Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Incidents

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Click here to purge this page
(For help, see Wikipedia:Purge)
Purpose of this page Using this page

Welcome to the Education Program Incidents page.

This page is for reporting and discussing specific incidents related to student editing and/or the Education Program on the English Wikipedia that require the intervention of experienced editors and/or administrators.

Topics may include:

  • Content issues created by real or potential student assignments
  • Unresponsive classrooms or those editing with poorly managed or structured courses
  • Classrooms editing without a course page or with an ambiguous page
  • And any other issue that might relate to student assignments


Of course, we should remain civil towards all participants and assume good faith.
Shortcuts:
  • Before posting a grievance about a user here, please discuss the issue with them on their user talk page.
  • You should generally notify any user who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{ping}} to do so, or simply link their username when you post your comment. It is not required to contact students when their edits are only being discussed in the context of a class-wide problem.
  • Please include diffs to help us find the problem you are reporting.
  • Please sign all contributions, using four tilde characters "~~~~".
  • Threads are automatically archived after 7 days of inactivity.

Where possible and relevant, please include the following information with any report: Article(s), Course, Instructor, Online volunteers, and Student.
See also
  • Special:Courses (a list of courses using the Education Program extension)
Click here to start a new discussion thread


Unregistered class project / account sharing[edit]

During my usual vandalism patrol beat i happened to chance upon this edit by a new user. The edit mentions the account is shared between multiple editors which on its own is a clear problem, but due to the mention of a school project this also suggests that there may be multiple other problematic accounts. So far I have taken no action on the assumption that someone more involved in the education project would be better suited to follow this one up. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 19:34, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@Excirial: Thanks for the heads up. This is not a course we're aware of, but based on the information on the userpage, I've narrowed the class down to a couple different instructors. I'll see if we can reach out to them to bring them on board. I'll also leave a brief message on the students' page. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:48, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for following this one up Ryan. The explanation at the students talk page is certainly more helpful and to-the-point than any message I would have left myself. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 20:12, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@Excirial: FYI my colleague, Samantha, got in touch with the instructor. This term's assignment is just about finished, but he plans to work with Wiki Ed next time around. Samantha explained to him that the draft of the swimming in Canada article probably isn't fit for mainspace due to insufficient sourcing, and that he should pass the message on to the student before they try to move it out of the sandbox. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Cross post - Issue with the "The Wiki Ed welcome mat"[edit]

Editors may be interested in this ANI thread. I'd also urge editors to flick through the relevant user talk page and answer any outstanding queries -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 14:58, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Chemistry class maybe[edit]

User:Edgar181 has identified what is probably a class working on a set of articles about chemicals:

articles
accounts

No clear indication of if they have a teacher, but scandavianish names, timing, and common interest make it look like a class. They don't know what they are doing. -- Jytdog (talk) 00:34, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I did a cursory check on the account names that appear to be real names and as far as i can determine these are Dutch names. The check also correlated several editors as being educated at the Radboud University Nijmegen in various chemistry related topics (Biochemistry, Molecular life sciences and Biotechnology for example). Based on what i can see I'd say this is extremely likely to be a class or group project. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 01:26, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
The contributions are not very good but not 100% garbage. Maybe 80%. They must be graded by the length of the contribution. Apparently unsupervised. It is probably not worth our efforts to do much until the class is over. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:39, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
I posted here hoping folks at the education project would reach out and find the instructor and get this class pulled into the program and reined in. We all have a lot of work to do and cleaning up after a class is not one of my favorite things.Jytdog (talk) 19:13, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
Each new time this sort of thing happens, my patience wears out a bit more, as does my sympathy for WP:BITE. Editors should feel free to revert. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
  • one of the students has replied to me here. Contact information for the instructor is there. Jytdog (talk) 22:47, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi all. Institutions in the Netherlands are part of the Global Education Program. Let's ping TFlanagan-WMF to see if he can connect with this instructor. The country-based resources at outreach:Education/Countries can be useful. There is a page for the Netherlands, for example, with a few contacts that may be able to help. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 11:57, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
Hi there. I am responsible for the Dutch education program. We haven't cooperated with this university before, and I wasn't aware that they were doing anything on Wikipedia. I will reach out to the teacher of this class to try and find out more. Best, --AWossink (talk) 18:17, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
  • note, one of the users that was listed above left me a message that they are not part of the class, here, so i removed their name and the article from the list above Jytdog (talk) 15:19, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi all, I've reached out to the teacher. He's sorry that the assignment caused concern and is interested to work with the community and Wikimedia Nederland to avoid incidents like this from happening in the future. This means that, as part of the next class, students will get an introduction into Wikipedia, editing, citation use on WP, etc. This will be done as part of the education program of Wikipedia Nederland. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any objections or concerns about this arrangement. As for the articles that have already been edited; I saw that some additions were reversed, whereas in others the edits seem to have been left in place. I am not sure how to proceed on them. The class is already finished so no new work is expected on them. Best, --AWossink (talk) 08:43, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Questionable Article on Free Store[edit]

