Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Biosthmors (talk | contribs) at 18:33, 29 September 2013 (→Request for course instructor right: NewmanComm (talk): re). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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.

Archives

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

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Template:Active editnotice

Maybe ambassadors could write about a paragraph after each semester

And publish it on Misplaced Pages, summarizing their goals, what they did, what worked, what didn't, and what they hope to try in the next semester. Or they could say they might not continue to volunteer and why. Or they would like to do something but are trying to figure out how and would like help. There could be subpages that are then transcluded into one page. Does anyone think this voluntary action might help things along? Biosthmors (talk) 10:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Not sure. The education program now is different than it was a year ago and will be different a year from now. The information that an ambassador might share might not have lasting relevance. Something ought to be documented but I am not sure what. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:11, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

One of the ideas the initial WEF working group aspired to was to establish a curated library of “best practices” resources widely available to educators, students and Wikipedians. Dumping one experience at a time (good or bad) randomly, without structure, into the bowels of Misplaced Pages almost ensures no one (especially those outside the day-to-day Misplaced Pages community) will ever benefit from them. I still hope the WEF intends to pursue a “curated resources library” strategy to will make all the learnings from using Misplaced Pages in the classroom widely available outside the confines and limitations of the Misplaced Pages wiki. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey Mike Cline! I thought it was M. Christie posting. I was hoping WP:Student assignments would be a one-stop-shop kind of place. I think we should have a suite of nice course pages that we present there. Maybe you have some ideas for how it could improve? Best regards. Biosthmors (talk) please notify me (i.e. {{U}}) when you sign your reply, thx 08:48, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors – My personal view is that the Misplaced Pages Wiki is a very poor place (functionally, format wise, and stability) to build a curated library of peer reviewed “best practices” as it relates to using Misplaced Pages in the classroom. Although WP:Student assignments is an interesting read, it does not even come close to providing the kind of curated resources that the average university professor could use to plan and execute a Misplaced Pages assignment in their classroom. Plus, it is doubtful the average professor interested in using Misplaced Pages would ever stumble across it on their own. When I was part of the WEF project I wrote this about “curated resources”.

One of the primary functions of the Wiki Education Foundation is to make available digitally curated resources to a wide audience (students, instructors, professors, administrators, librarians, etc.) in institutions of higher education and volunteers from Wikimedia communities in the U.S. and Canada that encourage and support the effective use of English Misplaced Pages in support of classroom learning objectives and information fluency.

Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets. Digital curation establishes, maintains and adds value to repositories of digital data for present and future use. This is often accomplished by archivists, librarians, scientists, historians, and scholars. Enterprises are starting to utilize digital curation to improve the quality of information and data within their operational and strategic processes. Successful digital curation will mitigate digital obsolescence, keeping the information accessible to users indefinitely. (http://en.wikipedia.org/Digital_curation)

Curated resources may include but are not limited to: case studies, general and discipline specific curriculum and lesson plans, Misplaced Pages training, tutorials and best practices, scholarly studies, etc.

Curated resources may be in the form of presentations, PDF and Word documents, videos, images, etc.

Curated resources must be stored and organized in ways that allow easy access and use by all levels of users in the Misplaced Pages and Academic communities.

Another primary function of the Wiki Education Foundation is to provide a collaboration platform where geographically separated staff, program volunteers, Wikipedians and participating academics, librarians and students can connect and collaborative on specific Misplaced Pages in education initiatives, events, classes and scholarly activity.

I doubt seriously that the Misplaced Pages Wiki could ever aspire to make the above types of resources widely available to educators. I hope the new WEF will pursue a more universally accessible, comprehensive and functional off-wiki approach to building and making such a library of best practices available. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:06, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

"I doubt seriously that the Misplaced Pages Wiki could ever aspire to make the above types of resources widely available to educators." Mike, can you explain why you think this? I agree with you that a curated library of the sort you indicate would be a very good idea. But I'm not entirely sure why you think that "functionally, format wise, and stability," Misplaced Pages is not the place for it. I agree that the Misplaced Pages pages on the WEF are a mess, but that mess is only made worse by the decision go to off-wiki and essentially neglect Misplaced Pages. In any case, on-wiki or off what's important is that effort is made to (precisely) curate such a list of resources. I don't see any such effort invested off wiki. On wiki at least the WEF could draw upon the good will and enthusiasm of people who are actually interested and engaged in the project. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:18, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

@Jbmurray, in my view, the structure and norms of the Misplaced Pages Wiki are fine for an online, collaboratively built encyclopedia, but are ill-suited for building and maintaining a curated library of best practices resources (especially if you want systematic peer/crowd sourced review of those resources to identify the best and most widely used) focused on the productive use of Misplaced Pages in achieving classroom learning objectives. Most Wikipedians think the Education Program is all about “Getting Students to Edit Misplaced Pages”. In my view, that’s 180° from what the program is really all about—using Misplaced Pages to help instructors in higher education courses to achieve learning objectives—whatever they might be. Editing Misplaced Pages may be a by-product of achieving learning objectives that indeed improves Misplaced Pages, but it is not the end all-be all of the Education Program. We use Misplaced Pages in freshman writing and University Studies classes at MSU in ways that don’t involve any editing. Yet, there’s no way (at present) to share those lesson plans and learning objectives with the global educator community on the Misplaced Pages Wiki and in turn get the feedback from the educator community on the efficacy of any given lesson plan.

