Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:22, 2 April 2013

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This page is for discussion related to student assignments and the Misplaced Pages Education Program. Please feel free to post, whether you're from a class, a potential class, or if you're a Misplaced Pages editor. Topics for this board might include: Content issues created by real or potential student assignments Improving student assignment output quality per the RfC Questions about the trainings or any question from instructors or students Discussion of the Wiki Education Foundation or the Misplaced Pages Education Program. Students who have done great work and need {{The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar}} Of course, we should remain civil towards all participants and assume good faith. There are other pages more appropriate for dealing with certain specific issues: An issue requiring immediate administrator attention → Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents Vandalism by non-participating students from schools → administrator intervention against vandalism. Cut-and-paste moves/history merge → the cut-and-paste move repair holding pen. Students revealing sensitive personal information → requests for oversight. Please DO NOT make such requests here; reports here are visible to everyone. Course announcements from dashboard.wikiedu.org / outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org → /Wiki Ed course submissions Issues related to dashboard.wikedu.org / outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org → meta:Talk:Programs & Events Dashboard For a list of topics that students should avoid editing → Misplaced Pages:General sanctions#Active sanctions			Shortcuts WP:EDUN WP:ENB "Start a new discussion thread". Use an informative title: ==Informative title==. If a thread is related to an ongoing discussion, consider placing it under a level-3 heading within that existing discussion. You should generally notify any user who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{ping}} to do so, or simply link their username when you post your comment. It is not required to contact students when their edits are only being discussed in the context of a class-wide problem. If no comments have been made within 30 days, your post and any responses will be automatically archived. Please sign all contributions, using four tilde characters "~~~~". If discussion is already ongoing elsewhere or if there is a more natural location for a discussion, please continue the discussion there, and put a short note with a link to the relevant location on this page. If you cannot edit this page because it is protected, please place your comments on this page and they will be addressed. Managing threads If you'd like to make sure a thread does not get archived automatically after 30 days, use {{Do not archive until}} at the top of the section. Use {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} within a section to have it archived (more or less) immediately. A brief Archives page lists them with the years in which those now inactive discussions took place. If you encounter new editors who appear to be students in a class project, but they have not identified their class, you can place Template:Welcome student (or, where appropriate, Template:Welcome medical student) on their user talk pages. Wiki Education Foundation only supports classes in Canada and the US. Classes in all other countries are supported by other organizations.

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Template:Active editnotice

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? Misplaced Pages: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 . 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 Misplaced Pages at educational institutions.

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, Misplaced Pages editors, students, and instructors to help the program succeed. Classrooms will be supported to leave behind quality contributions, so that Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages, however. This might be a good place to comment that I don't see the WEF's activities as taking place on Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. --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 Misplaced Pages editing experience, or else we should make it part of that person's job to edit Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages'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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages-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 Misplaced Pages'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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 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: Misplaced Pages: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)

Online Ambassador application: Hanad Mukhtar

Hanad Mukhtar

Hanad Mukhtar (talk · contribs)

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

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

   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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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, Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not and other policies that can be found at Misplaced Pages: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 , 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 Misplaced Pages 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° 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 Misplaced Pages without regard to Misplaced Pages community guidelines. His idea as I understood it was that Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages articles. Misplaced Pages'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° 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 Misplaced Pages: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° 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)

Incidentally, blocking the university will gain no benefit. Students are editing from home or from other locations. It is not a solution to anything. Risker (talk) 17:02, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I see, that's true. How about bringing back medieval torture? I don't know, maybe we are coming up against a new kind of problem that will require a new kind of tool to protect against it. I remain deeply concerned about the collateral damage to established editors here. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:03, 29 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages, Misplaced Pages will eventually gain a highly educated core of editors with expertise, and this will be to the benefit of the quality of Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages" class assignment is not helping Misplaced Pages and never will no matter what analysis you perform on it. Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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° 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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages 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)

Bluerasberry, thank you for not seeming so much like a villager with a torch and pitchfork charging up the hill to my residence! Guys, my intentions are good, and I am very open to working with the community to find ways to assess and maximize the quality contributions while minimizing negative effects on Misplaced Pages. Heck, part of my goal is to better spread knowledge about psychology via Misplaced Pages so I also want the quality to be high. That said, yes I do also come at this from an educational psychology bent ... if you want a taste you can search YouTube for my TEDxUTSC talk that relates to the use of Misplaced Pages in education. All that said, I have very strong negative reactions to what I see as the cyber-stalking of my students. I consider it improper and borderline (or not) illegal ... in fact in one recent case a "defender" acquired username information from a student in one of my classes so they could check up on edits. That is simply improper. BUT this is not to say we can't come up with appropriate ways of satisfying my goals and the larger goals of the Misplaced Pages community, and I am meeting with some people today to describe a proposal that would involve community members if they're willing to participate in a proper manner (i.e., research, not witch hunting). Here is the idea ... we give you a list of articles, with specific edits highlighted. Some of those edits were performed by my students ... others by Misplaced Pages editors at a similar (early) experience level. You guys judge the quality of those edits "blind" and therefore without bias. My Ph.D. student compiles the data and shares the results. We will choose student edits randomly, and will choose the control articles randomly, and we'll see how bad things really are. If there is truth to your concerns (and I do not suggest there are not ... I just trust cumulative data over witch hunts) then we will at least have a measure of how big the problem is, and whether we all can think of ways of reducing it ... not to zero, but to culturally accepted (i.e., control group) levels. If we deem that impossible in some cases (e.g., my very large class) then I can be convinced - by the data and not by the pitchforks - to give up on it despite the learning potential. But let's do this scientifically, shall we? I have invited a long term Misplaced Pages editor (and administrator) who approached me without pitchfork in hand to be part of the meeting along with another long term editor (and I think administrator) who is associated with UofT. So what do you say, do we approach this rationally, or do you want to continue with the cyberstalking and threats of IP blocking? WoodSnake (talk)

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° 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° 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° 22:18, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Not true on the data analysis part. I have seen the data in person that Joordens' asked his graduate student to compile for fall 2011 & winter 2012 course (using similar metrics used by WMF). OhanaUnited 00:29, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd very much like to see that data. Is it available? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

It was a powerpoint slide that he showed during the presentation in January. I only remember some of the results vaguely. The metrics used were characters added, # of articles edited, and something to do with whether the info was retained or reverted (forgot the timeframe or how to assess the info retention rate). He mentioned that more students participated in the fall 2011 term than winter 2012, even though the class size was comparable and the winter 2012 class was a continuation (2nd part) of the fall 2011 class. Another thing to he mentioned is that students actually went through a module (designed by his grad student who compiled the data and not the WMF module) before editing. OhanaUnited 01:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest then that the metrics being used to determine whether or not an edit is "useful" are part of the problem. Retention of the edit (i.e., a failure to revert it) does not mean that the content is useful, as anyone who's ever actually edited articles would know, particularly over the very short duration of these classes. We know that from our own prolific script-using editors; when their script fails to function correctly over the thousands of edits they can do in a day, it can take weeks to clean up, and that's when we have a single, unified contributions history to review. Risker (talk) 02:08, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Like I said earlier. It was few months ago and I can't remember exactly which specific metrics were used. The only ones that I am confident are the # of characters added and # of articles edited per account. OhanaUnited 04:50, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean by "Not true on the data analysis part."? Yes, see below for a paper based on this nonsense about edit retention == edit quality. Perhaps someone could write a small essay on that and publish it on wiki. Then we can pass it to all the journals to stop them publishing this nonsense. The same goes for silly stats like characters added or # articles edited. Who gives a **** about characters added to Misplaced Pages? What is that a measure of other than that fingers were pressed on keyboards? I fully expect Sue Gardner and others to quote that "Undergraduates produce material indistinguishable from PhD experts" line. I seem to remember she gave some talk showing reams of paper representing student contributions. All nonsense. It just depresses me the level of junk science going on here. Colin° 08:14, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

It would be good to have a published paper demonstrating the weaknesses of some of the metrics that have been discussed. I suspect one reason the edit-retention metric gets used is because it does usually have a positive correlation with quality, because if a hundred experienced editors each add text, then it's true that the best text is more likely to be retained than the worst text. I'm having some trouble putting my finger on exactly why this breaks down for classes like Joordens', but I suspect that the correlation only shows up strongly if you have a range of contributions of varying quality. If all the contributions in a sample are poor quality, then random variation, and factors such as the overwhelming of the editors watching those articles, will cause some edits to be retained for longer periods. It's incorrect to then assume that these edits are as good as the best edits in the "experienced editor" sample. I agree with Colin's points elsewhere on this page; the edit-retention metric does miss a lot of factors, but it's still true there's likely to be a positive correlation for experienced editors, and that's something we have to address.

