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  • Am I correct in assuming that Lianna Davis is a paid employee of the WMF? Her comments (defending an instigator of harassment against a 15-year-old volunteer) are very unprofessional. Schierbecker (talk) 21:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of Lianna's comments. I thought she made several reasonable points about the context. And it's also very unclear to me that @kibona intended to instigate harassment. The subsequent harassment is still unacceptable, of course. Chris Troutman's comments, below, also strike me as an overreaction. Ganesha811 (talk) 23:57, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm very thankful Sdkb gave this subject a fair write up, at my suggestion. I am appalled by Mkibona's conduct; these violations of WP:CANVASS and WP:MEAT call for a topic ban if not an outright block and removal from WEF's program. Because the harassment involved should have been prevented by WEF, LiAnna (WikiEd)'s failure to address this matter and her passive-aggressive "I'm sorry anyone was hurt" statement after the fact should result in her removal from WEF, as well. As I've read, this isn't the first time WEF's efforts created suboptimal results for en-wp which calls into question Helaine (Wiki Ed)'s leadership. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:19, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I am a paid employee of Wiki Education, not WMF. I fundamentally disagree that the instructor in this class instigated harassment. The tweet the instructor sent requesting support is quoted above: "I don’t know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving" two articles. This was not instigating harassment. The AfD nominator somehow found this tweet and responded to it. Other users on Twitter — none connected to the course or Wiki Education — did harass the AfD nominator (and I'll repeat my comment that the initial wording of my post was a mistake, not an attempt to minimize or deny the unacceptable Twitter harassment — it was harassment, and I'm glad Barkeep49 pointed that out at the time so I could clarify). But her asking for help identifying additional sources for two articles is not instigating harassment. It's also worth noting that while one article she requested help with did get deleted, the other one she asked for help for in the thread (Ratchet feminism) got some additional sourcing and is now an article. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't get why I am "Administrator Barkeep49". The fact that I am an administrator is immaterial to this situation but this kind of labeling suggests it is. If you're going to name a PERM that matters in this context it would be "New Page Reviewer Barkeep49". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Three points from BHG:
  1. It seems that those running this course did not give (or did not succeed in conveying) to the students a proper grounding in WP:V, WP:RS and WP:GNG. Those policies are absolutely fundamental to writing any article on en.wp, yet the students who have commented seems to be woefully lacking in that understanding; one even suggested dding refs to press releases as evidence of notability. I count that as grave failing by the course director, and more broadly by WikiEd.
  2. A lot of the commentary refers to "harassment" by and of various parties, but none of the posts cited show any evidence of harassment. There are many critical responses, and some of those are heated or harsh ... but the harassment is normally used to describe a pattern of hostile behaviour, rather than just individual acts of hostility. This misuse of the word poisons our ability to discuss contentious issues.
  3. It seems to me to be very unlikely that a 15yo is suitably experienced to be able to assess the significance and availability of sources related to a politically-contentious topic which is not well-covered in mainstream media. I intend no criticism of the individual concerned, who I assume is diligent and well-intentioned ... but the ideal choice of person to assess such matters would be someone with a lot more experience. That is a structural problem arising from wp's fundamental policies relating to editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:42, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
Regarding 3.: Looking at the AfD discussion, it appears that five other editors agreed with the nominator's concerns about the sources cited, and two of them reported having made unsuccessful efforts to find suitable sources themselves. Do you think all five lacked competence as well?
And are there concrete examples of sources that were overlooked or misjudged in this case (in particular due to the alleged incompetence issue)? Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB: I am not here to re-run the AFD debate or to find sources.
I remain concerned at the lack of expertise and experience. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:51, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
It seems that those running this course did not give (or did not succeed in conveying) to the students a proper grounding in WP:V, WP:RS and WP:GNG. Sometimes there's a gap between what's written and what people take away from what's written, but we do communicate these concepts to thousands of students each term. We could say more in our trainings, but longer, more detailed instructions don't equal better retention (cf the existence of "tldr").
Those policies are absolutely fundamental to writing any article on en.wp, yet the students who have commented seems to be woefully lacking in that understanding; one even suggested dding refs to press releases as evidence of notability. I count that as grave failing by the course director, and more broadly by WikiEd. Yes, something didn't connect here. In a conversation with Mkibona after the blow-up, she mentioned that the students why they didn't use the sources she supplied in class, for some reason. Sometimes people don't get it. But there were almost 6,000 students last term, who worked on over 6,000 articles. The vast majority did much, much better than the average brand new editor - because of the training and support we provide.