I personally have aspirations as to what a “curated library of best practice resources” might look like, but in no way do I believe I have the perfect solution. On the other hand, I am confident that the Misplaced Pages Wiki is ill-suited, and would be extremely ineffective in making a “curated library of best practices” widely available to educators across the US and Canada.

As a matter of example, I submit that Educause is a style of curated resources and associated collaboration that would suit the WEF well. Misplaced Pages should focus on being the best online encyclopedia it can possibly be. The WEF should focus on finding ways to promote the most effective methods of using Misplaced Pages in classrooms of higher education to achieve learning objectives in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Should Misplaced Pages benefit from those methods, all the better. --Mike Cline (talk) 02:04, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Mike, thanks for sharing that perspective. I am of the opinion that you could document some great ideas on Misplaced Pages. Could you please share your knowledge at WP:Achieving learning objectives with Misplaced Pages? I think it would be a great place for you to share (it could be a Misplaced Pages essay, if you'd like), then everyone will be able to see your ideas as well. Please share your knowledge and thoughts about things the WEF could focus on there! Best regards. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

In other words, Mike, I think it would be nice if a curated library existed at one point, but why not make a start at getting some of the big helpful ideas down on Misplaced Pages so everyone can see them? I would like to know your ideas, so that I can share them with instructors. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:49, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Mattvest

Mattvest (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Misplaced Pages Ambassador?

   To support faculty and students at Davidson College.

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

   North Carolina, Davidson College.

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

   Librarian

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

   I have created one wikipedia page.

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

   N/A

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Mattvest (talk) 18:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Mattvest, I am a regional ambassador, so I can get you started! We interview people on Skype. I'll either email you or write a note for you on your talk page, unless someone beats me to this process. Best regards. Biosthmors (talk) 11:50, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• I just emailed Matt with a Davidson College adddress I found online to see if he was still interested. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 06:56, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Shrnirish (talk)

Name

Sharon Irish

Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Course title and description

Dialogues on Feminism and Technology is a graduate seminar and is part of FemTechNet's Distributed Open Collaborative Course: we are covering eleven themes and students are required to engage with Misplaced Pages in some way, whether reviewing articles, working on stubs, or participating in a discussion. The students will specify what they intend to do by October 7, 2013. We are working with Adrianne Wadewitz and https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Feminism/Students

Assignment plan

The key goal is to have students experience basic interaction with Misplaced Pages community by identifying a small task. We will know more on October 7.

Number of students

18

Start and end dates

August 26 to December 16, 2013

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Shrnirish (talk) 23:15, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Hi Sharon - I went ahead and granted you the course instructor userright which should allow you to set up your course page. Please let me know if you need help with anything at any point this semester. Thanks, Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:50, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: NewmanComm (talk)

Name

<Dr. Suzanne V. L. Berg>

Institution

<Newman University>

Course title and description

<Group Communication!-COMM 1033 will provide a practical study of communication principles and interactions which occur in small group and interview settings. Focus will be on theory, analysis, application and group communication skill development. The use of Misplaced Pages is a way to build group/organizational concepts into the course.>

Assignment plan

<The students will develop the pages associated with Newman University and the Adorers of the Blood of Christ.>

Number of students

<Four>

Start and end dates

<August 26-December 6, 2013>

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --NewmanComm (talk) 16:08, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

This sounds good. I just don't typically grant the course instructor right unless I have some sort of postive interaction with the instructor. Has anyone spoken with Suzanne? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:10, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone spoken with Suzanne? I guess I'll go look up the regional ambassadors. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:29, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

From the Skyplains region, we have User:Rjensen, thought Richard didn't reply to my previous request to comment here. Richard, would you like to talk to Suzanne and orient her? I see that you're busy doing content contributions, which is awesome, by the way. Thanks for that. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:33, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Vaparedes (talk)

Name

Veronica Paredes and @AnneMBalsamo: Anne Balsamo

Institution

The New School

Course title and description

LCST 3705: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology & NMDS 5292: Practicum in Experimental Networked Learning Design -- These two courses are part of the FemTechNet 2013 DOCC (Distributed Open Collaborative Course) effort. The first is an advanced undergraduate course in the Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. There are 18 students registered in this course. Course topics address a range of issues and themes drawn from the history of the feminist engagement with science and technology and from contemporary feminist work in technology and media.

The other course (NMDS 5292) is a small graduate seminar composed of only four students, based in the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement. Unlike the undergraduate class, the four graduate students enrolled in this class will explore issues of networked infrastructures for learning, learner-centered pedagogies, collaborative knowledge creation, and transformational practices of design and media making. They will take active roles in shaping their own research agendas in FemTechNet's research and projects.

A key assignment for the undergraduate course is engagement with Misplaced Pages. Throughout the first half of the semester, students will become familiar with the policies, protocols and community of Misplaced Pages. In this assignment, they will ultimately contribute to, or begin, articles related to the themes of feminism, science and technology.

In coordination with the FemTechNet community, we will be working with Adrianne Wadewitz @Wadewitz: and the WikiProject Feminism.

Assignment plan

The midterm project requires that all students contribute to Misplaced Pages -- though we are hoping a number of students will continue their work throughout the semester, carrying into their final projects. The midterm assignment will require students thoroughly document their process. In the following weeks they will begin choosing topics, creating reference lists and writing short summaries for these topics. We are using assignment and workshop suggestions from The Sample Syllabus guide and the Instructor Basics brochure to reach these milestones. This week we have covered Misplaced Pages's key policies in class and have assigned the online training for students. We are hoping to have all students' user accounts listed by the end of the week, once we have permission to set up the course page.

