Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard

Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

More information Welcome to the education noticeboard, Purpose of this page ...

Welcome to the education noticeboard

Purpose of this page Using this page

This page is for discussion related to student assignments and the Wikipedia Education Program. Please feel free to post, whether you're from a class, a potential class, or if you're a Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 → Wikipedia:General sanctions#Active sanctions

Shortcuts

"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.

Click here to start a new discussion

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

This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by when more than 4 sections are present.

Fashion/textiles class is back again (n+1)

Ayup, just like clockwork, Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 23#Surprise, another semester, another undeclared school project making a mess of fashion articles is ramping up with one-off uncited edits to a not-small pool of articles. They never discuss. They often don't ever make a second edit. They do not always hit the same articles, so protection is not very useful. But they often do hit the same articles, so better to leave them unprotected as a honeypot with a hair trigger? That's really a horrible non-solution. I'm fairly confident I know which school it is. DMacks (talk) 03:13, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Block the entire class. I know it's an extreme solution, but I think we've hit the point where anything less will not be sufficient. Primefac (talk) 13:46, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

While I do support that, the past two semesters they have switched to mostly single-edit accounts. As if the assignment has become as lame as "make an edit to a WP article related to our class" or even "prove that WP is editable by anyone". Is there a set of IPs that can be blocked to help make a dent in it? DMacks (talk) 14:14, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Jeez... if that's the case, we're almost running into meatbot territory... could probably justify a rangeblock based on that. Primefac (talk) 14:24, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

It is still on-going, and as usual oozing into more and different articles. One of them confirmed on-wiki that it is a class project and has a username with the string "CSULA" in it. That confirms the school I had in mind, consistent semester-to-semester. DMacks (talk) 03:27, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

With that school name, we can try to find the instructor and reach out to offer our support so the students hopefully can make more productive edits. But if anyone hears the actual professor or class's name, please let us know. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:45, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I was able to find the professor! I've connected with them and asked them to have the students stop editing for now, and to schedule a call with us to provide better support in the future. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

The professor apologized profusely -- they inherited this assignment from someone else and have just been following what the previous person did. They have agreed to have students stop editing for now so hopefully the disruption will end shortly. We will meet with them next week to ensure they better understand Wikipedia and are following our best practices before tackling it again. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:27, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your follow-up here! Wracking ^talk! 21:27, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you thank you thank you! DMacks (talk) 07:35, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Do we know if this is the same project as Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive_23#"Off_the_rails"_school_project_resuming, which has been recurring twice a year since at least 2021? (Students make a few edits to fashion/textile articles and return two or three weeks later to create draft fashion/artist biographies from an out of date list, some of them duplicates, many using copyrighted images taken from the web.) Belbury (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I think so, yes. We'll make sure to address this when we speak to the current instructor. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:22, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Minneapolis

Hello. Am I within your protocols to ask an instructor to follow WP:Student assignments in the future?

Some background. About four or five students from a University of Minnesota class on "social computing" have been making their edits to Minneapolis. I welcomed the first one. Then we decided something was up and I erroneously reported the whole bunch as part of our years-long sockpuppet farm. I wrote to their instructor, who says he's had students editing for years and that this class has completed their assignment. This class was unlucky to coincide with an old page protection removal on March 4, which was restored on March 29.
I apologized and emailed the first person who I unfairly accused of sockpuppetry. I hope he forgives me.
The Minneapolis article is in extended featured article review, and in the middle of a contentious RfC, which has postponed the FAR process. Then came this class on top. I skimmed a bit of WikiEducation; it says that if they choose their own, students should select underdeveloped articles to work on. Minneapolis is as far from underdeveloped as one can get.
Spicy kindly supplied the link to WP:Student assignments during the sockpuppet investigation. It's completely new to me.

-SusanLesch (talk) 15:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

It sounds to me like you handled it very sensitively, thanks. The one additional thing that needs to be done is to tell the instructor that he is expected to conduct his on-Wikipedia classes with WikiEd. The educational institution is in the US, so it's within WikiEd's remit, and working with them would have avoided any of these problems having happened. The links to WikiEd are at the student assignments information page, and also at the top of this noticeboard. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Tryptofish, thanks for your kind reply. Done. -SusanLesch (talk) 21:16, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

The instructor, Loren Terveen of GroupLens Research, did not reply to my follow up. I'm afraid he might think they're too busy studying Wikipedia to participate. Would anyone here like to send them an email? I sent mine to the five Ph.D.s pictured on the project home page.
You all taught me something. I am busy reading Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers and associated guidelines.
I found an undergraduate course in your archives that strikes me as a good example from the U of M Twin Cities.

