Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SandyGeorgia (talk | contribs) at 02:31, 11 December 2014 (→I simply don't know: catching up). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Template:Active editnotice

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.

Archives (Index)

1 1 2 3 4 s/6 5 6 7

W. B. Yeats

Can someone here, who has time, take a look at W. B. Yeats. It's a featured article and apparently part of a class project, . I'm sorry if I've been bitey, and probably it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a campus ambassador with better people skills than I have to explain the complexities of editing featured articles. Also, I think that's something that should be mentioned in the training. My inclination right now is to let them do the work and then revert after they're done. Victoria (tk) 00:13, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I took a look, and I think that what you and other experienced editors have been doing is fine. I noticed that you said on the talk page that you were concerned that the students' grades might be affected. You may find it helpful to see WP:NOTTA, where it is made clear that student grades are never Misplaced Pages editors' problem, and you should feel free to revert whatever needs to be reverted, following the usual practices of talk page discussion (as you have been doing). If student edits are reverted, putting the students through the process of going to talk is, or ought to be, part of the education process, once an instructor has decided to use Misplaced Pages (and instructors who haven't thought of that aren't doing their jobs). I see that the students have already had Template:Welcome student put on their talk pages (one red-linked editor has not, not sure if that's a student, but maybe that one should get it too), so that's exactly right. Anyway, stewardship of FAs trumps any perceived student "own"ership of a page. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tryptofish for responding. After sleeping on this and thinking about it, I agree with you. I'll probably end up reverting again, but first will try to go through the page, figure out what was done, and explain why I've reverted (which will be a huge task as it was basically done in a single edit). At that point edits can be added back if consensus is achieved. It would be nice if we could determine who is running this class and have some outreach. I get the sense that we're *only* Misplaced Pages editors and perhaps don't understand the subject, and my view is that professors should never assume who might be curating or what their qualifications are. Anyway, this will take a lot of time to sort out. Also, since I'm here posting a general call out to the people who are involved with Wiki Ed: this is the last week of classes for many colleges in the US. I, myself, have final projects to grade this week, and so am very busy, yet at the same time am dealing with the Yeats issue and another that was brought to my attention on my talk - is there any chance of getting more eyes on these boards in the next few weeks? Thanks. Victoria (tk) 17:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Good luck with that :) The Education Program has ruined all of my Thanksgiving holidays for quite a few years now, since students are cramming to get bad edits in just as US editors are preparing for holidays. The Education Program is little able to do much about that, and few professors seem aware of WP:OWN#Featured articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:09, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I don’t have any record of this student being in a Wiki Ed affiliated course, and we prioritize helping student editors (especially during busy times like now) who are enrolled in the courses we’re affiliated with. That being said, if you or anyone else does get in touch with the instructor, I encourage you to connect them with us so the instructor and students can go through our system next term, hopefully heading off problems like this in the future. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2014 (UTC) 

So you would like us to do the leg-work, even though we're unpaid volunteers? Victoria (tk) 22:07, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Let me be super clear: Wiki Ed takes full responsibility for classes that we have brought to Misplaced Pages. We train those instructors, we check their assignment design to make sure it's good for Misplaced Pages, and we step in if those classes have problems. When we have time, we're happy to help out with classes that are not part of our program, just like any other community member can, and as Helaine said, we're happy to try to educate instructors (assuming this class is a university class and in the US or Canada, which is the boundaries we work in) about how to do good Misplaced Pages assignments so they can be part of our program in the future. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:06, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To Victoriaearle's point, perhaps Template:Welcome student (and Template:Welcome medical student) should either be strengthened, to tell students to tell their instructor of the need to identify themselves and the course, or a new template should be created for that purpose. As I see it, once one of us unpaid volunteers has put a useful message via template on a student editor's talkpage, there really isn't a reason for us to dig deeper than that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