Number of students

22

Start and end dates

The date range for the class began August 26, 2013 and ends December 11, 2013.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Vaparedes (talk) 03:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Hi Vaparedes: I went ahead and granted both you and Anne the course instructor userright. This will allow you to set up a course page. Please let me know if you need help with anything at any point this semester. Thanks, Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:48, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: AJuhasz1 (talk)

Name

Alex Juhasz

Institution

Pitzer College

Course title and description

The name of our course is Feminist Dialogues on Technology. In this course, we’ll be exploring the ways that gender and technology have defined and redefined each other socially and culturally. This class is part of a larger project (see http://fembotcollective.org/femtechnet/), so students will participate in ongoing collaborations in feminism, technology, video, art and craft. Students are given the opportunity to edit Misplaced Pages pages that are relevant to the course, and of interest to them. They will contribute in the following ways: content creation, content editing or language correction. 15 advanced undergraduates will be taking this course in the fall semester. We will be working with experienced editor, Adrianne Wadewitz.

Assignment plan

Our class will be editing Misplaced Pages, hoping add feminist scholarship to already existing content on Misplaced Pages, as well as create and expand articles on women who played and are playing important roles in history and current events. By adding articles and information about women and feminist scholarship, we are making certain women and their contributions to culture are remembered and acknowledged in the digital landscape. By becoming contributors to Misplaced Pages, we are helping change the demographics of Misplaced Pages’s editor-base in order to create a more equitable, inviting space.

Number of students

15

Start and end dates

September-December 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by AJuhasz1 (talk • contribs) 19:49, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

• Hi Alex, I went ahead and granted you the necessary userright to complete your course page. Please feel free to reach out to me at any point during the semester that you or your students need help with anything. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:04, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: Cymru.lass

cymru.lass (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Misplaced Pages Ambassador?

   I am (and always have been) very passionate about Misplaced Pages, and I share that passion whenever I can. I'd love the opportunity to work face-to-face with people to help get them acquainted with the way things work around here.

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

   I've been editing Misplaced Pages from this account for just under three and a half years; before that, I edited as an IP from 2006/2007 up until I created my account. I've contributed to many pages in many different ways—template editing, copy editing, translation, WikiGnoming, vandalism reversion, new pages patrolling, and more.

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

   As a WikiGnome-type editor, my edits tend to be spread out over a large number of articles. My areas of interest are widespread, ranging from technical maintenance to vandalism reversion to new page patrol to translation to copyediting and beyond. I translated Mount Abantos from es:Monte Abantos), and I've done a bunch of template work such as creating {{Welcome unref blp}} and making the template {{ping}} be able to handle parameters formatted as "User:Example" and/or "Example", as opposed to just "Example". Copyedits include: (these were a while back, and my grasp of English and Misplaced Pages style guidelines has continued to improve since then).

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

   Assuming good faith is (of course) key to welcoming/helping new users, but I think the importance of understanding what it's like to be a newbie is largely overlooked by many Wikipedians who come into contact with new users. When they first start contributing to Misplaced Pages, most people aren't familiar at all with the way Wikipeda works, beyond the "anyone can edit" tagline. The problem with saying things like "Please see WP:COPYRIGHT. Also, you should read WP:GNG" to a new user who has just created an article about a non-notable person that violates copyright is that a) the user probably doesn't know what the Misplaced Pages namespace is, b) it doesn't explain what WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:GNG are and why they have anything to do with what's going on, and c) curt statements like that can makes the user feel like they did something wrong/make them feel stupid (yes, the user violated Misplaced Pages policy, but in all likelihood, that edit was in good faith). I'm not saying all this from a high horse or anything; I only realized all of that relatively recently. I love the reminders at WP:BITE, especially "Behavior that appears malicious to experienced Wikipedians is more likely caused by ignorance of our expectations and rules" and Observe for a while and, if necessary, ask what the newcomer is trying to achieve before concluding that their efforts are substandard or that they are simply "wrong".

   A recent example of my being patient with newbies instead of just immediately tossing some policy shortcuts at them and nominating their article for deletion could be found at User talk:Speakforthose318.

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

   I haven't had any major conflicts with other editors, nor have I ever been blocked, banned, involved in arbitration or discussed at WP:AN/I. I've had minor conflicts in the past (as anybody who edits Misplaced Pages long enough will), but I've kept my cool well enough to not take anything personally and to know when I'm getting irritated and it's time to give the discussion a little space.

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

   If you check my contribution history, you'll see that in 2012 and early- to mid-2013, I wasn't the most regular of contributors, initially due to settling in to college, and then to injuries sustained in a car crash. Now that I'm used to my college workload and the injuries preventing me from contributing regularly are healed, I'm back to checking Misplaced Pages at least daily. I usually check in briefly at least 3 times a day, and I tend to have at least one daily period where I'm editing/hanging around for over an hour.

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

   The first step to making sure my students don't violate copyright laws is to make sure they understand copyright laws and how they apply to Misplaced Pages. Pointing them to Misplaced Pages:Copyrights#Using copyrighted work from others is a must, as is explaining what the CC-BY-SA and GDFL licenses actually mean and pointing them to Misplaced Pages:Plagiarism. Also important is making sure they're aware of the fact that anything they find on the internet or in a book is copyrighted, unless it says otherwise or the material falls under public domain. A significant amount of people are under the impression that if material doesn't have the word "copyrighted" on it, then it's not copyrighted. On top of that, it's important to periodically check in with the students to make sure they are citing their sources (and doing it properly), since not citing one's sources is a form of plagiarism. I could also direct them to Help:External links and references, a mini-tutorial I created about 3 years ago, as well as Help:Referencing for beginners.

