Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Teletraffic Engineering

=Conclusions=
 * For a school project, it is prudent to contact the teacher and ask him to consider article quality for grading of the project
 * When you spot a school project, please notify people at the Village Pump
 * In general, such projects do not require separate guidelines - Don't bite the newbies applies as normal, but so does Deletion policy
 * See also School_and_university_projects

Attempted consensus
Sometimes, a group of similar or related articles is nominated for deletion over a short period of time. In cases like this, it seems prudent to have one centralized discussion about the entire group, rather than repeating arguments over each member thereof. This is an attempt to forum consensus on one such groups of articles.

Note that individual articles from the group may still be considered worth retaining on other grounds.

See School and university projects.

Description
A teacher has given an assignment to his students to add an article to Wikipedia, and have those articles interlinked. While in principle that might be a good idea, there are concerns about the lack of quality, accuracy and verifiability of several of the articles.

As a side point it may be useful to establish guidelines for teachers wishing to do a similar assignment in the future. It hasn't happened often yet but may become more common in the future.

Teletraffic Engineering and all the articles which it references: (suggest a move to more standard telecommunications engineering. Lexor|Talk July 8, 2005 09:37 (UTC))
 * Teletraffic Call Centres - ( duplicates has been merged into Call centre)
 * Teletraffic Common Channel Signalling - ( largely redundant with Signalling System 7 - listed on WP:VFD)
 * Teletraffic Engineering in Multi-Service Networks - ( largely redundant with Multiplexing and Asynchronous traffic mode - listed on WP:VFD)
 * Teletraffic Grade of Service - ( duplicates has been merged into Grade of service)
 * Teletraffic Quality of Service - ( duplicates has been merged into Quality of service and Telephony quality of service added)
 * Teletraffic Trunking - ( duplicates has been merged into  Trunking)
 * Traffic Engineering Forecasting - (apparently a new topic. Moved to telecommunications forecasting)
 * Teletraffic Measurement - (duplicates Traffic analysis) apparently new material
 * Teletraffic Queuing Theory - ( duplicates should be merged into Queueing theory)
 * Teletraffic Routing - largely redundant with Routing and Routing in the PSTN marked to merge to the latter
 * Teletraffic Simulation - moved to network traffic simulation overlaps with simulation and Computer simulation but noticable new material.
 * Teletraffic Time Division Multiplexing - (duplicates Time-division multiplexing)
 * Network Planning and Design - appears to be new material
 * Engset Calculation - appears to be new material
 * High Loss Calculations - see talk page misguided?
 * Full Availability, Limited Availability and Gradings - moved to limited availability
 * Network Performance - very general ; does this have any value?
 * Tariffing - ( duplicates Tarrif ) moved to charging in telecomms networks - new material it seems?
 * Trade in Services - (duplicates General Agreement on Trade in Services) now cleaned up.
 * Teletraffic Engineering in ATM Networks - (if written will duplicate Asynchronous Transfer Mode)
 * Congestion Control - (covers only ATM so isn't very useful)
 * Cellular teletraffic - (duplicates Global System for Mobile Communications and cellular network - listed on WP:VFD)
 * Teletraffic GSM - (duplicates Global System for Mobile Communications with no additional information - listed on WP:VFD)
 * Cell handover process - (duplicates Handoff and parts of Cellular network with little clear additional material - delete? - listed on WP:VFD)
 * Mobile QoS - apparently new material
 * long-tail traffic - apparently new material / needs to be split into maths and telecomms.
 * Important aspects of GSM Teletraffic doesn't seem to exist. no value over curret GSM titles.

These articles have been written by Vandenbr, Caltox, Barry22, Y.bata and anons with South African IP addresses. This is a project by students at the University of the Witwatersrand.

The authors seem to be showing a total disregard for the rest of Wikipedia. They are blithely creating parallels of existing articles. They have created scarcely any links out from this group of articles. They have made no attempt whatsoever to create incoming links to them. They have removed tags when negligible wikification has been done. The titles are unhelpful, for example, what is the difference between Cellular teletraffic and Teletraffic GSM?

Essentially this consensus page has been created as a plea that these contributors should enter into the Wiki process properly or depart. -- RHaworth 02:16, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Confirmation

 * copy of an email

Dear Roger,

Your response is wonderful. Thank you. We also appreciate the editorial role you have so kindly provided at wikipedia. 

Yes, I am the soul responsible for this work-in-progress at wikipedia (currently at about the one third mark towards completion). See http://dept.ee.wits.ac.za/~kennedy/elen5007

The small postgrad class has as an examinable outcome, a major contribution to wikipedia.

Their real e-mail addresses are in the cc list above.

One of the outcomes for them is to learn how to work in groups. This outcome should be visible in their wiki links to each others work AND to the community of scholarly work pre-existing in the Web and wiki. They must listen to your constructive criticism, or their final marks will be downgraded heavily! Please remain in contact, and once again thanks for the comments!