User:Asavoie has created an article on Free Store (in Ottawa). I and some other editors consider it to be non-notable, and it has been nominated for deletion. However, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAsavoie&type=revision&diff=771975546&oldid=771972498 This appears to be a class assignment that is asking students to add non-notable fluff to Wikipedia, a questionable educational assignment. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:50, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

It looks to me like the AfD is being handled as it should be, and no consideration at AfD should be given to student editors that would not also be given to any other editor. It would be best to ask the student to ask the instructor to register an account, and to get the class coordinated with the WikiEd staff. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon and Tryptofish: Given the timing and subject of the edits, I'm inclined to think this is the same class as above. We've reached out to the instructor and offered some advice, and hopefully they will follow-up and work with us in the future, but since the assignment is over today (again, assuming it's the same class) it's unclear whether we'll see much more engagement on-wiki. As you say, students should indeed receive no more or less consideration for being students. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:47, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Unanswered question[edit]

There's a thus far unanswered question at Wikipedia talk:Wiki Ed/Swarthmore College/History 014-Friars, Heretics, and Female Mystics (Spring)#Hadewijch – could someone please attend to it? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:08, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Message left on the listed page - someone from WikiEd may or may not want to extend on this reply. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 11:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: You raise an interesting issue. As Excirial mentioned, the template was added to the Hadewijch talk page because it was added as an "available article". Before an assignment starts, instructors commonly select some articles students may want to work on. But being "available" doesn't mean a student will actually work on it. Choosing to err on the side of more information and more transparency, when we added the "available articles" feature to the Dashboard we had it automatically add a tag to those article talk pages (or rather, we didn't disable it). The idea was for it to act as a sort of notice that students will likely be editing the article. Now that you bring it up, though, I can appreciate that this could be confusing and perhaps misleading to have a template there if it's not certain whether students will actually will work on it. For that reason we've now disabled tagging of articles when they are simply "available". Article talk pages will only be tagged when a student has decided to work on it. Thanks for bringing it up.
As an aside, I'll add, following from the recent ANI discussion, that comments on the "Wikipedia talk:Wiki Ed/..." pages are much less likely to be seen/addressed than if they are left for the instructor and/or Content Expert directly or left here (if an incident) or WP:ENB (for anything else class-related). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:10, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Unregistred class project, likely Tahquitz High School[edit]

I happened to run into this edit where an editor claims they are part of a class project which is apparently being graded based on the amount of characters added. Based on the edits to Tahquitz High School i suspect a total of four accounts are involved in this class project:

None of them seem to be registered to any course, and a cursory check reveals a deleted copyright violation, a non-notable autobiography and another page that seems to be a direct copy of another Wikipedia page. In other words: "amount of characters" seems to be working out quite badly as a grading metric. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 18:50, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Ferret: Fyi, since you were on the receiving end of the above edit. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 18:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
Add Jmassis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log) to the list. Appears to be a friend of B landen4 and only real edit (when I was looking yesterday) was contesting the CSD A7 placed on the article B landen4 appears to have created about themselves. -- ferret (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
A lot of the edits made seem to be problematic - perhaps even most. So far virtually everything ends up being a Wikipedia copyright violation or otherwise straith copy and paste.
And these are only part of the problem - there are more edits beyond this. The rate at which content is added is unreasonable as well - writing a 980 characters in a single edit before adding another 1000+ to another article a couple of minutes later is impossible to be anything but a copyright violation. I'm unlikely to have any time to deal with this myself so forwarding this to ANI since at the very least the stream of copyvio's needs to be dealt with. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 19:32, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
The effect of that Adventure_City link is just change of formatting. Not arguing that it might not be as a result of cut'n'pasting, and I do agree that all of User:Arios11's edits are poor. But the listed antecedent is actually newer than the equal content here...reverse-copyvio. DMacks (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
The infogalactic.com site is not actually a copyvio, reverse or otherwise. It's merely a legitimate mirror. Each article on the site contains attribution at the foot of the page "This article's content derived from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (See original source)" and the content is made available under a CC-BY-SA licence as we require. --RexxS (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
On closer examination it appears the content from Arabic swords was copied from Pre-Islamic Arabia. Therefore not a copyvio, though neither an edit that improves the article. I also noticed that two diff templates were actually pointing to the wrong diff (The first three were pointing to Arabic swords instead of their respective article's). There are certainly problems with the edits as a whole (some copyvio's among them) but it isn't as serious as I initially suspected. In retrospect my attempt to finish above analysis while under time pressure certainly didn't improve its quality. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 22:15, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
@Excirial: Copying within Wikipedia is technically still a copyvio if not attributed correctly (which these weren't). ansh666 03:44, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Article on Nso people and a Sandbox[edit]

I came across User:Efreitas2/sandbox at Articles for Creation. It has multiple problems, all of which would be mitigated by the fact that it was a draft submission and not an article. It consists of multiple sections, each written by and signed by a different student, written in the first person. It also has [edit source] at the corner of each paragraph, an indication that the students didn't know that [edit source] is supplied by Wikipedia, which, in addition to everything else, implies that they have had no proper instruction in how to edit Wikipedia. I declined the draft for all of the reasons. However, I then went to User talk:Efreitas2, and from there to the article Nso people. The article, in article space, had all of the same problems as the draft. It consisted of multiple signed portions written in the first person. Fortunately, those were recent changes, and I reverted the article to its previous stable state. It appears that we have a class project where the students edited in article space as well as in draft space without the slightest idea of how Wikipedia works. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:40, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

  • I'll try reaching out to the student and giving a more in-depth explanation as to why the content was removed. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:48, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. I have posted to the instructor's page and asked that they give the student orientation as to Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:38, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Possible Class project?[edit]

Hello! A user on IRC dropped this in the #Wikipedia-en channel. They've come across 3 users that the content was a bit funky. Those of us that idle on IRC were thinking it might be a class project. Is there any way one of the folks form Wiki-Ed could take a look into this?

--Cameron11598 (Talk) 17:40, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Pictogram voting info.svg Note: the content of the user pages was deleted by JamesBWatson so an administrator might need to look at the deleted content to see what exactly made us think a possible school project. (and I did notice JamesBWatson that I was dropping a note here) --Cameron11598 (Talk) 17:41, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Hi, person from the IRC here. I'd like to add that Nmaas (talk · contribs) has been making similar edits and might be related. ~barakokula31 (talk) 17:43, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Anthonie-Matumain (talk · contribs) might also be related. ~barakokula31 (talk) 17:45, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
... and one more: User talk:Thomas Oster. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
  • All of the accounts have done nothing other than post short essays about social media to user pages and talk pages, and in a very few cases posting brief messages without any meaningful content to one another's talk pages. It is not acceptable use of talk pages and user pages, and if it is a class project then it has been organised by a teacher with little or no knowledge of how Wikipedia works. Some of the pages have been deleted as use of Wikipedia as a web host (speedy deletion criterion U5) and I intend to delete more of them. However, typical examples of the content which has been posted can be seen here and here. (Those have not been deleted because the page histories also contain valid talk page messages.) I considered suggesting using user sandboxes, but having thought about it I very much doubt that these are intended as drafts for articles. It is entirely possible that someone has suggested using Wikipedia as working storage for a project, or perhaps there is some other explanation. I shall post to some of the talk pages suggesting that the teacher (if there is one) come to this page and comment. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:30, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I can now confirm with virtually 100% confidence that this is an educational assignement. One edit was made to one of the user talk pages (now deleted) by IP address 143.110.136.132, which is allocated to the College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks for looking into this. We can certainly reach out to see if we can bring the class on board. Has anyone seen clues regarding the name of the instructor or title of the class (which can often identify the instructor via the university course schedule)? Since it looks like you've pointed the students to this thread, I'll just make request here: @students, please respond to this thread with the name of your instructor (and preferably an email) so that we can talk to him/her about the many resources available to help classes like yours contribute to Wikipedia. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

