes a mockery of those editors here who have spent years and thousands of edits to learn how to contribute constructively on wikipedia. I think the EP articles should all be sandboxed until they are vetted by an experienced editor, if one wants to take the time and energy to do it. What do you suggest? (You seem to be asking the wikipedia community to step in and do the work that these professors and the APS can't do. I've looked at the APS page and there's nothing useful there - just a list of old courses and for the most part messy articles.) I'm not understanding what you expect me to do. MathewTownsend (talk) 19:47, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

New editors are going to continue to edit, and professors are going to continue to assign students to do so. That is the nature of a wiki and this encyclopedia. The Education Program aims to support those new editors in the best possible way. Please don't assume every person who volunteers for the Education Program in any capacity does not care about Misplaced Pages and is not constantly trying to improve the support. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Comments like these seem to try to distance the education program from what's happening, by arguing that it would be happening anyway. New editors don't arrive at an article, remove most of the content, drop a new (often plagiarized) version in its place, then disappear without comment. Because this happens with the apparent support of the Wikimedia Foundation, editors are reluctant simply to revert, which is what would normally happen, and unable to deal with it in any other way because of the numbers involved and the time needed to sort it out. The idea that the students are like any other new editors is to misunderstand the nature and scale of the problem. SlimVirgin 20:03, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

If they are just like any other new editors, then we should treat them like other new editors. No special support is needed. MathewTownsend (talk) 20:16, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

For this program to occur we need to make an exception to the regulations surrounding group editing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Copyvio problem: working to resolve the issue

Recently, some experienced editors noticed copyright violations from editors participating in the Misplaced Pages Education Program and notified the instructor who created the assignment. Off-wiki, the professor reminded the editors of the plagiarism guidelines on both Misplaced Pages and at their academic institution and gave them a short timeline to fix their contributions, as he was hoping to turn this into a learning experience for them. Since many of them have not yet reverted the close paraphrasing and plagiarism themselves, the professor is now working with his Regional Ambassadors to remove the copyvios while preserving all of the other positive contributions his students made.

Since on-wiki time runs a bit more quickly than off-wiki time, I ask that we all assume good faith and know that this professor, who of course opposes plagiarism and negatively impacting Misplaced Pages, is trying to hold himself accountable for the burden these copyvios place on the community.

That being said, I'd really like any interested editors to work closely with the initial board of the (hopefully) new thematic organization for the Education Program over the next month or so to develop a proactive plan for future issues with our program's participants. Of course there will always be some issues (these are new editors in a very complex world of unknown policies and guidelines), and of course professors will try to prevent them in the first place, but I think we owe it to the community to create a trustworthy system to handle these issues, as our program is supposed to be a positive experience for everyone involved. I know many of our program participants are hoping to move the program in the direction of integrating more closely with the already-existing infrastructure on Misplaced Pages, but it's perfectly reasonable that our members should help alleviate any negative burden we inadvertently add to other editors. Perhaps you guys can "sign up" here (just place your name below?) if you're interested in working with the initial Board to develop a promising accountability plan for the future of the program. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I honestly have no idea what that final paragraph means. The first line alone is overblown and obscure. The management-speak is pernicious and completely opaque. No wonder people are suspicious about this entire initiative. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:41, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I am generally supportive of these experiments as long as they are that, experiments. After one last bad episode I am temped to report the class and prof who where involved to their dean and the press (due to plagiarism). If we generated some harsh stories about what happens when one does bad stuff on Misplaced Pages and a few students / profs get tossed from University than people will take involvement seriously. They will no longer see us as free teaching assistants if we hold them accountable. By the way not too long ago with a couple of emails and comments on line I managed to get a textbook pulled from the market globally . We as Wikipedians must not underestimate our authority. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

• I'm certainly interested in working with the initial board to develop plans related to the future of the program, including ones related to mitigating the potential burden elements of the program may represent to the broader community Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:58, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

  Thanks, Kevin! I'll make sure they include you in this conversation. I'm excited that we have the opportunity, while reframing the program, to have these constructive conversations and engage more with our community! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 02:01, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Jami, this sentence sums up the problem: "I know many of our program participants are hoping to move the program in the direction of integrating more closely with the already-existing infrastructure on Misplaced Pages, but it's perfectly reasonable that our members should help alleviate any negative burden we inadvertently add to other editors."

In other words, the program wants to rely on unpaid Wikipedians to do the work, but is willing to help out. That is what we're objecting to. If they want to be involved in live publishing, they have to pick up the burden themselves, and promptly. When the same professors assign ordinary essays, they have to check for plagiarism and other issues themselves. The only difference between that and publishing on WP is that, if you add text directly to the encyclopaedia, you have to fix or revert the problems quickly. The idea that Wikipedians can be forced to act as unpaid teaching assistants – forced because they care about the quality of the articles on their watchlists – really has to be put aside, because it's causing a lot of ill feeling. SlimVirgin 02:14, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that's what she's saying, SV. I think (hope?) she means something more like "yeah, we hope that eventually this will just sort of chug along as part of the community, but until it does, it's our job to keep it from weighing too heavily on the community." Which would be about as right-thinking and honorable a sentiment about EP responsibility as we've gotten recently. At the least, it would be a concession that the EP does have some responsibility for policing its own content, which, again, is an idea we haven't heard much of recently.A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:55, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Fluffernutter. That was exactly what I was trying to say! You put it much more eloquently. :) JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

UCSF College of Medicine

We are planning on launching an elective at UCSF where 3/4th year medical students will be editing Misplaced Pages as per here Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Medicine/UCSF. I will be heading down their to give a week of lectures / editing sessions to students and staff on how we work and will be involved in supervising the students. We will see if this works with a small number of students and than see if it is scalable. The hope is that students who get involved in the first year will provide supervision is subsequent years and that is the only way this can really grow. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:51, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we need to send a note to teachers / students before they begin

