Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

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Education Working group proposal marked "historical"

This is just an FYI that I've marked the Education Working Group proposal as "historical." This is for three reasons: 1) Nobody from the working group has been editing it (and most never did), and there has been little to no response to comments on the talk page; 2) it's purpose was always unclear, and has only become more so; 3) it seems that the working group doesn't even exist any more, now that a subset of its members are calling themselves the "Education Board."

I'm not sure what venue there should be for community discussion of the Education Board's activity, which seems to continue from what one can gather. The lack of transparency and/or accountability is quite astounding. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I see there have been a couple comments about this at the proposal talk page. I'm thankful to get some great communication on this noticeboard sometimes, but it would be reassuring if more of those involved with the iniative communicated and helped out with things that pop up here. It is kind of odd thinking that there are supposedly lots of people who want to help assignments but then you don't see any edits anywhere or responses here. Of course, lots of great things can be done off-wiki, but more robust discussion about and participation in the issues this noticeboard identifies is desired, to me. I also find it odd that there is repeated talk about "having a place to communicate" when this noticeboard already exists.

Where is the official statement of guiding principles, I wonder? Wikipedia:Education Board/Wiki Education Foundation Members currently says "Anyone can become a member of the program. There will be a simple online process for signing up, with minimal requirements, such as agreeing with the guiding principles, which the Board will develop." That hasn't stopped 36 people (me being #36) from putting our names down as Members/Interested Members though! What did I sign up for? =) Biosthmors (talk) 00:03, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I hate to tell you, but you signed up for HumancentiPad. :-) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

What?! I'm very disheartened. I would have much rather signed up for a featured production. Biosthmors (talk) 00:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Bio, the guiding principles are in the proposal, albeit in draft form [1]. If the final principles aren't to your liking, your $0.00 (USD) membership fee will be returned (minus shipping and applicable state taxes). Like Mike below, I'm available for any questions on the new group. in terms of centipad/pede placement, I recommend signing up for the front position. Avoid the middle if possible.The Interior (Talk) 01:47, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to try to be a bit more responsive on-wiki, but I am really busy in real life, so please feel free to poke me at my talk page or via email if I seem to be ignoring a discussion. I don't have a whole lot to add to the note Biosthmors linked to just yet -- we are still working on the tedious administrivia of starting up a 501(c)(3). If there are any specific questions, please post them here and I promise to respond as quickly as I have time for. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:10, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Guiding precepts

Thanks for citing those The Interior! To me, the following bullet point strikes me as problematic.

The organization will strive to sustain the successes of the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program at educational institutions in the United States and Canada. Members will recruit to expand the program and provide all volunteers, instructors, and editors with necessary resources. The organization and its members will strive to encourage greater use and understanding of Wikipedia at educational institutions.[2]

I think the words successes, expand, and greater use unfortunately all precede the word understand. The wording suggests that the group is confident that they have a good system and are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to "scale up". Shouldn't there be a mention of avoiding the problems, such as those identified in the RFC? I don't think the confident language is justified. In my opinion, this is a time when basic things should be re-evaluated to make there is a firm foundation, instead of concerning one's self with growth. I would like to see more of an explicit committment and willingness to improve upon the resources provided to instructors, students, and ambassadors, for example. As I mention here, I think there is room for improvement in the most basic instructions we are currently providing classrooms. So I recommend that this precept be modified to acknowledge the real need to improve, rather than focusing on the potential for expansion. I think we need a committment to quality, as the RfC identified that as a major problem from the community's view. Biosthmors (talk) 02:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, I've got a bit more to say on this, but might not get to it until tomorrow/friday. There are some important elements missing, imo. The Interior (Talk) 03:02, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

You're right that more groundwork needs to be done in terms of understanding the issues arising from student editing, and how those issues should be approached. There has been the in-depth report on the IEP, Mike Christie and co.'s qualitative analysis last year, and the many anecdotal reports of problems here, and previously at AN before this noticeboard was set up. So there is no shortage of material to learn from. I think a summary document of the difficulties encountered so far is necessary, and as you say, should be a foundation to build future activities from. The learning materials are one place these experiences have been translated into advice, but there are a lot of them, and some contain contradictory advice from what I've seen. Improving these resources, and making sure they evolve with community expectations is definitely a high priority of the new org. I wouldn't be opposed to changes in the proposal along the lines of what you've said, if you have specific wording, love to hear it. There is nothing to be gained by glossing over real problems, and I don't want the proposal to read that way. The Interior (Talk) 05:25, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

How about this?

The organization will strive to improve upon the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program in the United States and Canada. Members will support all stakeholders: readers, Wikipedia editors, students, and instructors to help the program succeed. Classrooms will be supported to leave behind quality contributions, so that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sister projects benefit from greater engagement.

Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 19:18, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts? Biosthmors (talk) 20:33, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I like some of the rewording, but I think we should give more thought to the difference between "resources" and "support". "Resources" includes training videos, on-campus expertise, and advice; support includes the work done by ambassadors. I don't see the WEF as providing support directly in the latter sense. I think the WEF should strive to provide resources and training materials to campuses so that they are in turn capable of supporting the professors on that faculty. Online ambassadors are a huge plus for those professors, but they're a volunteer group and can't be assumed to exist for any course. That means that the best thing we can do for professors is to give them local resources that can answer their questions and teach them how to edit Wikipedia. At the NYC Wiki event a couple of weeks ago there was some discussion of this point; I spent a little time talking to Ann Matsuuchi, a librarian from LaGuardia Community College, and she feels that librarians are a good place for this expertise within campuses. Librarians are frequently the instructional technology experts on campus, so this is a natural extension of what they do. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:03, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe,"Members will support all stakeholders" could be changed to "Members will endeavour to support all stakeholders", to reflect that no one can make any promises about how or where volunteers will spend their time on ed. related activities? The "will be supported to leave behind quality contributions" is a bit cumbersome, how about "WEF-USCAN structures, training materials, and volunteers will work towards supporting class projects to produce quality contributions.."? Agree on librarians, Mike, I spent a couple hours last week job-shadowing a reference librarian who had a lot to say about Wikipedia, the "Google generation" and how students access information these days. Library staff are the "front lines" in terms of information flow at universities. The Interior (Talk) 23:29, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I think these are improvements. How can we "officially" document them with edits to a draft? Should a new draft be copied and pasted into another space? Biosthmors (talk) 17:50, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but it's probably time for a new page, reflecting changes made by editors. I'll bring this up with the board. The Interior (Talk) 22:58, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. Mike said that when you met in Chicago you'd decide whether or not to make the proposal public. What was the decision? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:40, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

It's this weekend coming up. I'll make sure to broach this. The Interior (Talk) 22:44, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The "thematic organization" application is on meta; I'll see if I can find the link -- so that's already public. It's a draft for now; I don't think anyone but Pharos has edited it yet. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's the link. I haven't had time to read it through yet, I'm afraid, but will by the weekend. It will be reviewed in Chicago and I believe approval of a final version is on the agenda there. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:32, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The Interior, have you brought this up with the board? I was wondering if there was a response yet. Best. Biosthmors (talk) 17:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

We had a lot to discuss this weekend, but I did bring up this thread. The operative version of the proposal is now the m:Wiki_Education_Foundation version, as that's what AffComm is going to look at in regards to approving the new org to be affiliated with Wikimedia. As you are involved with the education project, I think you should feel free to amend the precepts part of the proposal, or indeed improve any part of the proposal you think is weak. Major changes need consensus, of course, but I support your amendment to the precepts. If you don't feel comfortable changing it yourself, I can do it. We're having a conference call tomorrow to finalize the by-laws, and we're going to ask AffCom to take a look soon, so changes should be made/suggested this week. The Interior (Talk) 18:23, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Please check out the Proposal

The proposal is, as Mike has said, up on Meta. And there are some quite significant changes to the proposal, and indeed to the whole project of the proposed organization. Sadly, as it's on Meta, there are very few eyes there. I'd recommend anyone to go have a look at it, and the changes it's undergoing. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Jon, I was just preparing a post in this vein. The Interior (Talk) 19:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation update

There have been some comments, here and elsewhere, to the effect that it's not been very easy to see what's happening with the process started by the Education Program working group last year. We're going to try to post regular updates on this page to make the process a bit more transparent. To recap, for those unfamiliar with the background, that working group process led to a proposal to create a nonprofit, to be called the "Wiki Education Foundation -- USA and Canada": WEF-USCA for short; or just WEF.

The WEF has an interim board, the members of which are listed here. The board has been meeting by phone and will be meeting in Chicago on the weekend of the 23rd of March. Current tasks include getting the final form a grant proposal to the Grant Advisory Committee, getting an affiliation proposal to the Affiliations Committee, and working with a pro bono lawyer to set up the bye-laws for the new 501(c)(3) and incorporate the new entity. The budget includes funds for hiring staff for the WEF; we're still discussing exactly what qualifications are needed. Do we need someone who is very experienced at running a non-profit? Or do we want someone with lots of fund-raising experience? Or someone with a strong Wikipedia editing record? Rod Dunican will be at the Chicago meeting, and I expect that there will be further discussion of the role of the WEF and the input of the community in the form of the RfC.

Three members of the board -- me, Chanitra, and Pat -- are going to monitor this page and will add an update periodically. We'd like to do an update weekly, but there may be nothing happening on a given week, since the board is all-volunteer. We'll also try to respond in a timely way to comments here; and we'd like to get input and feedback on the updates we post here. If you have any questions, please post them, and we'll try to respond. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:45, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Mike thanks for this. A few very quick questions:

1. When you say "We're going to try to post regular updates," who is "we"? As I've noted, the majority of the board hasn't edited on Wikipedia at all, except to edit pages of bureaucracy internal to the working group, and now the putative board. Is this going to change? Or does all the burden rest on your shoulders and those of Chanitra (who has never edited here before) and Pat?