NPOV problem[edit]

Concerned/interested editors and admins should look at WP:Wiki Ed/University of California, Berkeley/Environmental Justice Section 101 (Spring 2017) and evaluate it from WP's WP:NPOV policy. My concern is the general description, which is blatantly anti-Trumpian. I am traveling this week. If this is resolved during that time, I'll be happy. If not, I'll return to comment and to notify those who created the material. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 19:30, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the edits, but it sounds like the subject matter is also subject to discretionary sanctions from an ArbCom case. I think that class assignments should be actively discouraged from entering into DS subjects, because there are too many ways for things to go badly, but if they go there anyway, they need to be formally notified of the DS, using Template:Alert. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:20, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
I just noticed that the same situation has been raised at WP:ANI#POV forks being created as school project. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
From what I see, the Wiki Edu does not require students to submit work for WP:New pages patrol review before moving them into the mainspace. – S. Rich (talk) 00:13, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
There are 6 sections of this course, so let's not focus solely on the one linked. There are likely serious POV-pushing issues in all of them, given what we've found so far. Can someone compile a list of all the articles these students created? (there surely has to be an easier way than checking each one's contributions) – Train2104 (t • c) 01:19, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
@Train2104: The course dashboard has a tab that lists all article's created and edited by editors in that course. It only lists live edits though - sandboxed content isn't included. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 07:12, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
About submitting drafts to New Page Patrol, it would probably make better sense to do it through Articles for Creation. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Course doing anthropology on the WP community[edit]

See here and User:Reagle/Online Communities 2017-1-SP.

The class above is studying the behavior of online communities, and does "breaching experiments" where students purposefully violate norms and watch the reactions in various contexts (e.g facebook picture stalking).

Part of what the class is doing is studying the behavior of the WP community by creating articles and seeing what happens to the articles, and how en-WP editors interact with the article creator(s). It isn't clear to me if students are being instructed to create poor articles as a sort of breaching experiment, or not. As far as I can tell the students have minimal to no training in (for example) the mission of WP, what en-WP considers "notable" and why, etc.

This appears to be abuse of mainspace and the en-WP community as experimental guinea pigs, as far as I can tell. I don't see any explicit goal here to improve WP. This is not like say a class in microbiology where the students are assigned to work on WP articles about microbiology to show what they have learned - that task has at least a nominal goal of improving mainspace.

I am posting here to make sure that the Education program is aware of this and can confirm that this is what this class is actually doing. The liaison for the class is User:Adam (Wiki Ed) who is not around; am pinging User:Shalor (Wiki Ed) and User:Ian (Wiki Ed) who have been filling in for Adam.