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

   The first thing would be to confirm that what's going on is indeed copyright violation. Next, I would remove any copyrighted material and get in touch with the student to notify him/her and explain why the material had to be removed (with relevant policy links). I might also consider messaging or emailing the teacher/professor and asking him/her to give the students a gentle reminder about copyright violations the next time the class met. I would then monitor the student's future contribs for more copyvios. If it continued to be a problem and I could tell the student was receiving my messages and either persistently not understanding or choosing to ignore what I was saying, I would again contact the teacher/prof, this time explicitly naming the student and explaining the problem. I would also consider bring it to the attention of administrators via WP:ANI.

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

   Broadly speaking, copyright violation is the use of material in a way that you don't have the right to do. Some of the things falling under the definition of copyright infringement include directly copying images amounts of text from a copyrighted source (whether attributed or not; this does not include short, properly attributed quotes or the use of images under fair use) and copying material from a copylefted source that violates the copyleft license in some way (examples include not attributing text copied from a CC-BY source or not distributing text from a CC-BY-SA source under the same license). Also it should be noted that per Misplaced Pages policy, information copied from a public domain source still needs to be attributed in order to avoid plagiarism (while not technically illegal, it is unethical not to do so).

10. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Misplaced Pages Ambassador?

    I'm also interested in being a Campus Ambassador (that's what I originally applied for, before User:Biosthmors pointed out that I can apply for both) in the event that any classroom projects start up in the Buffalo, NY area (not limiting myself to one school/college as there are a ton of colleges in this area easily accessible to me by public transportation). I think that about covers it.

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

1. Endorse. An experienced user, and someone that I trust very much – fully qualified. By the way, if you haven't yet read WP:ASSIGN, I'll put in a shameless plug for it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:10, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

   I have in fact read WP:ASSIGN :) Thank you for your trust! — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 23:42, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

2. Endorse. This user has the skills to be a Misplaced Pages Ambassador on behalf of the Misplaced Pages community. =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:04, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Education program

I just tried to edit this page to add a note for Aussies, Brits, Kiwis, etc., but the page is so fancified, I don't know how to direct people to relevant community resources. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:25, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Training slides

For Misplaced Pages:Training/For students/How a ragtag band created Misplaced Pages video and Misplaced Pages:Training/For students/Why Wikipedians are Weird video, and all other training slides like this in the other training modules, could we simply replace them with one slide called "Why do people edit Misplaced Pages" and then show them this video, which I find impressive? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:16, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: Given that the "background" module is supplemental, and seen only by people who choose to go beyond the basic training series, I suggest adding it rather than replacing it. I do like that video, but I think it serves a different purpose to the other two. It's a feel-good inspirational video along the lines of the earlier 2010 video series that were initially used in these trainings. One consistent piece of feedback that came in was that those videos were unnecessary (although I like them a lot too), so I took them out. But it's a fine addition to the optional module. Feel free to add it!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:39, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Sage, maybe you could intimidate some intern at the WMF do it (or recruit one)? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:57, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

To do what, exactly? czar ♔ 03:56, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

To remove ineffective propaganda and to replace it with effective propaganda. =) I have to say that is the most effective use of WMF funds that I've ever seen. Somebody convince me otherwise. Echo/notifications is awesome. Right the the VisualEditor isn't worth the investment, but the long-term potential is tremendous. But I guess I'll have to WP:Be bold and do it myself. But you know, this is an outsider's point of view so I'd love to hear what WMF employees think was the best and worse use of donor funds. It would be nice to have some sort of WMF-employee survey published anonymously, so those that serve can speak, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 06:30, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I meant, what are you suggesting some intern should do? Make another video like that one? czar ♔ 14:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for Course Instructor Right

Instructor Names: Billy Pashaie pangurban22 (talk · contribs), and Randa Wahbe bitjennin32 (talk · contribs)

Institution: Cypress College

Course title and description: English 60/100--This is a freshman composition course.

Assignment plan: Groups of 2 students will identify an issue covered in this course, will make sure that the issue is not already covered in Misplaced Pages, and will collaborate to create a Misplaced Pages entry for their issue.

Number of students: 22 students total; 11 groups of 2 students will collaborate to make contributions

Start and end dates: 8/26/13 to 12/15/13 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pangurban22 (talk • contribs) 16:15, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello there! Are you familiar with the general notability guideline? There are peculiar requirements for what should exist as a Misplaced Pages article sometimes. =) Also, see the reasons for merging articles. It's sometimes a challenge to identify which articles need creating. How do you anticipate to make this part of the course? Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Biosthmors. Thank you once again! I have watched some videos for instruction on Misplaced Pages, but haven't read the pages you've suggested. I will do so, and I appreciate your suggestions. pangurban22 —Preceding undated comment added 17:38, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. FYI to the others, I've emailed the link to the training to Professor Pashaie and when it's taken I'll grant the user right. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Course page issues

Would there be any reason why Education Program:Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies/Gender and International Affairs (Fall 2013) wouldn't automatically reflect what is in User:Ituta/Course page, which is WP:Transcluded in? I don't see a purge function on the Education Program: page. I am getting reports of students not being able to see the updates to User:Ituta/Course page on Education Program:Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies/Gender and International Affairs (Fall 2013). Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:53, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