   By "we", I meant Pat, Chanitra and me; it's quite possible Pat and I will do more of it than Chanitra, because of our familiarity with Wikipedia. No, I don't expect those board members without extensive editing experience to start editing more. Some of the board members, such as Diana Strassman, have multiple semesters of experience with running classes on Wikipedia, however. This might be a good place to comment that I don't see the WEF's activities as taking place on Wikipedia to any significant extent; what I hope we'll be doing is creating resources to train campus staff, and taking over the role Jami Mathewson and others at the WMF have played -- coordination of classes and the related administrative work. Of course doing that correctly does require a good understanding of Wikipedia. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   I'm not entirely sure what I think of the fact that you "don't see the WEF's activities as taking place on Wikipedia to any significant extent," although I appreciate the honesty at least. Indeed, it's far from surprising, in that essentially none of the working group / board's activities have taken place on Wikipedia. What it does do, however, is suggest once again how limited you see any input that Wikipedians might have on what the organization might do. I refer once again to Pharos's comments on the RFC: "The important thing is that we structure this program for deep community participation at all levels, which is a lesson that I believe has been learned from the experience of past stages, both in North America and globally. And we must ensure the community fully joins in planning the next stage of this structure as it evolves beyond the top-down approach of the pilot programs." We're a long way from that, aren't we?

   More pragmatically, as you know what can be the most frustrating thing about university (or other) classes coming on Wikipedia is when the students and/or the professors refuse (or don't know how) to watch talk pages and respond to invitations to communicate. Yet the members of the working group / board have, almost en masse, decided to take much the same tack themselves. So, perhaps they will not be editing articles themselves. But I find it extraordinary that any members of the board would not be watching this page, at the very minimum. It is disappointing on a whole number of levels. It smacks of arrogance. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   I can't speak for the rest of the board; I don't know if they're watching or not. But yes, we aren't where I'd like to be in terms of Pharos's comment that you quote. I would like to have more involvement from other Wikipedians, and I agree that beyond the RfC and a few posts there's not been much in the way of communication. I'd like to do better than that. As The Interior says below, it's not that we're unwilling; we've either been busy or (at times) there hasn't been much going on so there's not been much to post about.

   To your comment about the WEF's future activities taking place largely off-wiki: perhaps we have different conceptions of what this organization will do? In my eyes, if the WEF is successful, every campus in the US and Canada will have at least one person on staff who is a high-quality resource for any professor on that campus wanting to bring Wikipedia into the classroom. If I were the executive director of the WEF, I think I'd spend most of my time working with campus staff, developing resources -- PDFs, on-wiki training material, video, case studies, etc. -- helping with fund raising, reading and absorbing feedback from the Wikipedia community and academe, and looking for decent metrics, as well as the usual administrative tasks. There's some time spent on Wiki reading, and responding, certainly -- but do you think that would be more than an hour or two a week? Then there's the functions that Jami currently performs -- those aren't really on-wiki tasks; most professors don't communicate on-wiki, so perforce the communication back to them is via email too. Can you give me an idea of how you see the WEF operating in your vision of what it should be? I'm starting to wonder if that's the real gap between us -- I see our planning as a reasonable way to reach the goal, but if you see a different goal, then no wonder we're disagreeing on some basic points. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

2. Will you be posting either of your draft proposals on wiki? Will you be soliciting input on those proposals?

   This will be discussed in Chicago, but my own feeling is that they should be made public, and we should solicit input, but we should not wait for that input before providing the proposals to the grant committee and affiliations committee, just because we are very short of time if we are going to meet the goal the WMF gave us of taking over the work the WMF is doing by this summer. (I don't know either process in detail but I'd be surprised if those two processes didn't involve making the proposals public anyway.) So feedback on those two proposals would also be direct input to those committees. As I said, this is still up for discussion; that's just my take. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   Why exactly would they not be made public? Why would you not seek input? The opacity of the process is bizarre, and utterly against the culture of Wikipedia. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   Just a note on the AffCom and GrantCom applications: these applications all happen on open MetaWiki pages to my understanding, we will make sure to post notices here when the applications are up for review. Anyone is able to give input on those pages I believe. If anyone wants to take part in shaping the application before it's made, contacting the board members who are working on it would be a welcomed move. In terms of the process here, it's not ideal, I agree. The opacity is not meant to obscure anything from anyone, it's just an unfortunate by-product of people having real-time conversations. The Interior (Talk) 00:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

   I agree with The Interior's comments. I think my phrasing was poor -- by saying "this will be discussed in Chicago" I didn't mean "we're considering not making them public vs. making them public", I meant the proposals would be discussed in Chicago. So far I haven't heard anyone suggest that the proposals should not be public. I agree with you that they should be public and that we need and should solicit input. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

3. Likewise, will you be soliciting input to your discussions about the staff? (Biosthmors asked about this here over a month ago, and never received any response.) Or in this case (as others) are you merely reporting on discussions that are strictly internal to the organization you are trying to set up?

   I thought I was soliciting input on just that question, above; sorry if I wasn't clear. The board is very interested in getting opinions from the editing community as well as other interested parties (academe, the WMF) on all the points raised above. To reply specifically to Biosthmors, my own feeling is that anybody in the role of executive director ought to either have significant Wikipedia editing experience, or else we should make it part of that person's job to edit Wikipedia for a while -- say, until they have a couple of Good Articles. The main reason I would be willing to hire someone without WP experience, and expect them to learn by editing, is that I suspect we'll have an easier time finding a good candidate with non-profit experience and training them on WP than we would have finding a Wikipedian without nonprofit experience and expecting them to acquire those skills on the job. Of course, if the right candidate comes along with all relevant skills, that would be perfect. Please note: the above is not a board consensus, but I'll be making the case for that point of view in Chicago. As to whether the communication is reporting only, or if we are truly interested in soliciting input, the latter is the case. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   So this is the place and the means by which the board is soliciting input? It seems haphazard at best. I appreciate your articulation of your own views. It would be nice to hear that of other members of the board, too. Personally, I wouldn't demand Good Article writing of anybody. But I would expect the staff to be familiar with Wikipedia, and to live up to its values of openness and transparency. The problem is that the current board is very far from incarnating those values itself. I would also, by the way, expect the person to be familiar with academia, and beyond simply the context of interactions with Wikipedia. Sadly, the WMF doesn't have a good track record of hiring anyone with those qualities, either. I hope the board doesn't repeat its mistakes. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   "So this is the place and the means by which the board is soliciting input?" Suggestions for other methods are welcome, this seemed to be the practical place to get in touch with the largest cohort of Wikipedians interested in education outreach. My opinion on the executive director qualifications are similar to Mike's - a working knowledge of Wikipedia's processes is key. Having them sit down to write a GA might be a good indicator of whether they "get it". The Interior (Talk) 23:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

4. Is there even the chance for input to your discussions about input? Why is Rod Dunican's presence relevant if the board is supposedly independent of the Wikimedia Foundation? Have you invited any other people--Wikipedians, say--to take part in these discussions?

   Not sure what you mean by the first question. Rod's presence is relevant because it's his organization (which was under Frank at the time) that started this process; I imagine he will be providing input to the grant and affiliation committee. We're not incorporated or affiliated yet, and we have no grant money; if Rod were to conclude that we're not doing what the WMF wanted us to do, no doubt he'd provide that input to those committees, which would quite likely stop us from proceeding. Conversely, if we really are going to pick up the work that the WMF is doing, we had better understand it in excruciating detail, and Rod and his staff are the source for that. In addition there's a coordination question -- when/if the handover happens, we will need to be communicating with his group in some detail. I imagine there will be an ongoing need for close communication with Rod's team, since much of what his group works on for the Global Education Program is going to be relevant to the WEF, and vice versa -- classes in English-speaking countries outside the US and Canada are an obvious area where resources for one group are likely to be useful to the other. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   The first question merely refers to your (or the board's) model for input. Which essentially seems to consist in asking you (and Chanitra and Pat) to watch this page and report back in some way. But in that the discussions themselves are veiled (e.g. it seems unlikely that anyone outside the board or the WMF will even see the proposals), it's hard to provide input to a process that is so completely cloaked in veils of secrecy. Meanwhile, surely part of what's issue is whether what you intend to do is merely to "pick up the work that the WMF is doing" and ensure that "you're doing what the WMF wanted us to do." This is a totally bizarre notion, it seems to me. Is the board merely then a means by which the WMF outsources its operations, voiding itself of all responsibility (and no longer paying for them), while maintaining veto power on what is and is not done?! Say it ain't so! --23:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   It does seem to be the case that the WMF is "outsourcing" this particular aspect of their operations. That's the decision that's been made, not by anyone on the board. We're just trying to work with the situation. As for "veto power", I'm not sure what you mean, could you be more specific? The Interior (Talk) 23:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

   I agree; Jon, I think your choice of "outsourcing" is pretty accurate, with one exception: as DGG pointed out in the RfC, one difference is that the new organization will have several board members elected by Wikipedia editors, but only one from the WMF, so the level of direct control exerted by the WMF should decrease in favour of increased involvement by the editing community. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

   I just wanted to comment (I have been watching, too :) ), that I don't think this new organization is looking to have any sort of 'veto power' about anything. This ideal Mike speaks of, where we essentially serve as the conduit for campus faculty to engage and become experts themselves, would likely lead to more Wikipedians on campuses supporting their classes much in the same way very active Wikipedians in the program do now. They would be experts in Wikipedia assignment design, which would ensure that professors start off on the right foot. Then they could support students in various ways (maybe the class assignment involves adding reliable sources to existing articles, in which case the work with students might be limited to having them work closely with librarians to evaluate sources and then learn how to add those to an article; maybe the assignment is much like yours, Jon, in which case the students would need a lot more support on the Wikipedia-editing and culture side). This expertise and depth of familiarity allows the assignments to be more flexible and to fit in with the class and Wikipedia's needs. If we can help establish more experts on college campuses, then way more classes can become self-sufficient, like you. Would you ever let someone come in and veto something you were doing in your class? ;) Anyway, the idea is to empower volunteers to have the know-how to make the partnership between Wikipedia and education that much stronger. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 17:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

1. Hi Mike, Jami, sorry that I haven't had much time recently... But by "veto power" I thought it was clear that I wasn't referring to any control over Wikipedia that the proposed organization might wield. (I'm a little surprised that you imagined I could possibly mean that.) Rather, I was referring to the relationship between it and the WMF. That's why it seemed odd to me that Rod would be at this Chicago meeting. If this is truly to be an independent organization, why bring him in? Especially as there is already one WMF staffer on the proposed Board as it is. Do you feel that one is not enough? As for a potential veto, that's quite clear in Mike's comment: "if Rod were to conclude that we're not doing what the WMF wanted us to do, no doubt he'd provide that input to those committees, which would quite likely stop us from proceeding." This seems to say that if Rod doesn't like something, then the Board will drop it. For an organization that claims to be doing things differently, that's quite some admission. And if the WMF wants to continue to determine what gets done and what doesn't, then why are they hiving the whole business off? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:44, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

(Outdenting) Jon, I'm going to break up your comments into bullets so I can answer them separately rather than running multiple answers inline, partly because it's easier for me and also in case we need to pursue one of these points further.