We can hat this or archive it or whatever. Thanks LiAnna for being super clear. Got the message. Loud and clear. Victoria (tk) 23:19, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Adding: LiAnna, I think your comment was quite rude, given that there are unpaid volunteers who have historically done quite a bit at this time of year. I've spent almost as much time today trying to help students from an unknown class as I have on the assignment I'm working on for my own class. Oh, yes, btw. I am a professor and I've been bringing students through here each semester for the past five years. But I've done it outside of WikiEd because I don't share your philosophy. I've had some conversations with a few people who are interested about how I do what I do, but mostly your group isn't interested. Which is fine. However, insulting an unpaid volunteer who is trying to help, trying to make things easier for students, and at the same time hoping to get the professor's attention is not helpful. Finding the class isn't hard. It can be done by looking at the contribs, the editors, etc. I'll follow up on my own with the university and try to find the professor because right now I'm ashamed that we invite students to edit here and yet when an unpaid volunteer asks for assistance the reply is prefaced by a "Let me be super clear". Victoria (tk) 23:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

@Victoriaearle: I'm sorry that I came off sounding rude or insulting to you; that wasn't my intent at all. I was trying to clarify what we take full responsibility for and what we feel should go through normal community processes. Clearly I didn't do that effectively, and I apologize for coming off as insulting to you. As this is the busiest time of year for both of us, now is not a good time, but maybe in a few weeks we could have a Skype call to talk about our difference in philosophy you refer to? I'd be really interested to talk with you more about that. If that's something you'd be willing to do, let me know, and I'll set a calendar reminder for myself to ping you in early January so we can schedule a time to talk more. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

LiAnna, sorry for not responding earlier. I was busy, and also thinking about your offer to Skype. I'm not against the idea of Skyping, but I'd prefer to have a transparent discussion. One of the issues I think WikiEd should address is that it seems to be a walled garden of sorts, and in my view it's crucial to pull the professors and the students into the community and have them adhere to community norms. I had a conversation about the subject with Mike Christie at about this time last year and wanted then to write up my philosophies in terms of bringing students here but didn't get around to it. In the meantime I've tried a couple of other class-room strategies which have worked really well. Instead of chatting via Skype, I'd prefer to write up my philosophies and then probably post to a subpage. We could then take it from there. Victoria (tk) 00:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Class from Lexington Kentucky

Issues with copy and pasting and use of primary sources. Lot of them. Editing pharmacology related topics. Anyone know who they are? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:01, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay 19 of them. Have received little instruction. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:28, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Have sent instructions through one of the students. Still unclear who the prof is. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:13, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Class on search engine optimization editing Misplaced Pages?

See also WP:COIN#Link_building,

• Link building
• Web traffic
• HusnainMeerzadeh (talk · contribs)
• Hnancy (talk · contribs)

These two new users have been adding links to articles related to search engine optimization. This, of course, attracted attention, and they've been hammered with all the usual warnings. "Hnancy" writes on WP:COIN:

"Hnancy (talk) 05:08, 3 December 2014 (UTC) Hello that I am an informatics student at UW and it is really my class project to edit a wikipedia page. Previously I tried to make a new topic called "link popularity" but later I adopted teacher's advice to work on the link building page. Moz didn't pay me at all and I even never heard of this company before. I accidentally used the resource from searchenginejournal because I think it is authentical and it has the resources I needed(I didn't realize that it has backlinks to Moz.)i actually could't finish my homework right now because I couldn't add new contents to the page. I am now editing the conflicts section and I try to add a brief section called "link building tactics" (which is highly related to link building I think). I hope I can finish these edits today so I am able to turn in my homework."

Assuming this is correct, somewhere there's an instructor at UW who issued a really bad assignment. Adding spammy-looking links to the link building article was certain to attract attention. That may have been the point. It takes lots of time to clean this up, and if there's enough of it, it can lead to a schoolblock. Can anyone find the instructor responsible and get them a clue? Here's the University of Washington information systems course list for the current quarter. Thanks. John Nagle (talk) 02:41, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Husnain is just spamming. I don't see that he has anything to do with the other user, except that they both pounded on the article at roughly the same time. Choess (talk) 05:18, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Environmental effects of basketballs

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Environmental effects of basketballs is about to be closed as delete. The author is in Template:Course link, which doesn't appear to have an ambassador or much detail at all. Not sure if someone wanted to reach out to the prof/class. czar ⨹ 14:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Didn't see that there was a campus volunteer—pinging her @B.J.Carmichael czar ⨹ 14:58, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

The same user is also instructor at Template:Course link. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:53, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

I am the Campus Ambassador working with the instructors for each of these courses at Louisiana State University and am currently in contact with the instructor for Template:Course link. It would be very helpful to have feedback placed on the course pages so all students enrolled in the class can benefit from the collaborative process. Thank you for alerting me. B.J.Carmichael (talk) 17:58, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Blocking students

Thankfully we have a copy and paste detection bot. Picked up this one User:Esth270 for a second time and I have blocked them.

