Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

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Course coordinator currently involved in an ArbCom case relating to a course they are teaching

There will likely be an ArbCom case (Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Holocaust in Poland) relating to User:Chapmansh. To rehash the drama, Chapmansh/Shira Klein recently published an article in an academic journal [1] accusing several Wikipedia editors of coordinating offsite to distort facts relating to the Holocaust. This has prompted ArbCom to propose a case in which Chapmansh may be made a party. Needless to say, this is going to be a big case especially given that it involves Icewhiz.

The reason why I'm posting this to the education notice board is because User:Chapmansh is teaching the course Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Chapman University/Jewish Life from Napoleon to Hitler (Spring 2023). In past iterations of this course,[2] students have edited in the Holocaust topic area.

I would say that if Chapmansh coordinates editing offsite in the Holocaust topic area during this ArbCom case it will probably not be an enjoyable experience for the student editors. Regardless of whether there is a conflict of interest, the students will probably be under a microscope the entire time given how many people are involved in this case. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 16:58, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Oy. Well, at least given that the class clearly includes a lot of historical scope prior to the Holocaust, we could presumably direct Klein and her students to stick to the non-Holocaust stuff, at least for this semester? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:07, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@Rosguill: That's what I would imagine is the best choice here onwiki (as well as to avoid Poland). I'll ping User:Brianda (Wiki Ed) who is the Wiki Ed expert assigned to that course. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 17:21, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Pardon me for butting in, I saw this mentioned at WP:ARC and thought I could help by clarifying a few things. The topic area of the Arbcom case, and the journal article, is not "Holocaust", but "Holocaust in Poland". In Wikispeak, that's part of WP:APL. WP:APL has, since May 2020, been covered by (what we now call) WP:ARBECR, which means that non-extended-confirmed editors can't edit in that topic area. If you look at the "past iterations of this course" link by Chess above, none of the students listed are extended-confirmed, and none of them edited in the WP:APL topic area--all those articles are outside of WP:APL. In sum: apparently WikiEd students already stay out of the topic area, and have for a couple years. Levivich (talk) 17:58, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@Levivich: That's true, though keep in mind offwiki coordination by Klein has come up during the ArbCom case. There's nothing wrong with student editors contributing to our coverage of the Holocaust, but the perception that Klein is trying to influence Wikipedia's coverage of certain topics by using her position is something that could be discussed during the case.

Regardless of whether or not this is true, student editors could very easily wander into a minefield they aren't remotely prepared for. Your claim that none of them edited in the WP:APL topic area isn't actually true. ZyerAbdullah123 appears to have removed someone else's talk page comment on Polish death camps during the 2021 course. [3]

While I doubt that was intentional and is very minor (not even worthy of anything beyond a gentle reminder), people have a habit of assuming bad faith during very controversial ArbCom cases. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 19:16, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

An unsupported claim of offwiki coordination was made by an involved party, it should not be repeated and has no bearing here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:22, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Accidentally removing a talk page comment does not constitute editing in the topic area. And you say "trying to influence Wikipedia's coverage" as if it's a bad thing. I welcome scholars trying to "influence Wikipedia's coverage" by pointing out problems in that coverage. I welcome teachers trying to "influence Wikipedia's coverage" by teaching students how to edit. Levivich (talk) 19:35, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Although an accidental removal is not topic area editing, I think the point is that these things attract excessive attention during controversial ArbCom cases, and it does no service to students, or to the students' educational experience, to unwittingly find themselves in the middle of that. It's not about whether or not the students do anything wrong, but rather, about trying to keep the students from getting needlessly caught up in wiki-drama. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I think Levivich makes a valid point that due to not being e-confirmed, the students can't edit this area much even if they wanted to. On the other hand, there are still many minor articles related to this topic area which don't have the right protection level slapped in, I believe, so as Chess' correctly notes with their example, they may occasionally stumble into the "minefield". To add another example: in the companion piece that the authors published in a Polish newspaper a few days ago [4], they actually mentioned that Klein became interested in the Wiki-side of the narrative after one of her students editing the History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland article (which is now e-c portended but wasn't back in 2018) got into a dispute with an editor who told him not to cite historian Jan T. Gross (the authors erroneously claimed that editor was myself, while in fact that editor who criticized Gross was Xx236; meanwhile I defended Gross and helped the student, for which Klein thanked me - see Talk:History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland/Archive_4#Postwar_Antisemitism; that misattribution error confusing me with Xx236 already got fixed in the Polish news article which now sports a small correction note - one error down, dozens more to go, sigh). Anyway, the point I am making is that it is possible the students will occasionally run into issues, but I wouldn't worry to much about it, those have been and likely will be isolated incidents. Teaching experience on all sides, really. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:04, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, nobody should be going around to stalk/hound these students' edits in the absence of clear evidence of (a) bad faith, or (b) significant policy violations. Their professor writing an article about a topic shouldn't affect the status of their students. The reality, however, is that students in this class will simply be more likely to run into this kind of problematic behavior, and should be aware of what they're getting into. For what it's worth, anyone following these students around and/or undoing their work will themselves be subject to heightened scrutiny, too. A good practice would be to encourage anyone who's wary of jumping in to just edit in userspace rather than article space, moving good content into articles after some review (a good practice with controversial subject areas regardless). But Chapmansh has run many Wikipedia assignments in the past, and likely knows a thing or two about editing controversial topics from both teaching and research, so I don't anticipate anything in this thread coming as a surprise. At the end of the day, if there's something the article and the arbcom case make clear, it's that there's room for improvement in Holocaust-related articles, and it would be great to have additional editors making policy-based improvements. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:07, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I'll confirm here that User:Chapmansh's students will not be working on topics related to Poland. We at Wiki Education understand the sensitivity around this topic, and are working closely with Champansh to ensure students are adequately supported for any edits they make. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:33, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

