User talk:UM BIOE120 Instructor

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Hello, UM BIOE120 Instructor, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! Zachlipton (talk) 20:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
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School and university projects/University of Maryland Bioengineering
Hi there and welcome to Wikipedia. I went ahead and moved your new page to School and university projects/University of Maryland Bioengineering, as its clearly a project page and not an encyclopedia article in and of itself. I'm glad you're using Wikipedia as part of your class. There are lots of great resources to help you with exactly this project at School and university projects, including mentors who can help you or your students with any questions. You can also leave me a message on my talk page and I'll do my best to help out or point you to the right person. Best of luck with your project and feel free to let me know if there's anything I can do. Welcome! Zachlipton (talk) 20:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for moving. I did not realize that I had created an article instead of a project page. However, I would like the title of the project page to be specific to the course and semester to which it is related. e.g. "Wikipedia:School and university projects/University of Maryland Biology for Engineers (Spring 2011)". If you could make this change, that would be great, else I will work on it within a day or so. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, I've moved the page to School and university projects/University of Maryland Biology for Engineers (Spring 2011). OSbornarfcontribs. 20:46, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks! UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 21:36, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Instruction vs Wikipedia - please be careful not to cause harm
Please careful not to damage Wikipedia in your effort to teach your class. Many instructors with the best of intentions require students to write material and upload material into Wikipedia. Often such material is inferior in quality, hyperspecialized, does not follow our usual writing style, or uses references poorly (WP:SECONDARY. Etc.  Then other editors must clean up after these students.  So be careful not to cause harm.  My recommendation is to not upload unless the instructor does the editing afterwards.--Smokefoot (talk) 17:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * User:Smokefoot, are you aware that Wikipedia allows for pages to be created as part of school and university writing projects? See School_and_university_projects. To the extent I know, there is no Wikipedia policy that requires the articles to be uploaded only after editing by the instructor.


 * You wrote: “Often such material is inferior in quality, hyperspecialized, does not follow our usual writing style, or uses references poorly (WP:SECONDARY. Then other editors must clean up after these students.” But isn't this what Wikipedia is about? How does an ongoing school project, which has yet to go through two more drafts and student-initiated peer reviews and final instructor approval, cause harm? UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 18:34, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I would like to combine this discussion to an ongoing one, primarily between me and Smokefoot, on User talk:Ascrimge.


 * Let us first discuss the situation that occurred with the erstwhile (educational assignment) article titled "Nitrogen Flow through Metabolism". I have communicated my justification for a standalone article with this title on User talk:Ascrimge, so please refer to it to see why this is an appropriate article for Wikipedia. I realize that the student team that worked on this article ended up with an article that significantly overlaps with Nitrogen cycle and Nitrogen fixation, so Sadads requested a merger of Nitrogen Flow through Metabolism and Nitrogen cycle in this |this edit. Barely 90 minutes after this merge request and even before any discussion about the merger was initiated and responded to, Smokefoot redirected Nitrogen Flow through Metabolism to Nitrogen cycle in this |this edit. Not waiting for even a reasonable amount of time (~a day) to discuss the merger is clearly unfair. In my experience with this and another project from the same class, students approach the instructor when they realize about a possible merger or deletion of their article. The article could have been improved with the instructor's intervention and feedback (without waiting until the end of the semester for the fix), but this team was not even given the chance to do so. Anyways, the situation is still (hopefully) reversible.


 * Now to discuss another issue: Smokefoot you have expressed more than once that student projects should be posted on Wikipedia only after a "cleanup" by the instructor:


 * "My recommendation is to not upload unless the instructor does the editing afterwards."


 * "Perhaps the instructor, who is an authority, could insert section or two from the student report into the current article on Nitrogen assimilation."


 * To the extent I searched, Wikipedia also does not have a policy that students working on these projects should create and write their articles outside Wikipedia's article space and that the instructor should select parts of these student assignments, clean them up and post on Wikipedia. And is this concern about school and university projects shared by other Wikipedia editors (and documented somewhere) or is it solely your opinion? If this is not documented anywhere on Wikipedia, please do so, especially on School and university projects which is where instructors (and students) look before they begin working on their projects.


 * Wikipedia clearly encourages school and university projects and even has a template for educational assignments. However, your (may I dare to say, discouraging) words seem to be inconsistent with this spirit. And here is the most recent comment by Smokefoot on Ascrimge:


 * "Sure, I can explain. Editors here do not add material knowing that it is flawed. We make our edits to our best ability and we do so incrementally, so that others can contribute. We do not ask to be held to a low standard because we are part of a classroom. Etc. So when the student finish the semester, regular editors are often stuck repairing a mass. This problem would not exist if the instructors did some editing of their students' work, but instructors rarely do so. So in short, better ways exist to serve both the student and Wikipedia, but these methods require the faculty member to do more. And they are reluctant to do so, hence my complaint."