We cannot let the education program fill Misplaced Pages full of plagiarism and poorly sourced content which I am seeing a lot of lately. Sigh. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:52, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

@Doc James: Since you brought this up here, and I'm going off line for a few hours I'll leave a note here first, before starting an AN thread. This new user is adding cited information, at least one of which appears to be from the public domain cursory review only. Do you have any comments you can add to this, maybe I'm missing something? Thank you, — xaosflux 23:34, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Details here User_talk:Esth270#Copy_and_pasting. Which are you saying is from the public domain? While this is in PMC it does not appear to be public domain This also does not appear to be CC Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:55, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, like I said, only cursory--so it's not public domain; but a block quote or some simple would have made this not be a copyright violation; the user had one warning and now is idef blocked for "plagiarism" which is not part of the blocking policy unless you are claiming they have risen to the level of "disruption" through continuous breaching of guidelines; I don't think an indef block is appropriate as a first block. — xaosflux 02:15, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay so are you saying people are allowed to copy and paste blocks of text into Misplaced Pages? It was not "quoted". I have had one company's publishing department tell me that one gets 20 seconds in music and 7 words in text. So do we as a community have a policy on how much text people are allowed to copy and paste from sources? I have been using the seven word limit which this was much much over but if others want to raise it would be happy to follow community consensus.

We have a very strict policy on fair use of images on En Misplaced Pages. Do we allow text based on fair use as well? I agree copyright is complicated and happy to be clarified on where we draw the line. Do; however, not want to expose my WPMED to issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Moonriddengirl as the local copyright expert can you comment? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

A couple of points. :) User:Xaosflux, people get blocked for plagiarism - they have done since well before I became an admin. Jimmy took a firm stand on it himself in 2005: . I haven't looked at the details of this particular situation, but an indefinite block is not an infinite one - it can sometimes be shorter than a defined length block, as quite often a person can be unblocked (especially for copyright issues) just by indicating that they understand. Typically, people are not blocked for copyright issues unless they persist after a warning or unless they have violated copyright across many articles, but there can be other circumstances and, again, I'm not familiar with this one.

We absolutely do allow text based on fair use - the policy and guideline are at WP:NFC. Every quotation from a copyrighted source is fair use. User:Doc James, whoever gave you those defined limits was making stuff up, at least if they were talking about the U.S. law that governs us. :) There is no clear defining line in what constitutes "substantial similarity" under the U.S. law - this is why court cases can be so contentious. It depends on so many subjective factors, including how important the content is, the level of originality, the way it is used and where it is used. (See http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html - "There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission.") The courts consider all the factors of fair use. Quotation marks do not help, legally, in the U.S. As that same document notes, "Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission." However, quotation marks when copying from copyrighted sources not only helps on Misplaced Pages, but is required for a number of good reasons, including that we are identifying our fair use material, which allows people to determine whether it is permissible in their own reuse of our content. (Some countries have firmer laws on using non-free content than the U.S., which governs Misplaced Pages, does.) As a general rule of thumb, content that is copied from non-free sources without quotation marks or block quote is a violation of WP:NFC, which makes it in turn a violation of WP:C and hence a copyright violation. (As we are not a court of law, we cannot assess copyright infringement from the legal perspective, but only what is consistent with internal policy, crafted to remain within law. We're not accusing people of crimes here.) In most of the cases I've seen in my sixish years of working copyright on Misplaced Pages, copyright violation is an opportunity for education. Most people who run afoul of this policy are unaware of the concepts or good practices in this area. Blocks work best in conjunction with clear explanations so that they do not continue violating this critical policy as they grasp it. Some people are either unwilling or unable to correct their practices, and these people wind up de facto banned. It's not unusual to see such a person return with socks that are caught precisely because of their continued copy-pasting. --Moonriddengirl 11:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