You can purge it with one of the "return to your main course page and continue" links that are included in the default course wizard subpages, such as this one. Outdated transclusions can stick around for a long time on course pages, which is why I had to add those purge links. If updating that Ituta's userspace course page is going to happen regularly, I suggest pasting in the same noincluded purge link on that page so that it's convenient to purge after each update.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Sage. I would think most edits have been made, but I tried adding that just in case. I replaced the page name. That link now takes me to Education Program:Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies though, so I don't know if it helps. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:27, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

You're right, that link code assumes you're on a subpage. I changed it.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:32, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Ituta, this is now fixed. =) Just click the link at the bottom of User:Ituta/Course page and refresh the course page if it ever happens again. Thanks Sage! Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:35, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much!Ituta (talk) 14:10, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Plagiarism research project

I've still got more work to do to get all the data published, document the research process, and communicate about it more broadly (since it is relevant beyond the education program), but I wanted to post about the results of the plagiarism research project my team has been working on. See Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Education Program/Research/Plagiarism.

The short version is that I think it's safe to say that education program assignments from the United States Education Program and Canada Education Program are not making the English Misplaced Pages's plagiarism problem worse than it already is. We found plagiarism or close paraphrasing in almost 5% of the new articles created by student editors, compared with about 13% of articles created by statistically similar newcomers who were not participating in education program classes, and 10% or more for articles created by new users who got started 2006, 2009, or 2012. We also have data for student editors who expanded existing articles (over 8%), and articles written or expanded by admins (over 3%) and high-edit-count non-admins (over 3%). Many caveats apply, so check out the details. Discussion and questions are welcome, preferably on the research page.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Ping to User:Colin, User:Jmh649, User:SandyGeorgia, and User:SlimVirgin, b/c I think you have all been interested in this issue at least at one point. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

thanks for the ping, wish I had more time to follow, am surprised that overall plagiarism was found to be that low, both among students and among others ... I can convince myself that students plagiarize no worse than others, but have a hard time believing those low numbers, based on my experience. I'm wondering if plagiarism might be worse in medical topics? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:53, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Check out the details of how the numbers were generated, and the caveats section. There are very few false positives (as we manually checked every hit and threw out the cases of reverse plagiarism or ones where direction of copying couldn't be definitively established), but several modes of plagiarism that would not have been picked up. We tried to construct the datasets to provide a good basis for comparison, but the absolute rates almost certainly undercount the prevalence of plagiarism. By how much, it's hard to say without guessing wildly.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Sage ... no time ... but it sounds like even if there are issues in the absolute rate, the conclusion that students plagiarize no more than other editors does not surprise me, and is likely sound. The issue is, their profs aren't checking, and the students are not typically long-term contributors, they don't stick around, they don't learn, so we gain little by having to check and revert their work, where hopefully other editors do learn from their mistakes and stick around to make useful contribs without overtaxing other editors. In other words, I don't think the question is whether students plagiarize more or less, rather a question of the overall benefit vs the time we spend doing profs' work. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

The whole idea of loads of incoming student edits makes me nervous unless they've received some stellar guidance and they have a good grading rubric. We had an admin recently on this board who had a bad outcome and vowed to never run an assignment again, on behalf of the community's interest. An admin. That just shows you how easily assignments can turn into failures for Misplaced Pages. This stuff has to be managed properly. And quality expectations should be high, especially because maybe 98 or 99% leave after it's over. And from what I've seen, the topics that are selected are obscure (another reason it's hard to expect anyone will look over their work). Anyhow, that's why I've been emphasizing raised expectations in terms of quality output, in line with the RfC's result. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks SandyGeorgia. I agree that this research doesn't directly address the issue of the overall costs and benefits of education program. It is intended to give us a better basis for understanding the particular problem of plagiarism (and even then, of course, it only gives a partial view).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors, thanks for the ping. Sage, can you say more about how the plagiarism was found? The report says: "These datasets were sent to TaskUs to be checked for plagiarism via the Yahoo!-powered Grammarly tool," but doesn't give details.

The reason I ask is that the student essays in which I found plagiarism usually indicated that an effort had been made to avoid it being detected (or that the student genuinely believed that changing a few words was enough). New editors who plagiarize don't do that as a rule; they will often just copy-paste, so it's much easier to spot. The students usually change a few words or phrases in a sentence, so finding it is more time-consuming. Also, new editors tend to use online sources that aren't behind paywalls; the students were plagiarizing from academic papers that were sometimes behind paywalls, or books that weren't always online. My understanding of Grammarly is that it doesn't check that kind of source.

I'd therefore be interested to know how the team ironed out these differences so that they didn't affect the end result. SlimVirgin 19:32, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: I'm not sure what all is in Grammarly's plagiarism checking database. As I understand it, it is powered by Yahoo!, but I believe it includes more than a simple web search. Many sources behind paywalls, as well as webpages that are not indexed for conventional web search because of robot.txt settings, were returned as hits. I've not been able to find details about which paywalled databases are included or excluded for Grammarly, but I will see if I can learn more.