"Off the rails" school project resuming

Flagging that Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive_23#Possible_school_project_off_the_rails has started up again this month, with students being asked to create American artist biographies without much regard for copyright, and no course page.

It seems to be a project that's run every May and December for the last few years, and I've tried putting a custom notice on Draft:Kim Abeles and other relevant pages this time around. I did get one brief confirmation from a student last week that it's a class project (I looked up my artist on the site, and no results came up) and they said they'd tell their tutor to create a course page, but these articles are still being created today.

Given the apparently small number of articles, it may just be one tutor using an inappropriate lesson plan for a few dozen students. Not sure if there's anything else that can be done at this point, but I thought I'd keep the noticeboard updated in case anybody else was encountering it. Belbury (talk) 19:52, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

@Belbury: Any other potential members of the class. I am wondering if CU can be helpful here to figure out the school -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 21:22, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

A search for the names of artists whose drafts get recreated every six months will show you some of the student accounts who've created those drafts, or edited the actual biographies directly where they exist. These are the named recurring artists that I've noticed so far:

• Bryan Ida
• Emily Rinehardt
• Kim Abeles
• Rafa Esparza
• Elana Mann
• Jemima Wyman
• Veronique d'Entremont
• Cassandra Casas
• Jennifer Moon
• Joanne Julian
• Zackary Drucker

Talk:Rafa Esparza has a couple of educational assignment templates on it, but this is likely to just be a coincidence. These draft articles are still being created as of today, so the class is still active for now. There are also a lot of photos uploaded earlier in 2023 and even back in 2022 which are violating copyright on Commons, I've been flagging the ones that I've found. --Belbury (talk) 12:43, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

@Guerillero: I don't know what Wikipedia's best practice is for publicly identifying and contacting people in this kind of situation, but student Eebee Beebee is still being active and helpful on their talk page if it'd be appropriate to ask more about their school or their professor's contact details. Belbury (talk) 10:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks like the discussion with Eebee Beebee is going well so far (other than the teacher not yet reading their emails).

I had been wondering before reading that conversation if, for these pages, we might need to try having these identified repeats bumped up to extended confirmed edit access to curtail this 'redraft of an existing article' pattern and whether EC was the next logical step or something else might be better (AC would be too low). And what (if any) unintended consequences that might have for the Wikipedia community. Hopefully that conversation connects and this rogue assignment gets fixed without needing to consider any further steps. Zinnober9 (talk) 03:00, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Even without page protection we've already had Draft:Rafa Esparaza, Draft:Rafa Esparza, Draft:RAFA ESPARZA, Draft:Rafa Esparza - his Impactful Work, Draft:Rafa Esparza (ART-2100) where multiple students have used a different title when their first attempt was taken. Some users will also make a user sandbox instead (there are already dozens of these about Esparza) which still might be submitted as drafts that get patiently reviewed and rejected.

I'd go for a clear "problem project" warning template at the top of relevant drafts: telling the students that their teacher is clearly running a class project that goes against Wikipedia guidelines, highlighting the big problems with it (that students are using copyrighted text and images from the web, and that submitting twenty different versions of the same biography doesn't help Wikipedia much) and saying that they need to tell their teacher to set up a course page.