One more thing - those who are not already familiar of it should be aware of this template in working with newer editors who run afoul of copyright policy: Template:uw-copyright-new. Even if you adapt it as part of a personal message, it can help. :) I'm not a fan of the icon, though. :/ A recent addition. The template was meant to be less scary in introducing a massive topic, but I worry that the icon undermines that. --Moonriddengirl 11:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

It was a lawyer from a multi billion dollar company who gave me this rule of thumb when they declined my request to use specific content. When it comes to law in the US it is not just who is "right" that matters but who has the most money. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Lots of disruption from that course; is anyone at the Education Program doing anything about attempting to contact the MIA Prof, User:BrooklynProf to give her better guidance about Misplaced Pages? Or to ask her (or her three assistants) to educate the students about Misplaced Pages and supervise their edits? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The prof is aware in this case and is meeting with the student to discuss the issues that occurred. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:44, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

That's good, but there are problems elsewhere :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I am NOT endorsing bulk copy pasting, I am saying that I disagree with an indefinite block being issued to a new editor for a guideline infraction. — xaosflux 02:55, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste plagiarism is a "guideline infraction"? Copyright violation is against the law, and then there's WP:COPYVIO, which is identified clearly as "policy with legal consideration". Surely this is driven home by profs, and students caught plagiarizing (twice) usually fail the course. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Ah so you want me to simply allow the student to continue copy and pasting content into Misplaced Pages than? Are you against the reverting of "copy and pasted" text? User:Xaosflux I am not understanding your position. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:05, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Google Knol was partly killed by having no mechanisms to deal with "copy and pasting" into it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Doc, I suspect he/she just wants you to reduce the block, maybe to time served? We probably wouldn't do that for a regular editor (MRG may know), but folks in here seem to treat student editors differently. In this case, if the prof already knows, there's likely a very big penalty on board already (as in, fail the course. assuming the prof is paying attention, that is). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:14, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

What I am looking for is that this students 1) still has a desire to edit 2) now has a clear understanding of what is required. Clarified this for them Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:16, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: yes, just because they are a student doesn't make them any less of an editor. — xaosflux 03:32, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@Doc James: Your block reason listed is "Plagiarism", not "Copyright Violation". Plagiarism is not a component of the Blocking Policy, it is only a content guideline. If you mean to block for COPYVIO, please clearly explain to the user that their block is due to violation of the COPYVIO policy. A shorter block (perhaps 24 hours?) should also be sufficient to stop any disruption to the encyclopedia and give them time to read your messages, why make them go through additional bureaucracy to return to the project? — xaosflux 03:28, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

To your other question, I fully endorse reversion of edits that are not constructive. — xaosflux 03:30, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I take copyright seriously (If Commons admin doesn't care copyright, he should be desysopped!) but one warning then indef seems so harsh... Not saying block is wrong, but it's too long imo. — Revi 03:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes the user in question needs to clearly show that they understand what is paraphrasing before they can return to editing. And the way to show someone knows something is to get them to do it. Now because of these issues, if they are unblocked, their edits will need to be check. To show some respect for my time I include the requirement of properly formatting to make this easier.

An indef is not forever. Call me demanding but I just had a students agree to follow the requests and then not do so. How many students / classes of students are you two by the way keeping an eye one? Copyright violations are a big deal in my profession. Would the NEJM say no worries simply try again tomorrow? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Anyway this is called verifying WP:COMPETENCE. I assume they will likely pass. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:54, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2) My classes (2, both run by Piotrus) has student 20 or less in total. Anyway, back to topic, I know indef is not forever, but it may be frustrating to newbies. If you feel indef is nessesary, that's fine (I'm not admin). I don't have strong opinion about this, just want you to say that I felt indef was too long. :p — Revi 03:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The student is here until their assignment ends on Dec 20th/23rd thus they are motivated. I have been in email discussions with the student in question.