- SusanLesch (talk) 18:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi SusanLesch, just letting you know my organization, Wiki Education, exists to help support faculty who are teaching with Wikipedia in higher education institutions in the US and Canada. The course page you referenced there is one of ours; the course from the social computing class isn't one of ours, but after it was brought to our attention earlier this year, we reached out and asked the instructor to join us in future terms, to which they seemed amenable. We also understand that course is over for this term. So hopefully any future students of theirs will receive our support. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:07, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply, LiAnna (Wiki Ed). Last week's train wreck doesn't appear to correspond with "earlier this year". But I put in my request to you guys and that's all I can do. Best wishes, -SusanLesch (talk) 13:32, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Ah sorry by earlier this year I meant this thread: Wikipedia_talk:Education_program#College_student_asking_for_help_at_University_of_Minnesota. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:26, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Would anyone here like to send an email to GroupLens? -SusanLesch (talk) 13:05, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

No problem, moving on. Roadkill happens. -SusanLesch (talk) 16:49, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Questions

I asked a bunch of questions over at User_talk:Ian_(Wiki_Ed)#Back_again, please respond there. Polygnotus (talk) 04:14, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Please do not, a user talkpage is not an appropriate location for extended general discussions. CMD (talk) 05:10, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: Yeah but I don't really want to do a bunch of work rewriting everything so that it can be placed here. Especially since one of the problems is that I feel that a bunch of my time is being wasted and undervalued. Polygnotus (talk) 05:15, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I've transcluded the discussion in question so that folks can see it without necessarily needing to go there. Primefac (talk) 11:36, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

More information Content of the link in question, Revisiting WikiEd questions from user talk page section ...

Content of the link in question

Revisiting WikiEd questions from user talk page section

Back again

If I underestimated the amount of good edits caused by Wiki Edu that is awesome; as a pessimist I love being wrong.

Perhaps you missed these questions:

I would consider Nature therapy and Urban green space to fall within the controversial/MEDRS area, but somehow students still get assigned those articles. (1) Do you think the instructions are unclear in that respect? (2) How can they be improved? (3) Where can I see the instructions given to students and teachers?

(4) Please respond over at Nature therapy, like I asked you before. People do a lot of work, but it doesn't improve the article. (5) Can you please explain to the instructor that this is not a suitable topic for their course (6) and to the student why this is inappropriate for an encyclopedia? (7) Is there a blacklist of topics and article names somewhere? I honestly feel bad reverting 10k bytes from a good faithed editor who will get bitten because their instructor did not give them the help required. Polygnotus (talk) 05:25, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

(8) How do the teachers ensure students aren't simply using ChatGPT or something similar to violate the copyright of the sources? (9) Do the students work from home with no oversight or in a classroom? Polygnotus (talk) 22:01, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Turns out they didn't do a lot of work. Bit of digging and I discovered they are introducing blatant copyright violations into Wikipedia, most likely with the help of ChatGPT (or something similar). Assuming good faith failed again. Polygnotus (talk) 20:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

(10) Why are you ignoring my questions. That is very impolite. Polygnotus (talk) 01:29, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Urban green space seems to have been assigned again. I got the student over at Nature therapy blocked because they kept posting copyright violations. Polygnotus (talk) 01:33, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Here you wrote: When students assign themselves a GA or FA they get an automated email strongly suggesting they pick another article to work on. Why isn't this same system used for articles in Category:Alternative medical treatments, Category:Fringe science and Category:Pseudoscience? Nature therapy is in all three those categories but it still got assigned to a student editor multiple times. (11) Can you please ensure that articles in those categories are never assigned to Wiki Edu students and that students who pick them get a similar email telling them to pick a more suitable topic? Polygnotus (talk)

We do this for controversial topics as well, although it works a little differently. The notification system broke though (I think a category was renamed) and I wasn't getting the notifications. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:52, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Can you respond to the numbered questions please. You wrote: We do this for controversial topics as well, although it works a little differently. Ok, (12) how does this system work, (13) where can I see the code, (14) why is it not working currently and (15) how can we fix it? I wasn't getting the notifications (16) Does that mean the system relies on a single human being to stop students from picking controversial articles? That seems like bad design. Polygnotus (talk) 21:55, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

(17) I am currently looking at the work of another student editor and it seems like that everything they have done needs to be reverted. It is unfair to dump this responsibility on me, so can you fix it please? Diamond.xza (talk · contribs) I have reverted the edits to Urban green space already. Polygnotus (talk) 22:13, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus

Can you respond to the numbered questions please.