Something like "Editing Misplaced Pages is a form of live publishing. The long term editors of Misplaced Pages are very experienced at finding plagiarism. If either you or your class do not know what "plagarism" is, we advice against editing the online encyclopedia or first learning about how to avoid it. If you are caught involved in this sort of activity this could result in you being expelled from university and negative press for your school. We at Misplaced Pages have caught other sources plagiarizing from us and take these activities very seriously . Sincerely The Misplaced Pages Community. Thoughts? Than no one can say we did not warm them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:08, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Doc James. The professor orientation currently addresses copyright and plagiarism, and I invite you to edit as you see appropriate. Sage just added in some edits we came up with as a group last week, but I know that your perspective will make it better. Please remember to keep the language as straightforward and simple as possible. Thanks! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

This is something I've been doing with every class I've been involved with so far, and I think it would be a good idea to try to make sure it's something stressed to all classes. Amusingly, I think I've even used that exact same article as an example before. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:52, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps once there is consensus that Misplaced Pages:Assignments for student editors is past the early-draft stage, it would be good to tell instructors that they are strongly urged to read it. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Sample case

OK, let's take a sample case I just encountered, so we can use this to understand how professors, students, WMF staff, ambassadors, and the community can or should use this board. I will notify all involved parties next. My apologies to Mike Christie for just now encountering this, as I was reviewing old links he left on my page while I was mostly not editing (and my extra apologies to him for not being available all spring, summer and fall, as he repeatedly queried my talk). I found this article by reviewing that course page for topics I'm familiar with.

Cluttering

• Course: Misplaced Pages:United States Education Program/Courses/Psychology of Language (Kyle Chambers) (the course was Spring term 2012, so discussion here will not affect the student's grade)
• Professor: Kechambers (talk · contribs) (the professor has not edited since the course ended; the professor's only edits to Misplaced Pages mainspace appear to be moving articles out of sandbox.
• Student: Lcannaday (talk · contribs) (she signed the DYK nom as "Liz Cannaday" so real name issues involved; the student has apparently not returned to editing since finishing the course)
• Online ambassador Mike Christie (talk · contribs)
• Article: Cluttering
• DYK nom: Template:Did you know nominations/Cluttering (unclear why it was rejected, will ping Crisco)
• Also submitted simultaneously to GAN (an additional drain on resources): Talk:Cluttering/GA1
• Student did tag article talk:
• Other articles that need to be checked for plagiarism: Misplaced Pages:United States Education Program/Courses/Psychology of Language (Kyle Chambers)#Articles
• Most of the students pages I have checked indicate they are members of Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Psychology/APS-Misplaced Pages Initiative
• The course page is not accessible, so we don't know if the professor requires DYK or GAN submissions.

• "For a list of project tasks and deadlines, please refer to our Moodle course page."

Analysis

One of the student's first edits to the article was to remove a large chunk of sourced text. Every single article edit was made in one day, just before the course ended. Within minutes of finishing the work, in one session, the (clearly unprepared) article was simultaneously nominated at both DYK and GAN, adding to the drain on resources at those pages; an established editor would have likely known the article was not GA quality, and we don't know if the course required her to submit these nominations.

The article contains blatant, easily spotted, outright cut-and-paste plagiarism from at least the online sources, meaning certainly the offline sources will need checking as well. Since the student plagiarized online sources, someone will need to access and check offline sources. Samples:

1. (the entire definition, not in quotes),
2. ,
3. (see )

I stopped there; since the first three edits contain plagiarism, it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that the entire article does. Nor does it seem unreasonable to assume that neither the professor nor the ambassador (sorry, Mike, you know I adore you and value your work!) checked.

There are other style issues: grammatical, MOS, information and sections that should be eliminated-- in other words, a lot of cleanup needed. A good deal of the portions that need cleanup were in the article before the student started editing, but what the student did was 1) not fix faulty text or sections, while 2) deleting sourced information to 3) replace it with plagiarized text.

Cleanup will be easier once the plagiarism is removed, but since it wasn't detected on time, the article has been edited since. This article "looks" good, but it was not an improvement; it was a net negative to Misplaced Pages, and a drain on editor time.

Many courses require students to do a few edits before they start writing; Lcannaday's only other edits to Misplaced Pages were to:

1. Remove a citation needed tag and replace it with a source that does not verify the text.
2. Format that citation, which is worse, because the casual reader will assume that the notion of "play or music therapy" is cited text. SIx months later, that faulty and unsourced information is still in the article, looking to the casual reader as if it is well cited.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:21, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

While the DYK group is at least happy to have students posting DYKs last time we discussed it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

So, what admin is going to revert to pre-plagiarism, revdel or whatever adminly thing has to be done to remove the plagiarism, check the offline sources I can't access, etc? Once all that is done, I can cleanup the issues that were in the article pre-student editing. I'm more interested in using this example as a guide to how we should approach the hundreds or thousands of same that are out there. For starters, the professor should be uninvited, since he clearly wasn't engaging the project adequately. Since we know this professor wasn't checking for plagiarism, I suggest every article his course touched is suspect. Should we revert them all? Who is going to be responsbible for checking all of them? Is someone going to submit a copyvio investigation on the entire course? If these were not students, that is what we would be doing. So, how does this board plan to address this and similar situations? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:08, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Nice example. I presume the DYK nom was rejected because no hook was suggested, leaving it incomplete. In my experience "One of the student's first edits to the article was to remove a large chunk of sourced text. Every single article edit was made in one day, just before the course ended" is very typical. I find many just blank the whole page before adding their text, but not of course things like categories or images. Do we even know what articles were involved in the whole class? This is often very hard to discover. Johnbod (talk) 17:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

List of articles and editors is on the course page; all of their contribs would need to be checked. This is a pretty clear sample of how many established editors and processes are wasting time on this misguided program. If this occurs under one of our finest editors and most diligent ambassadors (and it is not Mike's job to check all of this, what about the professor?), I shudder to think what else is out there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:16, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Agree that we need mechanisms in place to deal with the above issues brought forwards by Sandy. Who is supposed to address this? The more I see this the more I think we need some negative press and maybe a few people expelled. I might ping the NYTs to see if they are interested. A title like "Universities Students from College X Caught Adding Plagiarism to Misplaced Pages as Part of Class Work, Student Expelled, Prof. Reprimanded".