I am considering posting at ANI to have the instructor indefinitely blocked as being WP:NOTHERE and purposefully wasting volunteer time. Am still thinking about that but want to see how Reagle and others respond. I have notified Reagle of this discussion. Jytdog (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm also interested to see if any other Wiki Ed-authorized courses have such anthropological learning objectives. – Train2104 (t • c) 22:46, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
I looked pretty carefully at the syllabus and the other link. I see the part about a breaching experiment, but I'm not seeing anywhere that says that it will be done on Wikipedia. It's not at all clear what the activity for the breaching experiment will be. I would want to AGF until we hear back from the instructor. If, and I emphasize if, the intention is to do that here, then that needs to be closed down. I remember a long time ago when an editor did something like a breaching experiment, and the consensus then was that it was unacceptable. But – other than that, it does not look like anything that would be any more disruptive than any other class (I see some talk page comments by students who sound interested in starting pages that I suspect would fail at AfD, but that's about it). The instructions to students to familiarize themselves with policies and guidelines prior to starting content actually look to me to be better than what usually happens in class assignments. It's not yet a matter for ANI. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:59, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm going to ping Reagle to this. In any case, I found the list of social breaching experiments that the students can pick from and Wikipedia isn't listed among the list. I get the impression that he's getting the students to edit Wikipedia as a way of experiencing this particular type of community since it's fairly different from say, IMDb message boards (when they still existed) or Facebook. Some clarification would be good, though. I also think that it would be good to officially set up your class dashboard. All in all though, I don't think that he's here to vandalize Wikipedia. It doesn't really mesh with the interactions I've had with him so far. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:39, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
  • just want to be clear, that even if students are not doing "breaching" experiments here, the other thing I was trying to say in my OP is that this course is not like say a microbiology course, where the WP work is really integrated with the course work in terms of students trying to share what they are learning in WP. In this course, the mainspace content itself is just being created as something for the community to react to, so students can experience the "social" part of WP. This is the other part of NOTHERE that is troubling to me. Jytdog (talk) 01:24, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Hello all, there is no breaching at Wikipedia. This is the sixth semester of a project in which students make good faith contributions to Wikipedia. The students choose topics for which they'd like to write a legitimate article. Originally, these tended to be from our University Special Collections but we addressed much of the low-hanging fruit and in this case we have the difficulty of having mostly primary sources. More recently, students have chosen their own topics, which has its own issues, including that their interests tend to be seen as promotional. I continue to refine the instruction and guidance I give them on this front. Students are asked to reflect on their experiences in light of what we've learned about online communities.