I'm glad Joordens cited the paper that justifies his methods; I agree with Colin that it appears to be wrong, but it gives us the opportunity to rebut the conclusion via better-designed studies. I'd like to see the WMF support more research of this kind to try to dispel some of these incorrect ideas. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:36, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

One can imagine examples of great edits that are retained for a long time. And harmful edits that are quickly detected and removed. It may well be that edits of extremely short lifespan are generally of the harmful kind. But once you get above vandalism, pov-pushing and good-faith-but-hoplessly-misguided edits, is lifespan a measure of quality as most people use the word (i.e. goodness, not badness)? In my 2011 analysis, I'd often see dreadful text entered that wasn't removed until I looked at it. During that time, wikignomes came along and fixed the citations, spelling, grammar and added wikilinks. Sometimes the text was changed more substantially. Then I see it is copy/paste from source and needs to go. Were all those wiki-gnome edits poor? They all had a shorter duration that the original copyvio. The edit retention metric can only look at words-added, and I strongly suspect, only at words kept within the article. So all those copy-edits where somebody reduced the words you wrote and thus made the sentence stronger, well I guess they have no value at all. Or when someone takes your brilliant prose and moves it to a daughter article. I guess your brilliant prose doesn't look so brilliant now.

The edit-retention value measures the inertia in an article. The fewer watchlisters, the less controversial, the less polished already, the more likely that a poor edit is retained. Someone can dump a mediocre factoid on a psychology biography and it is the same turd-brown as the rest of the article, but do the same on Autism or Water fluoridation and it duration will be measured in minutes. I wouldn't mind if they used the edit retention metric wrt measuring the quantity of harmful edits made by various groups. But measuring the quality of edits. And saying that this metric is so powerful that two edits with the same value are "indistinguishable" in terms of quality. Now that is just ridiculous. My second issue is the way these papers build upon one another. The edit-retention myth is just an assumption. Then someone cites another paper and it becomes a proven fact according to peer-reviewed literature. Follow the chain back and you find nobody had actually reviewed the quality of the edits by, you know, looking at them with eyeballs connected to a brain capable of judging quality. Colin° 13:18, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

All true -- my point is just that I strongly suspect that you would find a positive correlation between retention and quality if you looked at yours or my edits -- not 100% correlation, but statistically significant. If I'm right, it doesn't invalidate any of your points; it's just a fact that we have to deal with, and in particular it's a fact that causes mistaken approaches to student editing such as Joordens'. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I didn't want to say but, yes 100% quality = 100% retention. Probably doesn't hold for lesser Wikipedians :-) Colin° 13:44, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Just found some of my old notes from that workshop. These are *some* of the metrics Prof. Joordens used (because I only written down a few): # of edits, words inserted, words deleted, (and again one metric to do with information retained on the article after certain period, but can't remember how it was measured). OhanaUnited 21:29, 28 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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° 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages? Colin° 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 Misplaced Pages.--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° 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages" 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 Misplaced Pages. 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° 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 Misplaced Pages, 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° 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 Misplaced Pages 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.Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages. 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° 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 Misplaced Pages 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° 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 Misplaced Pages. 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)

The training for professors is at Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages, so that we can make sure it's sensible.

Note also the student training: Misplaced Pages: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.Misplaced Pages. --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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages: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)

Sage, I have adapted this from Misplaced Pages:Assignments for student editors#Editing topics in medicine, biology or psychology:

Health-related content in any English Misplaced Pages article (not just medicine, biology and psychology articles) must be supported by independent "secondary" or "tertiary" sources, such as expert reviews in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, university-level textbooks, professional guidelines, etc. "Primary" sources, such as reports of randomized controlled trials, case reports and comparative studies (even if they are published in a peer-reviewed journal) are rarely adequate support for assertions in this field. If health-related information is not covered in high quality independent secondary or tertiary sources, it is unlikely to be suitable for Misplaced Pages. The distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources is discussed at Primary, secondary and tertiary sources.

Students editing health-related content and those supervising or grading their work must read Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (medicine).

I believe that these facts should be hot-branded onto the consciousness of any teacher who intends adding Misplaced Pages editing to a course curriculum, but especially those expressly targeting medicine, biology or psychology articles.

Teachers should be told this in a separate email or wiki communication and required to make it clear that they understand it and will take pains to firmly impress it on their students, and will penalise students who ignore it. To be really clear, I'm suggesting that this data occupy a privileged place in the education program (perhaps along with a similar summary of copyright and BLP issues).

--Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:23, 29 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° 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° 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)

Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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° 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 Misplaced Pages through educational initiatives rarely continue to edit after their class is over. They last longer and do more work, however, than the modal new Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages as a whole. See Halfaker, A., Geiger, S., Jonathan, M., & Riedl, J. (2012). The rise and decline of an open collaboration system: How Misplaced Pages’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 Misplaced Pages 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° 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 Misplaced Pages, though not a perfect measure, it predicts changes in changes in the Misplaced Pages Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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° 21:16, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Colin, you seem to be missing the section on page 4 of Jury of Your Peers paper that attempts to validate the measure of quality. "To check our assumption that word persis- tence is an appropriate measure of quality, we performed an analysis to determine if the quality of the articles edited by higher word persistence editors would be more likely to increase in their Misplaced Pages 1.0 Assessment than those edited by low word persistence editors. ... We found that a rise of one standard deviation average word persistence across editors active during a six month time period of an article predicted a 1/10th assessment grade rise independent from the structure of editors contributions, the number of words added and all other predictors tested. Although this effect may appear small, it is important to note that 90% of samples showed no increase in assessment grade during the six months observed. This result supports our assumption that word persistence measures the quality an editor’s contributions." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robertekraut (talk • contribs) 15:17, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't see that the paper wasn't the webpage that was linked but is actually in the PDF. The web page looked like a complete, if rather short, paper. I'll look at it later. Colin° 15:44, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I've read it now. I strongly disagree that this check has shown anything useful at all wrt quality in the normal English sense of the word. The quality assessment was done on the article, not the edit. The article rating system is a very crude measure of quality and for all but the highest ratings does not test for plagiarism or quality sourcing and is largely a measure of overall comprehensiveness. But even if it was a great measure, there are lots editors who improve the article, not necessarily the one being examined. It may be that good editors tend to edit improving articles but many of them don't significantly contribute to that improvement. This may happen because those improving the article ask for help in making it better (peer review, copy edit requests, wikignome improvements, wikiproject collaborations). Naturally when the community is functioning as a collaborative system, good editors will recruit and work with other good editors to improve articles. They won't invite the vandals and the incompetent.

What word-persistence measures (wrt editors) is whether they make awful edits - bad enough to be reverted. Editors who tend to make awful edits tend to not improve articles and tend not be asked for help. The main issue I have with your metric is the claim it measures "quality". Instead, it measures "awfulness". And the check done in that paper showed that awful editors aren't associated with improving articles. The stats may show that undergraduates make awful edits just as frequently as PhD students make them. That is quite a different thing from saying they are writing at the same quality level. If that were true, one would question what those extra years of education has done for anyone.

