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Contentious topics edit
Is there any guideline, recommendation, or opinion at Wiki Ed about whether students should be assigned articles designated as a Contentious topic? Currently, Gender and Technoculture 320-01 (assisted by Brianda) has students assigned to Gender-critical feminism, Feminist views on transgender topics, and Transphobia, all designated as contentious. (There may be others, I only checked the ones I thought would be.) I checked the archives, but the only discussion related to this topic was this one, and it isn't directly relevant. Tryptofish started that one, so might have an opinion on this. Mathglot (talk) 05:14, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping. My understanding is that we have a consensus that student editors should steer clear of CTOPs, and that WikiEd advises students of this. But of course, some students initially do it anyway. In my experience, once the WikiEd advisor finds out about it, they can be counted on to tell the students to find a different page, and point it out to the instructor. I expect this will happen here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks Tryptofish & Mathglot. We do try to steer classes away from contentious topics, but given the large swaths of Wikipedia that are or were covered, we take a more nuanced approach. For example, climate change articles have rarely proven to be a problem for student editors (at least in the dimension of them being contentious), so over the years we changed our approach from steering classes away from those topics to encouraging certain types of classes to participate.
- We've supported a large number of feminism-related classes (this class alone has run 22 times before this term) and improving the topic area is important. While the arbcom ruling is limited to "gender-related disputes or controversies and associated people", it isn't always clear up front what's disputed or controversial and what isn't. But telling instructors and students they need to stay clear of "gender", as a whole, on Wikipedia, probably would be.
- We try to strike a balance between steering students away from categories of articles where they're unlikely to have a good experience, and trying to help them understand how to edit collegially. In this case, Brianda has gone over the list of articles that students assigned themselves and suggested that they might want to drop certain topics, while also trying to provide extra support in the event students do run into problems. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
{{Draft:Article attribute decoration|contentious|Transphobia}}→
{{Draft:Article attribute decoration|contentious|Iguana}}→
- (Don't worry about the icon; you can either embed it in an #if, or maybe I'll provide yes-no booleans later; also, this draft template may cease working or work differently at any time; it's still in development.) The point I wanted to make, though, is that "contentious" can be well-defined, if we want it to be, by associating it with presence/absence of Talk page templates. Mathglot (talk) 22:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
- Ian, one approach that I think would be helpful to WikiEd staff when deciding whether or not to steer a student away is to look for whether or not there is a CTOP warning template, or edit notice, on the talk page. If there is such a warning already present for a given page, then it should probably be pretty close to automatic to tell the student and the instructor. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hope this helps. Mathglot (talk) 00:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
- (Don't worry about the icon; you can either embed it in an #if, or maybe I'll provide yes-no booleans later; also, this draft template may cease working or work differently at any time; it's still in development.) The point I wanted to make, though, is that "contentious" can be well-defined, if we want it to be, by associating it with presence/absence of Talk page templates. Mathglot (talk) 22:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
- The reality is that student edits to these high-traffic, highly controversial articles are simply going to be reverted. Frankly it's a waste of both the student's and community's time to be assigning articles like gender-critical feminism as Mathglot mentioned, whose student editor just got predictably reverted instantly. An article which has already gone through lots of debate and consensus-making is not going to be the type of article which is accepting of the (typically lower quality) contributions from student editors. Endwise (talk) 00:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- I want to add that simply and predictably ending up reverted is a poor educational experience for the student. I realize that sometimes editors can be reluctant to say "no" to students or instructors about page choices, but we do the class no favor by having things go this way. (And I also want to add that editors should never hesitate to revert student edits that need to be reverted.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Ayup, just like clockwork, Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 23#Surprise, another semester, another undeclared school project making a mess of fashion articles is ramping up with one-off uncited edits to a not-small pool of articles. They never discuss. They often don't ever make a second edit. They do not always hit the same articles, so protection is not very useful. But they often do hit the same articles, so better to leave them unprotected as a honeypot with a hair trigger? That's really a horrible non-solution. I'm fairly confident I know which school it is. DMacks (talk) 03:13, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
UNLV related madness. Well, confusion and weirdness. Thanks -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:15, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
- Hello. Am I within your protocols to ask an instructor to follow WP:Student assignments in the future?
- Some background. About four or five students from a University of Minnesota class on "social computing" have been making their edits to Minneapolis. I welcomed the first one. Then we decided something was up and I erroneously reported the whole bunch as part of our years-long sockpuppet farm. I wrote to their instructor, who says he's had students editing for years and that this class has completed their assignment. This class was unlucky to coincide with an old page protection removal on March 4, which was restored on March 29.