Anyway I will start collecting data going forwards. We have experimented. The issues are prominent. We now need a new strategy. While I agree it will be hard to keep profs from editing using on Wiki tools if we hold them responsible in real life via their dean they will take note. If we hold students to their universities plagiarism regulations we will improve their education. If they are allowed to get away with this they will never learn just what an issue it is. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

The school (not listed on the course page) is Gustavus Adolphus College. Contact info. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:46, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay will compile a list of copyright related education program issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:26, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

From information on the school search engine, it appears that the student is likely to have graduated by now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:30, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

@ SandyGeorgia: Nice example. Having gone through the available information on the course page, I have some questions that I would need answered before I could come to all the conclusions you’ve come too. The fact that the article you cite has been edited in a manner that is a bad for WP is undeniable and unfortunate. The questions I have (and these have to be mostly rhetorical because I don’t think we can know the answers accurately after the fact):

• Were the problems with this article a result of it being edited by a “student” or edited by “a new editor that didn’t know what they were doing”?
  • It would be interesting data to have: How many other WP articles were abused like this in the same time frame by completely new editors independent of any aspect of the EP?
• What were the learning objectives for this course? They are not evident on the course page. I suspect they are somewhere in the documents on this university LMS (linked on the page) but not accessible to anyone outside the university. What role was Misplaced Pages (if any) supposed to play in achieving those learning objectives? How was the Misplaced Pages activity designed to support the learning objectives?
• Did the Misplaced Pages activity have any bearing on the student’s grade? In other words, what was the expected deliverable (Misplaced Pages wise) from the students and how did the instructor intend to evaluate that deliverable?
• Did the instructor have any counsel with an experienced Wikipedian in designing the appropriate Misplaced Pages related activity necessary to not only achieve learning objectives, but to not do things with WP that would harm the encyclopedia?
• If indeed active WP activity was designed into the course objectives, what did the instructor do to ensure the students had the necessary skills to do it in an acceptable manner?
• I did see some work on the course page that when leveraged correctly is always a net positive for WP because it does not require editing articles and causes zero burden on the community, yet provides benefit to the community. The article survey identifying gaps in sources, content, subject coverage, quality etc. is always valuable if it can be channeled in the right manner. Because I know little of professional psychology I can’t evaluate the quality of the student survey work in this case. But this type of survey work (in a sense literature reviews) is invaluable in identifying holes in the encyclopedia that experienced editors can help fill in.
• On the specific issue of plagiarism, would be interesting to know what kind of emphasis is put on plagiarism in this particular university and this particular course? I do know that at MSU it is a major point of emphasis starting with freshmen and just not tolerated when it is discovered. In the freshman writing course we use Misplaced Pages in, the issue of plagarism is a key learning objective and woven into the entire course activities. I find it difficult to think that any university professor would tolerate plagarism whether it was associated with WP or not. So the question I would really like to know is what circumstances lead to the belief (by a student or students) that their plagiarism would be tolerated?

Again Sandy, good example which indeed demonstrates the potential adverse burden on the community if these types of activity aren’t avoided. But avoided they can be through good instructional design, good training, good resources outlining best practices, and collaborative activities between the Misplaced Pages community and academia. We have ample evidence that this can be done right? --Mike Cline (talk) 18:28, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike, but your response is kinda ... BS. Regardless of course objectives, plagiarism is always an issue any professor should be concerned with. Our issue here is the drain on our time when large blocks of text are plopped in all at once in one day because someone is after a grade. That is not how typical editors work; trying to compare this to the typical non-student editor misses the point we've been repeatedly raising. A "typical" editor would only edit apraxia because they knew or had an interest in the topic, not because they were required to edit something, and most folks knowing that content area would be aware of the controversy surrounding "music and play therapy". We gained nothing from this student's edits; they were a net negative and a drain, and this is entirely representative of what I encounter. The questions raised for this one sample in a sea of same relate to how are we going to deal with these growing situations. You haven't answered those questions; you are looking for excuses. Perhaps Doc James has the only solution? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:36, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandy - I asked a series of questions. That's all I did? You didn't ask me for a proposed solution, but if you had, I would have asked exactly the same questions. And in no way do my questions above condon or try to make excuses for the plagarism experienced and I think it is disengenuous of you to imply that I that I was condoning plagarism. Why is it so difficult for us (the community) to deal with this rationally? I think we all need to stop challenging everyone's motives in these discussions just because we have different experiences with EP related activities. Doc James idea may indeed be a solution to something and indeed there are issues that need solutioning, but I am not yet convinced I completely understand what is causing (systematically speaking) the problems. I do trust that whatever solutions the community seeks doesn't in the long run cause far more serious issues for the future of the encyclopedia. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:02, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, you said "potential adverse burden". It isn't potential. It is actual. Is that sinking in yet? You said "avoided they can be ... We have ample evidence that this can be done right?" Is that a question or a statement? If it is question then the answer is "hell no!". Where is this "evidence". The only analysis we have seen conducted didn't look at plagiarism and wasn't capable of determining if the articles were accurate and appropriately weighted summaries of the topic. I challenge you to find a single psychology undergraduate course that is a net benefit to Misplaced Pages. Colin° 19:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

@Colin: Come on, the statement good example which indeed demonstrates the potential adverse burden on the community if these types of activity aren’t avoided. was a summary in a global context. It actually reinforces what you are saying--we've got to fix the issues or the problems will get worse. I get it, but what I don't understand is why everyone is looking for a scapegoat and cherry picking language to reinforce that search. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:17, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

@Colin: When I say ample evidence, I am saying that many of us who have used WP as a tool in the classroom have seen net benefits to WP without any adverse burden on the community. We've been creative in the way we use it. We've been creative in the ways we've engaged students and professors and we've used WP in ways that not only helped achieve learning objectives, the resulting scholarly work is now resident in the encyclopedia. The fact, and it is clearly a fact, the problems steming the from this Psychology class, are the result of someone using WP in the classroom that didn't know what they were doing. That doesn't mean we all don't know what we doing. And if you participated in the RfC you had ample opportunity to see results of the successful activities stemming from the EP. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:17, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, can you give some examples of the articles that resulted from your own use of WP in the classroom, so that we can read through some of the better ones? I've looked at the legal examples Kevin offered, which make it clear that it's possible for WP to benefit, but so far these are in the tiny minority. SlimVirgin 21:25, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

If we as a movement are going to activity promote editing by universities (and spend money on this effort ) we better make sure that the quality of the output is higher than that of a new editor. This is how I feel it the program has been pitched to the community and thus we need to make sure it is delivered.