We do do a innocuous social breaching assignment, but this is completely unrelated to Wikipedia. We have a class dedicated to the ethics of online research -- and discuss why breach experiments of Wikipedia are not cool. We have ethical guidelines for all of our assignments, and the one for the social breach and Wikipedia contribution are very different. -Reagle (talk) 12:25, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Looking at the assignments as written on the syllabus, the course seems like a good one - it explains to students how Wikipedia works, has them take the tutorial, requires citing sources, and (better than others) provides a warning about promotion pitfalls. What I think Jytdog is concerned about is how the assignment description jibes with the reflection essays students are writing in their userspace, which talks less about their experience writing for Wikipedia, and more about the social/community aspects of Wikipedia, as well as analyzing users' treatment toward newcomers. If I did not look at the syllabus, and merely looked at their articles and the reaction essays, I could easily see how this could be seen as a social experiment - perhaps not in the strictest sense, but definitely in the "not here to improve the encyclopedia" sense. Also pinging @Bri: who commented on the instructor's talk page. – Train2104 (t • c) 14:27, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Train2104, just to reiterate, the students contributions are intended to improve Wikipedia, nothing else -- even if some Wikipedians find some of their attempts fall short. That, of course, is not exclusive to being asked to reflect on their experience, it can even complement it. Some will be positive, others will be less so -- just like Wikipedians. To step back and look at the big picture, some students attempted to make articles about topics they were interested in and which others found non-notable or promotional. I will be more vigorous about warning students about this in the future, but this is something Wikipedians disagree about all the time. There is no experiment, hoax, vandalism, or damage, just sincere efforts to do their best. -Reagle (talk) 15:44, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
I'm not seeing a problem. Thanks Reagle for the replies. Jytdog, you are wrong about the nothere thing. There is nothing wrong with making a good faith attempt to contribute good content and then observing how other editors react. It's only disruptive if the contributions are not intended to be constructive. Simply being interested in what the community does is not disruptive. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:05, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
I take issue with Reagle's comment these are sincere efforts. If that were true, his students would have accepted my offer to help them, and I would not have been talked about behind my back. I've explained that somewhat, although not in detail in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Decibel Therapeutics. I deserved to know that I was engaging with students who were planning to write about their interactions with me. That, in my view, violated applicable ethics guidelines from Reagle's university. Mduvekot (talk) 21:04, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Hi Mduvekot, my students' are not performing research (i.e., "contributing to general knowledge" and publishing papers) and this is part of an educational activity to learn about Wikipedia by contributing to it; these exclude it from the ambit of research ethics. Instead, I ask them to make sincere efforts to contribute and reflect on their experiences as a Wikipedian, something any Wikipedian can do. They are required to abide by the policies of Wikipedia but I can't guarantee that they will make all Wikipedians happy nor that all the Wikipedians they encounter will be do the same for them.
That said, I am committed to ensuring as productive and positive experience as possible and have been relatively successful over the past few years. I'm disappointed at this turn of events but recall that it stems from the simple issue that some students chose topics that others thought overly promotional. I will provide more guidance about this in the future should I teach this again---this assignment is done and will not teach this course again this year.
Also, in the future, I would require the students to document on their User pages that their participation is part of an assignment to both (a) contribute to and (b) learn about Wikipedia. -Reagle (talk) 22:25, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Reagle You didn't address my the issue I raised. You continue to claim that their contribution is sincere when their behaviour is so demonstrably disingenuous. You seem to be incapable of any insight into what went wrong and your role in this mess. Some signs of compunction would be most welcome at the moment. Mduvekot (talk) 01:18, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
When denying that Northeastern's policy for classroom research applies, you also didn't address "but which will not lead to generalizable knowledge or publication/dissemination of findings outside of the classroom" (emphasis mine). Note the OR. The findings were published outside the classroom: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Mduvekot (talk) 12:20, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
 :::::: Mduvekot as a long time Wikipedian, I am sincere in wanting to advance Wikipedia and further students' skills and understanding. I can't definitively speak to others' interior states, but I also sincerely believe my students are making good faith contributions. Two of the things I love most, Wikipedia and teaching, have been amazingly complementary. Among the seventy plus articles students have started, I'm proud of most of them as useful contributions: Circle of Poison from a science student, local and forgotten history as seen in the Boston Society of Vulcans, and even No Holds Bard on the pop-culture front. I am sorry my class had an unusual number of misfires this year; there were some novel circumstances and I've identified how I can improve on the notability of topics and independence of sources.
On the student reflections front, again, until recently, this has been amazingly complementary: students reflect on Wikipedia as nascent Wikipedians and as students of online community -- using the same techniques that we, as more experienced Wikipedians, use to discuss and reflect. For instance, in these reflections I ask students to make use of the Special:Permalink and Special:Diff. Last week, when a student got the import of these tools and how we use them on Wikipedia, she said "that's cool!" Indeed. (You might think such things are trivial, but most students -- and many educators -- at first don't appreciate there is a community of volunteers, that pages have a history tab, and a talk page.) This is one of the most common sentiments in student reflections: being warned off Wikipedia as bunk by teachers but coming to better appreciate the importance of sourcing (even if, for some, still imperfect) and that Wikipedia is an extraordinary collaborative effort. These reflections have informed my own approach when I talk about the importance of Wikipedia and engaging it constructively.