Many of the hits returned as potential plagiarism were of short phrases, which in many cases turned out to be close paraphrasing of the type you describe, where bits and pieces are changed but the basic form of the source text remains. As noted in the caveats section, if there are no significant phrase matches at all because of thorough changing of individual words, then that sort of plagiarism would slip through. My qualitative impression after looking through many hundreds of matches for both student editors and non-student editors is that this sort of plagiarism is not significantly more common in the student datasets, but we have not specifically tried to investigate that.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Sage. SlimVirgin 16:47, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sceptical about the low figures for all groups. And I second SlimVirgin's point about student sources being particularly hard to check. In my experience this problem was near universal rather than rare, and greatly under detected due to source choice. The analysis doesn't seem to compare article and source differences between the groups. I suspect if that was done, then the analysis comparing the groups might be questioned. Further, there is the cost of the plagiarism to the community. How many willing eyes does a pop culture topic get for it to be either fixed up or problem eliminated through churn, vs academic subject so obscure we didn't even have an article on it. We have a huge systemic bias problem in the demographics of our editor base. The editors we have more than enough of are unaffected by student edits because they don't touch those subjects. The editors we have barely any of are completely swamped at times by student edits to the point where they leave. The students aren't replacing those editors. So the demographics will get worse. Ultimately, this obsession with proving that students are no worse than newbies is imo deeply unhelpful and completely misguided. Colin° 21:29, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I, too, would like to know more about possible false negatives. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:19, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

@Colin and Tryptofish: With the match cohort, we attempted to control for the type of sources indirectly, by matching based on the categories of articles. That is, we took the set of articles contributed by student editors, and tried to find non-student editors with similar time since registration and edit count, who contributed articles in related categories. (You can see the technical details of how the match dataset was constructed in Evan Rosen's github scripts; I only have a qualitative understanding of what we were trying to accomplish with the matching.) This approach will not have eliminated the potential for systematic differences in source choice, but it's an issue we had in mind during the design of the match cohort.

For me at least, the central aim of this project was not to prove that student editors are no worse than newbies. (I am now convinced that, with respect to plagiarism, this is true. But I was not at all sure at the outset of the project.) Plagiarism is a significant problem, for the education program in particular and Misplaced Pages in general, and it is one that we have very little systematic data about. These is not the be-all, end-all of the issue, nor is it intended to shut down discussion of plagiarism problems related to the education program. It's an attempt to understand the problem better.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Peeking in briefly, Sage, per Colin, SV, Trypto and myself, I suggest it is premature to be "convinced that, with respect to plagiarism, this is true" ... I don't believe you have the study controls to be so sure of that, per the caveats, shortcomings and explanations given. Like Colin, in my experience, the student copyvio rate is near 100%, and it is extremely time-consuming to investigate and remove, and it is almost always on obscure topics that aren't worth the effort. The same can be said for other new editors I encounter, but they learn and stick around, so the effort is worth it to convert a new plagiarizer to a good, long-standing editor. In my experience, that has never ever been the case with a student, and they are a net drain on my time ... and my motivation. This has been one of the factors that discouraged me from contributing as much here as I used to (the others being the ongoing disgusting issues at DYK, the debacles at FAC leading to an extreme decline in quality there, and the socking endorsed by the arbs, which contributed to the decline of FA). I think a useful analysis would be a by-hand (without the problems of articles behind paywall, etc) examination focused on medical topics (perhaps students working in other areas are better grounded in plagiarism through their other coursework ... in medical topics, the students I encounter seem to have zero understanding of plagiarism ... perhaps this is covered better in the liberal arts). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:31, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you mean that figuratively, but I find the idea that the 'copyvio rate is near 100%' for student editors to be completely implausible. Having poured over the data and seen the kinds of plagiarism that was detected in these datasets for both students and non-students—and having seen and checked a wide variety contributions from student editors in many subject areas—I'm personally convinced that plagiarism rates are not higher for education program participants than for other newcomers. Your mileage may vary. What this research shows is that plagiarism rates for new articles as detected by this methodology are less than half the rates for either the match cohort or random newcomers from the beginnings of the years 2006, 2009 and 2012. The detected plagiarism rate for articles expanded by student editors is higher than for new articles by student editors, but lower than the rates for new articles by other newcomers; we didn't make a corresponding set of articles expanded by other newcomers, but I expect that any set of expanded articles will have a higher rate of plagiarism than that for surviving new articles by similar editors (because the most obvious cases for new articles will have been deleted, or never moved into main space). I've not seen evidence that source choice and the Grammarly database are disproportionately undercounting plagiarism by student editors—although I don't rule it out. Based on the data, I would guess that the full plagiarism rate among student editors is about half that other newcomers. But I intentionally don't go that far when I say I'm convinced that student editors are no worse than other newbies when it comes to plagiarism.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

In the Toronto fiasco the plagiarism rate approached 100%, and in the India fiasco it was also very high, but in most of the class projects that I've watched the rate has clearly been much lower. Looie496 (talk) 16:24, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Looie, that's a really important point. Thanks for thinking of it. It goes to the very real fact that students behave in the context of the course structure in which they find themselves. If they believe that the instructor is paying attention, they will believe: (1) that they won't get away with it, and (2) that the rest of the class wouldn't get away with it either, and therefore are not doing it. On the other hand, if they can see that the instructor just does not care, they will believe: (1) that everyone else is doing it, so they need to do it so as not to be at a disadvantage, and (2) they will get away with it. That's a fundamental difference between student editors and other editors. Other editors never have to worry about being graded in comparison with their fellow editors. In a way, an analysis that treats all student projects as a single group will miss this information. It's very important to understand and act on the differences between class projects that work, and those that become fiascos. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:32, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I thank Sage for the thoughtful reply, and I want to point out that I, personally, don't specifically care about whether student editors plagiarize more or less than others. What I care about is the fact that we have a lot of student editors, and we need to do everything practical to make them a net positive for Misplaced Pages, and consequently, to whatever extent they do plagiarize, we need to understand it accurately, and I want to make sure that we don't unintentionally underestimate the problems that we need to work together to fix.