So I've still yet to see proof that the length of edit retention is a measure of quality. It measures awfulness, which is only applicable at the bottom end of the quality scale. Just as the death rate of patients is no measure of the quality of an eczema drug except at the bottom end of the quality scale. Colin° 22:24, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

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

The article is Misplaced Pages 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° 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° 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 Misplaced Pages-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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages 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 06:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, your comment that "Joordens hasn't used Misplaced Pages 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° 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 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages, I think it's an option that we are going to have to consider seriously. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I too am sorry to see this happen. I don't really know enough about the connection between the course and the editor's decision to take a break to comment on that, but it saddens me to see someone who is obviously valuable to the editing community feel overwhelmed. --Bob Cummings (talk) 17:33, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I sent this prof some advise over a year ago. He got pissed off at me and said he was not going to edit again. I have seen an email from him afterwards were he boasts about his ability to "fly under the radar". What he has going is more or less a giant meet-puppet. Once we finish the analysis started by Colin we will need to look at publishing our findings. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:25, 29 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:Misplaced Pages Education Program rather than generic Misplaced Pages signups, there is no pointer on where to start, etc. Could some text be written please? Stuartyeates (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Text could be added to Misplaced Pages:Assignments_for_student_editors#Education_Program. I'm not sure what I would say there at this point, but perhaps you could clarify things there? Biosthmors (talk) 19:16, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the point in adding text to Misplaced Pages:Assignments_for_student_editors#Education_Program since Special:OnlineVolunteers and friends don't link there (nor indeed do they link to the many other useful help pages, this being the problem). Stuartyeates (talk) 09:37, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed new policy

It is clear from discussions on this page that Misplaced Pages lacks the necessary policy to deal with student assignments that go wrong, to discourage the kind of assignments that tend to fail and to clearly indicate the sort of assignment that Misplaced Pages wants. The Misplaced Pages:Assignments for student editors essay is a great resource and I encourage its development into a guideline. But I think Misplaced Pages needs a new policy to handle assignments. The relationship between the community and those involved in setting and performing the assignment is completely different to the one we are used to with volunteer editors. We simply can't handle the case where 200 students create accounts and make a handful of edits over the space of minutes and then log off again never to return. There is no policy at present to deal with that.

I've made a start: User:Colin/Assignments. The nutshell is "If you give someone an assignment to do on Misplaced Pages, you are responsible for their actions." The page is deliberately general and not specific to professors/students, which I think is appropriate for policy. It is obviously very draft at present. What do people here think? Would such a policy help? I think it would clearly prevent the sort of assignment where the prof makes no effort whatsoever to review and fix the edits. It forces class sizes down to the level that can be managed in-house rather than using us Wikipedians as classroom assistants.

If this proposed policy looks worth pursuing, then I'll move it out of user space and let the community work on it. Colin° 09:10, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. This is interesting, though I don't think I could support it. I wonder what those who are putting together the Wiki Education Foundation proposal would say about it. Most of the educators on that board would clearly be unfit to set Misplaced Pages assignments from your perspective: they do not "have the time, degree of competence on-wiki and subject-knowledge in order to review and correct" their students' edits. But then by affiliating with the Education Program, does the burden of responsibility shift to that Program? I'm not sure that the proposed WEF wants to take that burden on. But there's also a more fundamental philosophical issue here: Is a teacher responsible for whether or not a student follows his or her instructions? Is he or she obliged to ensure that the student passes? Obviously not: that would be crazy. (Though there are plenty of students who do think this way--they believe that it's up to the teacher to ensure that they succeed!) I guess the issue here is what happens when a student's failure has real-world consequences. Is that balanced by the fact that a student's success will also have real-world consequences? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 13:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

This is the key point, though. If a student gets an D grade on their essay then that is only so much ink on paper in a drawer. But if they change axon so its lead is D-grade unintelligible or is brilliant but plagiarised text, who is responsible for fixing that? All classes will have good and bad students. But if the assignment is such that even good students fail miserably, who is responsible? The issue with Joordens class shows that one invoke the creation of hundreds of temporary accounts, inflict insidious damage to a whole domain of articles, and we have no policy at present to do anything about it. Do you have a solution?

I certainly think there is a role for the teacher to recruit assistants who may have the necessary skills on wikipedia and subject. Perhaps that should be included in the text.

I don't think the teacher is responsible for lifting the student text to acceptable standard. Some assignments may do that as part of some iterative rework. But in the bad case, that D-grade work is now on Misplaced Pages. Who is responsible for doing something about that? I think for too long educators have seen Misplaced Pages as a common resource like the air we breath. It isn't. Colin° 14:04, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

It's tough, I think. I've certainly had students who have plagiarized on Misplaced Pages. (I have also had students who plagiarized in essays; as it happens, it's generally easier to spot on Misplaced Pages, but that's another matter.) The most egregious examples took place on the Spanish Misplaced Pages, rather than the English one, but so be it. In some ways, I don't take responsibility for that plagiarism: I totally disapprove of it, and the students know that; I also teach them to understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. On the other hand, I've definitely gone in and made sure that that plagiarism doesn't endure. I've personally fixed the articles myself--especially when (as has happened a couple of times) I've only identified it after the course is over. But having taught a fair number of classes that use Misplaced Pages, there's no way I can put my hand on my heart and say that I have caught every single plagiarized sentence or passage. Or (less seriously perhaps--but only perhaps) that my students always understood their sources and paraphrased or interpreted them well. (For even when students are being ethical, they are not always right.) But on balance I think (I know) that the impact of my students on Misplaced Pages has been far more for the good than for the bad: they produced a bunch of featured articles and even more good ones; even those articles that haven't passed such tests have demonstrably improved, often by leaps and bounds. So it is a question of balance. We can't have zero tolerance here, much though we (everyone involved) might like that. And if this sounds a little like Joorden's argument above, then so be it. What's at issue is less the argument per se than the question of whether or not individual classes actually are on balance improving the Encyclopedia, and how much. If the improvements exceed the mistakes only negligibly or by a small margin, then the class has gone wrong, clearly. (It certainly sounds like this is the case for the UT class.) But if the improvements are significantly more substantial than the extent to which articles have suffered (as I'd say was the case for my classes), then the project succeeds. We can't be absolutist. At the same time, we can't be satisfied with merely a "net benefit." We need more than that. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 16:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Jbmurray, it sounds very much like you already assume some kind of responsibility for your class's actions. Yes this isn't absolute responsibility for ensuring all their actions are a net benefit and fixing every single mistake. Remember, this is just an early draft and so the language might not be helpful or some of the concepts need kicking around a bit. At one extreme, we've got a mega class where the prof takes no responsibility at all and fully expects the community to review and fix the edits. At another, we've got tiny classes where the students work alongside the prof on assignments, and the class is so well designed that no student is doing damage but some are doing better than others. A problem we have is Joordens also "knows" his class is a net benefit. We'll see what this year's class's stats look like when we've looked at more students, but 2011's analysis was a clear net damage and with far more hours spent reviewing and fixing the edits than the students spent themselves on the assignment. I fully agree with you that we need more than just a mere net benefit. Damage limitation -- are there mechanisms in place to catch the really bad stuff?

I think I get the bit about you not being personally responsible for someone's plagiarism -- you did the best that can be expected to prevent it but ultimately it was the student's "sin" and not yours. However, you also removed it. Why? Can you put in words what made you feel you should do that -- so we can indicate this is desirable? On the other hand, someone who fails to properly educate their students on plagiarism, say, and fails to check to some degree that they have understood it before editing, and fails to review their work at all, is surely responsible for the frequent problems that occur. I'd appreciate your help finding the balance and the words to use. You are welcome to edit the draft in my user space, or use its talk page. Colin° 18:18, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I've been trying to think of a solution to the "professor dispatches 200 students to wreak havoc" problem recently too, but I keep running into the same problem that your proposal runs into, Colin: the professors who are doing the "bad" professoring (and, really, most of the ones doing the "good", too) aren't editing Misplaced Pages, anyway. And given that our last line of defense against disruptive editing is to block or ban the responsible editor, which in this case would be the professor who's not editing anyway, making them responsible for their students' edits is unenforceable by any sort of sanction on the professor. If they disdain Misplaced Pages enough to send their unprepared students this way, they disdain it enough that whether they're blocked or not, they'll continue to do so, because a block on the professor has no effect on the dispatching of students to edit.