User:-revi are you checking for copy and paste issues? I have found they run about 15-30%.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but if they do copypaste, that's likely copypaste and translation, as all students are Korean and likely to paste (and translate) in Korean. I have no idea to check source, tbh. — Revi 04:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@Doc James: I double-checked my students' contents and I don't see problem on copyright... — Revi 05:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Good to hear :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:39, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

See also ANI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:56, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

ANI notices left, asked to continue the discussion here to prevent forking. — xaosflux 04:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• This user has acknowledged the issue and wants to continue to be an editor, blocks are preventative not punitive--why do they need to continue to be blocked? — xaosflux 04:05, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes they are preventative not punitive. We are now verifying that they are unlikely to do it again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

So many misconceptions, so little time. The student both committed plagiarism (failing to properly attribute the intellectual origin of material) and copyright violation (use of another's copyrighted text without permission). "A block quote" would have corrected the plagiarism problem, but not the copyright violation. The doctrine of "fair use" allows the use of copyrighted text without explicit permission in a number of cases; the boundaries are very fuzzy, and it's not as clear-cut as the publishing rep tried to make out to Doc James. However, Misplaced Pages is governed by WP:NFC, which allows brief quotations of copyrighted texts, but forbids extensive quotation. In this case, there was no reason the information of the quotes could not have been conveyed in an original, non-copyrighted manner, so I don't see a reasonable fair use claim to include them, in quotes or not. Note that copyright is a legal issue, not just a contravention of one of our Gormenghastly guidelines. ;)

Doc James should indeed have referred to "copyvio" instead of "plagiarism" as a reason, but I think overall his block was pretty reasonable. Maybe two weeks (which would cover the end of the semester) instead of indef would have been preferable, but indefinite is not infinite, he was obviously watching to see if the student would constructively engage, which she has, and as the situation is now moving towards constructive resolution, it seems he did the right thing. Choess (talk) 04:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• Concur with block and length Indefinite is not infinite. As soon as the person who has been blocked expresses a clear understanding of why they are blocked, and how they plan to behave differently going forward, they can be unblocked immediately. No need to wait two weeks (as Choess expresses above) or any other random length of time. Either they know why what they did is wrong, and promise not to do it again, or they don't. If they do so express, unblock them. If they don't, leave them blocked. --Jayron32 04:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks User:Jayron32 and User:Choess, the plan is as soon as they provide a clear description of what they will do differently I am more than happy to unblock them. This is what I have always done in the past. Student blocks I find some of the hardest as they have often been send to Misplaced Pages without proper training. But we also know from experience that are only here for the short term. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:22, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
    • They don't need to be, we should always welcome all editors openly and encourage them to continue to contribute to the encyclopedia in the future - it could be as minor of a future action as a copyedit to some subject that interests them. We should never treat any student editor with any less courtesy then any other new editor. We all started with one edit. — xaosflux 04:29, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
      • That's true, and I agree with the sentiment that we don't treat editors who are students any differently than editors who are not. Which is why we don't treat them differently here. Being a student or not being a student is irrelevant: if someone is not willing to learn some basic principles such as "don't steal the work of others and pass it off as your own", I see no reason to continue to allow them to steal the work of others, regardless of what they do outside of Misplaced Pages. --Jayron32 04:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
        • • User:Xaosflux do not get me wrong. I block non students for plagiarism too. It is harder in these cases as I realize that it has real life repercussions for them. If your first edits are plagiarism and than following a warning you next edits are also plagiarism we have a problem. The editor in question needs a bit of time to think on things. And should provide examples that they understand the issues in question. This is not something we should simply blow off. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
    • Plagiarism is never appropriate; it's something against which any good syllabus will warn, so we should assume that any college student is well aware of why it's a problem and of the likely result. We ought to be careful with enforcing most of our policies on student accounts, since they can't be expected to know them, but we need to be harsh with plagiarism: it's a horrid idea to sanction the student account (and thus potentially harm the real-life student's grade) for ordinary issues, but any decent professor will severely penalise a student for plagiarism, so if a student's plagiarising, we shouldn't act unusually softly. If the student engage productively, as here, of course we can unblock, as Doc James is hoping to do, but the severe sanctions for intellectual dishonesty (and thus for hoaxing, in a way) should follow just as rapidly with students as with established accounts. PS — I editconflicted with Xaosflux; everything before this was written before the conflict. Just responding to We should never treat...other new editor — some new editors are unaware of intellectual honesty problems such as plagiarism, but new student editors are aware that it's wrong. Nyttend (talk) 04:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
• I think that as long as the student is aware that copyright violations are not acceptable and they make a promise not to do it again, we should unblock the account. My only suggestion would be that the editor get warned that they will be watched quite closely and they will be indef'd again if it happens. However I do want to say that I agree with Nyttend's argument about dealing with plagiarism. If I'd done this in one of my classes and not made it a clear quote (using parentheses, which the editor in question did not use), I'd get my paper handed back and told to fix it... assuming I didn't get a F without the chance to re-do it. My teachers all have (and have had) a very clear zero acceptance policy for plagiarism. It's one of the first things that we're told in class and it's something that's been told to me throughout my college years- and I'm in a Master's program now. There's no way that this student would be completely unaware that plagiarism is unacceptable. Once? Sure- mistakes happen. Twice? That is a pretty big warning sign. Maybe this was just a case of the student being a little lazy due to the end of the semester, but the issue is that they still violated copyright- something that would land them a failing grade in school. The only way that this would be somewhat too harsh is if there was no way for the student to regain editing privileges. From what I see the student has acknowledged what they did was wrong and looks like they're willing to fix what they did, so a conditional unblock in this situation seems appropriate. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I simply don't know