Based on my own experiences teaching at the college level for a very long time, I know that students can show a great deal of resourcefulness in plagiarism and cheating generally when they think that everyone else is doing it and when they think they can get away with it. Because of the way that students become student editors, they have motivations to cut corners that other editors, who come here entirely by choice, simply do not. At Misplaced Pages, I keep seeing instructors who are obviously not doing the hard work that it takes to discourage their students from plagiarizing. And Sandy et al. are quite correct about the ways that students might use sources that we would miss in the usual ways of detecting text matches.

Here's an example. Please take a look at the bottom half of Talk:Flynn-Aird syndrome, where I helped out with a class project a few years ago. The page covers a rather specialized subject. I, and other editors who know the source material, are pretty sure that most if not all of the primary source material is the original work by Flynn and Aird themselves. The student edits added a significant amount of very specific material that, very simply, cannot be found in any of the sources that they cited. They must have gotten it somewhere, after all. It reads like the kind of material one would find in medical school textbooks or similar tertiary sources, although these are not cited. At the time, I looked every way I could think of for matching source material, and came up empty. It would, for sure, come up "clean" in any text-matching software that I know of. And yet, there is the content, and the students could not have gotten it from the sources that they cited, and they must have gotten it somewhere, where they deliberately chose not to cite the source. I'm guessing an old textbook, and they probably copied it directly, and therefore chose not to cite it. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

This is interesting example, and if it's the kind of plagiarism you suspect, it would indeed be hard to detect. Across all work by student editors, though, I think this is an edge case. My impression is that most editors (including students) cite the sources they are using if they cite any at all, and that plagiarism or close paraphrasing of the sources cited are far more common than malicious attempts to cover up plagiarism by citing one source and copying another. A useful follow up study might be to go source-by-source to manually compare added material with what the source says—both to check for plagiarism, and see if the source verifies the text. That's much easier to imagine than to do, however.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I guess it's one kind, but not the only kind of plagiarism I would expect. For me, the tl;dr boils down to the fact that we have to realize that students have different incentives than other editors, and that it's very possible for them to confound the most obvious ways of detecting plagiarism. Again, I'm not really interested in proving or disproving how student editors compare with other editors, but in finding ways to make student editing as much of a positive as possible. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's an "edge case" at all, Sage, because it's what I also see, and often. Several students edit a neurobiomedical topic extensively, in one or two days (and never return), and everything they add is either copyvio (not easily detected, a few words changed), or simply not in the sources cited at all, in any way shape or form, although the text appears well written, even professional. In other words, they likely got the text from somewhere else, and don't want to point to those sources lest the copyvio be detected. I agree with Trypto that we shouldn't unintentionally underestimate this problem lest that impede our ability to "fix it"; it has dominated most of my editing experience of late (or more specifically, whatever editing I do towards the end of a university semester or trimester ... ). Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:31, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if there's something specific about medical topics, perhaps even psychology and medicine, that increases the frequency of copyvio and plagiarism. Sandy's experience has been reported by others in those topic areas, but it seems to be much less frequent (though it still occurs) in other areas. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:31, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Speaking as a math undergrad, I suspect that some areas of university study do not cover copyvio/plagiarism to the same extent others do ... a division between the sciences and arts, sorta. I didn't really understand copyvio until the Dispatch was written: Let's get serious about plagiarism. Before that, I definitely thought it was OK to copy-paste public domain text to Misplaced Pages, and there were dozens of instances of Featured article reviews of geology articles that contained direct cut-and-paste of almost entire articles from public domain that passed FAR and retained FA status ... there was a time on Misplaced Pages when public domain cut-and-paste was routine and accepted, so it is not surprising to me that students of the sciences are not well grounded on copyvio. I do strongly believe we do a disservice to our medical editors if you don't acknowledge that there is a real problem out there, that is affecting our editing ... not just plagiarism, but of students editing topics they are not qualified or prepared to edit, with professors who are not adequately supervising them. But then, I'm also of the opinion that no information on medical topics is better than spreading BAD information, and that like BLPs, we should be able to shoot uncited or poorly cited text on sight. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps. Search the noticeboard archives for "Myoclonic epilepsy". This wasn't a class of thousands unsupervised (though the class were editing topics beyond the expert knowledge of the prof, which isn't at all uncommon). A huge chunk of essentially copy/paste text and the students just thought a citation was sufficient to avoid it being plagiarism. I'm interested to know if Grammarly can see paywalled text or has access to student undergraduate textbooks -- because those are the sources these students are using, neither of which are widely available/used by the general editor base -- hence I very much doubt you can collect enough samples of the "newbie" cohort to compare with the students. The sort of article work I'm seeing students do just isn't being done by newbies at all -- and where it is being done by wikipedians it is by those who actually know the subject. I continue to believe that students doing an "Introduction to ...." topic should not be part of the education program. They don't understand the topic well enough to put it into their own words without completely screwing up, or not bothering -- neither of which is satisfactory. I also believe profs should be strongly advised to ensure students edit within the prof's own subject speciality. Far too many psychology classes editing neurology for example. Colin° 12:03, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll bring up the suggestion I've made before: it might be useful create some specific guidance for student editors working in trickier topic areas (medicine and psychology being the obvious places to start). This could be integrated into the existing training so that at some point, the training makes you select whether you're working on one of these areas or some other, and if it's one of those where a topic-specific training module exists, the training forks off to present that module before returning to the common endpoint. I'm happy to work on integrating it into the training infrastructure if others write the content. We've also seen that the videos in the training are well-received, so making a video about plagiarism to replace the current text content might make it more effective; videos are a chance to go into a little more depth without having people tune out like they do with long blocks of text. (I can't make any commitments, but I might take that on if I can fit it into my schedule at some point.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:ASSIGN already has a section of advice specific to med/psych/health-related topic editing. That said, I feel quite strongly that our policies on copyvio etc. apply to all topic areas equally, so it's not like it's more OK to copy in some topic areas than in others. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:39, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Categories for course pages