• Why bring Rod in? It was very useful to have Rod there, for several reasons. He had a lot of experience with the PPI, and was able to talk to us about the grant-writing and fundraising; that was very helpful. We're going to have to do exactly that kind of fundraising if we want to survive. He's also currently in charge of the budget for the education program and was able to give us a lot of pointers on budgeting costs, both data points on what certain kinds of salaries and expenses cost, and also what the historical expenses had been in some areas. Jami has a lot of this information too, but she's a contractor, not a staff member, and is not being retained by the WMF past June 30th of this year. She had no PPI experience and doesn't have the budgeting information. She does have a lot of concrete data about the day-to-day tasks that are currently done inside the WMF -- communication with faculty, responding to questions, and so on. Also, and this is a personal comment just from me, I would have felt it was rude to object to anyone from the WMF coming to visit -- the plan to start this organization was orginally their idea, they are funding the travel and accommodations, and I think it would be inappropriate to tell them to stay away without a very good reason. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for these long and helpful answers. Here, a couple of things arise. Not least, who if anyone will replace Jami. With Annie Lin gone, that's significant continuity lost. I presume it will be LiAnna? I do, however, understand your sense that if the WMF are paying, they get to call the tune. But my understanding is that "the plan to start this organization" was not "orginally their idea." Surely the narrative is that they set up a working group, which then came up with this idea? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 07:30, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

    It's true that the working group came up with the current plan, but the whole plan to move the US/Canada EP outside the WMF was the WMF's idea, and that's what I meant. Re continuity: yes, that's a problem. Personally I hope the new organization has the opportunity to rehire Jami; I think we have to take on that coordination role, since the WMF isn't going to, and she's obviously very well-qualified for it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:27, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

• A potential veto...if Rod doesn't like something, then the board will drop it. I'm not sure what plausible setup we could have had that would not leave us open to a comment like this. First I think I should say that I, at least, haven't heard or read a single word from anyone at the WMF that I could think of as a constraint on us to work on one plan rather than another. The only thing I think would be an issue would be if we weren't plannning to take on the off-wiki part of communicating with instructors in the program, and since the board unanimously think that we need to do that, it hasn't come up. Even if there were some desire on the part of the WMF to constrain the WEF in some way, it would be rather pointless, since as soon as the WEF is funded it can ignore the WMF's directives. What I outlined to you is just a hypothetical sequence of events: if organization A funds plan B, wouldn't you expect organization A to insist on actually wanting plan B to happen? Finally, suppose, for the sake of argument, that the WEF board really does want to do something Rod hates, and Rod says he will recommend not funding us. (I hope it's clear that this is completely hypothetical; Rod has been 100% supportive in all my interactions with him.) I don't know whether the grants committee takes WMF input as significant, but I assume so, hence strong WMF opposition would reduce the likelihood of us getting a grant. That's just a fact. The board could decide to change its plans in order to get the funding; they could also go ahead and look for funding elsewhere. I don't know what would actually happen, but I am sure this is going to remain hypothetical so I am not concerned about it. Do you have a specific plan you think we should be pursuing that you think the WMF would oppose, or is this just a structural issue in your eyes? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Again, I understand that the organization that pays gets to decide what goes on. But the WMF are shortly pulling their funding. At some point this organization is to be at least notionally independent. If the WMF wants to continue to determine its direction, then they should continue to pay. Meanwhile, I think it's less a question of whether or not I personally have a specific plan (though I have mentioned to you what I'd like to see...) as one of the latitude you have to consider all the possible options. I don't see you having that--or taking it, if you have it. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 07:30, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

    "If the WMF wants to continue to determine its direction, then they should continue to pay": as far as I can detect, the WMF hasn't done anything to determine the direction of the working group's plans beyond the initial statement that they wanted to move the US/Canada EP outside their organization. In the future, I would expect we'll continue to apply for grants via the GAC, but I don't think that will determine our direction any more or less than any other grant -- and to be honest I think the WMF grants, if we get them, are likely to be much less than the outside grants that we are hoping to be able to get. I won't say they will have no influence over us -- any granting organization has some influence on how the money is spent -- but I don't see that as problematic. And of course one of the board seats is reserved for a WMF nominee; that is another form of influence. Can you remind me of what you'd like to see us do? I know we've talked about it but I don't remember either the details or the forum; sorry. I'm not aware that we're not using our latitude, though I'm sure there are ways to improve the ideas we do have, and we would very much like to hear more ideas on what we should be doing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:27, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

• Why are [the WMF] hiving the whole business off? This is really a question for the WMF, not for me or any other WEF board member. Many of the working group members tried to persuade Frank that the WMF should keep the whole program in house, but he convinced us that the decision had been taken at a high enough level that it wasn't worth our time to take that route. I believe the answer is that the WMF doesn't want to take targeted grants any more, such as the Stanton Foundation's PPI grant, which was over $1M. The WEF could accept that money, and do other targeted things, such as working with Consumer Reports, or professional organizations. However, you should really ask someone at the WMF that question; the above is no more than my own impression. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, it's odd, at best. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 07:30, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks in advance for your answers! -jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:03, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Not sure I'll have time tonight for further responses, but I'll try. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Again, the question is why the burden should be so singularly on your own back? You have a board. Surely any one of them could respond. Indeed, on Meta we're informed that those interested can contact "any initial board member". --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

It's a division of labour issue. Some board members are focusing on by-laws, some on the AffCom and GrantCom applications, some on legal and finance. The division is broken down here: Wikipedia:Education Board/Committees. Would it really make sense for eight or nine people to respond to queries? The Interior (Talk) 23:40, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely. Jon, I've dodged multiple unpleasant board tasks such as the budget and grant writing; I am more than happy to let PJ and Diana and the others take on those tasks while I try to help here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:32, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

A brief update from Chicago, on a point I know Jon was curious about: the (draft) affiliation proposal is already public on meta, m:Wiki Education Foundation; and the grant proposal will also be public. The board also resolved to make all minutes public. I'll be posting the minutes later this week, I hope; they're not yet approved but should be this week. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Peer review assignments?

Why not encourage assignments where students open peer reviews on important topics? They could begin the peer review by saying,

I am opening this peer review for [[Course page|this assignment]], and my classmates will be commenting here. How well I address peer review comments, and how much I improve the article will be judged to help determine my grade. I would like to try to reach X-Class by the end of the review, thanks.

This way, I think we'd have a clear platform to encourage particpation, collaboration, and quality improvements where they are desired, instead of encouraging assignments that create unnecessary articles or dump large quantitites of poor-quality and unneccessary prose on obscure topics. Biosthmors (talk) 03:31, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts? Biosthmors (talk) 20:33, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I think this has to be considered on a case-by-case basis. I assume you're talking about students putting articles up for peer review through the existing system? Some classes would do a fine job of this; others I've worked with would just make additional work for regular editors without any guarantee of a clear benefit. Another problem is that PR frequently generates few or no comments, which means that the students would have no basis for subsequent work. I've also seen students attempting to provide peer review feedback to each other, and that's usually very poor quality -- they need significant experience with Wikipedia editing before they know what feedback to provide. Often you just see "You're doing a great job with this article, Joey! I really like your additions!" Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:08, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the existing system. I agree this would have to be managed appropriately (as does any classroom assignment), but I think it should be offered as one option to professors who are looking at incorporating Wikipedia into the classroom. As of now, our tutorials seem to offer a "one size fits all" assignment design that empahsizes adding new prose as progress. If students aren't capable of offering meaningful suggestions, why should they be editing Wikipedia in the first place? And if all they say is "I really like your additions!"—then I would hope the instructor would give zero credit to such trivial remarks! Biosthmors (talk) 21:41, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

See for example assignment 7 here. Biosthmors (talk) 19:02, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

One thing you could do is write it up as a case study. That's the main way we highlight various possible assignments that may make sense for an individual classes.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

New bug to fix with course pages with the extension?

I just copied the course page text of Education Program:Saint Louis University/Signal Transduction (SP13) into a user subpage (User:Biolprof/Signal Transduction Spring 2013) and then I replaced the content with {{User:Biolprof/Signal Transduction Spring 2013}} so that I can edit the course page in a traditional larger format, see WP:diffs, etc. Might have I created any new issues? And will the current fixes to the extension also show edit boxes inside the course page, so that I can select "edit" for individual sections, as I currently can at User:Biosthmors/Signal Transduction Spring 2013? Biosthmors (talk) 19:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

That shouldn't cause any problems. (If you notice any, let me know.) That's basically the same thing the {{course page wizard}} does, except it transcludes pages in the Education Program talk: namespace. (It also includes explicitly coded [edit] section links for each of the transcluded pages, which you could do on your course page if you want to make it easy for other people to edit as well, via the course page.) If by "current fixes" you mean "planned fixes", then yes. After the planned recode to use ContentHandler, we'll be able to make course pages behave a lot more like regular wiki pages, including section edit links.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. It escapes me at the moment about how I would implement that though. No worries, I'm not planning on implementing it at this point in time, but maybe later. Biosthmors (talk) 17:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: Hanad Mukhtar

Hanad Mukhtar

Hanad Mukhtar (talk · contribs)

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

   I am one of the few Somali people who knows about wikipedia and I can help with everything that needed to be edited especially Somalia.

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

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

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

   YOUR ANSWER

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

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

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

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

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

   No

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

   Yes

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

   I would have encouraged them to not, but if they do it, they would have severe consequences.

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

   I would have taken it out immediately.

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

    It is prohibited use of other works without being told or informed them.

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

    YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

Endorsements

(User:Hanad Mukhtar.)