I agree getting bad press for universities / classes / students that plagiarize could have some long term negative effects. But if we are going to be taken seriously, which I think is a more important goal, it is worth the risk. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:08, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I can't say what the initial wave of EP promotion was, but when I became involved during the USPP, we were not promoting editing WP by universities, we were promoting the use of WP as tool in the classroom. There is an important distinction here because as a tool, WP has far greater utility in the classroom than just editing. However, for WP to ultimately recieve any benefit from its use in the classroom, some editing by someone (not always inexperienced students) must be done to leverage the scholarly work accomplshed by the students. However that is accomplished, that editing activity shouldn't be harming, but should be helping the encyclopedia. So as we look to solutions we need to remain cognizant in many cases the problems caused go beyond mere "editing" shortfalls. You can turn a light off with a basketball, but the results aren't usually good for the light bulb. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:52, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

"to leverage the scholarly work accomplshed by the students" - how about the massive scholarly work done by regular wikipedians with no "help". To me this whole education ruckus points out what regular wikipedians have accomplished, and how little the "students" have done, even with special treatment. This whole educational initiative I see as turning upside down the wonderful spirit that has created this encyclopedia so far without so-called "academics", though academics are among the regular wikipedians. And now the community is being asked to clean up the problems created by EP courses. MathewTownsend (talk) 21:32, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

A good light bulb does not provoke basketball throwing. Biosthmors (talk) 21:42, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I consider myself a academic but really only with respect to Misplaced Pages. Maybe we need to start our own university and hand out our own certificates :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:27, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Cluttering again

• Regarding the DYK nom, Johnbod is right in that the nom was rejected immediately in part because there was no hook (or anything else, basically) in the nom. Another point was the length of the article: before the student worked on it, cluttering was 5690 characters. Afterwards, it was only 7820 characters, or an expansion of less than 1.5x. As previous experience with the psychology classes taught me that the student would never revisit the nom, I decided to IAR and close it immediately with no chance of passing. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:32, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• Does anyone need a revert + revdel for cluttering, to deal with what is here now? If you need it for diffs, I'll leave it, but I think we should have an article for readers for this fairly popular article — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:46, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• I don't know. I have no way of checking the offline sources, so my best guess would be to delete the whole thing. I was hoping someone with journal access could check whether the copyvio extends beyond the online sources. I emailed the professor, he sounds quite busy, but seems willing to revisit this when he is less busy. I don't know how we should handle this; that's why I put it up as an example. I pinged Moonriddengirl to look in here about 10 hours ago. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:54, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• Okay, I've reverted to an earlier version for readers but left the old edits in the history so that they can be discussed. A rewrite would probably be better, but one would have to be pretty well versed in psychology (unlike me) to do so. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed solutions

We should IMO spend some time discussing solutions. We have fairly clearly identified a problem. I propose getting press for these concerns using concrete cases. We can than point profs who are interested in being involved to these articles so that they see involvement as requiring supervision not simply a free source of TAs. Do others have comments on this idea or other ideas? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:11, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the WMF would like to initiate the press releases so the "spin" will be less ... detrimental. Maybe if "they" put out something to stem the tide, "we" wouldn't be so burdnened with the cleanup that resulted from their earlier promotion of this program. If they don't do something to end this misguided progarm, they can't complain if the New York Times helps. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to see a story along the lines of "plucky Wikipedians save the day again, please give more money to the Wikimedia Foundation."

As a longer-term approach I would like to see an ethics committee examine this program to decide whether it's in the students' interests. I'm thinking of a committee composed of a member of a major university's ethics committee, people from a big teaching union and a students' union, and a sociologist or philosopher who specializes in educational ethics. What is happening here is that one set of unpaid contributors (students) is being pitted against another set (Wikipedians), both sides forced to be involved -- the students for a course credit and the Wikipedians because no one else will clean up. And the people who are being paid to be involved (the teachers, the staffers, and whoever else) unwilling to take responsibility, perhaps because each group feels some other group is in charge.

Who is actually in charge of the program as things stand? It used to be Frank Schulenburg. Is that still the case? SlimVirgin 20:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Simple answer: , more complex question: Who's in charge of Misplaced Pages and who can we blame for all the silly unproductive disruption that occurs everyday 24/7 in every corner of this community. This is a frigging global undisciplined collaborative of unpaid volunteers that have somehow created ~4,000,000 + articles of free knowledge without killing anyone. We are just trying to get better at that. --Mike Cline (talk) 20:34, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Would you please, please, stop bouncing back all criticism by saying look at all the crap that everyday users do. Can you just focus on the EP and its net-benefit-how-can-we-fix-it issues. WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. The undergrad student edits are a perfect storm of editors ignorant of their subject being supervised by professors who are ignorant of Misplaced Pages. Colin° 20:53, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

That page doesn't say who's in charge of the education program; it doesn't even list everyone working for it (e.g. Sage). Do you know whether Frank is still in charge (and why is it so difficult to get answers to straightforward questions)? SlimVirgin

Slim, I think Jami answered this above but one can presume that indeed Frank heads the Global Education Program and Jami, working for Frank has the stick on the US/CAN Program. I cannot speak to who in the WMF has any authority or responsibility for any specific aspect of the Education Programs. I am just an unpaid Volunteer in Misplaced Pages land. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:30, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