I remain concerned at the lack of expertise and experience I suspect there aren't more than 100 people who have more expertise with article creation or policy than I do. And after supporting tens of thousands of new editors over the last 7+ years, I don't believe there's anyone who has more experience working with new editors. I did my best working with the students who wrote the BWR article, I exchanged many messages with them trying to help them understand the issues of V, N and RS. That I failed goes without saying. But it wasn't for lack of either experience or expertise. Guettarda (talk) 00:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Not about the specifics of what happened in this case, but about the context in which it occurs. There is a desire to increase coverage of under-represented topic areas and to increase involvement of editors from under-represented demographics. However, combining the two isn't the ideal solution. Getting new editors to write new articles runs the risk of these articles having problems with notability and other policy violations and ending up at AfD or other unpleasantness. And, if the group of new editors from under-represented demographics is being asked to write about topics relating to their own demographic, then there is also scope for conflict of interest and WP:GREATWRONGS. I say this from the perspective of someone who has been involved in supporting edit-a-thons of this nature. While there is a lot of good intention from all involved, it creates a high-risk situation (as the story reported above illustrates). Put simply, inexperienced contributors and new articles is not a good combination. I think we need to de-couple the two goals. Initiatives to increase content on under-represented topics should involve more experienced contributors and initiatives for engaging new contributors from under-represented demographics should focus on improving existing articles on uncontentious topics in the first instance. More generally, I think we should be lifting the bar on the creation of new articles, which is currently 10 edits or 4 days since sign-up. While this threshold may be OK to predict intent to vandalise, I don't think it's sufficient experience for new article creation. Maybe 100 edits *and* a month since sign-up for entry into Article for Creation, maybe 1000 edits *and* 3 months since sign-up for article creation straight into mainspace. In that way, contributors will have more experience when they tackle their first article and we will reduce conflict-of-interest article creation. As a side benefit, it will make it harder for the undisclosed paid editors, who currently create a new account, do 10 quick edits to random articles and then create the article (and then presumably repeat the pattern with a new account). Kerry (talk) 22:48, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
    • There is a desire to increase coverage of under-represented topic areas and to increase involvement of editors from under-represented demographics. However, combining the two isn't the ideal solution. - But there's a reason these two are connected, and combining the two is unavoidable without telling people "please stop writing about the things that are relevant to you -- let people of other demographics write about them instead". Dealing with systemic bias, both on and off-wiki, can be high-risk (at least in the sense of the weight of context), and just the fact of being underrepresented (subjects or people) makes them a bit trickier and weightier in some ways. If we actually want to bring more people to Misplaced Pages and cover more topics, we have to be ready to face some of that risk and potential challenges. I do want to be clear, though, that my response, at least, is a bit of an abstract tangent in that I'm not saying any Wikipedian should have to deal with the kinds of Tweets mentioned above. — Rhododendrites \\ 23:06, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
    @Kerry Raymond writes increase coverage of under-represented topic areas and to increase involvement of editors from under-represented demographics. However, combining the two isn't the ideal solution.
    Au contraire, WP:WikiProject Women in Red has combined the two with great success. It just needs to be run a lot better than this WikiEd course was. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:54, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
    • Yes, if it wasn't for an edit conflict, I would have gone on to make the point that such programs needs better risk management. Saying "we have to be ready to face some of that risk" begs the question of who "we" are. It is not just the people who design these programs who are choosing to accept the risk. On the contrary, they create risks for others who did not agree to those risks. A new contributor who has a bad experience probably didn't accept that risk (or didn't understand the risk they faced). The community members who responded to the problematic contribution have had their time wasted and, in some cases, will be accused of having taken their action because they are "anti" whatever the topic area is. They didn't agree to this risk. If the new contributor does not continue, then the movement has lost someone who might have continued if their early experience was more positive. The reader is impacted as they may see the problematic edits and misunderstand something because of them and they are also impacted by the loss of contributors as it leads to less content in the encyclopedia in the long run. Any analysis of risk must consider ALL of the stakeholders. I have been running Misplaced Pages training sessions here in Australia since 2013 and I have evolved them to reduce these risks, so I say these things from practical experience. Kerry (talk) 00:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • The canvassing issue is minor, although it does demonstrate a failing of WikiEd that Mkibona was not aware of the guideline. However, Mkibona appears to justify and blame the victim for offwiki harassment, and that is not minor. BilledMammal (talk) 00:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)