The only other possible solution I've come up with is much, much more extreme - a variation on CSD criterion G5, which allows for the deletion of content submitted by editors in violation of a block/ban: "If a professor fails to be responsible for his students' problematic edits after , all edits and account creations by any editors determined to be that professor's students (and who are editing at the behest of that professor) will be treated as the actions of a blocked user and those edits will be reverted and the accounts blocked accordingly." It's draconian and it bites students who may not have done anything wrong, but it would be the only way to hold professors accountable on Misplaced Pages for failing to prepare their students, and it would be our best chance to prevent ongoing damage by those students. Blocking a professor who doesn't edit anyway won't stop the disruption, but blocking anyone identified as one of their students would. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:18, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Took the words out of my mouth. We need a process to determine somehow whether or not a certain professor should be topic-banned from educational assignments due to irresponsibility. After that, a (existing or new) CSD criterion and RB would be allowed to revert all of their edits (except for ones that they wish to make a null edit taking responsibility for, if any deserve it). After that, if a professor continues this, we can and should contact the university in question, just like Abuse Reporting for organizations goes on now, and notifying the Dean/Administrators that they would be able to have access to data if needed to determine (if not obvious by username(s)) what professor/students are doing this. I think we need to encourage and help educational assignments here. But when professors blatantly disregard our offers of help and/or don't tell their students how to edit, we need to stop it, and if that means we go to their supervisor and get them to stop that way, so be it. It's like I said a while ago: We should not care what happens in the school's disciplinary side of things, only what happens on the Misplaced Pages side of this professor's classes. If he gets reprimanded, given less pay, etc., so be it, he should have realized that having students make crap edits after he was asked not to without teaching them first wouldn't work out well for anyone. gwickwire_editing 14:51, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

The proposed policy doesn't state (currently) what sanctions would be imposed, merely where the responsibility lies. Currently, responsibility for edits lies with the person making them -- but they've gone down the pub and were "only following orders". I agree that, for example, blocking User:Woodsnake would have no physical effect as he doesn't use the account, but it would have a psychological/social effect. Would you do a class assignment if you knew the prof was banned from Misplaced Pages for running that class assignment? Would the dean be happy to have profs running assignments on Misplaced Pages when they are currently a banned user? I think this would be significant enough to have an effect. Additionally, the students could have a message posted on their pages (like the suspected sockpuppet message) "We suspect you are part of a class assignment that has been banned from Wikpedia. Please confirm if you are ....etc". I'm sure word would get round that they weren't welcome. The proposed policy does state that the institution is ultimately responsible, which gives us room to block IPs should there continue to be disruption. I would hope that wouldn't be necessary for any reputable organisation. But more importantly, if this were policy, an assignment like Joordens simply wouldn't get off the drawing board. It would be completely clear that mass directed editing with no supervision isn't allowed on Misplaced Pages. Colin° 15:58, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I tried to emphasize some of this responsibility in the lead of the essay, for a start. Biosthmors (talk) 19:14, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support I support this beyond the education program and into Wikimedia chapter business. The general rule that I would like to see is that anyone who is claiming credit or benefit for a project on Misplaced Pages should also claim responsibility for it. The professors who do harmful things on Misplaced Pages often express that the Misplaced Pages community should be grateful to them, and historically the Misplaced Pages community's response has been to clean the mess and take no further action. I am not sure what action should be taken, but I would like to state that it is not okay for anyone to exploit the Wikimedia community's good will by abusing it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
• Fluffernutter is right about the lack of feasibility of enforcing policy against instructors, unless we figure out some way to block edits from a campus and the surrounding residential community, and that's not going to happen easily. In contrast to Colin's opening premise, I think it's useful to try to address these problems via a guideline, rather than policy. After all, we already have the rationale to pursue administrative action in cases of WP:Disruptive editing, which includes chronic ignoring of behavioral guidelines. I think we should start by establishing behavioral guidelines that have wide community consensus. With those in place, we can then, as a second step if needed, establish any new policy for which a need emerges. I've started a discussion at WT:Assignments for student editors about promoting it to a guideline, and I'd welcome input from the editors here, there. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:16, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I fully support "Assignments for student editors" being developed as a guideline. Guidelines apply to specific areas and offer advice. Policy sets the ground rules upon which we operate. I think unsupervised mass assignments, with no appreciation of responsibility, is a fundamentally bad thing. Joordens represents the extreme end of the scale. No guideline is going to influence someone like him. But we've had other classes in the past where the prof was utterly unprepared to understand what their students should be doing, let alone take responsibility for doing any degree of tidying up afterwards.

I disagree that such a policy can't be enforced. I've commented further up. I think that such a class, if disallowed by policy, would ultimately lead to the blocking of the professor and notices on the talk page of any suspected students. A message would be sent to the dean also. I find it hard to imagine students performing an assignment where their prof is banned and where their own accounts get blocked (even if they get blocked after their edits). Who wants to do an assignment as a guerilla terrorist? Colin° 09:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

• We are finding a fair bit of plagiarism from a U of T psychology class (about 30% of contributors right now). I plan to report this prof to his dean and his school to the papers. He has been warned in the past that his activities were not appropriate. Rather than address the criticism he became more secretive in editing activities. We seem to have another recurrence of the "India issues". Those involved in the India Program can take heart that it is not just those in the developing world that struggle with copyright but also those at one of Canada's most prestigious universities. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:06, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Wow – and please understand that I'm not objecting at all to that! In the end, a hard block of the campus will look like a much gentler option. I'll be watching with great interest to see what ends up happening. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:56, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Doc James, that percentage did sound high until I did some research on this issue. A Canadian government's arms-length organization found that 53% of undergraduate students surveyed admitted plagiarizing at least once. Another study placed the value at 23-25% for graduate students in American & Canadian universities. Is 30% plagiarism severe? Yes, for me, one instance is far too many. Is it causing so much concern and different from other courses that we should be screaming like headless chickens and calling for actions? No. The percentage suggests this is not much different than any other science courses and actually appears to be performing better than the average when we compare the 30% course average to the 53% national average for undergrads. Mind you, this is a first-year introduction to psychology course and we all know that high school doesn't treat plagiarism seriously. I'll be more concerned if this happens in an upper-year (3rd and 4th year) course. OhanaUnited 02:23, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

So if those are indeed the stats than we should probably call off the education program. In textbook or scientific journal publishing the rates are not so high. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:20, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the plagiarised text is the stuff that reads well and makes some sense. The incoherent illiterate stuff is the original student writing. OhanaUnited, I think you are failing to appreciate the utter drivel that this class is writing on Misplaced Pages. I do wish folk here would taken their statistics and shove them where the sun doesn't shine. Go look at the edits. Colin° 13:48, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

The difficulty is that we are comparing apples and oranges. The stat above is 50% have plagiarized at some point in their life at least one. What I care about is what percentage are plagiarizing right now. And I may be more lenient if a lot of great content was being created. So far I have found a couple of passable edits but nothing great (in percentages that would be 0%). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:56, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Colin, Doc James said "We are finding a fair bit of plagiarism from a U of T psychology class", not "We are finding a fair bit of incoherent illiterate stuff from a U of T psychology class" (emphasis added). Plagiarism includes both coherent and incoherent writing. Plus, nowhere in my numbers said it was based on incoherent writing and I strongly doubt that there are studies out there that looked at just undergraduate's writing quality on a large, representative scale. It's reasonable to assume that students write better as they progress in universities. That brings me to Doc James part. Again, I made a reasonable assumption that the majority of the 53% plagiarism will take place early on in university (1st & 2nd year courses vs. 3rd & 4th year). The time of plagiarism occurrence tends to be positively skewed. OhanaUnited 15:43, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Wider input on the quality of the review Ohana is doing might also be useful.. The first user I looked at added refs to work that was previous plagarism by someone else. Most of the rest of the refs were to a Misplaced Pages talk page. I would not describe this as positive but as either neutral or negative. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:38, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, can you please just lay off the stats. Also remember that whenever these students cite a paywalled article or a book, our ability to detect plagiarism drops to zero. Which is why it is essential these courses are internally supervised by those the same access to the sources as the students. Can you explain what wikipedia classes are running at UoT and more about the class you and James are reviewing. What degree of supervision did they get? What year are they? What were they asked to do? Are you aware of any change to the instructions or marking scheme used for the megaclass compared to 2011? Colin° 17:06, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't have the tools to check for copyvio, so I used a crude metric of examining revert summary, article talk page, and user talk page. Regarding that individual in question, I don't see the part that you said "Most of the rest of the refs were to a Misplaced Pages talk page". The revision you provided all point to specific journal articles. And Colin, please, don't boss me around on what I can do and what I can't do. If you bothered to check that page which Doc James provided provided, you would have found what year, which course, the course description, and support provided. It clearly shows you didn't even make an attempt to examine that page that before attacking me. OhanaUnited 17:12, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

If you look at you will notice this page referenced half a dozen times . Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:20, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Those revisions are from different page! Your first revision link was from audience effect, and now your revised link was from Motivational interviewing. No wonder I can't see what you're describing when you provided the wrong link.

