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Welcome to the Education Program Incidents page. This page is for reporting and discussing specific incidents related to student editing and/or the Education Program on the English Wikipedia that require the intervention of experienced editors and/or administrators. Topics may include:
Of course, we should remain civil towards all participants and assume good faith. |
Where possible and relevant, please include the following information with any report: Article(s), Course, Instructor, Online volunteers, and Student. |
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Contents
I have a suspicion there may be a COI involved over Bourne End Academy
Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to mention this, but this is the Incidents board for Education on WP, so I figured I'd get this out here. I was looking over the history of the Bourne End Academy page, given that it was my old secondary school (I left before the name change in 2014), when I noticed that a user named User:BourneEndAcad was editing the page. I believe this may be someone in the school itself attempting to alter the article, as they were making rather big changes such as uploading a logo for the school and providing information that is highly specific to the establishment itself. I doubt that there's any shred of paid editing involved, but I thought it was generally discouraged to edit articles that you have a personal interest or connection with, including if you are an employee or staff member of the establishment, company or school. I hope I'm not in the wrong place about this. --BrayLockBoy (talk) 14:35, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
- Usual warning template placed on talk of BourneEndAcad (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log). The edits made to the article Bourne End Academy ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) seem OK at first glance. Restored the picture of the school, and moved the logo to the school info box. Anything else needed? John Nagle (talk) 05:14, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
- Seems good to me. I'm glad this got notified, because the edits are indeed benign - I was just worried it would lead into more conspicuous activity.--BrayLockBoy (talk) 10:08, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
Duplicate artile creation as "college project"
See Alice Stopford Green (Project). I've slapped a Merge template on it to merge to the existing Alice Stopford Green, and left the editor a note. The article was created in editor's sandbox but then moved to main space with the edit summary "Project for college". No indication of what college, or how many other students on the same course are doing the same sad waste of effort by creating duplicate articles (with lots of refs but no inline refs, no wikilinks ... basically a college essay dumped into the encyclopedia).
Oh dear, just checked out the image and found it's "Own work" - a nice sketch of someone who died in 1929. Hmmm. PamD 15:17, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
- Hi PamD. I'd say a prod is a good route here. It's not a good redirect candidate and it does look mostly duplicative. I'll look into it and try to find out which class the student is associated with (though from a quick glance it does not appear to be one of ours). Thanks for the note. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
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- Yes, I changed my mind about Merging, and PRODded instead, because with no inline references there would be no way to incorporate the material from this "(Project)" page. I wish tutors would teach their students how to edit, not just point them vaguely in the direction of the Encyclopedia. PamD 16:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Ecology postgrad course at Maine?
There seems to be a postgrad project at Maine - see Talk:Plant strategies. I've left a note there and added the "Educational assignment" template, and left a note at User talk:IceAgeDoc. PamD 08:11, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
- @PamD: I previously went along and successfully CSD'd a student piece in the past and felt pretty bad about it, which is why I only tagged that article with the common "there's an issue but I can't be bothered to fix it" tags yesterday. It's on my watchlist, and hopefully they'll start working on it soon because, as you said, students don't get a free pass -- samtar whisper 08:22, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
- @Samtar: After the tutor asked how best they should have gone about this, I moved it to Draft:Plant strategies which seemed useful - the students can now work on it together and discuss it on the draft's talk page. No idea whether this is the standard recommendation for similar projects but it felt like a good idea. PamD 15:12, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)@PamD and Samtar: Thanks for the heads up. I've forwarded the professor's information to my colleague, Helaine (Wiki Ed), who will be reaching out to talk about how Wiki Ed can help. It looks like she's involved with the assignment on-wiki, which is always a good thing, and as far as I can tell (though I haven't looked exhaustively), it seems limited to this article? Also pinging Ian (Wiki Ed). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:13, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
- @Samtar and Ryan (Wiki Ed): There are two other groups of students working on upgrading existing articles (total of 7 students in 3 groups) - see User talk:IceAgeDoc#Course?. The tutor is interacting both with me and with her students, but seems to be a brand new editor herself. PamD 15:17, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)@PamD and Samtar: Thanks for the heads up. I've forwarded the professor's information to my colleague, Helaine (Wiki Ed), who will be reaching out to talk about how Wiki Ed can help. It looks like she's involved with the assignment on-wiki, which is always a good thing, and as far as I can tell (though I haven't looked exhaustively), it seems limited to this article? Also pinging Ian (Wiki Ed). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:13, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
- @Samtar: After the tutor asked how best they should have gone about this, I moved it to Draft:Plant strategies which seemed useful - the students can now work on it together and discuss it on the draft's talk page. No idea whether this is the standard recommendation for similar projects but it felt like a good idea. PamD 15:12, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
"Workshopping" articles on the article talk pages
I'm not naming names as I'm not sure this rises to the level of "incident" so forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this, but it it typical to "workshop" educational assignment articles on article talk pages? By this I mean filling them up with walls of text that may include complete proposed rewrites of sections or whole articles. If there's a quick link to the guideline I'd appreciate it, I don't have time at the moment to look it up and wanted to register my alarm at this phenomenon here. I'm thinking a subpage or sandbox would be a better place for this sort of thing. Valfontis (talk) 18:49, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
- Is that really so bad? I think talk pages are terribly under-utilized for proposed rewrites, and I know I use them to stage things like that (albeit on a much smaller scale, usually lists of references rather than sections). If the students leave off without completing it, it's more easily discoverable than a subpage etc. Choess (talk) 01:05, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
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- I just think they're messy and hard to follow since newbies don't really understand section heading levels and the like. But if there's not guideline for this then it's as good a place as any, I suppose. I'll sit on my hands and tidy up after if need be. It might be an issue on more heavily trafficked pages, however, but I'm sure the people who usually watch those pages can intervene when needed. I guess I'm just being a bit territorial about people who don't understand How Things Work Around Here using "our" pages to do their homework. I'm sure I'll get over it since in the end hopefully it will enhance the project rather than detract from it. Valfontis (talk) 01:30, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
- @Choess: @Valfontis: Perhaps it could be recommended that such drafts be collapsed, but kept on the same page, as a sort of compromise between the two. I understand your concerns, Valfontis: a balance needs to be struck between respecting the guidelines of Wikipedia and its openness to newcomers in a way that is neutrally beneficial. --Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 19:34, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
- I actually think this is a good thing, and certainly better than using a Sandbox (or even a subpage). One of the prime points of conflict with student assignments is when a student (usually very close to their deadline) simply dumps a mass of text into the article itself. It's often not at all clear where it's coming from, and not infrequently gets reverted, leading to hurt feelings all around.
- If students use the talk pages to work things out, then regular editors at least know what's going on (or that something's going on). The fact that things may be messy is by the by; as long as things are useful for the students, then I think regular editors can mostly sit by and simply watch what's going on. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:40, 11 December 2015 (UTC)