We appear to be going full steam in the direction of Google Knol. We at WP:MED are being filling with plagiarism, poorly sourced content and duplicate content. Some classes are:

1. Writing content in word perfect, not reading the existing articles, and simply dropping what they have written in place, thus we end up with duplication , ,
2. Adding plagiarism (have at least 4 classes of students in the last couple of days)
   1. User:Esth270 class of User:BrooklynProf
   2. 148.166.169.61 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 207.210.135.237 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), User:Neuroassignment unknown prof from Sacred Heart University
   3. User:Jzx6450, User:Minjae.Lee.uky, User:Gmoney61, User:Rchayd3 unknown prof but PhD students from Kentucky (17 in number)
   4. User:Rozo93, User:Isabel.guillen.5 class of User:NeuroJoe
3. Adding poorly sourced and poorly formatted content (more evidence here )

We need to do something different. Our current path is not working. If scaled this will kill Misplaced Pages. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't know either, but I share your concerns, and I encourage the folks in the Education Program to take these concerns seriously. One thing I do know is that established editors should not hesitate to revert content that does not belong here. Even if the quantity of bad edits is sometimes overwhelming – and it is – there is always the option of reverting. And I want to emphasize part of the point of WP:NOTTA: the fact that student editors are students does not entitle them to kid-glove treatment. I saw comments above that student editors are entitled to the same considerations as other editors, and they are, but they must also be held to the same expectations as other editors. They can't have it one way and not the other. The way I look at it, the educational value of Misplaced Pages editing includes education in learning about WP:Consensus as well as about our policies and guidelines. Everyone else here faces the possibility of having our edits reverted and having to discuss them in talk, so there is nothing counter-educational in making students do likewise, or see their edits disappear. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm fully on board that an editor is an editor, if you are in article space be prepared to be reverted and edited boldly by anyone. — xaosflux 22:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Doc Jones, I hear you loud and clear as edits related to medical articles, and do understand the importance of keeping them accurate and high quality; my suggested for student-editors would be more sandboxing; it gives them the freedom to make more errors without impacting our readers--and anything that is constructive can be merged in after article talk is happy. For single-semester type projects just outright copying an article to their sandbox and working on major drafts should be fine - so long as it gets cleared when complete and their instructors can see what was their work and what was the original (perhaps some sandbox talk type templates? — xaosflux 22:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Wiki Ed completely agrees with Tryptofish that student editors should be held to the same standards as other editors: please assume good faith that they're trying to improve Misplaced Pages, but free free to revert content that doesn't belong. In terms of the specifics Doc James mentions, I certainly hear and appreciate the frustrations, and I'll link to my comments on the other thread: We're working on the Barnard issues (#1 above), and we've asked the Wikipedian working with that class, Megs, to chime in here to give a status update. The Sacred Heart, Kentucky, and NeuroJoe classes aren't affiliated with Wiki Ed, and while we're happy to help out with unaffiliated classes as we have time, our priority right now (during the busiest time of the year for us) is the classes affiliated with us. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed) I do see the education program as collaborators on dealing with this issue. The greater problems are from classes that have not had any support. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:27, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