 * How can you expect an instructor to fix things if you redirect/merge student project articles without providing a platform for justification and without giving the instructor time to react?


 * And finally, you accuse me of causing "damage" and "harm" to Wikipedia (see title above) for assigning a Wikipedia project to my class and for justifying that a certain article title (Nitrogen Flow through Metabolism) deserved standalone status on Wikipedia (albeit after suitable change to the content). Please be more objective before using the words "damage" and "harm". UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 05:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Dive in
Hi there

Why don't you jump in and edit Wikipedia yourself? As an (eventual) long-term editor, you'll be more accustomed to the medium and the cultural norms here, which you can then share with your students to help them get settled in quicker. Some long-term editors have seen student groups come and go, and newbies often get a gruff response WP:BITE notwithstanding. With more guidance they can avoid many unseen tripwires. By being an active editor, you'll also be able to share your social capital with your brood. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 06:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Is this some sort of defense for Smokefoot's action and comments? (My reaching this conclusion was motivated by evidence of your and Smokefoot's joint efforts to express displeasure over school and university projects on your respective talk pages.) Do you really mean that merging/deleting an article page, without waiting for a discussion, as Smokefoot did, is the cultural norm here?

By the way, here is what WP:BITE has to say about recommending additional experience:

"While it is fine to point a new user who has made a mistake towards the relevant policy pages, it is both unreasonable and unfriendly to suggest that they stop taking part in votes, Articles for Deletion discussions, etc., until they 'gain more experience.' This both discourages new editors and deprives Wikipedia of much-needed insights."

(signed retroactively) UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 14:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm aware of what BITE says, and I'm also aware of why that essay needed to be written in the first place. Newcomers get in trouble for all sorts of reasons; this eventually tries the existing editors' patience, and communication goes downhill hence the newbies get bitten. Assimilating one new editor every few weeks is one thing, dealing with a much larger number is quite different.

Specifically with regard to your disagreement with Smokefoot: you have recourse. Bring it up to the relevant Wikiproject page, and get more informed opinions. It seems that Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology is appropriate. Consensus found there is more binding. Without discussing the merits of whether the article should be redirected or not, the article is in need of a lot of cleanup, starting from the title (sentence case, not title case is used here).


 * I will certainly bring it up on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology. Thanks for the suggestion. Regarding the need for cleanup, I do communicate privately with student teams if I find their contribution in need of quality improvement or overhaul as soon as I review their article. Please rest assured that I am doing this for every article in this course. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Coming back to my previous comment: I'm trying to give you a suggestion. Unless your students are writing about chemistry, I don't expect to come across your students' articles, and so I probably won't care less either way. But if you think you have a better idea, that's fine as well. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 07:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Comments and suggestions
First, please do not forget to sign your comments. Failing to do this makes following this discussion difficult. I am the administrator that moved the article and it's Talk Page into user space. (Although any editor could have done this). I did this because I realised that it was a student project and wanted to allow editing of the article to continue following "deletion". I took the time and trouble to make sure that nothing was lost and the article is here User talk:Ascrimge/Nitrogen flow through metabolism and Talk Page is here User talk:Ascrimge/Nitrogen flow through metabolism/Discussion. Many articles are started in user space and later moved to the main encyclopedia, so I see no insurmountable problems for the course project.


 * I signed the comment retroactively -- sorry for the omission. I very much appreciate that you recognized the article to be a student project and moved it to user space. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 18:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

In my view, the article was in such a poor state that the subsequent actions of established editors was inevitable. The advice given here WP:School_and_university_projects was not followed fully. Moreover it says, "Because Wikipedia's editorial policies are much stricter than the ease of article editing may initially suggest, many articles by new editors are deleted"—and this is what happened. It was not initially clear to me, and I presume others, that this was a university project. There were no obvious links to the project page and the relevant Wikipedia Projects were not notified. I have worked with similar projects in the past, and they were successful: four Featured Articles were produced by this one WikiProject AP Biology 2008. The course leader, Jimmy Butler, took the time and trouble to involve the wider community of editors and his efforts were rewarded.

It seems to me that the students have not been given good guidance, and were in danger of leaving a mess for other editors to clean-up: The absence of established reference formatting  for example, and little adherence to the WP:Manual of style.