Sorry for the confusion the link provided was to the editor that added the plagarism before this student edited. I have added the appropriate link. I have reviewed 4 editors so far. Ones edits were minor, ones edits were clear plagiarism, another editors edits were very close paraphrasing (not sure if it reaches the level of plagiarism or not, last editor some positive some neutral / negative IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:50, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

OhanaUnited, do what you like on Wiki but if you want a conversation with me about how students are doing, then quoting stats about the general issue of plagiarism in undergraduates and implying that means everything is hunky-dory with the Toronto students, is really not the way to go about it. I'm sick of the crap science round here. So you don't have the tools to check for copyvio either and are just relying on other wikipedian's revert summary to work out what was wrong. Have you not listened to anything we've said? Unless you have the tools to check for plagiarism, your stats suck. What is the point of writing "Clearly net positive" if you can't check? And as for the WikiScholar course, I asked a straightforward question, not an attack, and you haven't answered it. I can't figure out from that page any of the answers to the questions I asked. I fear from the description "This course will allow students to take on the role of student-educator, working collaboratively to examine, enhance, and create Misplaced Pages entries related to a set of psychology topics." that these students are peer-reviewing each other and there is no expert supervision nor wiki supervision. Colin° 18:17, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Going through these edits is taking a huge amount of time. The fifth user is sort of on the edge with this article IMO . While if one paraphrases a couple of lines like this I would have no issues. But do things change if one paraphrases a whole paper and uses the same outline? And why paraphrase a 1983 article when there is more recent literature on the topic? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:25, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Next two I reviewed appear to also be plagiarism. I however need help I do not have access to this textbook Bartol, Curt R. (2002). Criminal behavior : a psychosocial approach (6th ed. ed.). Upper Saddler River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780130918376. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help) I think it is page 5. Edits are these ones . Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:19, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Colin, I didn't provide the 30% stat from this class, it was Doc James who provided it. I provided the 53% national average stat. Calling "your stats suck" is incivil. And based on this thread, I seriously have to consider your competence on attributing statements to the correct user, finding info based on links provided by people on your side, and your ability to communicate with others who hold opposite views without descending to the level of making incivil comments. I strongly urge you to retract that statement. OhanaUnited 02:56, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I haven't attributed statements to the incorrect user once yet repeatedly your responses have been to wrongly attribute other's statements to yourself. You seem to be trying your darnedest to take offence. How about if I translate to the Queen's English: "Unless one has the tools to measure plagiarism, one's stats are sub-optimal". Or, if we're having a conversation in normal everyday English: "Unless you have the tools to check for plagiarism, your stats suck." No retraction required or offered. Please can you get above your defensiveness and try to help here. Can you answer my questions about the course. They would help us understand if there is anything coming from UoT that is worth retaining. Colin° 07:59, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Class size and supervision

• I'd like to throw out another idea, and see what the reaction is. It seems to me that the major disruption occurs when a class with a very large number of students is set loose on Misplaced Pages, because the instructor is less likely to supervise each of them in a responsible manner, and because the large number of student edits in a short period of time puts particular demands on established editors. (I fully realize, of course, that just a few students making lousy edits on a page on one's watchlist, and being uncooperative about fixing their edits, can be a pain. But that disruption is more delimited, and we already have ways to deal with it.) The discussion above shows how difficult it can be to enforce policy against instructors or students, when the policy relates to editing conduct. In contrast, we can draw a "bright line" based on the number of students enrolled in a course. We could establish a maximum number of enrolled students that would be permitted in a recognized class project. Perhaps we could spell out requirements that would have to be met if an exception is to be granted. And perhaps we could make a formal policy about what to do if the instructor, instead, goes underground. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:34, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I originally thought smaller class size would be more beneficial. But from what Doc James showed, that's not exactly the case. Smaller class size does produce more quantities of high-quality work (e.g. DYK), but doesn't necessarily reduce the plagiarism rate. OhanaUnited 03:15, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
    • The common factor between Joordens small class and the large class appears to be both are completely unsupervised. The later class might be doing some peer review. He has form here: see peerScholar. The aim, either with peerScholar or these wikipedia assignments, appears to be to run large classes and set huge assignments without the need to pay for teaching assistants. We've seen other small classes do badly when the instructor isn't up-to-speed with wiki or when the class edits outside of the instructor's abilities wrt subject-matter. But the damage is limited there (though of course, if everyone did that, the damage wouldn't be limited). So I still feel the issue at hand is those directing assignments without taking some degree of responsibility for the result. Since Joordens can't possibly take responsibility for 1700 students (and that would require a lot of staff) his megaclass simply can't be allowed on here. Colin° 08:05, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
      • Both of those replies are helpful, thanks. I agree that there is no correlation between class size and plagiarism, or for that matter between class size and any number of conduct issues. My thinking, however, is that plagiarism by a small class is easier to repair than is plagiarism by a large class, and for me that's an important point. If we're trying to think of things we can set policy on, I think it's important to address the problems that our current ways of doing business have had difficulty dealing with. Colin is quite right that supervision by the instructor is key. That, right there, might be an alternative thing we might want to make policy: never grant the course instructor privilege without a plan by the instructor to monitor every edit. And getting back to class size, it's possible to meet that requirement in a smaller class, whereas it's usually impossible in a huge class. I really cannot imagine a situation in which a class with over a thousand students can be part of a class project that doesn't dump a ton of pain on the Misplaced Pages community. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:45, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

• I think this approach is much, much too complex. All we really need is to remember that "The use of multiple Misplaced Pages user accounts for an improper purpose is called sock puppetry" and that 'improper' is defined by us, not by the institutions who are taking students money and expecting us to baby sit them. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:04, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The importance of minimizing drama

I am starting a new section because I think this point needs emphasis. If education projects are going to happen at all (and clearly they are), then our response to problems needs to be focused on minimizing drama. Harsh actions taken toward people who cause problems are likely to generate repercussions that will reflect badly on Misplaced Pages as a whole. We can't allow our important articles to deteriorate, but in my view we should look for the quietest and least dramatic approach that maintains their quality. Looie496 (talk) 17:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with what you're saying. We definitely want to be polite and not bite as this suggests. Did you have anything specific in mind, or did you just want to generally caution against overreactions? I think the overreactions tend to come from experienced editors who first encounter these assignments. They find the source of the perceived harm to content and are frustrated at what appears to be a lack of supervision. Biosthmors (talk) 19:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree too. It's a balance that we need to get right. After all, we already have a lot of consensus that WP:BITE is part of how we try to do things here. I'm in favor of guidelines that include advice to editors, along with advice to instructors and students. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:07, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is real live publishing that can result in real live consequences. If you are referring to the above issues my position is we cannot allow universities to come and add content that is 30% plagiarism. If we know of this issue and do not address it / nip it in the bud less drama now will result in greater drama in the future.

If 5 years down the road the media catches on that we knew of universities adding large volumes of plagiarized content and we did nothing about it the negative repercussions will be far greater. The prof in question had been warned a year or two ago. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Myself, I agree simultaneously with both Looie and Doc James. The specific U of T case is a real stinker. At the same time, there really are student editing projects that have been a pleasure to work with – I speak from personal experience. We need to deal decisively with users who disrupt Misplaced Pages, and at the same time, we need to remain welcoming to those who improve it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:52, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we must encourage positive engagement and discourage negative engagement. If this gets some press this will make sure that future classes and profs take Misplaced Pages seriously. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:11, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: RobertK Prods (talk)

Name

Robert Kluijver

Institution

Paris School of International Affairs

Course title and description

Contemporary Art and Geopolitics in the Middle East. This is a 24-hour course given in English to the students of the International Master programme (MA) of the Instituten for Political Studies in Paris, better known as Sciences Po.