• Oppose—lack of experience. All 58 edits are in the user and user talk namespaces; it's fabulous that you want to be an ambassador, but first get some experience on the wiki itself! :) Let me know if I can ever be of service, —Theopolisme (talk) 11:08, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
• I agree with Theopolisme, like he said, come back once you have a better understanding and grasp of how Wikipedia works. One thing that you could do to improve is to take a deeper look into some of the more important policies/guidelines like WP:COPYRIGHT, Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and other policies that can be found at Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines. Another thing you could do is ask someone to "adopt" you which will allow you to get individual assistance from an experienced editor or ask questions at the teahouse. Hope that helps. -- Cheers, Riley 23:57, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - Too early. Please come back when you're more experienced.Smallman12q (talk) 01:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Some 'tube tutorials

Howdy, y'all! Recently, for the Schreiner University course, I created two YouTube tutorials related to moving an article from sandbox to mainspace—they can be viewed at [3], just in case you were, you know, planning on recording some tutorials about that kind of stuff. ;) —Theopolisme (talk) 22:18, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

That's great! Except for the fact that this should have been done on one of the test wikis/WMF deployment labs. Please do that next time. -- Cheers, Riley 00:06, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Thpoilsport. ;) Noted. —Theopolisme (talk) 11:05, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Big problems with neuroscience articles

A very unpleasant situation has developed regarding a range of neuroscience articles. In the past we've had a number of courses where the teachers asked students to create articles, but the topics were always minor, and even though the results were mostly weak, the harm was limited.

Now, however, we seem to have a large group of students who have been asked to make small changes to core articles, such as axon and insomnia. The problem is that the edits are almost all bad and need to be reverted. This obviously isn't a good situation for anybody -- I wonder if there are any suggestions on how to deal with it? (I also wonder whether this is the right place to bring up the problem.) Looie496 (talk) 03:46, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

This is the right place. I browsed through contribs and couldn't find a course page or anything about what exactly the students have been asked to do. The best route is probably to ask the students to put you in touch with the professor, and try to have a discussion here to work out how the students can edit productively. The {{welcome student}} and {{welcome teacher}} templates may also be useful.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Most of these students don't even understand the concept of a talk page, but I'll try that if I have time. For what it's worth, they are clearly at the University of Toronto -- lots of their refs give url's that are only accessible from there. Looie496 (talk) 17:03, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. It's not definitive, but that's the same university system as this class (and the professor continued doing smaller Wikipedia projects without any on-wiki coordination or documentation is subsequent terms). I'll see if I can learn anything more.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

That looks exactly like what is happening here. Looie496 (talk) 17:27, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

• In the lead of Axon: The threshold current that excites an axon also defines the electrical excitability of that axon. To determine this threshold, it is best to use a computer to control the output of the current source, as it is a trial and error process. Irrelevant crap.
• In the "Nerve injury" section of Axon: In diseased or damaged axons, the inability to maintain the conduction of a meaningful impulse train may occur due to disturbed axonal excitability. Quite hard understand what this meaningless sentence adds to the article. The source says "When axons are diseased or damaged, disturbed axonal excitability may result in the inability to maintain conduction of a meaningful impulse train" so basically this student has taken text they don't understand and jumbled the words around.
• In the "Nodes of Ranvier" section of Axon: If the grey matter areas receive and injury then that's a permanent injury as they are not myelinated. Spinal cord contains grey areas as well and that's why if you get an injury in those areas than the person gets permanent paralytic. Where as the white areas injury can be recovered due to myelinated cells coating. Hence, the myelinated sheath cells also plays an important role in healing injuries. The illiterate student comment about nerve injury is not related to the Nodes of Ranvier.

Please can someone just block all accounts and IP access from University of Toronto IP addresses until their students stop crapping all over the articles. I'm serious, Sage Ross, this is just mass vandalism and needs to stop. Colin°^Talk 20:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Colin, if it is Joordens, we did everything we could to try to convince him to go about it the right way, and his response was to go underground. If the disruption is bad enough to merit admin intervention, it seems like protecting the articles that are being disrupted would be better than blocking the whole university system, in my opinion. (On a terminology note, it's not vandalism, just bad good-faith editing.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

This is fascinating as an organizational problem. It might not be unreasonable for someone to send an email or make a phone call to the professor presumed to be presiding over this, but of course I would not want to make trouble for anyone's good intentions. I really am not sure what to do in such cases but I would like to see policy developed toward a recommended response. How was a guess at the originating university made? I see that these edits are from registered users so no IP address is available.

I also do not want to jump to conclusions, but Joordens is notable as someone who has in the past been argumentative about his right to encourage students to do disruptive unproductive things on Wikipedia without regard to Wikipedia community guidelines. His idea as I understood it was that Wikipedia is a community space and that if it helps his students learn, then he need not answer to any community guidelines or consider creating a community work burden. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Sage Ross, do you realise that the "There's nothing we can/should do" response to bad student editing is based on the "anyone can edit" mantra (quietly forgetting the "The Encyclopedia ..." prefix) -- and your solution is to block volunteers from editing :-) It is quite impractical to block the hundred or so articles that Joordens' monkeys might attack every semester. On terminology, I'm not referring to the individual student edits but to the coordinated gradual destruction of Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia's admin policies are geared round one editor doing a lot of harm to a small set of articles. I think we need to write some kind of letter to his boss or the press in order to force things. Bluerasberry, look at the first diff and you'll see the student cites a paper within their own university intranet. Colin°^Talk 21:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Although I didn't specify, what I meant was that the articles should be semi-protected. That should be sufficient, since it looks like these students are trying to make their edits immediately after creating accounts. I agree that full protection isn't appropriate.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I've been away from this noticeboard for a while, but this discussion header really caught my attention. I'm also very concerned about something I read below: that User:Lova Falk has felt the need to take a break because of the unpleasantness of working with some class projects. For editors who want to "do the right thing", as well as for good-faith student projects (both faculty and students), please point people to the essay Wikipedia:Assignments for student editors. But, specifically for cases like this one, where apparently the faculty member chooses not to respect community consensus, we need to establish a commonsense consensus that faculty editors and student editors are not entitled to some sort of special status, making them immune to the expectations that we place on everyone else, out of fear that we might make for a bad student experience. And I'm saying that as a long-time academic myself! See particularly WP:NOTTA: editors are not unpaid teaching assistants. If an instructor reacts badly to polite and constructive advice about policies and guidelines, and then fosters disruptive editing, take them to WP:ANI with no hesitation. If students make bad edits and are not responsive to polite suggestions to fix those edits, revert, revert, revert! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem with Joordens is that blocking his account would have no effect as he doesn't use it. He's got 1700 fresh meatpuppet accounts to do his bidding every semester. I think we need policy to deal with student edits just as we are supposedly getting serious with COI/paid edits. It involves showing respect to the millions of hours of volunteer time that has gone into this project. About recognising that firstly this is an encyclopaedia to be read, not homework to be written and forgotten. That those running classes have to have competency in what they are assigning: able to edit to a reasonable level, aware of guidelines and policy on content and behaviour, willing to spend the time to review and fix up. About setting assignments that are recognised by the community as worthwhile and having a high success ratio rather than ones that are easy to automark. And that course organisers will be held accountable for their class's work. And that ultimately we will publicly shame institutions who persist in harming the project. Colin°^Talk 22:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Sage, let me suggest that a broad IP block of the university may be needed in this case (not that we decide it here), and is probably going to be more effective than trying to preemptively guess which pages to protect, or trying to communicate with anyone at the university. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Something does need to be done about this class. There might be a lot of collateral damage from a full UofT rangeblock, though. That's the largest uni in the country (although he appears to be at a satellite campus, which probably makes it more manageable). We need to get the prof engaging with us somehow. The Interior (Talk) 23:05, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm certainly not the one to make decisions about blocking the university's IP range; if it's serious enough and widespread enough (beyond the couple articles brought up here) that range blocks are the only good solution, then it should probably go to AN/I.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 23:12, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I have a question arising from my lack of familiarity with the history here: has there ever been any sort of RfC/U? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe so. Perhaps we should try to confirm that this is Joordens' class by asking some of the students whose class they are in.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 23:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I suspected. I was trying to asses the extent of past efforts at dispute resolution, because sometimes it can be difficult to get complicated matters dealt with at ANI. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Come to think of it, perhaps WP:SPI would be a place to start, as an alternative to asking the students (which could end up being a little like "entrapment"). --Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think a lot of the previous efforts at dispute resolution happened off-wiki; after Joordens' first term participating in the Canada Education Program, he was asked (I think by Jami) to make some changes to his assignment, and when we wasn't willing to do that, he was asked not to do one at all.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thinking back to what The Interior said above, the students presumably might be at the University of Toronto Scarborough, not the main campus. That might mean that a range block could be feasible without unreasonable collateral damage. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:02, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Putting on my checkuser hat for a minute here, it would be extremely unlikely that there would be no significant collateral damage when range blocking a large educational institution. In order to prevent these students (who have registered accounts, as I understand) from editing, the range would have to be "hard-blocked", meaning that neither unregistered or registered users could edit, and accounts could not be created. As a matter of practice, range blocks of universities are generally measured in hours or days, not months. Risker (talk) 00:38, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, my point was that it is a satellite campus, not the main campus. There's also collateral damage when established editors become unhappy with having to deal with troublesome student edits. It's a matter of balancing the one against the other – the lesser of two evils, if you will. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

This talk about blocking IPs, doing detective work, and protecting articles is not the most reasonable solution. Should it be the case that some professor is the cause of a problem, and that may or may not be happening in this case, then there needs to be some process for someone with authority to contact the school and negotiate resolution to the problem.

This could start with contacting students, go to contacting a professor, progress to contacting a department chair, and then end at contacting a university ombudsman. As Wikimedia projects do more off-wiki outreach there needs to be more off-wiki regulation. The regulation can either come from a new hierarchical structure or it can be crowdsourced to whoever wants to do complaint management on behalf of the Wikimedia brand. In the past, some complaints against professors have been crowdsourced to a mix of hotheads, trolls, well-meaning untrained and incompetent people, and sometimes people who actually fix the problem. However, crowdsourcing relatively high-profile brand-impacting affairs like outreach to seek discipline for professors at universities probably ought not be haphazard. If this is not something for paid staff associated with Wikipedia education management, then it at least ought to be a task for someone who is reviewed in the same way that OTRS volunteers are reviewed if not how sysops are reviewed. Complaining about this is potentially na attack on a professor's livelihood and a university's reputation. This entire situation is trouble if anyone does anything and trouble if no action is taken, regardless of whether anyone contacts the school or professor directly.