It's slightly complicated, because there are several transitions going on simultaneously. But I'll do my best to answer. Frank Schulenburg was until recently the Global Education Program director, and so broadly in charge of all of WMF's education program efforts. However, he's had expanded responsibilities since the departure of Barry Newstead and, as announced recently as part of the restructuring of WMF to narrow its focus, Frank has a new role, "Senior Director of Programs", which means the Global Education Program is now just a part of his area. WMF is currently searching for a Global Education Program Senior Manager. The Global Education Program staff includes Annie Lin and LiAnna Davis; they focus primarily (almost exclusively, in Annie's case) on Education Programs on other language wikis. Annie manages Jami Mathewson (a full-time contractor), and LiAnna manages me (a part-time contractor, which may be why I'm not listed on the staff page, but actually I think I just got forgotten... :( ). Jami and I are the only WMF people who whose primary responsibilities are the US and Canada Education Programs; Jami works with the Regional Ambassadors and the Working Group, screens professors who apply to participate, and is the primary staffer in charge of the US and Canada Programs. My main roles involve improving our training material and similar resources (handouts, videos, etc) for students, instructors and new Ambassadors, doing everything except the actual development related to the new extension for structured course pages, and whatever else needs doing that I can fit in. So in a day-to-day sense, Jami is in charge.

However, the other transition currently going on is the hand-off of the US and Canada Programs. Thus, in terms of the future of program and decision-making about significant changes to how it works, no one at Wikimedia Foundation is in charge at this point. The Working Group and its successors, and the English Misplaced Pages community more broadly as well as the community of instructors, Ambassadors, and other volunteers of the program (ie, all the "stakeholders"), now have that responsibility.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:08, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, Sage. Whose decision was it to take a hands-off approach to the US-Canada program, but not to the rest? SlimVirgin 22:20, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

One tires of hearing inappropriate comparisons of Misplaced Pages to "the real world", but WMF jobs are, theoretically real world. "Frank has a new role, 'Senior Director of Programs', which means the Global Education Program is now just a part of his area." So, for his effort in overseeing a failed program, Frank has been rewarded with a promotion? Only on Misplaced Pages. Should we now expect more of these wonderful programs? Sage Ross, I've always known you to be a competent editor; I'm not surprised that you are being overlooked by the not-real-Wikipedians who appear to be increasingly in charge, or trying to be in charge, or something. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:28, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

WMF has a direct hand in only a few programs right now; most of the programs (I think there are 26 of them at last count) are either run by chapters or by volunteers independently. The plan is to hand those off as well, as soon as it is feasible to do so. In terms of who made that decision precisely, I'm not sure, but it's part of the broader "narrowing focus" restructuring going on right now; Wikimedia Foundation is moving away from directly running programs to instead focus on engineering and grantmaking.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Can you find out who made that decision? It's actually not feasible for the Foundation to hand off the US-Canada program just yet, and the situation is causing quite a bit of bad feeling. I thought the recent RfC (which was not well publicized) didn't reach a clear consensus, yet it seems the hand-off is going ahead anyway. SlimVirgin 22:36, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware the WMF has not yet made a final decision about whether to create a separate organization. The RfC was no-consensus, as you say, and a summary to that effect will be included in the final report to the WMF. I was the one who publicized the RfC; was there more I should have done? The list of notifications is visible here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I made some comments abuot some of those other grantmaking debacles and this program here on my talk page to NYB. (Slim, I mentioned you and Malleus there.) And it was Frank who moved my comments earlier in the year off of this board to talk, trying to shut down criticism. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:58, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Can anyone estimate how many articles in the Category:Possible copyright violations are associated with EP activity. I am just not that familar with the whole range of articles being impacted here. I realize that yet undiscovered or unreported copyvios don't show up here but one might extrapolate the same ratio within the undiscovered pool. Additionally, do we have an estimate of how many US/CAN EP related articles over the course of the entire program have had copyvio issues? Just a question of the true scope of the problem. --Mike Cline (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, essentially nobody is looking. By and large, the only people with good access to the sources the students are using are those setting the assignments. And they aren't looking (find me an example of a prof or assistant pro-actively removing the stuff). But what we find, is that whenever we look, we find it. I've removed lots of copyvio additions by students but haven't reported at any noticeboard. And what I've removed is only the tip of the iceberg in those classes I've looked at because I don't have good journal access, never mind access to student textbooks. This is what makes it truly frustrating that the people least capable of successfully find plagiarism are those actually most likely to find it and fix it. Why should that be? Colin° 20:48, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Mike, I have only just started looking at these articles, but so far they have almost all contained plagiarism (word-for-word copying) or very close paraphrasing (where the student lifts a sentence from a source and slightly tweaks it, lifts the next sentence and slightly tweaks it, so that they essentially reproduce the text, but without in-text attribution). However, so far I haven't found an example of the really dishonest kind of plagiarism that doesn't cite the source at all. All the ones I've seen do include the source in footnotes, which suggests to me that the students have not been told what plagiarism is, and believe that citing in a footnote is enough. This is why it's so easy to find, which makes it surprising that the teachers didn't find it, and in fact suggests that they didn't check. And yet they offered grades for those essays. It's something that really does need to be asked of them, because the alternative is that they did see the plagiarism and took it into account when grading, but then didn't remove it from Misplaced Pages. SlimVirgin 21:04, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I came across a student who plagiarized a paragraph from one journal article and referenced it to a second one. Often google schoolar or google books will pick it up. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:20, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Back to my original questions

When we find plagiarism, indicating that the prof didn't check the work, what should we do?