The objective of the course is to allow the students to gain fresh insights into current social and cultural developments in the Arab world, by way of an informed reading of its contemporary art production.

Being an enthusiastic user of Misplaced Pages myself, I have noticed how little coverage contemporary art gets in general, and that from the Middle East in particular. Impressed by the level of my students' papers in previous years, and convinced that the generation of knowledge in the academic sphere should be reformed in order to reach a wider audience, I decided to ask my students to write Misplaced Pages articles this year, instead of the usual persuasive papers. I hope to continue and expand on this experience in coming years.

Assignment plan

This (first) year I need to experiment with Misplaced Pages assignments in class. I realize there are many dangers and pitfalls, and hope that with the guidance of the Misplaced Pages community, and intelligent input from my students, we can make this a success.

I have first asked all my students to create a user profile, start editing on the User Page and in their Sandbox, and start copyediting or providing references to existing pages to get a feel of how Misplaced Pages works. I have provided them with some basic tools but realize they need more yet. I then suggested a list of topics, based on existing coverage on Misplaced Pages; most students have chosen one of those I suggested, some have suggested their own.

In the meanwhile I have been discussing with Misplaced Pages community members such as Yunshui and Biosthmors, they have convinced me I better run this exercise through WEP; it is a bit late (student papers are due within a month) and I am aware I have made a few mistakes already, but I'm determined to see this through with success, and learn for next year.

Number of students

18

Start and end dates

25 January to 27 April 2013

--RobertK Prods (talk) 00:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

• Endorse; looks fine. —Theopolisme (talk) 04:01, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
• Granted by User:Shirik to your main account, User:Robert Kluijver. —Theopolisme (talk) 04:09, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Would any ambassador like to help RobertK Prods set up a course page? Robert, I helped construct User:Biolprof/Signal Transduction Spring 2013 this semester. You might find that copying and pasting some content out of that page useful, to put in your own course page. Biosthmors (talk) 21:35, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Biosthmors. I gather that a course page is actually a new User Page linked to my account User:Robert Kluijver. Do I create a new User Page from scratch or should I create my course page in my sandbox and then move it elsewhere? Also, the example you give is Read-Only, (there is no talk on that page) while I thought that the course page is where all the students User Pages are linked, and where all discussion takes place. Please clarify and sorry if I didn't RTFM, sometimes I search on WP and don't find the answers although I think they must be there.Robert Kluijver (talk) 09:57, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The instructions for setting up a course page start here. If any of that is too confusing, please let me know and I'll try to clarify.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Sage Ross for the link. However I have a problem here: I do not have the right to add the name of my institution (Paris School of International Affairs). They asked me not to be involved as an institution until, at least, my trial experience with Misplaced Pages has been judged successful. Can I create a course page without adding this institution? Robert Kluijver (talk) 21:17, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I have another pretty urgent question: can I access the sandboxes of my students? And if not, how can they best share their work with me? So I can monitor their progress before they start posting their pages in the encyclopedia?Robert Kluijver (talk) 22:07, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you should be able to do this easily. The simplest way to look at what they've been doing is to look at their contribution history, and you'll see their sandboxes listed there, and will be able to click on the links to look at the current state of their sandboxes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:17, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the institution, this is an interesting situation that we've not had before. How about this: create a new institution called "Independent courses" and set your course page up under that. We can change the institution for your course later, if need be.

For contribution monitoring, in addition to the advice others have given you, you should be able to see all your students' sandbox edits using the MyCourses feed: Special:MyCourses. (It will be linked from the word "Courses" next to your watchlist, once you have a course set up and you are signed on as the instructor.) This feed combines most of the contributions (in the article, talk, and user/usertalk namespaces) into a single list, for just the kind of monitoring you want to do.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Sage and Mike for the helpful tips. I have followed your suggestion, created the Paris/France based institution 'Independent Courses' and added my course to it. See Education Program:Independent Courses/Contemporary Art and Geopolitics in the Arab World (Spring 2013) and please let me know if you think it's alright. I will now send the link to my students and ask them to enroll.Robert Kluijver (talk) 09:38, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you created the institution as "Independent courses"; shouldn't it be "Institute for Political Studies"? However, it looks fine for your students to enroll -- presumably if you want to change the institution name later Sage will be able to tell you how. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:09, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Mike, Robert noted above that he isn't allowed to use his institution's name with his course unless/until his first foray with Misplaced Pages goes well. (Changing the institution is done by simply editing the course page and changing the appropriate field, which will change the page url as well.) Robert, looks like you are already getting started with the course page. Good luck!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:54, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Circadiansync (talk)

Name

Erik Herzog

Institution

Washington University

Course title and description

BIO 4030. Biological Clocks. This course examines how biological rhythms are generated and regulated at the molecular, cellular and systems levels. We will cover the relevance of biological timing to the ecology and health of everything from protozoans to plants to people.

Assignment plan

This project has Bio 4030 students identify wiki sites in need of updating, edit their content, and distribute their information to the world.

Number of students

58

Start and end dates

March 28-May 5, 2013

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

Wikicode fixed by Riley Huntley (talk) at 04:56, 28 March 2013 (UTC). For the original version, see this diff. -- Cheers, Riley 04:56, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• Comment This looks like a viable project. Our basic article on circadian rhythms is reasonably strong, though far from complete, so students should avoid working on it unless they are prepared to read the whole article and properly integrate their material. One additional point I would like to make is that, after having watched the dynamics of several class projects, I believe that professors don't really understand what they are asking their students to do unless they have themselves done a certain amount of wiki-editing, so I suggest that Erik start by himself making a few edits of the sort he would like to see his students make. Looie496 (talk) 17:08, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
• Comments and questions. Erik, thanks for posting. We'd love to have you here. I'm a little concerned, though, that some aspects of the article assignment need improvement (as does Misplaced Pages itself, so thanks for showing up)! For example, this is not a place for resumes. Your students will probably just receive gripes and have a bad experience from other editors if they post them. Generally, I doubt an article on a circadian researcher could justifiably be so detailed, unless of course the person is prominent enough to have a book written about them, for example. (The Alfred Russel Wallace article is an example of a high-quality biography of a researcher.) You might already be aware, but we don't base articles here off of primary sources, ones that are affiliated with the subject. Third-party sources are ideal for noteworty facts to ensure to our readers we are covering encyclopedic details. I assume the critiques students are required to perform by April 18th will be posted on the talk pages of each article, right? Anyhow, it seems like you could use a helping hand. Do you need help constructing a course page? Best wishes. Biosthmors (talk) 19:59, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I also just noticed http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/24908.aspx , which talks about classroom editing from the same university. Too bad that class (Misplaced Pages:USEP/Courses/Behavioral Ecology (Joan Strassmann)) appears to mandate only primary sources. The wustl.edu article also claims "Good articles in the sciences, at least, are ultimately grounded in citations from the peer-viewed primary literature." Has anyone discussed WP:Secondary with Strassmann previously? If anyone sends an email to Strassmann please be super polite and note it here because we don't want to bombard or come off the wrong way to anyone. I am about to send an email to Erik to let him know I replied here. Biosthmors (talk) 22:16, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Actually, Agelaia (talk · contribs) is Strassmann, and they have made a couple edits in March, which is refreshing, so I'll post about this at her talk page. Biosthmors (talk) 22:20, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

  Is is possible that different definitions of "primary" are being used here? I realize that WP:MEDRS directs that articles should be based largely on literature reviews, for obvious reasons, but it's not clear to me that the same imperatives exist in other sciences. To pluck an example from my own quiver, I would consider it an unacceptable primary source if I started adding to Adiantum viridimontanum based on my own lab notebook, but removing all of the sources "in which the authors directly participated in the research" from that article would obviously destroy its quality to no clear gain in accuracy. I would think similar considerations would hold for many non-medical biology articles. Choess (talk) 23:19, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

WP:SCIRS mentions that review articles are ideal sources. Review articles are a type of secondary source. Biosthmors (talk) 23:54, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

• CommentI am currently a student in Biological Clocks and was hoping to be granted instructor's rights to create the course page. I talked to my instructor Circadiansync (talk · contribs) and Misplaced Pages ambassador Biosthmors (talk · contribs) and offered to take on this project. Since Dr. Herzog already requested the creation of the course page, I thought I would reach out through this talk page. Please let me know what the next step is! Thank you so much for your help! SGL333 22:11, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse as online ambassador; Circadiansync shall receive the 'instructor' userright momentarily. —Theopolisme (talk) 11:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

U of T courses in Psychology

Per evidence building here and here and previous evidence here we need to do something about the situation in question. This appears to be a repeat of the India Education Program issues with fairly high rates of "copy and paste" . In this case it is occurring in the areas of psychology that is poorly watched. I have spent two days analysing the edits in question. While there is a fair bit more analysis / work to do IMO we have enough evidence that we should act. Thoughts?