There needs to be a system of turning over problems like this to someone who will take responsibility for them. This has more potential for bad media attention than other Wikipedia problems, and anyone who cares about the brand image of Wikimedia projects in the media has a stake in the handling of this. I would support the US Education Program having dedicated staff authorized by the community and the organization to receive and handle complaints like these in a standardized, community-endorsed way. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the goodwill in what you say here, but I think I need to point out that it's improbable that funds will be provided to hire more professional staff. (I'm basing that claim on recent discussions at the ArbCom talk page, where it was pointed out to me that WMF is unlikely to hire people to deal with some of the things that ArbCom does, even though similar arguments about the desirability of having professionals do it apply there.) As for complaints being a potential personal attack on a professor, comments here on-Wiki are far more benign in that regard than complaints to university administration would be. And frankly, most university administrations are going to take the "side" of the faculty member over that of Wikipedia, so we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that universities will help us all that much. (I say that as a long-time insider in higher education.) What we can control is what goes on on-Wiki. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Having a designated Education program staff member as an "ombudsman" (or an easier-to-pronounce synonym) is something myself and several others involved with courses have supported. Someone who's main task is spotting problems, communicating with those involved, and good at putting out fires. If there is community support for such a position, I think it can happen. The Interior (Talk) 00:56, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

This is part of what's at stake in the edit I discuss here. Now, one thing is whether the Education Program (and or the Foundation proposed to run it) feels it has any responsibility for classes that are run outside of its remit. It would be nice if it felt it had an expanded remit, or some kind of (let's call it) moral leadership, but I'd quite understand if those involved want to wash their hands of such "underground" classes. On the other hand there certainly should be some kind of monitoring and attempt to resolve problems that arise within the program. This is an ongoing issue that so far the proposed board hasn't, so far as I can tell, wanted to address. See multiple conversations on this page, but also here. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:48, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree; whatever happens to the EP, it seems to me that an ombudsman role such as The Interior outlines would be a good staff position to have. I believe Jami had occasion to take on this sort of task at least a couple of times -- for example it's mentioned above that she was one of the people who contacted Steve Joordens. I'd like to see that role continue. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:31, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Reply from WoodSnake

Hey all ... yes those are likely students from my class. May I ask, exactly how wide spread is this problem? I see you noted three or four instances of problems, I assure you that is an extremely small percentage of the edits being made by my students, I assure you there are many good edits, and I further assure you that we are doing precise research on exactly this issue; how good are the edits, and how can we take advantage of the learning opportunity and the opportunity to add expertise to Wikipedia while minimizing collateral damage?

My reason for going "underground" was this ... in the previous instance Wikipedians were making vast over generalizations regarding a few problematic edits (see below!). We have been taking steps to further educate our students about Wikipedia formatting, editing and culture before asking them to make edits, and we are recording the effects and determining best practices ... and we're doing it in a programmatic scientific way. Yes errors are being made, and yes it's easy to hold a handful to the light and generalize this as just bad, when you're not even seeing the good edits. Did you all not make some errors when you first edited? Let he who has not sinned, and all that. My hope is that by bringing some students to Wikipedia, Wikipedia will eventually gain a highly educated core of editors with expertise, and this will be to the benefit of the quality of Wikipedia. But yes, these students do not begin as perfect beings. So we are researching the best way to in-culture them, measuring the effects, and arriving at best practices.

I am a scientist. I work with samples and means and I don't get all excited or completely upset by a individual datapoints. I'm interested in the big picture, and I'm interested in programmatic study and understanding. The vibe I got very early on is that some Wikipedians view Wikipedia as their turf, and believe it is their duty to defend it at all costs. They get immediately negative towards "immigrants", and yes that turned me off completely. Do you even know the rate of your own errors as you were "immigrating"? Would it not make more sense to welcome and assist these new users rather than attempt to drive them out or block them as suggested? I don't have the time or energy to argue over individual data points. I will happily share our data when it's ready to be shared, and I assure you I understand the desire to educate these students as much as possible before having them edit. But people learn from experience and from useful feedback from those who know. I would love to see some of that from the Wikipedia community instead of this strong push-back reaction.

That is my perspective ... my students represent a potential resource ... I have the responsibility of introducing them well and learning how to do so while causing the least damage. I do not think any of us should jump to conclusions before we really understand the whole picture, and that's what I'm trying to do. But you all should, in my opinion, also play the role of welcoming the immigrants and helping them to adjust to the culture. Marking something as "irrelevant crap" is not helpful and makes me really not want to discuss these issues. If you'd like to have reasoned discussion, then I'm interested, although please also understand that my life is extremely busy!

So let me leave you all with this question. Let's say 100 students make edits on my class. Some percentage of those edits are problematic, and the people who make them never get involved or change their edits to correct them. Let's call them group A. Some other percentage do the work OK, add some useful information at a decent rate, but then just go away from Wikipedia. Let's call them B. Finally, some percent of students really enjoy the experience, do it well, and continue to edit articles as you all do as they proceed through their studies. The become great Wikipedia citizens who make expert contributions. The vibe I get is that you guys want 0% As, which is probably never going to happen. We can minimize A, but we won't get to zero, ever. Is that really your desired criterion? Or would you be willing to put up with some percent of As (representing short term annoyance) for some other percent of Cs (representing long-term quality contributions). What percents would make you happy? Have you even thought of the upside of what I'm trying to do? WoodSnake (talk) 14:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

WoodSnake, many of us took psychology articles off our watchlists as a lost cause. How widespread is it? Give us a list of the articles edited and we'll look. We can't generally go around guessing that so-and-so is one of your students because that might be interpreted as outing. While I appreciate you've fallen out with the education programme, there is no reason, per transparency, for you not to list which students are in the class. Because you are responsible for their edits. You asked them to make them. Are you cleaning up their mistakes? No. Saying there were "a few problematic edits" with your class is not helpful. We need to you be honest with us here. The huge problems with your class in the past are well documented and on a large scale. The "add a factoid to Wikipedia" class assignment is not helping Wikipedia and never will no matter what analysis you perform on it. Wikipedia is not an experiment lab.

The edit (first diff above) to the lead of Axon (an important topic that gets over a thousand hits a day) was "irrelevant crap". There's no other way of spinning it. If the student was a plain vandal writing "Jonny is gay" then at least the reader could skip and it would be trivial to spot and remove it. Instead your students are damaging Wikipedia articles in an insidious way. It is quite clear your students generally haven't a clue what they are writing about. There's no point suggesting we "welcome and assist these new users" when they don't identify themselves, don't use talk pages, and their accounts are very temporary. We need you to open up wrt the classroom assignments you are setting. You don't need to do it through the programme, just a list in your user space would help. The community has no way of properly analysing their work otherwise. Is there an upside to what you are doing? Are there any of your "add a factoid" students in category C at all? Please I'd love to have even one example from your "mega classroom". Colin°^Talk 16:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

"We need you to open up wrt the classroom assignments you are setting. You don't need to do it through the programme, just a list in your user space would help." I very much agree with this. At present it feels as though these students are less "immigrants" than secret agents. Moreover I think it would help you, them, and everyone else if there were one place in which discussions that arise from the project could take place. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

You're talking about reducing the bad edits to 0%, but in my experience they approach 100%. Look at the recent history of axon, insomnia, action potential, cerebral hemisphere, corpus callosum, and neurogenesis -- what fraction of those edits improve the articles? Looie496 (talk) 19:42, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

WoodSnake, thank you for coming here to comment. Please do me a big favor, and read Wikipedia:Assignments for student editors, and especially WP:INSTRUCTORS. As it happens, I'm an academic scientist too, many years tenure at a large US research university. Sure, I made mistakes when I first began editing. I still do! But I always try to listen to people who tell me I have made mistakes, and try to work with them cooperatively, not go underground. You are mistaken to think that Wikipedians regard the project as our turf that we have to defend from new editors. It's quite the opposite. But, like any other human institution, we have norms and rules. Our principle goal is to create an encyclopedia, not to provide you with an experimental protocol. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:32, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

"How I incorporate Wikipedia assignments in my mega (i.e., 1800 student) Introductory Psychology class" was the description of the 2013 talk at this workshop. I would be really curious to hear what kinds of things the professor said. I presume that this presentation was about the benefits of doing this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Articles affected

Looie496 pointed out student edits going on at two articles. Guerillero has semi-protected those two. Are there any others we've identified?--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• Axon - semi-protected for one week
• Insomnia - semi-protected for one week
• Will someone please semi-protect Childhood obesity. It has had about a dozen editors from Joordens' class crapping all over it for all of March and I think User:Cresix needs a rest. Colin°^Talk 21:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I've listed articles and students at User:Colin/Introduction to Psychology, 2013. The list is far from complete and just a start really. Anyone wants to help me list and analyse the edits, drop me a message on my talk page or email. I've done a few so far and glanced at the others. If this was one editor they'd have been banned long ago. Look at the article histories. Our articles are under attack from this class. I can fully see why LovaFalk is on wikibreak. Her watchlist must be on fire. Colin°^Talk 23:45, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

So far I've located about 120 students editing 75 articles. But the interative process of detection continues to find more students and articles. I reckon there are several hundred. Clearly we aren't going to analyse all their edits. In fact, nobody is, especially not Joordens. What is clear is that the accounts last for minutes (though some are picked up again in a few months if they repeat the assignment). I see no reason so far to assume the dire statistics from 2011 aren't repeated. It does look like the most of the edits stopped around the 23rd March. I hope this is the end of this semester's assignment, and not just a pause for breath. There is no way this can be allowed to happen again. We will create new policy to prevent it if necessary. Colin°^Talk 22:18, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Account creator rights

Is there any support for making this default for getting "Campus coordinator" rights? It seems redundant to add it after when people like myself can give a user the rights, but then need to find an administrator to add this right, and if possible, I was wondering if we could make this a right for them by default. I know there is the risk for abuse for this, but it is so small we would easily be able to monitor this. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Secondary sourcing in psychology articles

An issue of secondary vs primary sourcing has come up for Education Program:Davidson College/Cognitive Psychology (2013 Q1). User:Garrondo and User:Lova Falk have suggested for students to follow WP:MEDRS and use primarily secondary sources. In some areas, secondary sources are somewhat lacking. For a number of the article additions, students have used primary sources from peer-reviewed journals to describe models proposed by these primary sources. The models are similarly described in other secondary material and by abstracts/discussions in other peer-reviewed primary journals. WP:MEDRS states:

Reliable primary sources may occasionally be used with care as an adjunct to the secondary literature, but there remains potential for misuse. For that reason, edits that rely on primary sources should only describe the conclusions of the source, and should describe these findings clearly so the edit can be checked by editors with no specialist knowledge. In particular, this description should follow closely to the interpretation of the data given by the authors or by other reliable secondary sources.