1. Should we revert every student in that class, since we know the prof wasn't checking?
2. Should we disinvite the prof from the education program?
3. Should we submit a Copyright investigation on the entire class?
4. Who will locate offline sources and do the work to check these classes?
5. Should we contact the University?
6. Should this board have a method for starting subpaged, case files on individual courses and profs that are causing significant issues (similar to CCIs or the Dispute resolution noticeboard, so that we have records). The articles that have given me problems seem to be coming from the same professors.

etcetera ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:09, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Request for examples of good articles

Several people have made the point that we're all drawing conclusions from the particular experiences we've had, which is a fair point; the people involved with the education program are doing the same, of course. Could someone post examples of articles that were definitely improved by the program (apart from Brianwc's classes, which have already been mentioned)? Mike Cline said he would post some. If anyone else could do the same, it would help to put things in perspective. SlimVirgin 00:42, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Great idea. Other than JBMurrays class I have come across minor improvements at best. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:07, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Was JBMurray's class part of this education program? Malleus Fatuorum 01:10, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

No, Jbmurray's class had the advantage of most of Misplaced Pages's finest FA writers helping out, via WP:FAT. But I believe his class was the model that caused these programs to take off (his FAs generated a lot of publicity). What the Program got wrong was that Jon was/is a committed and knowledgeable Wikipedian who had lots of FA writers helping; these new profs aren't knowledgeable, and don't engage as Jb did. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:14, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Agree completely Sandy. That is the key. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

From my watched areas, Mu wave and DISC1. I'm not saying perfect, mind you, but definitely net positives. (On the other hand, the same class that did DISC1 also did Flynn–Aird syndrome, which I strongly suspect of copyvio.) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:30, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

• Tina Loo’s class last spring (Misplaced Pages:Canada Education Program/Courses/Present/North American Environmental History (Tina Loo)) added a lot of good content to 13 Canadian topics. They worked in groups, posted to talk pages, engaged with myself and Wikipedians, and, in my mind, anyway, made it work. Best articles (although there is good content added to all 13 of the articles listed at the course page):

• Columbia River Treaty - Before/after dif.
• Hells Gate (British Columbia) - Before/after dif. Student user (Eye101 (talk · contribs)) actually correctly identified a move situation for the article’s title, and (with my help), made it happen.
• Trail Smelter dispute - forgot about this one, new article, student editor added about a dozen historical images to Commons to boot (with assistance from another BC Wikipedian)

Students in this course did all their drafting and content-related communicating on-wiki, which really helped me point them in the right directions. I have done a little cleanup after these editors, but the ratio of content added to cleanup was very positive for this course.

I’ve also been working with Wnewbold (talk · contribs) on two of his sections, similar good content has been added by his students. Again, a lot of on-wiki interaction, talk page notices, etc. from this bunch. The Interior (Talk) 01:40, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The WMF has moved away from their earlier position on recruiting editors, but for the record anyway, that course page lists about 57 students, and after their course ended:

• Eye101 (talk · contribs) made one edit in June and two in December.
• Kaypri (talk · contribs) created and significantly edited Poverty in the Arctic in November (I wonder if she's in another course?)
• I painstakingly clicked on the contribs link for every other student in the class, and found not a single edit after mid-April 2012.

So, there is the data from one good course that so many of us have been asking for on editor retention. Three edits in eight months from one student, and a significant contribution from one other, out of 57 students. Basically, one editor retained out of 57, but maybe that editor is in another class.

1. Since this class seems to have done good work, why do you suppose the students were not interested in sticking around?
2. Who will maintain those articles in the good state they left them in?
3. Why are we investing so much editor time for so little return?
4. Have the articles been checked for plagiarism?

I would be happy to clean up after and mentor students if they turned into productive long-term editors. I wonder if we can conduct a follow-up survey on this class to see why the students weren't retained as editors, and how well their articles have held up since their departure. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:46, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I have a lot of respect for Doc James, but am surprised by this comment "Other than JBMurrays class I have come across minor improvements at best." While there have certainly been a few bumps along the way, the majority of the classes that I've worked with in the US and Canada have contributed a ton of quality content to Misplaced Pages, one needs only to review some of the many courses that have participated. Examples? In Canada there are numerous. Check out the contributions of this IP law class. Or this psychology class that brought two articles to Good Article status, not bad for a single semester. Most of the professors I've worked with value quality content, and have put in the time and the effort required. I know that established Wikipedians like those noted above are well-respected; however, do not assume that their status on WP makes them the only profs capable of supervising strong work. Jaobar (talk) 06:20, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

On the surface, the two articles are certainly significantly above the psych work I typically see. On the GAs, I would be interested in hearing Malleus Fatuorum's opinion on those two articles (he's a GA guru, GAs are passed by one editor, and quality of review at GA is variable depending on the reviewer). Vocabulary development has not a single online source, so we can't check it for plagiarism or copyvio (did anyone?), there's a weasle word tag, and it's not clear to me that primary/secondary sources are correctly used (not a single PMID, and I'm not going to take the time to track down every article, but indications primary sources are used). Joint attention has rough prose, quite a few stylistic issues, dubious use of primary/secondary sources, and not a single online source so we can check for plagiarism or copyvio. I doubt that it meets GA standards, wonder what Malleus thinks, and I don't think it would withstand a rigorous GA reevaluation. But yes, these articles are at least better than what I typically see. If they contain plagiarism, though ... Editor retention: 7 students, 0 editor retention, not a single edit since their coursework ended mid-April (same questions I posed above; if this work was successful, why aren't they interested in staying on? GAs do not stay GA level if someone isn't watching them. Significance of the work to our readers: very low page view stats. Meaning, why are we expending resources there? We could all be working on articles of interest to our readers (every time an editor has to clean up an obscure student article it takes time away from articles that our readers actually view). Summary: little viewed articles, no editor retention, and not yet evaluated for plagiarism, so we don't know if we have good articles or not. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

My experience in making this work

Much of the result of the following is documented in part here: MSU Education Program Work