No, I'm sorry, I can't. I woke up this morning to twenty-five notifications from you. If you're trying to harass me off Wikipedia, you're on the right track.

Please email lianna

wikiedu.org. I can't support 4-5,000 student editors while you're subjecting me to this relentless barrage. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:20, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

An incredibly disappointing response. If you want to contact me again you should apologize first. Polygnotus (talk) 14:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:28, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Meta discussion about what venue to use for questions about WikiEd, and related questions

Back again (meta discussion)

(talk page watcher) Polygnotus, this is often the case with brand new editors, and Wiki Ed students are all brand new editors, so this should not be surprising. To be honest, your tone comes across as badgering, and had you posted all of these questions and comments at my UTP, by now I probably would have quoted WP:SOFIXIT and WP:SATISFY back to you, but Ian is more diplomatic than I am. At least some, and probably most of your points appear to be general ones about Wiki Ed as a whole, and may I suggest that you stop posting questions here unrelated to specific student edits or courses monitored by Ian, and post them instead to WP:ENB. Your pessimism about Wiki Ed is noted, as are your concerns about bad design, but imho this is hardly the venue for airing those thoughts if you wish to effect change. Best, Mathglot (talk) 00:49, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot: How can things ever improve if we are not allowed to complain about imperfections? How will we ever agree (and understand others POV) if we can't ask someone else questions? As a non native speaker, it is very hard for me to come across as friendly. Especially when criticizing something. Sorry, I am not a happy-go-lucky person. But I do not think that that is my fault. I see problems and I try to fix them. But I can't do it alone. And it certainly feels like I am on my own fighting a flood of bad edits. Also, if Ian is an administrator and an expert, he should know all these things already. Ignoring my goodfaithed attempts to understand and improve Wiki Edu is not diplomatic; it is pretty rude. If you really want to help your friend (which is admirable), please step up and help answer my questions if you know the answers. You can't expect me to pretend I am super positive about Wiki Edu when all I see is problems and I feel responsible for fixing those problems, just because I discovered them. It is weird if the people involved in Wiki Edu do not feel the same responsibility. Telling me SOFIXIT is bizarre in the context that that is clearly what I am trying to do... Polygnotus (talk) 00:56, 19 April 2024 (UTC) p.s. Thanks for the link to WP:ENB.

(edit conflict) While I acknowledge your feelings of aloneness, it's nonsense to believe that you are in fact alone in fighting problems: there are probably thousands or tens of thousands of editors who gnome and fight vandalism for example; I know I do. You might consider joining the Counter-Vandalism Unit WikiProject, which may reduce your feelings about being alone fixing problems, or some other WP:WikiProject of your choice. Of course you can ask questions, but wouldn't you rather ask at a venue where the people who can effect change will see your question? Still, people have various requirements on their time both on- and off-wiki, and nobody owes you an answer to all of your questions. I take particular exception to your claims of rudeness on Ian's part; I have the greatest respect for those who speak another language and are from another culture, but I must tell you that from my cultural viewpoint, the only one who comes across as rude here is you. Please note that I am not accusing you of anything, just trying to increase your awareness of how you appear to others; I grant it is not your intention. In your culture, it likely would be seen differently. This will be my last comment here, as I don't wish to hijack Ian's page any further for a meta-discussion. I'll be happy to respond to you at my UTP, at WP:ENB, or at any appropriate venue you choose. Best, Mathglot (talk) 01:24, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

In all cultures I am aware of, ignoring someone's questions is considered rude (especially when they are questions about how to solve problems you were involved in causing). Sure, I am not alone fighting problems, but no one stepped up to do something about these particular problems I noticed. I have read the talkpages of some of the people involved in Wiki Edu, and there are a LOT of complaints that don't get a satisfying answer. I didn't know WP:ENB existed before you told me, so I complained at the most appropriate place I knew of. I know that many native speakers of English would be shocked by the directness of my culture; OTOH I was pretty confused when I accidentally bumped into someone and they apologized. Calling the misguided but good-faithed attempts of student editors vandalism would be rude, and it seems like the CVU deals mostly with vandalism, which this isn't. For example, to me, using a compliment sandwich is a clear attempt at manipulation and therefore quite rude. It is sad that so much politeness and friendliness feels fake because people use it to get what they want. Polygnotus (talk) 01:45, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Some of the questions you raise are so general that they cannot be answered. Ian is unable to solve the global challenge of LLMs in education. You are also certainly not alone in observing the edits of students on en.wiki. For more general discussions, ENB is a better location, although I'd suggest one question topic per discussion. CMD (talk) 02:07, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