We have talked about all of this Millions of times (see archives at ENB and ENI), and nothing changes ... well, no, something does change. It gets worse every year. Right now, a whole new course is popping in, dozens of students, active edit warring *and* real deal meat puppetry (one student reverting when another one leaves). When Will Someone Put Out A Press Release or some information to stem the tide? When will the denial stop? As a once productive and I hope valuable editor, this has made me leave WIkipedia for months at a time, and each time I come back, the situation is worse. No, Sandboxes won't help ... we've talked about that over and over. They don't engage talk, they don't know how to, their profs aren't engaged with the website at all, and it's not the students fault. When they work in sandbox, we still have the same problems of them plopping it all in at term-end, and the numbers have always been too big to manage, but just get worse and worse. If students do not engage talk, they should be shut down, in mercy to them and to us. We need some admin action. Why doesn't someone go deal with the whole CUNY class that is editwarring in dreadful content, and reverting for each other ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• Template:Course link, Pharos, Cshanesimpson, Mozucat

• Loads of editors from the same class in Eating disorder not otherwise specified, not a one of them responding on user or article talk, edit warring, and really ... the article should be fully protected to Get Them To Talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:50, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

•  Done 1 week, and I'm SURE it is on the The Wrong Version. — xaosflux 23:06, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I just reached out to the professor of the CUNY Template:Course link course to make her aware of the situation regarding her students. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:16, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the things you have said here. As for sandboxes, they aren't really turning out to be the solution, because students often use them to create just the kinds of problematic content we have been discussing here, and then summarily copy and paste it to main space without any prior interaction with experienced editors. I've been seeing a lot of that happening lately, from students who are not part of a registered class project, and who leave Misplaced Pages as soon as they have done the dump. It's a growing problem. As I've said somewhere else (I'm losing track), it goes against WP:What Misplaced Pages is not to use pages as somewhere to dump a term paper that does not conform to our editing guidelines. It sounds to me like WikiEd needs some additional hires to be able to identify and deal with class projects that do not register. There are more and more of those, and they are a growing problem. After all, when the instructor has not bothered to work with WikiEd, then the class is all the more likely to not understand how things work. And that makes for a bad experience for students, just as much as for established editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

• My opinion continues to be that where a course is engaging in meatpuppetry, we should block them. Where an institution is systematically engaging in meatpuppetry, we block them too. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:45, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

That might be a good solution User talk:Stuartyeates. Classes that wish to edit will be required to have a degree of training. Profs will need to be involved with Misplaced Pages and understand how Misplaced Pages works.

Another requirement could also include the school provide some funding to hire Misplaced Pages based "teaching assistants" to help with formatting and feedback to the students.

If these criteria are not met and the class decides to try to edit under the radar we block them until the end of the semester. Agree sandboxes do not solve the issue. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:34, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that solution too. I posted last week, at the top of the page, about not agreeing with WikiEd's philosophy and one of the most important points I've been trying to make for years, obviously ineffectually, is that if the profs aren't here editing with the students, or here editing to provide examples for the students to follow, then we'll have chaos. I've also said each year that my students don't want to edit here, yet WikiEd continues to woo institutions without providing adequate support during these crucial last weeks. Students perennially will wait until the last minute to do their work, and do whatever it takes to get it in. They don't care about talking, about WP policy etc., they simply care about getting the assignment done, taking the final and going home for the holidays. In the meantime we have kids posting requests like this. Can someone who is employed by WikiEd please reach out to these students and explain that their sandboxes are still available and reach out to the prof and explain that they can't edit here in mainspace as they have been doing today. Please. So far I've not seen much participation here from the folks at WikiEd. Victoria (tk) 00:45, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Agree we need to stop encouraging more classes to get involved until we are able to provide an appropriate level of support and have things working with a smaller number of classes.