Our experiences at Montana State University started when the US Public Policy project recruited a professor in Native American Studies. The course we would work on was Federal Indian Law and Policy a graduate level course. The professor’s interest in involving WP in the curriculum was twofold. First, she felt that Federal Indian Law was poorly represented in WP and that maybe there was a way to use her class to help expand free knowledge on the subject. The second motivation, I the one that I found most profound and challenging was this. A large percentage of her students were of Native American heritage. They had a tendency to be very biased and emotional when thinking and writing about Native American issues, especially issues of rights and law. The Professor believed the WP tenant of NPOV would make a great teaching tool that would enable her students to be much more effective advocates in the world of Native American issues if they could learn to think and write in unbiased, unemotional ways. So my fellow ambassador (an MSU Library archivist) and I (an experienced Wikipedian and instructional designer) worked with the Professor to map out a curriculum involving WP that would meet her desired learning objectives. To meet the first learning objective, a collaborative of students would conduct a comprehensive literature review on the subject of Federal Indian Law and survey WP content to see what needed more work or where there were missing topics. The second objective was met by several students who chose to research, expand or write about a few of the missing topics or topics needing work using basic WP guidelines for verifiability, NPOV, etc. About mid-way through the term we organized a formal computer lab session and tutored students in the basic WP landscape so they knew what they were writing for. When the assignments were complete (this amounted to about ¼ the total grade), they were submitted to the professor for review/grading/comments etc. in whatever format she desired. Very near the end of the term, we organized another computer lab session for those students who wanted to contribute their work to WP. There was no obligation to do so. Under the tutelage of the ambassadors, a number of articles were edited/created, to include the Outline of United States federal Indian law and policy which flowed out of the comprehensive literature review. Even after the term ended, as an ambassador I continued to make improvements to some articles as time permitted.

The second experience involved completely different learning objectives. The Freshman Writing Course (101) taught three styles of basic written communication in three separate segments. Segment 3 involved encyclopedic writing and WP was the desired model to teach to. By this time we had recruited a third ambassador, a tenured reference librarian. These were classes of 3 sections of 25 students all held on the same day each week. We worked with the instructor to craft a lesson plan to meet the learning objectives. In this course the emphasis was on good prose, good sourcing, and good written organization. The topic of the writing wasn’t relevant so we incorporated WP into the lesson by allowing student to select stubs on anything they felt comfortable sourcing and writing about. I think the requirement was ~2500 words of new prose written in encyclopedic style that would meet WP guidelines. When the assignment was complete, it was submitted to the instructor along with copies of the source material used where it was graded by instructor and returned to the student. We then organized computer lab sessions to allow those students that wanted to contribute their work, to do so under the tutelage of three ambassadors to ensure it met WP guidelines. We repeated this process significantly more efficiently for a second term and another 75 students. Not all students finished these courses, but those that did, did so in a way that met the instructors learning objectives while producing content that helped grow WP. Nothing in either of these courses was about editing WP as the learning objectives were all about teaching better writing skills. We just designed those objectives so that the product of the learning would be of benefit to WP.

One of the innovative things the instructor allowed us to try was a very fast paced, standup collaborative team exercise at the whiteboard where a team of -4-6 students with three journal sources on a topic in-hand (pre-read) had to right a four sentence lead paragraph using WP guidelines on leads. We would run 4 teams at a time. Each team had one source that was different from all the other groups. We gave them about 10 minutes to write the lead paragraph based on their sources. The groups would then openly critique each other’s prose and challenge the paraphrasing, differing information (different sources) and overall comprehensive of the lead paragraph. This was not a graded exercise and there was no right or wrong answers, but one that was designed to reinforce good sourcing, paraphrasing , construction and collaborative writing. In other words, we created a scenario using WP norms to allow the instructor to recognize and capitalize on teaching moments. The instructor loved it, the students loved it, and Misplaced Pages got credit for some fun in the classroom.

As we move forward at MSU we will continue to jointly establish curriculum with willing instructors around WP designed to meet whatever learning objectives are on the table. It may involve editing, it may not, but whatever curriculum we employ we will ensure any content contributed to WP meets WP norms. We have another proposed WP exercise in the works that doesn’t involve editing but will be of great benefit to the encyclopedia. Research skills receive a lot of interest at MSU in the freshman/sophomore years and the MSU library has a variety of programs related to improving those skills. WP has ~ 250,000 un-sourced articles and god knows how much unverified content. We are crafting a curriculum where students conduct the necessary research to find sources for un-sourced WP material. If we are successful, all that work can then be made available to WP where other editors can use those sources to improve articles and verify content. We are excited about this idea.

I am proud of what we’ve accomplished at MSU for several reasons. We’ve helped professors use WP to achieve learning objectives and we’ve helped students create some work that has improved WP. All without any adverse or negative burden on WP. --Mike Cline (talk) 03:25, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

This sounds incredibly fun and exciting and I'm green with envy. I'm happy that you have such a rewarding experience, but clearly, if more of us had similar experiences, we wouldn't be here. It's helpful to see why you are so proud and happy of the program's accomplishments at MSU; it would also be helpful to know you understand how miserable student editing has made many of us because our experience is so different. So far, with the exception of the page that Bio started (Misplaced Pages:Assignments for student editors) and that many of us have edited (that is unlikely to be read by the problem profs and students), I've not yet seen any good concrete suggestions for how the rest of us can enjoy an experience more like yours. I suspect that editing medical topics is harder than the norm, but faulty medical information on Misplaced Pages is, IMO, as bad as a BLP vio. Rather than hearing platitudes from staff, we need to hear concrete ways to move the rest of the courses more toward what you are experiencing, or get them to go away. If WMF staff is unable or unwilling to do something to improve the situation by highlighting and shining light on the problems and encouraging the bad courses to either clean up their act or leave, then perhaps bad press will do the job. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:19, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Online ambassadors

Someone suggested above: "perhaps recruiting ambassadors who are willing to monitor and clean up their classes' messes (it seems like this ought to already be part of the job description, but it doesn't seem to be)".