That is a strawman. I did not ask Ian to solve the global problem of LLMs in education (obviously). And I tried it but the problem is, I can move some questions to ENB but not others (e.g. those in response to what Ian wrote), and moving the few questions I can does not help Ian much if at all; it just makes a giant mess. So, I am going to leave the questions here. Polygnotus (talk) 04:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Primefac: Thanks, but please revert yourself; I got bullied off that page. Predictable, but incredibly disappointing. So my options are to waste yet more time trying to improve Wikipedia, or go descale the washing machine. I'll go descale my washing machine. Polygnotus (talk) 14:43, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I will respectfully decline. Primefac (talk) 14:47, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Ok, whatever. But one needs the context to see DARVO in action. Polygnotus (talk) 17:04, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Polygnotus, please refrain from making personal attacks and assuming bad faith of other editors. Several editors noted why they thought your behavior was inappropriate, especially for the venue. I encourage you to reflect on their feedback. Wracking ^talk! 17:35, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I did reflect on their feedback. And I am going to have to agree to disagree. Sometimes, when people view a situation radically different that is the best we can do. I have moved on and will do my best to avoid those users (and I sincerely hope they will do the same). I am very disappointed. Polygnotus (talk) 18:19, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Alerts for contentious articles

I'll address the technical problem that came up on Ian's talk page. Wiki Education Dashboard had a feature to monitor for any time a student in a supported course edits an article that was under discretionary sanction. The feature was based on the category, and it broke when DS was renamed to 'contentious articles' last year, and the category was renamed correspondingly. (I fixed it last week, so we're getting these alerts again.) --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. It sounds like we could, in theory, add other categories to that list. I would recommend adding Category:Pseudoscience and Category:Fringe science and Category:Alternative medical treatments (at depths higher than 1).

In \config\wizard\researchwrite\wizard.yml around line 150 I see "Medicine and other tricky topics".

It asks the teacher if they "expect any of your students to work on medicine-related articles" but that should be reworded to "articles that potentially contain medical claims".

For example, one of the schools is the "Niagara Parks School of Horticulture" so it makes sense that the teacher answers "No" to the question.

But the correct answer is yes, because one of their students is going to pick Nature therapy.

I understand that teachers cannot predict the future. A simple solution would be to always include the training module that covers MEDRS (but perhaps there are alternative solutions).

Polygnotus (talk) 18:21, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

That step of the assignment wizard has a fair bit of explanatory text beyond what the above quote to capture the breadth of what falls under MEDRES. Information overload is one of the constant risks with training material, so we generally avoid things like assigning a specific training module to every course when it will only be relevant to a portion of them. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:13, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Sage (Wiki Ed), what is the rough frequency of that alert, and is it an alert I can sign up for? Alternatively, I wonder if the core of your detection code could be reengineered into a User script which would add something to the page (perhaps another icon between the alert bell and the notices icon at the top, or a sidebar item) that I could click to unroll a list of brief text and link, analogous to how the notices icon works. Ideally, it would superimpose a '1' or other indicator to flag 'something new to see here'. Tagging Certes and Nardog who may have good input about this. (In brief: some kind of opt-in notification mechanism which displays on demand a list of recent (last N?) edits by student editors (defined as a user page having {{dashboard.wikiedu.org student editor}} on it) of a page designated as contentious (see {{is_contentious}}). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:53, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Lately, it's been about 1 per day, but this is somewhere close to the peak time period for student editors doing things in mainspace. The Dashboard doesn't have public feed of alerts; we generate an email for each alert, which is the main way Wiki Education staff handle them. It would be tough to repurpose the detection code for a script as it relies on queries against the Dashboard's database. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:09, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Actually it does have a public feed of alerts: https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/spring_2024/alerts. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, right! That is specific to a campaign, though, so the location would change every semester. There is another feed of *all* alerts (which includes some types of alerts that contain non-public information) that I had in mind, but I forgot about that campaign-based feed. The data for that also comes via a JSON endpoint (eg, spring_2024), so it would be possible to make a user script out of that. However, I'm not sure how well that data would match up to the use case you have in mind, as the alerts are a mix of page-specific, user-specific, and course-specific events. (I assume a well-engineered user script would not do something like make a new request every time a new page on Wikipedia is visited, so assuming that the request frequency from such a script is low, there shouldn't be any performance impacts on the Dashboard.) Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:01, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard

Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

Fashion/textiles class is back again (n+1)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Caramseyphotog

Minneapolis

Concerns about Algoma University student editors

Undisclosed class? Gone haywire

Questions

Back again (meta discussion)

Alerts for contentious articles

Arizona State University (ASU) class

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