Background: We have a psych prof who is having his 1700 students edit Misplaced Pages's psychology content. There is little to no review coming from the class itself. When concerns were brought to the profs attention a year ago he went "underground" making a community review more difficult. There is further discussion above. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:27, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it is worth collecting enough to provide a summary of the class situation. I'd like to try to finish locating all the students so we have some idea of numbers and number of articles affected. If we publish a summary and present that to the community (e.g. ANI, etc) then see what reaction we get. Colin° 20:43, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I guess I should make this more of a call for help in the analysis. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:48, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Can I help if I don't have access to JSTOR and so on? I'm concerned I won't be able to detect plagiarism or copyvio if I only have Google, so I might end up concluding an edit is OK when it isn't. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:20, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm nearly finished collecting all the students I can find. After that I wondered about taking a bunch of edits where the student cited a website or a paper that was free-online or otherwise readable. Perhaps 20-30 edits. Then working out the degree of plagiarism in those edits. Even if we had sources, many of these students are citing an impenetrable url in their intranet (and the exact same students did so last year so they haven't learned) or a Harvard ref like "Walker 1958" that is of little use without the rest of the citation. In fact, I have sometimes been able to identify the citation by Googling for plagiarism !!! Another figure it would be useful to gauge is what degree of edits are being reverted by the community (ourselves included). There are plenty students in the "More students to assess" table that you could stick your name against. Thanks. Colin° 12:35, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Class has been reported to Sockpuppet investigation here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I see checkuser reports that not even hard-blocking the entire university will stop them--but the question then becomes whether there is any other way to get attention to this? The problem is particularly difficult because the instructor seems to refuse to understand the harm he is doing. DGG ( talk ) 05:02, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I've posted a note to Joordens' talk page asking him to stop his students on the basis of the analysis done so far; at my last count, 16 of 19 students for whom we could make a definite determination had plagiarized their source. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:23, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

We're seeing about 85% plagiarism in the edits we can check against sources. In much of the remainder, the attempt to put text into the student's own words has failed to some degree. Either the text is incomprehensible, or it has significant errors. Some editors wrote very little (a short phrase). Exceptionally, editors wrote something original and useful and well sourced with a proper citation. This is on top of all the other problems we are seeing that would be an issue even if the added text was original, coherent and accurate. I've counted over 400 students editing 250 articles but that is likely to be a significant under-estimate based on the 2011 analysis of edit patterns and the limitations of our method of detecting students. The real numbers could be double that.

Joordens has been running this assignment since 2011, though I think this year's could be the biggest. A minority of this year's students also edited in November/December 2012. All told, these assignments could well have involved a thousands students editing and a similar number of articles.

We asked Joordens/Woodsnake to stop and work with us after 2011's analysis. Instead he decided to "fly under the radar". Do these comments mirror what we're seeing here and earlier here?

Is Misplaced Pages going to just accept that level of damage to our articles? Per Misplaced Pages:Plagiarism and Misplaced Pages:Close paraphrasing such content isn't acceptable. What to do? Is Joordens or the University of Toronto responsible? Or each individual student? Or just our open editing policy? Do we shrug our shoulders or demand something be done?

Colin° 17:49, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

A soon-to-be-published paper on psychology students working on Misplaced Pages said:

"In the eight months the has been active, at least 36 classrooms involving 640 students have used article-writing assignments. In addition, other classes used article-writing assignments because of the APSWI, but did not use the tools we provided; therefore, the behavior of the students in their classes was not recorded in our data. For example, we know of the instructor of an introductory psychology class of 1,700 who had students read some primary research related to a Misplaced Pages article and add a citation to the article. Overall, the students whose behavior we captured have improved over 840 Misplaced Pages articles and have written over 1,200 pages of text, more than the content of a psychology textbook."

It is interesting to consider that this "class of 1,700" has perhaps achieved the opposite. They may well have taken 800 pages of their class psychology textbook and scattered little bits of it largely unchanged all across Misplaced Pages. -- Colin° 21:58, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

• I've read the now-archived SPI page, and I've been thinking hard about the issue. I see that there is a pretty extensive administrative consensus that "collateral damage" would preclude a widely-cast hard block (and also that there is some proportion of students who seem to be editing from so far outside the campus that some would slip through any conceivable block). It seems increasingly to me that we are encountering a new(ish) kind of problem for Misplaced Pages, and that our existing administrative mechanisms just don't include an appropriate tool to deal with it. I'm pessimistic that the instructor will decide to become more cooperative with us, because that's not where his professional incentives lie. From his perspective, what he needs to do is to get the course taught with as little hassle to himself or to his department chair or dean as possible. I have no idea what kind of effect Doc James' planned letters to the university and the press will have. There's certainly no guarantee. I know that our existing blocking policies place a high priority on avoiding "collateral damage", but here I think we need to recognize that the situation is different and somewhat new. There is real collateral damage to the project here, to editors who are having a hard time cleaning up, and, in at least one case, have been so aggravated that they temporarily left the project. That's collateral damage, too, and we need to consider it seriously! It doesn't really make sense to think that collateral damage to editors who want to contribute from around the campus is somehow more important than collateral damage to the rest of the editing community. I am coming to believe that we need a consensus to change our rules about hard blocks. A hard block across the satellite campus may well be the one way to shift the "hassle" back to the instructor and the university. It would stop most of the student edits (albeit not all), to a degree that students (along with other, collateral damage, people in the block range) will complain in a way that would force the instructor to do things differently. Letters to the university and the press may or may not have the desired effect, but a hard block, done properly, would immediately have the effect that we need. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

  I basically agree with all that, but I'd like to add that I am opposed to letters to the press. Given the general ignorance of the press about Misplaced Pages, that amounts to firing a cannon in a random direction -- there is no telling who will get hit. It is entirely possible that the professor would be portrayed as the innocent victim of Misplaced Pages's weirdness. If any direct extra-Misplaced Pages action needs to be taken, a letter to the department chair is the way to go. Looie496 (talk) 15:50, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Request for feedback on Wiki Education Foundation governance

The Wiki Education Foundation is the organization that is proposed to take over the coordination role of the US/Canada Education Program from the WMF after June of this year. It's applying for thematic organization status; the proposal is here.

There is a question I would like to get specific feedback on from the editors involved with the EP. The board is intended to be made of three people who represent the Misplaced Pages community, three who represent the educator community, one from the WMF, and one who represents chapters and any additional groups that form with a specific interest in education and Misplaced Pages (e.g. there might be a group that focuses on one university or one academic discipline). There are four more optional appointed seats.

It's going to be fairly easy to select Wikipedians -- some form of on-wiki election will work. But how should we plan to get educators on the board, and who should select them? Should the educators be elected by the Misplaced Pages community plus educators, or by educators only, or should they be selected by the board, or is there some other method we should follow? I can think of pros and cons for all three options. Allowing the community to vote on educator seats will almost certainly overwhelm the few votes of the educators, but on the other hand this is a role that will affect the community, so they should have a say. Voting by educators only is more likely to give us educators that have the support of the other educators in the community, and in any case they only constitute three of the eight to twelve seats, so they can't be a majority; on the other hand very few educators are sufficiently interested or knowledgeable about the program now and would have no basis for voting for any particular candidate. Selections by the board will solve the problem of there being a small group of educators involved, since the board can search out candidates with the skills it needs; but this is the least democratic approach (though the board, with multiple Wikipedians on it, will have that perspective in its selection process).