I've never seen much action by online ambassadors. (Maybe it's all by email and chat.) Perhaps recruiting online ambassadors who are experienced wikipedians, who are also familiar with the subject matter of education course articles and who are willing to "monitor and clean up their classes' messes" would be the way to go. (And that would probably be more than one online ambassador for every 15 students, the ideal now but not always achieved.) MathewTownsend (talk) 01:04, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Active Wikipedians are already working on other stuff. Maybe what is needed is someone paid to review all edits with this someone paid by the university. And this will be a requirement for involvement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:12, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't mean to be negative about a fellow Wikipedian, but I did once have an experience with a page where the students massively ignored very basic editing principles, and didn't respond to my polite suggestions, and the instructor told me that the students just weren't very good and left it at that – and when I asked the ambassador to look into it, he responded with a vaguely insulting comment about me. I'm not interested in attacking that ambassador, but it did leave me with the feeling that this was someone who wasn't particularly fulfilling the role. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:25, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Not surprised. I just noticed that a prior member of the "Online Ambassador Selection Committee", who couldn't get an article through GA in two tries (and was very rude to me for failing her article for plagiarism/close paraphrasing), is now a member of the Grant Advisory Committee for WMF. Maybe a grant could be provided for some of this paid cleanup (since I doubt the universities will pay for it!) MathewTownsend (talk) 01:33, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The university should be paying. The WMF does not fund Wikimedians in Residence and these should be funded by the institution. This should be a full time employee whose primary duty is to explain how Misplaced Pages works and to check students work for plagiarism. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:45, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Some thoughts: my 2c. and then some

I've been following this discussion (and over the past several months others previous, including the RFC and the various scattered fallout over the Pune program etc.). I've also had quite a bit to do with the various incarnations of the EP, from an informal meeting in San Francisco, to seeing members of the team in Barcelona, to being part of the Jamboree in Boston. (These guys get around, I tell you... I mean, I obviously do, too, but mostly on my own dime and nowhere near as much as they do.)

Most of the WMF folk are well-intentioned (and they're better than some of the people who went before... Rob, for instance), but with few exceptions (Sage is one) they have not much idea about how Misplaced Pages actually works, and have never been active Wikipedians. Moreover, as an institution the WMF is much better at promotion and spin, but has little investment in following up on what they have started. This whole business of handing off the program, as though it were a hot potato that they no longer want to touch, is a very poor show indeed.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of people in academia who, in part encouraged by the WMF (but in part spurred by examples such as my own), have become very excited about the possibilities of using Misplaced Pages in the classroom. I met Steve Joordens, for instance, in Boston. He's a good guy but even at the time I was wondering how on earth he could pull off something with a class of 1500 students. Sadly, in the celebratory atmosphere of that meeting, it was hard to raise any doubts, cautions, or caveats. At the same meeting there was also much excitement about the Pune program, and we all know what happened there...

In short, for a variety of reasons a lot of hopes have been raised around this program. And a lot of good material has been produced. Sometimes things have gone well. But when things have gone wrong, they have gone badly wrong, and the WMF hasn't wanted to hear any doubts, and hasn't wanted to pick up the pieces.

Frankly, it's a crying shame because the WMF has had oodles of money and resources passing through its hands, and masses of goodwill, especially but not only from academics. It's been a shame to see that money and those resources too often wasted, in almost every way conceivable. (The Barcelona junket was a particular disaster, but it was one I saw only by accident, as I happened to be at the Mozilla Fest there in any case. The Wikimedia folk there had scarcely a clue as to what they were doing, and yet they had a golden opportunity to make connections and to talk to people, both to learn and to gain allies.)

Anyhow, beyond the waste it's also a shame because I strongly believe that there needs to be more thought and more effort devoted to thinking through (and doing something about) the relationship between Misplaced Pages and academia, which at present is frankly a broken relationship, with massive misunderstandings on both sides. The dialogue of the deaf that results would be amusing if it weren't also almost tragic. To take one example: academics fear Misplaced Pages because of the rampant plagiarism that (they think) creates it and that it in turn creates; yet here we have ongoing denunciation of student projects, for almost precisely the same reason. You'd have thought we'd have here the basis of a common conversation, common goals, and perhaps a shared set of tragedies. Instead we have mutual recriminations and allegations.

I think that the relationship between Misplaced Pages and the University (also, more broadly, the university and the intellectual commons) is a vital one, for a number of reasons. In reality, Misplaced Pages and the university are (or should be) in this together: they are both ultimately utopian enterprises, dedicated to the production and dissemination of knowledge to all, without commercial or ideological restraints. They are both, frankly, embattled, and their enemies are similar: rampant commercialization and privatization, for instance; or, in brief, an extraordinary attempt to enclose and profit from the digital commons.

This is why, beyond the basic obfuscation and evasions that it carries with it, I'm so against the management-speak that seems to come with the Education Project in its new incarnation. It is precisely this sort of shallow rationalization, short-termism, and unthinking belief in modish rhetoric that is killing the university and has the potential to kill Misplaced Pages. No wonder Wikipedians react so strongly against it! It is precisely the opposite of any solution to heal the rift between Misplaced Pages and the University. For it is the death-rattle of both.

Anyhow, all this may sound too high-falutin' or something. But there should be a forum for an honest and productive conversation between academics and Wikipedians (which is also a conversation among academics and Wikipedians, because of course there are plenty of people who are both, and in the end the divide is a false one). This should deal with pragmatic considerations such as plagiarism as well as the less-pragmatic ones about ethics. (By the way, there are also legalities at issue: strictly speaking when I tell my students to edit on Misplaced Pages I am also breaking the law of my home province; but that's another matter.)

We could ask why students, even good students, decide to plagiarize on Misplaced Pages, even those who wouldn't necessarily plagiarize elsewhere. (The other semester I had a grad class work on the Spanish Misplaced Pages and it turned out that two of the articles they wrote were massively plagiarized... No, I hadn't checked initially, because it honestly didn't occur to me that grad students would plagiarize in such a stupid manner. But they did.) We could think about ways to combat this. Incidentally, I find that Misplaced Pages assignments ultimately work well as a way to teach students not to plagiarize, just as they teach them about the perils of using poor sources. But it takes a while to get to that point; these are difficult lessons to learn, especially perhaps among this generation of students.

But more importantly we should also be thinking harder (and doing more) about the role that Misplaced Pages can and should play in the education sector, and vice versa. This should be a positive and productive relationship. I salute the WMF for realizing the potential of the two "sides" working together. This is why ultimately I support the Education Project. Indeed, I think it is vital. But this is also why (again) I think it's a huge shame that it has gone through such difficulties, and that it looks nowhere near resolving them anytime soon.

OK, I know: in the classic Misplaced Pages idiom, your response should probably be TLDNR. Shorter version: the Education Program (or something like it) is essential, but we can't let it be blighted by short-termism, blinkered vision, unthinking celebration, and shallow rhetoric. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:57, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

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