If secondary sources are hard to find/non-existent, or do not contradict/disavow the primary sources (the additions aren't 'wrong' per se) and the additions are new content (new articles, new sections), is the usage of primary sources an editorial judgement? This issue seems to exist more for certain areas in the social sciences where there appears to be fewer review journals than for chemistry/biology which have an abundance of secondary review material.Smallman12q (talk) 02:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

LovaFalk has stated her wish to take a wiki-break (I think she said that among her reasons was the exaustion she felt from education projects), so I do not think she will comment.

I agree that in very specific cases primary sources may be used and I have never said otherwise. However, as MEDRS states the potential for misuse, even from experienced wikipedians is great. When inexperienced editors, as are second year students, use them the probability for misuse is potentially enourmous. How can students decide which sources are important? and reliable? How can they give an overview of a field using primary sources. If you read a hundred sources in a subject, and work in it for some time you are probably capable in deciding if any primary source is worth including. However, students usually have a limited time and interest and are only capable of reading a few sources (Most probably less than 20). When this less than 20 sources are all primary the result (which has usually been the result of educational assingments in psychology) is a collection of concatenated descriptions of primary sources which most probably does not reflect consensus in secondary sources. This is what I feel that has occurred in this case. See for example here and here. This links with the comment " The models are similarly described in other secondary material and by abstracts/discussions in other peer-reviewed primary journals": I would add: says who? In some cases they do, in others they don't, and nevertheless experienced editors cannot know (since we only have a description of what a primary article says), so it is really hard to check for accuracy, which is very important when unexperienced, non-experts editors add lots of text to articles.

Regarding the comment "In some areas, secondary sources are somewhat lacking. " I believe is completely false. If an issue is important enough (exceptions with very new theories) there will be secondary sources. If it is important it will have been included in professional text-books and reviews in journals. I have yet to find an article in psychology for which there are no secondary sources that can be found in less than a day... Moreover, my opinion (and many others) is that if there are no secondary sources for an issue that was first studied several years ago, then it is simply not notable and it is not worth including in wikipedia. In the case above I even pointed several secondary sources to some of the students or gave them some hints to find them. See for example here and here and here, so truth is that there are secondary sources but simply it was not given enough emphasis when instructing the teacher and students.

As a conclussion: I believe that emphasis in secondary sources is critical in any article based on research (either in social or biological fields), and that cases were there are no secondary sources in a notable issue are a rarity. However this emphasis is even more important in educational assingments since secondary sources help to overcome many of the potential pitfalls in which students and university teachers usually fall. I am going to point to the psychology and medicine projects to this discussion, since I am sure they will find this discussion interesting.

Bests.--Garrondo (talk) 08:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

If one is just learning to edit Wikipedia only using secondary sources is a good way to prevent issues from occurring thus would strongly recommend it. Major textbooks are appropriate and in psychology there are lots of those. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine)

I can see that it may be difficult to find journal review articles that comprehensively cover some subjects. But that's not true of the rest of the secondary literature on the subject. The fundamental here, as covered by WP:WEIGHT policy, is that if the secondary literature doesn't cover an issue/point/topic then there's no way we, as tertiary literature, should be covering it.

The approach to studying the literature, and writing about it, that students need for Wikipedia is completely reversed from the approach used in academia. There are no brownie points for showing off how familiar one is with the primary literature, or how well one has summarised the field based on the primary literature, or that one has located and cited the seminal papers in the field. These are all important skills for academia but not here.

There is a tendency on Wikipedia to assume if a simple internet (or PubMed) search doesn't find source material then it doesn't exist. These students have access to a university library. I wish I did. They should use it.

One other issue is the tendency to set assignments (or for students to pick) obscure subjects so that an article can be created. This will naturally lead to topics that are hard to source well, and doesn't help the encyclopaedia. Colin°^Talk 12:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I am a regular participant in the University of Minnesota journal club in individual differences psychology and behavioral genetics (the Psychology 8935 graduate seminar) and as such I have occasion to read journal articles about psychology each week during the school year. Usually those articles are primary research articles. Once in a while we read a review article as part of the week's mix of articles. After participating in this journal club for a few years, I'm very much in agreement that WP:MEDRS should be the standard for references to back up Wikipedia articles about psychology. Quite a few articles related to individual differences psychology are currently under ongoing arbitration sanctions from the Arbitration Committee Race and Intelligence case, and the only way forward for the articles associated with that case to improve in quality is to be very rigorous about sourcing to reliable secondary sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

As this is a perennial topic for the many Association for Psychological Science classes, and one that a lot of the professors push back against (see the discussion on page 9 of this forth-coming paper about the APS Wikipedia Initiative, in addition to the on-wiki examples we're familiar with), perhaps it would be useful to have an RfC about appropriate sourcing for psychology articles. We could reach out the APS editors and try to forge a consensus about where primary peer-reviewed literature is and is not appropriate.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I've yet to hear an explanation for why Wikipedia should cover something that has yet to be "synthesized in review articles or textbooks", as the paper puts it. Does psychology have an oral tradition perhaps? Or are their published works suppressed by the authorities -- lecturers meeting their students in underground tunnels, passing them those scraps of journal articles they managed to salvage from the Great Burning of Wisdom? Is the work these students are doing on Wikipedia really so unprecedented that nobody has ever reviewed the experimental studies and written about them before? Are we expected to believe that second-year psychology undergraduates are learning such bleeding-edge concepts and ideas that there is nothing in the last 50-years of research in the field worth writing about?

What purpose would an RfC serve if the proposal is counter to basic policy? Instead, could someone from APS please come here and explain why a topic in undergraduate psychology that has never been written about to any degree in the secondary literature should be a topic on Wikipedia? Colin°^Talk 13:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The purpose would be to have a discussion between editors with different views on the appropriate interpretation of the sourcing guidelines. I'm not talking about a proposal counter to policy, or any proposal at all. It's just an opportunity for a structured discussion on just the issue that we've seen continuing disagreement about (ie, when, exactly, primary peer-reviewed literature is acceptable for psychology articles). It would be a chance to either reach common ground with the APS professors, or clarify disagreements and figure out whether what they want to do is compatible with Wikipedia.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:04, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Do any of the APS professors edit here? That would be a start. There's certainly a lot of misunderstanding going on. Why is it just WMF and Wikipedians talking here, and no profs? Colin°^Talk 14:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

That's why I suggested an RfC, to bring the professors to the discussion. They aren't in this discussion because we haven't let them know about it. Some do edit, and more keep an eye on what their students are doing and guide them behind the scenes. Few watch this page, or have the watchlist-checking habits of the regulars here.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I've heard an explanation for why Wikipedia should cover something that has yet to be "synthesized in review articles or textbooks": it's because the subject is so obscure that reviews and specialized textbooks are only expected to be updated every five or ten years as a result. Think "genetic disease affecting fewer than 100 people, all from the same family." Additionally, we do sometimes use primary sources if we want to get the details on something that a secondary source glosses over. A good textbook i going to skip the gritty details of Watson and Crick's work on determining DNA's structure and function, but a good editor might want to include a few colorful details to add interest and accessibility to a specialized article on that research.

In this case, however, it seems to be more WP:RECENTISM than appropriate use of primary sources. People seem to be talking about adding information on newly published models, with no idea whether those models will be discarded next season. In this instance, I think that setting a general rule of thumb that "if it's not in a secondary source, it's not worth adding to Wikipedia" would help students figure out what's important. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:18, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Joorden's mega class experiment was explicitly designed as a means of getting the latest research findings/thoughts onto Wikipedia. I suspect he's not alone in thinking this is the most important thing these students could be doing. Why don't we get classes picking basic undergraduate topics in psychology and working to improve an existing article? Could be the better article has less text than before? Could be the resulting article has some existing text mingled in with student text? Could be the students actually collaborate with other Wikipedians. Now what would that do to all those silly words-added metrics? Colin°^Talk 19:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll summarize my own reactions, after dealing with several class projects in the neuroscience domain: (1) These things are a pure negative for Wikipedia, even if they may be moderately beneficial to the students; (2) If they stick to obscure articles, the harm is limited, and the best thing to do is to ignore them -- if necessary doing a massive revert after the class ends; (3) If they edit important articles, almost all of their edits need to be reverted immediately. Looie496 (talk) 20:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

You will also find that the neuroscience/neurology articles are invariably being edited by psychology students seeking something concrete to write about. So their profs are completely unable to provide "expert" supervision, if they can be bothered, that is. Colin°^Talk 21:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• For the record, most of what is being talked about in this section is explicitly not permitted under no original research policy. Peer-reviewed reliable sources on scientific matters is the standard expected for topics at this level, not "latest research". Risker (talk) 21:42, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't think that's quite accurate, Risker. We're talking about peer-reviewed scientific literature, just primary research papers (published in reputable journals) rather than secondary review articles. Of course, such sources can be put together in ways that amount to original research, but that isn't necessarily the case. WP:MEDRS calls for a more stringent standard, one that a lot of the APS Wikipedia Initiative professors seem to buck up against.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
    • This worries me. I can understand professors encouraging their students to compile and synthesise primary sources, because that higher level of thought is something all good professors want to inculcate. It is incompatable with en.Wikipedia, though. Obviously so. Sure, there are rare instances where citing a primary source is appropriate in health-related content, but they are rare. My attention was drawn here by two student proposals in Talk:Autism for new autism-related articles, one built entirely on primary sources, the other almost entirely.