- I apologized and emailed the first person who I unfairly accused of sockpuppetry. I hope he forgives me.
- The Minneapolis article is in extended featured article review, and in the middle of a contentious RfC, which has postponed the FAR process. Then came this class on top. I skimmed a bit of WikiEducation; it says that if they choose their own, students should select underdeveloped articles to work on. Minneapolis is as far from underdeveloped as one can get.
- Spicy kindly supplied the link to WP:Student assignments during the sockpuppet investigation. It's completely new to me.
-SusanLesch (talk) 15:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
- It sounds to me like you handled it very sensitively, thanks. The one additional thing that needs to be done is to tell the instructor that he is expected to conduct his on-Wikipedia classes with WikiEd. The educational institution is in the US, so it's within WikiEd's remit, and working with them would have avoided any of these problems having happened. The links to WikiEd are at the student assignments information page, and also at the top of this noticeboard. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
- Tryptofish, thanks for your kind reply. Done. -SusanLesch (talk) 21:16, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
- The instructor, Loren Terveen of GroupLens Research, did not reply to my follow up. I'm afraid he might think they're too busy studying Wikipedia to participate. Would anyone here like to send them an email? I sent mine to the five Ph.D.s pictured on the project home page.
- You all taught me something. I am busy reading Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers and associated guidelines.
- I found an undergraduate course in your archives that strikes me as a good example from the U of M Twin Cities.
- SusanLesch (talk) 18:10, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
- Hi SusanLesch, just letting you know my organization, Wiki Education, exists to help support faculty who are teaching with Wikipedia in higher education institutions in the US and Canada. The course page you referenced there is one of ours; the course from the social computing class isn't one of ours, but after it was brought to our attention earlier this year, we reached out and asked the instructor to join us in future terms, to which they seemed amenable. We also understand that course is over for this term. So hopefully any future students of theirs will receive our support. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:07, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for your reply, LiAnna (Wiki Ed). Last week's train wreck doesn't appear to correspond with "earlier this year". But I put in my request to you guys and that's all I can do. Best wishes, -SusanLesch (talk) 13:32, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
It appears that several students from Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Algoma University/Introduction to Community Economic and Social Development II (Winter 2024) have been making some substandard edits, including the creation of Indie dog of India (see that page's history), and other edits using first person, with unsourced additions, copy pasting copyrighted material, etc. None of the edits seem particularly malevolent, but it makes me question whether proper Wikipedia policies were fully discussed in class.
Not sure if this is something someone should bring up with the instructor. I haven't checked all the student editors, and some are just editing in their sandboxes, but others (including User:Abhi Suthar, User:Hr54ankush, User:Jashann, and User:Amrsandhu) are not. ForsythiaJo (talk) 04:14, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
- @ForsythiaJo I got in touch the instructor yesterday and they've agreed to tell their students to stop editing, at least until we can figure out what's going on with so many of the students. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:43, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
- @Ian (Wiki Ed), whatever you did isn't working, because I've just had to revert @Abhisheksaini007 twice for adding crap to International students in Canada. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:33, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
- See also:
- Music of Haryana edited by Aditya001x (talk · contribs)
- Kheer edited by Rajatrana1 (talk · contribs)
- Agricultural pollution edited by Nikhil Kashyap 1 (talk · contribs)
- International student edited by Gurshan0001c (talk · contribs)
- Wracking talk! 05:17, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
- See also:
- @Ian (Wiki Ed), whatever you did isn't working, because I've just had to revert @Abhisheksaini007 twice for adding crap to International students in Canada. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:33, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
See User talk:HJ Mitchell#About blocking some of the users, this mentions a bunch of student accounts being globally locked and blocked here. I have some knowledge of this, given that I made this Steward requests/Global report that most likely contains some of the mentioned locks. Anybody know of this class? Pinging HJ Mitchell. v/r - Seawolf35 T--C 08:15, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
- This is not one of Wiki Education's, and looks like it might not be in the U.S. If you do find out the name of the school, I can try to connect them to support in their location. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:33, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
- This looks like it's related to Government Medical College Bhavnagar (this link, provided by AminMDMA (talk · contribs), does not work for me). See discussion at User talk:AminMDMA and User talk:Arjayay. Wracking talk! 05:37, 13 April 2024 (UTC)