Category:Misplaced Pages United States Education Program courses, 2011 Q3 is an example of a sub-category of course pages. But is there a parent category? And are Education Program: course pages being put into a category? I'd like to see all of these course pages all categorized together under one parent category, whether they're in User space, Education Program: space, or Misplaced Pages: space. Is that already done? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:48, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Since categories do not work with Education Program: course pages, there are no categories for those; the alternative is to use the filters on Special:Courses. Not ideal, I know.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Is that a feature request already tracked in Bugzilla? Man I really need to get my myself over there and post. But now I have a bug to help me on that issue of not posting bugs. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:08, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Extension

Per a conversation at WP:VPPR, Misplaced Pages:EducationProgram extension now exists. Feel free to improve/discuss. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:25, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: I would suggest instead pointing people to mw:Extension:Education Program to discuss / read about the extension itself. I've tried to make Misplaced Pages:Course pages the hub for info about how the extension is used on English Misplaced Pages. I don't see why an additional separate page is needed.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah yes perhaps it should be merged into the course page page. Or perhaps the specific extension stuff should be moved over there? To me the MediaWiki software peculiarities/issues are distinct enough to merit a separate page, though we might not be there in terms of the amount of content yet. I don't like working at mediawiki.org, personally. There's probably ways to make WP:Student assignments and WP:Course page agree more as well. Just more to do, I guess! Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:56, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I formatted the link wrong that points to the existing hub for the extension itself (on mediawiki.org).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:49, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Templates

Could someone with admin rights please edit {{educational assignment}} to point the link to Misplaced Pages:Student assignments to match {{course assignment}}. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:28, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Ping to Doc James please. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Need additional monitors for apparent class IP

This IP appears to be editing on behalf of student assignments. As you might expect, some of the additions are perfectly fine, but many of them not so much (garbled grammar, using questionable sources, copying lyrics wholesale). I've been doing my best to check all of the edits, but will be pretty busy today; could use some additional eyes. Thanks, OhNoitsJamie 15:34, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll help. Flyer22 (talk) 17:21, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks much, Flyer22! OhNoitsJamie 17:42, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. It's the least I can do for all your help around here. Flyer22 (talk) 18:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Watchlisting course pages

I've noticed (here) that main course pages are set up with buttons for "Enroll" and "Watch this course" near the top left of the page. The normal star icon that regular editors use to watchlist pages seems to be disabled, so that the "Watch" button is the only way to watchlist the class project. I guess that's user-friendly for student editors, but it's confusing for experienced non-student editors who want to get involved with a class project. I think we should want to encourage that kind of involvement. Could the regular process of watchlisting be re-enabled, along with the new button? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:45, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

For this specific class, I recommend watchlisting Education Program talk:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013)/Timeline, as that's where the students are listing the articles. I'm not encouraging students to actually list in the space where the software is designed for it, because of its poor functionality. This software removes tons of the benefits of Misplaced Pages but only yields a tracking feature as an added benefit. To me, this should be a feature given to the community for whoever wants to assemble a list of editors. There is a new page at WP:Education Program extension with a diff to a recent comment about it in the see also that relates to its development. The page there should link to the tracking feature that is available for every class. Just click "View Activity" tab to see recent edits on any of the clunky Education Program: spaces pages now listed at Special:Courses. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:56, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

That's all well and good, but I would like it to be possible, in general (not just for this particular class) for experienced editors to be able to figure out how to watchlist a course page if they want to do so. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:00, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

That watchlist link is basically a hack to work around the limitations of the course pages as currently implemented. You actually can't watch the course pages themselves, only the talk pages. Adding a pseudo-watchlist feature to allow any user to add class's activity feed to their Special:MyCourses even without being an instructor, student or ambassador might be a possibility in the near-term bug fixes without re-engineering the whole extension phase of development.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I have a follow-up question. Once I have clicked the "Watch this course" button, how do I un-watch it? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Understood and agreed. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:45, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you can click talk and unwatch it there from what Sage has told me as a work-around. Sage, by the way, who all worked on giving guidance for the design of this software? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:45, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that works. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Good. You're welcome. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Education noticeboard/Header

Misplaced Pages:Education noticeboard/Header could probably use some editing. Just a note. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:57, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

$500,000+ to jumpstart a Brazilian education program

As mentioned in the Signpost, and in line with this comment, I posted over here on m:meta-wiki. I have asked some questions about a grant proposal that seeks to catalyze an education program. I have mentioned this noticeboard and WP:ASSIGN. I'm wondering if the grant proposers have some lessons to learn from the English Misplaced Pages's experiences. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:44, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages noticeboards