Maybe it should even go as far as giving the students explicit instruction/permission in Wikipedia's voice to stop working on the project. Belbury (talk) 09:50, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I've created a userspace template for this project alone at User:Belbury/Template:Abeles and put it onto the articles, as well as updating the context (and adding a fuller list of target biographies) at Draft talk:Kim Abeles. --Belbury (talk) 10:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I have put two parameters in the template to tell students that an article already exists. The first parameter specifies the article's title if it already exists, and the second parameter is when Wikipedia had that article. Example: {{User:Belbury/Template:Abeles|Wikipedia|2001}} ~~2NumForIce (^speak|_edits) 16:18, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Would it make any sense to create a placeholder project page for this, rather than a discussion that restarts every six months, and drafts that expire as abandoned? I've been linking to Draft talk:Kim Abeles as a unified reference point, but that draft will probably get deleted again at some point. --Belbury (talk) 11:11, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Should we start deleting the abandonded userspace drafts? They clutter up search-results, making it that much harder to try to track each new semester and potentially elicit a response from an active students. But they also demonstrate the depth and breadth of this ongoing disruption. Or should we replace them with the template (great job, Belbury!)? DMacks (talk) 16:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Search results aren't too badly affected because you can sort by edit/creation date, but there are undoubtedly some outright copyright violations in there where a student has just copied text from the artist's web page (Draft:Bryan Ida had some redactions of copyrighted text today). Belbury (talk) 16:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

There's also BLP. While we sometimes let bare bio facts remain uncited for a while during GF article development (and just tag/remove them at the point of AFC triage and moving to mainspace), that's not the ultimate endpoint of them. My main goal is to stop the time-sink of everyone who cleans up here for what demonstratably does not lead to a WP benefit. DMacks (talk) 16:41, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

... and there are also copyvio image issues which I'm still finding today where a student doesn't name the artist (or spells their name wrong) when uploading a photo they found online to Commons, meaning that the file doesn't turn up in a cross-wiki search for the artist name. We will have to check all of these drafts by hand for copyrighted images, whether or not we delete them. Belbury (talk) 15:56, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Could also start with the centralauth of the accounts. c:COM:PCP and "cross-wiki disruption" are valid rationales and there are some tools that can handle "all uploads of an account" in a single pass. DMacks (talk) 20:10, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

...which I now see you are well-versed in using. Thanks! DMacks (talk) 19:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Is {{uw-create3}} a reasonable starting-point? While the student themself might be making a good-faith edit because they're getting bad advice, that student's behavior is part of a long-term disruption from a CIR advisor, so there's MEAT here. I feel bad not AGF for each student, but seems like patience is wearing thin for the situation as a whole. DMacks (talk) 16:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Creating a draft/sandbox article is very consistently the last thing that these students do, it's presumably the final task in the Wikipedia section of their course. They only create one draft each; the entire contribution of 99% of these students is to edit three or four fashion articles in one week, and to create a single draft article in a later week. Then they abandon their Wikipedia account forever. Warning them against article creation isn't going to change anything that's happening here. Belbury (talk) 17:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

As in past years, this project seems to have ended before Christmas, with students abandoning their drafts and leaving Wikipedia. I'm assuming we never heard anything from the teacher, so we'll see if the next class is asked to write the same drafts again in May. --Belbury (talk) 14:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Academic studies of Wikipedia in education

Hi All,

I created a new page listing the academic studies available about the use of Wikipedia in education. I hope this can be useful for anyone considering using Wiki in education. It is still missing a lot of papers so feel free to expand.

Best wishes,

Adam Harangozó (talk) 14:42, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you! Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Student editor needs help

Faizæ self-describes as a student in a course a year ago, and another course currently, but doesn't indicate the institution. He keeps getting into trouble over copyright violations and the like, and could definitely use some guidance. It's possible that the school is outside of North America. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Just found this: [5], so he's in Turkey, and thus outside of WikiEd. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

There's a classmate at Talk:Autism spectrum#Suggestions from Gizempsy. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 01:30, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Since they're in Türkiye, pinging @HakanIST, Zafer, and Basak: in case they can help! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:15, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, LiAnna. My concerns are:

• I have not checked that Gizempsy's talk page section for copyvio
• I'm uncertain if they have learned the guidelines on biomedical information.

Hopefully, we can make the students' experiences less frustrating and more fruitful. Thanks again! Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 23:08, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Also: Scientific Pen, per [6]. Student has problems visible on their user talk page. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

New Wiki Education Dashboard feature: preventing assignment of specific articles

I have a new feature ready to deploy soon (thanks to volunteer developer Abishek). It will let us prevent student editors from choosing specific articles for their assignments, based on an on-wiki category. The idea is that we can add a hidden category (or talk page category) to an article like Bubble tea that perennially attracts student editors but isn't actually a fruitful article to work on, and the Dashboard will prevent anyone from being assigned that article.