Any comments? The exact method of the elections doesn't have to be decided now -- it's more a question of what's the appropriate electorate for this group of board members. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:18, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I doubt that educators would be able to contribute usefully unless they have experience both in education and in working with Misplaced Pages. If you set both of those as criteria, I think the number of candidates is not going to be very large. Looie496 (talk) 15:36, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's true. There are two professors on the current interim board; both have taught using Misplaced Pages but have limited editing experience themselves. They've been extremely valuable to the board. If you include teaching with Misplaced Pages in "experience ... in working with Misplaced Pages" then you may be right, though I think the right person, with the right contacts, might still be valuable to the board if they were motivated but had little direct experience of working with it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:29, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

"...both have taught using Misplaced Pages but have limited editing experience themselves." Ummm... how? I see this as the primary cause of some previous problems with professors assigning Misplaced Pages editing in classes; they didn't actually have a damn clue how it functions. I'm not a brain surgeon, but I have the sense to know that glancing through a book about synapses doesn't mean I'd then be able to teach brain surgery. Presenting pre-vetted candidates to the community for voting makes sense to me. We would thus need info on each candidate, much like the requests for course instructor right shows that they "get it". --Geniac (talk) 03:38, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that professors who don't "get it" are the most likely to cause problems. The two professors on the board right now are BobCummings (talk · contribs) and DStrassmann (talk · contribs); you can see for yourself what their contributions history is. Diana Strassmann is teaching a class this semester: Poverty, Gender, and Human Development. I haven't worked with Bob's classes directly, but Diana's students do good work. Both Bob and Diana have been absolutely invaluable on the board, and I wouldn't want to see criteria that would prevent us from electing educators like them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:17, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

It would be good if you could summarize their contributions, because as you say their input on-wiki has been minimal at best. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:39, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think I can summarize their contributions, but I'd like to mention a couple of things as examples of what they have contributed. Not all relevant experience for our purposes is on-wiki experience, so I'll mention a couple of non-Misplaced Pages related items first: Bob is helping with the budget planning; he has experience with budgeting using the accounting system at his institution, and is using that GL breakdown to put the initial line items together; and Diana has prior experience being on the board of a non-profit and was the person who located the pro bono lawyer for us, which is going to save us a good deal of money. Both of them are also working on locating an academic institution where we might become embedded in an existing office infrastructure, rather than having to run our own admin, payroll, accounting and so on; I can't be specific since so far these are just inquiries, but this is one of the most important things we can get done this spring. (These are just examples; they have both been significant contributors in many ways throughout the past year.) As far as Misplaced Pages-related experience is concerned I suggest anyone interested review their courses to see if what they've done has been beneficial to the encyclopedia -- we argue, rightly, that failing to "get" Misplaced Pages is likely to lead to harmful classes, and to me that implies the reverse: running successful classes means that the instructor "gets" Misplaced Pages. (I've worked with Diana's students but not Bob's.) In addition, take a look at Misplaced Pages:Communicate OER which Bob is involved with. I can't pull examples out of the past year of discussion that illustrate their (or anyone else's) contributions to the Misplaced Pages-related aspects of the discussions but they have been valuable members of the team. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:36, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

These all sound like marvellous reasons for the Board to co-opt such people among the four members that it has allocated to self-select. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 16:15, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I think Mike did a nice job of laying out the various pluses and minuses. I suppose one option would be for the Board to do an initial screening, and then present a group of pre-vetted candidates to the Misplaced Pages community for voting. One question I have might help figure out the right answer to the question Mike asks: how would the candidates be presented to whoever votes? In other words, what kinds of information about each educator candidate would accompany the ballots? I'm wondering about that because I'm trying to figure how Wikipedians would evaluate one educator candidate versus another, and likewise how other educators would evaluate one from another. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:57, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

That's two people who've suggested a shortlist; I think that could work. How about the electorate -- do educators vote on educators, and Wikipedians on Wikipedians, or do both vote on both? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:17, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, the question is should we combine the electorates for editors and involved educators, so that together as a combined community they elect 50% of the Wiki Education Foundation board (with of those selected, three seats having editor credentials and three having educator credentials)? Or do we separate them, so that each elects 25%?--Pharos (talk) 20:57, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd have thought this would be fairly easy: have one election, on wiki, with the stipulation that three of the people elected must be educators (defined in some fashion or another: does this include librarians, contract staff, TAs, etc.). I can't say I like the sound of "pre-vetted candidates," especially as the board is self-selecting four additional members in any case. Those seats can be used for non-contributing faculty such as Bob and Diana, if the board feels it fit. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:39, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

• I suggest that we consider approaching profs who have published at least some work in the field of how to teach their field. People who know a little pedagogic theory. Gender and geographic balance would be a bonus. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:54, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: Go Phightins!

Go Phightins!

Go Phightins! (talk · contribs)

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

   I think that I have a good skill set for this kind of work which is shown in my work in adoption and at the Teahouse. I am looking for a new challenge and think that I would enjoy this type of interaction and would be pretty good at it too.

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

   I am active at the baseball WikiProject and am semi-active at the politics WikiProject and the the American football WikiProject and have totaled seven good articles and five did you know articles. Outside of article space, I am active at the Teahouse, where I have had several stints as maitre d' and have adopted probably somewhere between 5 and 10 new users in the past four or so months. I founded the editor of the week project and would like to think that I am pretty good in editor retention. There's my three sentences, so that's all for now.

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

   This page lists all of my promoted content, but probably the best work I have done is on Jim Thome, which is currently a featured article candidate and if it passes will be my first FA. I usually take a stub or start-class article and bring it up as far as my interest and sources I can find will take it. I did some work on articles related to the 2012 College Football Bowl season such as 2012 New Mexico Bowl and 2013 Cotton Bowl Classic.

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

   As mentioned, I have done a lot of work at the Teahouse and am involved in the adopt-a-user program.

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

   I think that helping new users resolve disputes amicably and making editing something that is fun rather than work would be the best way to engage them. Also, I think that, especially early on, some positive reinforcement (e.g., barnstars) makes users feel valued, and if someone feels valued, they will want to keep coming back.

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

   The biggest conflict I had was in October with a new user with whom I edit conflicted on his new page. I did not communicate as well as I could have, but he eventually was blocked for a battleground mentality and has not been back since. Interestingly, I was just re-reading this dispute earlier today before I even decided to apply as an ambassador. Other than that slight hiccup, I think that I have stayed relatively conflict-free.

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

   I am online in one way or another for at least two hours per day and keep me watchlist open whenever my browser is open refreshing periodically, so I usually respond to queries quickly...I occasionally am away for a few days at a time, but when I am I leave a template on my talk page to let people know and as soon as I get back I respond to whatever I missed.

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

   After I see a contribution, I would copy a couple of sentences to the clipboard and simply google it and see if it came up elsewhere online. If so, it is likely a copyright violation. When a student uses offline sources such as books, that would be harder for me to check...I would probably see if I could find a copy of the book online and if not perhaps check the library. Other than that, I would just have to assume good faith.

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

   First and foremost, the copyright violation needs to be removed as soon as possible, so removing that would be priority number one. After removal, then a discussion can be initiated with the editor to discuss the issue. There is no need to beat the editor up over it, just make it clear that copyright violations are not acceptable.

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

    A copyright violation is when someone takes what is not their own and claims it as their own. There are a few obvious exceptions (public domain, fair use), but generally speaking, if it isn't yours, you shouldn't be copying it.

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

    Nothing is coming to mind...

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• Support Certainly a good choice for something like this. Very good helping new users. Very good in general. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • AAPT) 03:11, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Looks fine to me; I looked over a couple of interactions with new users and miscellaneous other edits and see no problems. Experienced enough. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:06, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

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