Psychology professors are encouraging, or at least allowing, students to add reviews, not reviews of reviews (tertiary level articles) to Wikipedia. The solution is not, in my opinion, to invite the professors here to collaborate in a redrafting of our content policies to allow for that. They need to better understand our epistemological model. Someone isn't making it clear to them that we can't trust their or their students' judgement about which primary evidence is worthy of our readers' attention; that we rely only on strong secondary sources like scholarly reviews and highly-regarded textbooks for that judgment call. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:10, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Risker, your two sentences are vague to the point that misunderstanding is possible and not really clear what your point is. But my guess is that you're mistaken wrt sourcing at a pretty fundamental level. Since you're an arb, I sincerely hope this is not the case. Colin°^Talk 08:28, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Anthony, I think it is time to draft a new policy wrt student editing. The issue I think is that Wikipedia assumes editors are intrinsically motivated individuals and has mechanisms to deal with this. But where someone directs others to make edits, with some degree of compulsion, I think the contract changes. Particularly so when on a large scale. What is missing so far from the bad student assignments, is any degree of responsibility taken by those directing the students to edit. That has to change, and I hope the community will support such a change. Colin°^Talk 08:28, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Training

Oversight by professors would be a good thing, but the need for it would be vastly reduced if professors in health-related subjects were actually effectively teaching their students how to edit health-related content on Wikipedia. Can you point me to the training the professors receive? I'd like to know if the problem lies in the training we give the professors. Is there a formal assessment of the professors' competency? Do they sit an exam before their course is accepted into the programme? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Sage or Jami will probably respond with links to the training materials; they'll give a more accurate answer than I could. However, better training will only help correct problems caused by classes with cooperative instructors. Joordens has, so I gather, indicated he does not plan to cooperate, and I don't know if he's received any training at all. That shouldn't stop us improving the training, but the training doesn't appear to be the issue in this case. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

This thread isn't about (what we think is) Joordens' class. The specific class that Garrondo and Smallman12q have been involved with Education Program:Davidson College/Cognitive Psychology (2013 Q1). In this case the professor, User:CogPsyProf, did go through the training and from what I've seen, is receptive to feedback and has been trying to guide the students to use appropriate sources. Per the professor's talk page, Garrondo (at least) is frustrated that, despite feedback from him, some students are still relying on primary sources, and recently added large amounts of their work in one go. I think this is more a case of "it's hard to get students to use optimal sources" rather than an uncooperative or untrained professor.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 12:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

[edit-conflicted with Mike] The training for professors is at Wikipedia:Training/For educators. It is not specific to those teaching health-related subjects, although it does include a pointer to WP:MEDRS so that those teaching relevant subjects will know about it. (One thing I think would be helpful would be a specific module for psychology classes, as a supplement to the current training. Anyone up for writing content for such a thing?) This training is fairly new, and only a fraction of currently active professors in the education program have taken it (and before, there was no training for the professors). Going forward, I expect that most or all will be required to go through the training before being given access to the instructor right that allows them to set up a course page. (The rights request link is now integrated into the training near the end, as of a few weeks ago.) There is no exam, but instructors have to post to this page the basics of what they want to do with their class on Wikipedia, so that we can make sure it's sensible.

Note also the student training: Wikipedia:Training/For students, which a large fraction of the students this term have taken (usually because they were assigned to complete it, as we recommend and build into the example syllabus).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 12:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I couldn't find a reference to WP:MEDRS in that material. Could you possibly link me to it? I would be delighted to help draft a module about adding health-related content to en.Wikipedia. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:21, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was in the educators series, but in fact it's only in the students training, at Wikipedia:Training/For students/Specialized help pages. That module from the students training is itself part of the further reading section of the educators training, at Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Further reading. Please do draft a health-related content module! Feel free to draft it anywhere, and I can help with getting it into the same format as the others.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Regarding User:CogPsyProf and his class it is not accurate: that he is receptive to feedback and has been trying to guide the students to use appropriate sources: While at some point he said that importance of secondary sources was being told to students, it seems now to me that he did not really feel that it was important and that use of primary sources was permmitted, and that my emphasis on secondary sources was a personal mania of myself. I feel that this attittude was further fuelled by the online embassador. I think that both felt that it was not as important secondary sourcing as students adding text to wikipedia. Nevertheless these have been my feelings and I am not completely sure if they are true, but the initial comment in this thread by smallmann (online embassador) points that I am correct.--Garrondo (talk) 08:13, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Garrondo. This prof has been very defensive and has not always had good advice from Smallman12q, such as that the class might like to tackle Autism, something that had a good handful of medical editors screaming "Nooooo!" at their monitors. The class page still has "Autism - add a section on face recognition" as an assignment, though we've been assured the students will actually create a new article (again this obsession with creating new articles on minor topics). The issue that keeps recurring is that the profs running these classes don't have the wiki-competence to guide their students. We spend too much time training the profs after their students have already made mistakes and done their assignments. Colin°^Talk 10:52, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

From what I've seen of CogPsyProf's on-wiki comments, both earlier on and within the last week (since her students started posting much of their initial work), she's very receptive to feedback and seems to be trying to get her students to make as high quality contributions as possible. As you note, she's been adjusting her plans and guiding her students based on advice (sometimes conflicting) from experienced editors. I would also characterize a lot of the comments directed to her as pretty aggressive; nothing too terrible, but enough to be pretty intimidating for someone trying work with the community. As she noted on a couple of talk pages, her students are current peer reviewing each others work, and will then delve into further improvements based on the peer reviews and the advice of other editors.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:49, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

This isn't helping Sage. What you say might be true but is the same old defensive argument. It's like someone driving the wrong way up a one-way street having a moan about all horn beeping and swearing going on. Rather than criticising the community for how it reacted, ask why did the community reacted in the way that it did? Was the preparation adequate? Did this prof ask their students to do something that they didn't know how to do? Was the prof ill-advised? Why does so much communication happen off-wiki? Why do we have to keep arguing about sourcing when policy is clear? Why are students tackling neurology articles when the prof is a psychologist? Colin°^Talk 14:13, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I've had a short conversation by email with CogPsyProf (in which she sought advice on how she could make it clear on-wiki that she really was taking in the feedback from experienced editors), but aside from that all the communication I'm aware of on these issue has been on-wiki. (Except, of course, whatever is going on in her classroom.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:18, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Classroom Experiment: bidirectional benefits of students’ engagement in online production communities

I've just read that paper. Three brief responses. I think we should prepare a more substantial response. I see misunderstanding, poor science and propaganda.

• "Undergraduate and graduate students substantially improved the scientific content of over 800 articles, at a level of quality indistinguishable from content written by PhD experts." and "students... have improved over 840 Wikipedia articles and have written 1,200 pages of text, more than the content of a psychology textbooks". Expect to see the bold text heavily promoted -- it's written in a peer-reviewed journal so must be true :-). By what measure do they judge the student writing? Perhaps they showed it to subject experts and asked them to comment? No they used the flawed method of analysing text retention. The same method Joordens thought he could use to auto-mark his student's homework in the "mega classroom" experiment. That's no measure at all -- most of these students are writing in articles on very few watchlists and many are writing new orphan articles that aren't on anybody's watchlists. That's assuming those watching those articles are actually capable of checking the text matches the source.
• They write "We expected students' contributions would be as good as those made by expert psychologists since they receive direct feedback from their faculty who are experts in the field." Wow. They clearly haven't read anything these students have written. Does a student term paper become as good as the expert writing because the student "receives direct feedback from their faculty"? Do they think these students correct the mistakes after their work is marked? This also assumes the students stick to subjects their prof is an expert in, or that is actually covered by their course, rather than some more interesting neurology topic or genetics topic that took their fancy.
• Their paper cites others wrt the psychology of communities and feedback. Yet in practice is these students are no more part of the WP community than I am part of a community when I stay in a hotel for the weekend. They turn up; they dump their text; they're down the pub. The graduates writing "good article" level works may stick around a while and a few do actually interact briefly, but the undergraduates are mayflies.

Colin°^Talk 14:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Did they jump or were they pushed? I agree that the vast majority of editors who are induced to work on Wikipedia through educational initiatives rarely continue to edit after their class is over. They last longer and do more work, however, than the modal new Wikipedia editor, who leaves after a single editing session. There is substantial evidence that negative feedback and reverts by old-timers and their failure to explain to new editors what they are doing wrong drives away potentially valuable editors, who are editing in good faith and producing useful if syntactically incorrect contributions to WP. This hostility to new editors (including those recruited through the various educational initiatives) is having harmful effects on Wikipedia as a whole. See Halfaker, A., Geiger, S., Jonathan, M., & Riedl, J. (2012). The rise and decline of an open collaboration system: How Wikipedia’s reaction to sudden popularity is causing its decline. American Behavioral Scientist for a data-filled argument about the causes and consequences of these old-timer activities. As a faculty member who has encouraged my students to try to improve WP articles, I've seen the demotivating effects on new editors of what I consider to be superficial and often ill-informed critiques of students' work. An example of that type of discussion is here. In this case a WP editor who specializes in writing about women's sports reverted in a hostile way a PhD student in behavioral economics' useful and well-sourced additions about the research base aboutinformation cascades. Needless to say, this student stopped editing after completing the course, although he had intended to become a Wikipedian before the responses he got. Robertekraut (talk) 17:52, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

This is a situation where scale makes all the difference. Activities that are easy to handle when a few people do them become overwhelming when done on a large scale. My first approach, as maintainer of most of our neuroscience articles, was to try to work with students in a helpful way, but once I realized that I couldn't handle the volume, and that most students dislike any sort of outside interference, I switched to ignoring edits if they aren't too harmful and reverting edits if they damage important articles. I really don't see any other way to make it work. Looie496 (talk) 18:19, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• On the edit retention metric. I see edit retention keeps being used as a gauge of edit quality. No research has shown this to be a useful measure AFAIK. The assumption seems to be that articles are closely supervised by a group of volunteers and only the finest prose and most accurate writing is retained. The reality is that psychology articles are a neglected wasteland, all the more so since students moved in. Hardly any are watchlisted. Many student edits are in new articles with no supervision by volunteers. Volunteers are hopelessly unable to spot plagiarism or check sources, even if they were motivated to do so. Edit retention is somewhat correlated with the activity, ability and motivation of volunteers in the topic area to review and cleanup. Where it is correlated with edit quality at all, it measures only the dreadful end of the scale. Edits that are clear nonsense, that are completely unsourced, that are obviously in the wrong place, etc. This metric is like some statistician measuring the effectiveness of two drugs for eczema who instead of examining the patients clinically for improvement, instead counts how many patients died of toxic effects. If we can say anything about these students based on edit retention (and I very much doubt we can) it is only that one set is comparably as awful as another set. To claim that undergraduates on Wikipedia are writing article content at PhD level is ridiculous. To expect them to write at the level of their professors, because they are "supervised", is doubly ridiculous. Colin°^Talk 19:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