I can configure it to point to any single category; I was thinking something like Category:Wiki Education assignment blocklist, but I'm open to suggestions. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Sage. Great new feature; this should help. The block in Blocklist seems too close to WP:BLOCK, which can't apply to an article, of course, but might make me think that it goes on the User talk page of blocked students, so that doesn't seem like the right idea. Also, a category name usually suggests some attribute of the articles or pages that are members of the category, and the only type of articles that should belong to a category that is a "something-something-list" is an article whose title has "list" in it, or that amounts to a list without the word list. I'm thinking something like, Category:Articles restricted from Wiki Ed assignment. (Other possibilities: excluded, unsuitable, discouraged, inappropriate, etc.) But I'm not a category-gnome, and I think you might get better feedback if you cross-posted or linked this section from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories; they'll have good advice for you, I'm sure. Mathglot (talk) 08:59, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I like the feature! But I dislike the implementation. Using a category seems too decentralized, and therefore difficult to audit/control (and therefore prevent abuse and disruption/confusion). And this really is only about WikiEd's inner workings, not about the page. How about instead a page that lists all the restricted pages? That way it's a single location to monitor and control. This new feature would therefore be parallel to MediaWiki:Bad image list, another single-page centralized list of other pages that have restricted use. DMacks (talk) 09:00, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

They would be centrally listed at Category:Wiki Educational assignment blocklist, no? And you could watchlist it to monitor things being added and removed. I like the idea of using a category because it makes the status visible to editors of the page, not just watchers of the central list, and means we can include it in templates like {{Pp}} or {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}}, that define classes of articles that students really ought to steer clear of. – Joe (talk) 11:38, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Do any editors except WikiEd actually care (or even know what it means)? It seems like you're ceding control of limiting the students to anyone and everyone (WikiEd can watch the cat, but any editor at all can add/remove the cat tag on any article).

Having it automatically applied by Contentious Topics tag is nice though. But isn't that tag placed on the talkpage rather than the article? Thinking in that direction, so are all the other WikiEd messages. So if this is a cat feature, maybe it should be cat of the talk pages of the articles for consistency. The talk-page is the place for everything about development of the article, which this is, rather than the actual article-topic prose. DMacks (talk) 11:56, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Do any editors except WikiEd actually care? It started with requests from community members if we could find a way to give certain articles a break from student editing (it started with the bubble tea article).

The idea of having it apply to pages rather than a centralised list is something that I think is important. In my mind, the decision that an article is getting too much unwanted student attention is something that an editor interested in the article should decide.

Student editing in no big deal for people who know this noticeboard exists, but I come across a lot of editors who seem to feel powerless against what feels to them like a tsunami of student editing. My advocacy for this change came from an editing perspective, not from a staff perspective. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:36, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

My concern would be nearly the opposite. There are a lot of editors with strong feelings about student editors and their pet topic/articles. If there's a simple technical intervention (adding a category/template to a talk page) which would prevent it, it will not just be used but abused. What guidelines are in place to prevent someone from just adding it by default to every article they work on to avoid having to interact with student editors, or an especially protective wikiproject from, say, incorporating it into their wikiproject tag? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:52, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. Maybe the system could use a central page-list entry of a category as being 'exclude every page in this category' (and again, using the article associated with a categorized talkpage) rather than 'exclude this Category:... page'? Like cascading-protection. Then the idea of excluding CTOP is easy, and likewise any other swath of pages that has consensus to do so, but again "not just anyone" can block any random page from students. DMacks (talk) 19:06, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I can imagine a system where we have a subpage under ENB called Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Requests for page restriction that would operate somewhat like Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. So, rather than any editor adding a category that would automatically block a page, we'd have a forum where such requests could be made, just like requests for page protection. Probably we'd create a handy template to make it easier to do, along with accompanying template doc explaining what is expected of a requester, including the justification for the request, and so on. Wiki Ed folks would play the same role that admins at WP:RPP play, i.e., examining requests and make the call whether to add the page (or category, or whatever) to the restricted list, or not. Mathglot (talk) 09:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Ambiguous Wiki Ed course name

Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Madison College/English 2 (Spring). Madison College is a disambiguation page listing several schools. It should presumably be renamed to Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Madison Area Technical College/English 2 (Spring). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:10, 15 January 2024 (UTC)