I, nor anyone else I've spoken to or read of (Wikipedians, other instructors, ethics scholars, WikiEd folks), had previously understood or spoken of these reflections as "research" or an ethical concern. Sometimes there are negative sentiments (more so this semester), but they are predominately positive, thoughtful, and even touching. But I'll cut to the point, if there was agreement that on-site reflections are unwelcome, I'll stop. I'd be disappointed because I think it contributes to students' learning and might be of interest to Wikipedians and educators, but I can ask them to instead turn in a paper to me. -Reagle (talk) 09:11, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
  • From what I've seen so far, it's relatively common for students participating in WikiEd to write some sort of reflection or commentary on the article(s) they're editing or reading. Some of these have been added to the talk pages of the articles themselves, however ideally they would be placed somewhere in the student's userspace or in some place off Wikipedia, so they don't fill up the article talk pages. From what I've seen from the lesson plan, there was never any intent to deliberately disrupt Wikipedia nor any plan to manipulate anything from a psychological point of view. I've interacted with Reagle in the past with my main account and he's always taken great pains to follow guidelines, so any errors made by the students are unintentional. I've looked at one of the articles and it does need improvement, but this is actually pretty common with new users in general and with students, especially as students are typically used to writing persuasive essays and academic papers for class. Writing encyclopedia articles is an entirely new beast for them, which is why even before I started working with WikiEd I would usually just move them to the students' userspaces so they could work on them. It's rare that a student isn't willing to try to fix whatever needs fixing with an article. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:16, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I'll quickly make a suggestion I have and then I'm done discussing this. It appears that regulations on human-subject research are about to be relaxed, so my point (it's unethical and should be forbidden) is moot. I'm dismayed, but not interested in pursuing this further. In addition to simply following the consensus at Wikipedia:Student assignments. I would suggest that
  • Improving an article offers better opportunities for engaging with other editors than creating a new article in the Draft: or User: namespaces.
  • Students who write a reflection paper on-wiki should post a note on their user page that clarifies that they are required to write a reflection, with a link to the the instructions for writing the reflection, and a link to the reflection itself.
  • Students who create articles that are part of a course assignment should post a note on the talk page of the article with a link to the course page and a link to the user page of the student who was assigned to work on that page.
  • Perhaps a template exists (I only know of Template:WAP student, which doesn't quite fit) or can be developed that students can use on their user page and the talk page of the articles they work on. I would be willing to help with those, if needed. Mduvekot (talk) 14:30, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, I think it is inappropriate to be nominating other students' articles (Ipsy_(company) and Rue_La_La) for deletion with the claim that "This was created as a class project to probe the behavior of online communities ... not worth wasting more community resources on." I disagree with your former characterization: there is no probe or experiment (see my point above). These students have, or were trying, to be part of the community and spent their resources, as well, trying to make a useful contribution. Over the past few years, prior to this semester, we've contributed over seventy articles; a handful have since fallen due to lack of notability, but each of those were decided and discussed on their individual merit. This semester has been different, for a number of reasons, including an unusual degree of interest in online companies and social media / beauty celebrities. I ask you to slow down a bit, assume good faith, and not think in terms of "the community" versus "newbies." If you feel you've wasted too much time on this issue, it might be better to step back and let others consider the concerns you've raised and my responses. -Reagle (talk) 18:08, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Agree. I just un-prod-ed the two pages linked above (with no prejudice to AfD). If there are other prod-ed pages, please let me know. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:16, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
I did not tag all the articles (I reviewed a bunch of them and left plenty alone); please don't put a framework on this like I prodded unselelectively. I will AfD those two.
User:Reagle a few things:
a) both of my PROD nominations started with "Badly sourced or unsourced; company is just another online retailer." They were primarily about the content. You omitted that. Hm.
b) this has nothing to do with the "community" vs "newbies" - that is your hammer and apparently everything is a nail. I ask you to think about how your class in particular sucks up volunteer time. (that is my hammer, and your class is a nail).
c) And I won't leave your claims here that student articles are created freely, and are not created In order to probe the community's response at all, unchallenged. Both are "truthy".
c1) The framework of their interaction with the en-WP community is very much an experiment which they have to write up when they are done. That creates a context that changes the interactions for the students. They are not "just" here like everybody else (I think reflecting on what happens is important.... but I wonder how much you are making your students aware of their own context as "anthropologists" out exploring WP)
c2) And these students are in the education "game" and within the rules of that game they have to do what is assigned or they are penalized. Yes they can choose the topic freely but that is within a context.
Please don't minimize either piece of the context.
I withdraw the concern about NOTHERE but I do ask you to be more reflective about the impact of your class on volunteer time and to keep in mind that your students are not playing the same game as volunteers in the community, on two levels. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=774759827"