A rationale for using reverts as a measure of article quality is written up at A Jury of Your Peers: Quality, Experience and Ownership in Wikipedia, though not a perfect measure, it predicts changes in changes in the Wikipedia Wikipedia 1.0 Assessment scores over a six month period. Using this metric the data from the Socializing Volunteers shows students in the APS initiative do more work than PhD psychologists who registered for the APS initiative and that students' edits last as long as work written by PhD psychologists and longer, on average, than non-student text added during this period to other articles in psychology, sociology and neuroscience. Robertekraut (talk) 16:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The "A Jury of Your Peers" paper you cite says "We assume that the more revisions that take place which do not remove the word from the article, the higher quality in quality the original contribution that added it is." The paper doesn't give evidence for that -- it's an assumption. A flawed one. The paper cites two others (this and this). Neither papers measure the quality of the edit. These all measure a proxy. They all assume the longevity of an edit (or words in an edit) is a measure of its quality. It quite clearly isn't. These various papers say very little about what actually happens on wikipedia. Their simplistic computer models are quite inadequate. Great edits may reduce the amount of text in an article. Or move whole chunks to another article. Massive plagiarism and hoax articles can go undetected for years. Editors may appear to add valuable text when the individual edits diffs are examined, but in fact the text was already present on Wikipedia in a better place. The issue of measuring quality is also quite challenging in highly technical fields like medicine/science compared to a biography, say. The "The Rise and Decline" paper may be "data filled" but is also utterly unconvincing and just politics and opinion. They plot various measurements over time and claim the changes in one are responsible for the changes in the other. Yet their analysis cannot show this. I continue to be very disappointed at the research conducted wrt Wikipedia. The edit-retention = quality myth is quite harmful if statements like "at a level of quality indistinguishable from content written by PhD experts" are made from it. Colin°^Talk 21:16, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there a full reference to article somewhere? Stuartyeates (talk) 22:06, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The article is Wikipedia Classroom Experiment: bidirectional benefits of students’ engagement in online production communities and is authored by User:Rostaf and User:Robertekraut. The article is a bit idealistic, but it does raise pertinent issues regarding the APS initiative. I have notified the authors of this discussion. Robertekraut has stated that it's already set to be published.Smallman12q (talk) 01:12, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

It looks like it's been submitted to CHI’13, April 27–May 2, 2013, Paris, France. http://chi2013.acm.org/ I'm sure that if someone were to put together a point-by-point rebuttal the organisers would entertain it somehow, since this is a major conference. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Would you be interested in attending that conference, Colin, if the foundation covered your expenses? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:08, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Are you serious. If so send me an email. Anyway wrt to the above paper, those who know me know I don't mince my words. I'm extremely disappointed the authors of that paper didn't consult the community prior to publication. Many misunderstandings could have been corrected. The paper contains opinions like the need to cite primary research papers for articles in the field that are easily challenged. The paper mentions negative issues like deletion debates without actually citing them -- leaving the reader unable to check for themselves that the spin being put on them there is fair (it isn't). This is a shame. Colin°^Talk 08:28, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes. I'll email you in an hour or two. --

I think I read above that the authors have been invited to this page. I hope they will take the opportunity to discuss your criticisms here. I should point out that Colin is a senior and highly-regarded medical editor. He has had significant influence on WP:MEDRS (from its conception, I think), and Autism and its family of articles, as well as on many other areas of policy and content. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:43, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Responding at that conference would be a great way to engage that community. I agree about Colin's stature here, but I wonder about credentialism; will the conference attendees respond not to the substance of Colin's arguments but to his academic status or lack of it? (I've no idea what Colin does in real life.) Will Colin's credentials, whatever they are, make a difference to his ability to make his points heard? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:01, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

(EC) Thinning grey hairs. Check. Scouts first-aid badge. Check. My credentials as senior medial editor are sound. (Anyone wants to know my real-life qualifications/job can contact me off-wiki). Being a collaborative wiki, if we are to make a response then it should be representative of the community opinion, not just one voice no matter how respected or otherwise. I have my own opinions, sure, but I'm also quite ignorant of much of the education programme and others here are considerably more experienced in that regard. Colin°^Talk 13:19, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

If it makes sense to send someone (I don't know anything about that conference), we should send the best person for the job and, in my opinion, that's Colin. Never mind credentialism. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The WMF does fund conference participation. See meta:Participation:Support and meta:Participation:Support/Requests. Provided you could get a conference ticket, you'd probably get funded. You're certainly be the person for the job=). Also, there isn't a centralized place to discuss Wikipedia-related research (maybe a new centralized noticeboard should be created.) When writing such a paper, they should reach out to those involved. Smallman12q (talk) 13:44, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

If the conference is significant, and the presentation of this paper will have some impact, I'd prefer to have it rebutted at the conference, if at all possible, and by you, Colin. If you feel, once the rebuttal has been drafted here (and you seem to have made a good start above), that some expertise on the education programme is needed too, perhaps one of the volunteers with the necessary knowledge could accompany you. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The advance program for the CHI conference where this paper will be presented is available. Authors have about 17 minutes to present their paper and take 2-3 minutes of Q&A. This isn't a venue that will allow a full discussion of the issues you raise. I think you'd be more successful in raising these issues by proposing a panel at the next Computer Supported Cooperative Work conference, WikiSym or a conference related to online education. Robertekraut (talk)

Thanks for pointing that out. I see registration is $1200 for the conference or $575 for a day. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

WRT credentialism, I have a PhD in Comp Sci http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/2600 and am happy to provide detailed feedback on a criticism, but I'm rather in the wrong part of the world to attend that conference. Stuartyeates (talk) 18:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

DYK from student at Rice University today

You should check out one of today's DYKs for Women in the Arab Spring, an article User:Nadhika99 created for her assignment at Rice. I added the page to the trophy case but thought I'd post a note here, in case anyone wanted to see it on the main page. Nadhika was in Diana Strassmann's class last Spring and took another one this term. Enjoy her interesting article! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Reaction from the Education Board please

How does the Wikipedia:Education Board react to this comment? What lessons, facts, or perspective, etc. would someone (or multiple people) from the board like to emphasize in response to this type of comment by a community member? Biosthmors (talk) 16:59, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, the first step would be to figure out which class or classes is causing Lova headaches, and what has gone awry there. I've gone through their recent edits, and am having trouble linking any of the accounts reverted to a registered class. One clue that links to the above discussion is User:HassiniUofT, presumably a member of Prof. Joordens class. My impression is that we need much stronger guidance for courses working in medical areas. They need to work with O.A.s and C.A.s and interact with editors. As a community, we also have to decide what to do when a class works outside the system, and doesn't take responsibility for negative effects. Its very troubling, and I'm sorry to see Lova Falk taking a break because of it. The Interior (Talk) 18:15, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I already commented at her user talk, but I'm deeply concerned about this issue, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Prof. Joordens students have caused some significant issues the last few years. A number of us found a very high rate of plagiarism within their edits. There was little to no oversight of their work. He appears to be using us as his experimental playground. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Doc James, that psychology course with Prof. Steve Joordens took place before I took on as campus ambassador. There shouldn't be similar problems now that I'm onboard. And no, Tryptofish, User:HassiniUofT is not a member of Prof. Joordens' class (neither as undergrad, graduate student nor TA) because Prof. Joordens hasn't used Wikipedia as teaching tool since last summer and we don't have an individual called Hassini from the psychology department from our campus. Why not contact this individual and ask him/her instead of doing the guesswork (which ended up being wrong anyway)? So far, neither the four of you involved in the discussion attempted to communicate with him through his talk page (see that it's still red? maybe, just maybe, talking to the individual will clear things up) OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, your comment that "Joordens hasn't used Wikipedia as teaching tool since last summer" doesn't square with Joordens' admission here that the students causing big problems are likely to be his. See User:Colin/Introduction to Psychology, 2013 for a growing list of students editing March 2013 from the University of Toronto doing exactly the same assignment (it appears) as Joordens set in 2011. Some of those students also edited in autumn 2012 (and haven't learned anything from it it seems). OhanaUnited, do you realise that the accounts used in this megaclass have a Wiki-lifespan of minutes? The traditional mechanisms for welcoming and educating newbies just don't work with these temporary accounts and "log in, dump plagiarised text, go down pub" activity we're seeing. Have you looked at the edit history of childhood obesity for example. Do you think spreading WikiLove to all the dozen editors who crapped on that article would make them come back and contribute properly? Please can you explain your involvement with this class.

I'm absolutely convinced that Joordens' class was the last straw that forced Lova Falk's wikibreak. There is another psych class that is proving to be a handful, with a very defensive prof, but it is the sheer quantity of crap being dumped in the psych-domain from Joordens' class that would cause anyone who cares about those articles to throw up their hands in despair. Colin°^Talk 08:27, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Colin. It seems like I was uninformed by anyone yet again even though I am the campus ambassador. I met Joordens as recent as this January at this workshop and there was no indication that he would be doing it yet again. During the workshop, he did mention that he had done a course (class size <30 students) by flying under the radar last summer. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

A couple of points. OhanaUnited, in your now-struck comment, you attributed something to me that was actually said by someone else. I think that the instructor's lack of openness with the campus ambassador is a symptom of something wrong at the instructor's end. Also, I see above that a class with 1800 students may be involved. That number raises at least two issues that I can think of. One is that it is near to impossible for editors here to monitor that many student edits. The other is that it is also near to impossible for the instructor to do it, either. (Having done a lot of teaching myself, I can sympathize with how hard it is to teach huge classes, and how tempting it can be to simply set the students loose on Wikipedia. But that is merely trying to use volunteer editors here as unpaid TAs, and this talk thread shows that one editor found that to be a dysphoric experience.) I know that there were objections elsewhere in these discussions to the idea of a hard block of the entire satellite campus, but considering the "collateral damage" here at Wikipedia, I think it's an option that we are going to have to consider seriously. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Special pages are opaque

Pages such as Special:OnlineVolunteers aren't self explanatory for users who follow such links from third party sites and who have no previous knowledge of the workings of wikipedia. There is no text explaining that this is part of the meta:Wikipedia Education Program rather than generic Wikipedia signups, there is no pointer on where to start, etc. Could some text be written please? Stuartyeates (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Circadiansync (talk)

Name

Institution

Course title and description

Assignment plan

Number of students

Start and end dates

--Circadiansync (talk) 00:14, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.