 * Let me explain that the class was given due guidance (and some, although not all, groups have been following it diligently). The detailed assignment handout had instructions to collaboratively and incrementally edit on Wikipedia article space (as opposed to editing offline and pasting the completed draft on Wikipedia), to discuss the article openly on its talk page, to use the educational assignment template on the article, to use a professional scientific style while still reaching out to a broader audience, to use using only scholarly sources (peer-reviewed journal articles, and less preferably, books) to substantiate the article, to not plagiarize from any source as well as to follow Wikipedia guidelines for citing/bibliography. The University library also stepped in and developed this guide to guide the undergraduates on performing scholarly research. Furthermore, each student team was asked to first submit a letter of intent to the instructor (me), which had to describe the anticipated contents of the team's article. Students could start editing Wikipedia only after they received feedback from me on this letter. Teams that proposed content that was similar to or overlapped existing Wikipedia articles were cautioned about the need for revising their proposal and instructed which alternative subjects to include and where to find information on these. Finally, teams were cautioned that Wikipedia editors could potentially edit their articles to a significant extent. So I don't think there was a lack of "good" guidance. I wish I could have done more, such as watching each article as it progressed, but sadly, assistant professors in R1 universities do not get this much time. In hindsight I also feel I should have enforced some of my instructions, such as using a grade penalty when articles were not incrementally edited or when my feedback to the letter of intent was not followed. So much of a grade penalty seems harsh, but I may look at using this in future years to ensure that contributions are of high quality. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 18:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Getting into arguments with other editors is not going to help: everyone has been acting in good faith. Nothing has been lost. I suggest the project continues in user space for the time being. The article can easily be moved back in to main space when it is improved.

PS. I am also concerned that the students might possibly be sharing an account, which contravenes our policies, (see WP:NOSHARE). If this is not the case please ignore this comment. Graham Colm (talk) 09:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * An incremental approach is also helpful in assimilating new editors to our community. They are either provided pointers on how to edit, or they learn by example by watching others clean up. A ready made article is much harder to process. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Graham: the students in this team do not share an account. They were asked to submit usernames in a forum (that is only open to the class) and I can assure you that there are as many different usernames as there are students in the group. Rifleman: As explained in my response above, the instructions did indicate that the article was to be incrementally written and openly discussed on Wikipedia, but were not enforced. Asking students to watch others clean up is a great idea, and I will certainly use this in future years. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 18:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your detailed reply addressing my concerns. This is just to acknowledge that I have read this. I live in the UK, and it's getting late here. I will catch up with this discussion tomorrow. It would be beneficial to both Wikipedia and the students if all involved could begin to work together on this. I see that the work being done on Hershey-Chase experiment is also part of this project. This seems to be progressing more smoothly. But there are comments at its peer review (some from me), which have yet to be addressed. I was thinking about reviewing its WP:GAN, but as I don't think it's ready, I decided not to. I do not want to give the impression that I do not support this project. I do. I hope the team that is working on the nitrogen article and other articles are following these discussions and know that they are held accountable to a global audience. Please let me know if help is needed. Best wishes. Graham. Graham Colm (talk) 19:19, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Graham, for your offer to help. I am going to intervene in this project more than I have (and intended to). Best, Ganesh. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 19:48, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Student projects
Copied from my talk page ", we need to continue our discussion of your intervention in the (erstwhile) student project article on Nitrogen Flow through Metabolism in my talk page. Please respond there. By the way, reading your talk page reveals that you are quite opposed to the spirit of Wikipedia: School and university projects and Wikipedia: template for educational assignments. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 05:43, 23 April 2011 (UTC)"
 * The reason that I comment on your efforts is because I do the same kind of work. I have supervised hundreds of student projects over about 5 years.  But I invest a lot of time on these projects so that they meet both my educational goals and Wikipedia's standards.  There is no way that I would as a newbie try to push around established editors or write over or challenge long-established articles.  I have learned, often through humbling experience, that the editorial standards in Wikipedia can be high and quite selective. So again, I dont oppose university participation, but it helps to be pretty careful.  --Smokefoot (talk) 13:47, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I can echo that - I think that Smokefoot was probably the first editor to run a large class project based on students contributing/editing chemistry articles. So he does bring a wealth of knowledge and experience.  Molecular biology isn't my thing (I'm a synthetic organic chemist), but if I can help with your efforts please let me know.  Good luck, Walkerma (talk) 16:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If Smokefoot has done so, I laud their efforts. It would be nice if they depict some of this work on their user page. It will not be immodest to do so, and will prevent their user talk page from giving the impression that they are opposed to Wikipedia being used for school or university projects.
 * I think that this still does not give Smokefoot the right to use words and phrases like damage, harm or (see preceding comment above) imply that I or my students are "challenging longstanding articles" without objectively substantiating their opinion. For example, what makes Smokefoot think that anyone associated with my class challenged an existing, longstanding article? UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 18:38, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