But some will come to the idea of bringing their class to Misplaced Pages all by themselves. At that point it is not the Education foundation that has authority to say no, it is the Misplaced Pages community that has this authority. I am glad to see that we are beginning to do so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

What I meant by sandboxes was to have the sandbox edits BE the assignment, so there is never a rush to dump to mainspace; if the sandbox ends up being good it could get merged and Misplaced Pages gains positive content, if not it gets deleted and maybe someone learned something about editing that they would use in the future? — xaosflux 00:50, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Xaosflux that sounds excellent :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what the best namespace for these would be, EPT might work, sample at Education Program talk:CUNY, Hunter College/Human Development (Fall 2014)/Eating disorder not otherwise specified....problem is those don't support THEIR own talk. — xaosflux 01:05, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Xaosflux, can you copy the article to here? This seems to the Nutrition.and.Health's workspace, and they can finish it there. I'll leave a message on their talkpage and on the article talk for them. Victoria (tk) 01:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

 Done here: User:Nutrition.and.Health/sandbox/Eating disorder not otherwise specified. — xaosflux 01:14, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps User:ProfessorNameHere/sandbox/articlecopy or something; and simultaneously more strongly encourage professors to use sandboxes? Really would like some WikiEd feedback here, I'm just guessing. — xaosflux 01:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thanks so much! I don't know how to find the prof (and am totally wiped out from reading papers and exams), but I think someone should drop a short note on the prof's page supplying the link to the draft space with the article there. I'm not sure the students will know how to link it, or how they're supposed to turn in this assignment. The prof may expect to see it in article space tomorrow, and so should be notified. Adding post ec: WikiEd is AWOL so we have to punt. This will work. Victoria (tk) 01:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Prof is Cshanesimpson. I left a message there. Yes, it would be nice to get feedback from WikiEd. Victoria (tk) 01:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I noted the class talk as well. — xaosflux 01:41, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Summary of diffs for the record:

1. Edit warring by User:Nutrition.and.Health (I have removed the AN3 since Xaosflux has now dealt with the problem).
2. Posts to User Nutrition.and.Health
3. Posts to Keicee7, whose edits indicate possible tag-teaming with Nutrition.and.Health
4. Posts to article talk before Xaosflux protected
5. First and only, ever, post to a talk page by Nutrition.and.Health finally happens only after Xoasflux protects the article:
6. Most curious post from the prof, which is at odds with what the student says.
7. And the usual EP responses (we are communicating with the prof ... that's so nice ... but this is happening on hundreds of articles and from scores of classes).

So much fun while I was out enjoying Mexican food. At any rate, just another typical scenario, played out in article after article, term after term, year after year. Thanks in order:

1. First, to Victoriaearle for setting up and pointing the students to a sandbox.
2. Second, to Xaosflux for protecting (of course, the wrong version of) the article, which *finally* brought the students to talk (which is where they should have started their Wiki Adventure).

It is not lost on me that the actions finally taken in here were not by representatives of the Education Program. It has never been lost on me that the Education Program representatives seem to spend a good portion of their time contacting profs backchannel and generally promoting the Education Program whenever and wherever they can, while others in here have to clean up after the program.

Which brings me to my next point (considering we have been going round these same issues over and over for four years now). I don't really care about the distinction between courses that are or are not part of the Education Program. Students are here because this program and the WMF have promoted student editing, so the global problem affecting content and established editors is your concern, whether or not the courses are registered. While the WMF had no problem getting publicity to promote the alleged Gender Gap, we never see a word in the press about the disastrous effect student editing has had on the website, and we frequently see glowing webcasts, reports, articles, etc about these programs. Which serve to bring in more and more courses every year. So please stop brushing off concerns about unregistered courses: this program caused them.

On the subject of sandboxes: we've also been over and over that, and it has never helped. The fundamental problem is that we have students who have never learned to use talk, and cannot possibly learn the ins and outs of Misplaced Pages during one course, and who are editing only for a grade-- requiring an enormous investment in established editor time for no payout, since they never return or become regular editors-- being not supervised by their absent professors, who know nothing of Misplaced Pages themselves, except that they are generally getting free TAs. And not enough student ambassadors (or whatever we're calling them this year) to even pretend to keep up.

What is needed is an RFC to shut down the program. Then the classes who continue to do what we saw played out here-- and which is the norm-- can be dealt with as any other meatpuppetry or coordinated editing situation would be dealt with. After all, the Education Program is doing nothing to stem the tide, plenty to promote the program, and when we finally get action, it's from non-EP editors like Victoria and Xaosflux.

What we also need is some very good publicity about the problems that this program is causing. I wouldn't want to be any one of these hapless students who have been placed in such awkward positions through the fault of their absent and ill-prepared professors because of a poorly-designed but well-promoted fiasco hoisted upon us by the WMF. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

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