, are recent examples. I appreciate that everyone has limited amounts of time, but I'd still encourage you to find some time to pick a topic you are interested in and start editing. An established editor managing a student project really does avoid a lot of potential problems. He can tell the students how it actually is, rather than how it should be. More importantly, he gets a lot more support from bystanders, rather than complaints, because there is a certain assurance that this regular editor will ultimately ensure that what needs to be fixed will eventually be fixed. This is one of the idiosyncrasies of this medium - professional titles and affiliations mean little because of the anonymity associated with editing, so social capital and an informal reputation system serve instead. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 19:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia assignments
Hi, sorry for the above confusion and whatnot. One of your students came onto IRC with a question and I was looking at your course page. As a Wikipedia online ambassador working with other university courses, I thought I'd bring a fresh perspective to this: Regards, / ƒETCH COMMS  /  03:48, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's OK if students don't bring polished and perfect articles on their first try. Obviously, our goal is to add more content, not delete it. Unless a test article was saved by mistake, usually we can just put it in someone's userspace and clean it up first before making it a live page.
 * If an article is left a mess by the end of the semester, you can lower the student(s)'s grade and others can salvage what's there. It's not a big deal.
 * Wikipedia has a steep learning curve. Busy students are neither expected nor required to know everything or get it perfectly. The best advice I have is to tell them to model their pages off existing featured articles so they know how to organize the page and what sort of tone to use. The minor details of style and such can be dealt with later.
 * I agree that Smokefoot's initial comment about not causing harm and whatnot was not the best way to start off. However, he is experienced in this area and I assure you he made that comment out of experience and was only trying to explain what may very well happen at the end of the semester. You two really just need to work together :). That's what Wikipedia is all about: collaboration. Have a nice up of tea, and let's start over, shall we?
 * I also think you should take the advice to edit articles regularly. It's really a different perspective when you get into the societal/cultural aspects of Wikipedia.
 * Some students will have more success than others. Some intervention will be needed. If you haven't heard of it already, I'll encourage you to read about Wikipedia ambassadors, and if you feel one would be beneficial for a similar assignment next semester, just email sross@undefinedwikimedia.org to inquire about it—we're more than happy to look for an ambassador in the UM area for next school year.
 * Don't hesitate to contact me at User talk:Fetchcomms if you have questions about what I just wrote.


 * Thanks much. Yes, I have started intervening in the project more than I had planned to. I will certainly be in touch. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 11:32, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Okazaki fragment & friends
I looked through what I believe are the articles your students are working on. I think Okazaki fragment is a good, positive example. Specific to this article, referencing needs to be improved - I'm not sure if your students know how to properly cite journals. cite journal and User:CitationBot is often helpful. I think that the "medical" and "engineering concepts" sections seem a little contrived, and should be phrased carefully to fit the tone of the encyclopedia. Appropriate wikilinks can also be introduced as appropriate. Section headers should follow sentence case, not title case. I know this is not common but is the manual of style here. Perhaps some illustrations are helpful?

Skin cell gun is a fair attempt too, but I think the quality of references is not ideal. I'm sure there are more authoritative sources than Newsweek, for instance? Similar issues as the last.

Induced_Pluripotent_Cells_Cure_Disease seems to need the most help. The title is inappropriate, as is the, and it seems like the content should be merged into induced pluripotent stem cell. If it should indeed be a standalone article, something like induced pluripotent cell therapy or something? It's not my field to be sure; I'm looking at it from the perspective of a scientifically literate person. Referencing in this article is terrible. Bare URLs are terrible, and we do not support one Wikipedia article with another, we use external sources. The lead section does not clearly tell the reader what the article is all about. Sectioning and formatting needs to be improved as well. I would strongly suggest that these students look at their classmates' other two articles for inspiration. I'm going to format the sections, but I would once again urge that they re-think the title.

I hope this helps with your class. Let me know if you need anything. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 04:55, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Since the sickle cell section is merely a re-cap of another concept, it should be dramatically shortened, with an appropriate link to sickle cell anemia. Perhaps like. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 04:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)


 * This is very helpful. My students will be surely be looking at your reviews in the next few days. UM BIOE120 Instructor (talk) 11:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

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