Roger W. Haworth wrote:


 * Please look at Deletion policy/Teletraffic Engineering. You are most welcome to add your comments to it. (You do not need a User Id but you should identify yourself.)  It has been on display for eight hours now without anyone adding comments - and that is a long time in Wikipedia. But I am sure others will eventually find it.


 * I strongly suspect that you can convert the Id's: Vandenbr, Caltox, Barry22 and Y.bata into real people. If so, will you please explain to them that their main sin is, in my opinion, what the army calls dumb insolence Get them to talk about what they are doing, either on the above deletion policy page or, for example, on the discussion page of the Teletraffic Engineering article Talk:Teletraffic_Engineering.  They might be pleasantly surprised at the response they receive!

-- Best Regards, Ian.

Responses to Ian Kennedy

 * I am sorry, but I think your idea is misguided. To give an example: how can you examine Barry22's work on long-tail traffic when Richard Clegg has been at the article as well (see below)? But never mind what I think, let us see what others think. Anyhow, I am glad I went to the effort of creating this page and the links to your project - it was fully justified. -- RHaworth 12:59, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Arguments for bulk deletion

 * As a class project (grad, undergrad, high school, who cares really), and apparently the first of its kind by this instructor (is this true, or is there a history of this by this person?), it was a class experiment and therefore should all be considered "test" pages. Furthermore the demonstrated lack of respect for WP editorial and content-management conventions is either deliberately disruptive or perhaps also part of a (social) experiment. And furthermore the material is arguably original research, many of the pages are without any indication of reference or citation -- normally not something I would complain about, admittedly, but the articles show a serious lack of conforming to encylopedic style; rather they are in instructional or essay style. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 17:54, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)


 * This is a pretty unethical project in my view. If educators want to help their students learn about collaborative writing on the internet they can download some wiki software and do it in their own private space. We are trying to create an encyclopedia here and if teachers want to get their students to join that effort then fine, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Teachers have no right to encourage their students to come and piss about in the article space. These people do not appear to have made much of an effort to understand Wikipedia policy or the nature of the wiki process. This is disruptive to Wikipedia and creating a lot of unecessary work for people. The accounts ought to be blocked in my view. &mdash; Trilobite (Talk) 13:52, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Hear, hear. Especially the suggestion of creating their own Wiki. They can set it up so that it supports interwiki links to here can't they? (Not that they show any interest in creatimg such!) -- RHaworth 14:18, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)

Arguments for selective keeping and merging
-- RHaworth 08:54, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
 * This is a student project squatting in Wikispace.
 * Full Availability, Limited Availability and Gradings - moved to a more sensible title, may be worth keeping for historical interest
 * Engset Calculation and long-tail traffic - are probably worth retaining after cleanup
 * keep - This should be kept, it is a very usefully calculation. I agree the article is a bit messy and needs to be cleaned up and better linked in with other articles on the title, but keep itKitsonk 00:35, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't believe we should go for bulk deletion before the pages have been scanned for useful content. Selective portions of it should certainly be kept. Radiant! 11:42, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * A person or group of persons, preferably with some level of knowledge on the subject, should take a long hard look at these articles, determine what (if anything) is useful, non-duplicate information, merge it, and redirect.  No VfD would even be necessary. Andrew Lenahan - St ar bli nd  13:03, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * I feel that, the question of what should happen to these articles is now secondary to whether Wikipedia is a proper place for Ian Kennedy to conduct an examinable (!) project. I note in particular that his email omits any mention of creating incoming links to the project. Can anyone with a much longer Wikimemory than mine recall what happened about a similar visit by Hong Kong University in 2003 July? See Special:Whatlinkshere/User:H0119907 and User:H0119907. -- RHaworth 13:19, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * Interesting question. I believe in theory it would be a Good Thing if a teacher were to set an assignment for his pupils on Wikipedia. He could examine the edit history to verify what work was actually done by the pupil in question. However, I have some concern about the level of quality added here; I could imagine high school kids to not take the assignment seriously, and adding nonsense. The work in Teletraffic isn't exactly of top quality. Anwyay... would it be a good idea to set up a Teacher's FAQ to Wikipedian Assignments or something like that? Radiant! 16:07, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * See School and university projects for an attempt at something along those lines. / Alarm 12:50, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I think what you really mean is "it would be a Good Thing if a teacher were to set an assignment for his pupils on a Wiki." Encouraging school classes to commit their rough essays to Wikipedia's main encyclopedic space is the equivalent of sending them to scribble their class notes in the library's copy of Britannica. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 19:05, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, yes. It would in theory be good, but in practice it may well be a poor quality addition. Radiant! 08:18, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree with Radiant!, these pages all need to be assessed independently. Many of these contain useful information and/or can be dealt with by merges and/or redirects.  If there are problems with the users creating these pages, the users should be dealt with via the dispute resolution process, not by deleting the articles.  JYolkowski 23:30, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Radiant is right. Lacrimosus 23:47, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Another agreement with Radiant. Just because something is a student/class project doesn't mean it isn't worthy of inclusion. I'm sure we have a number of smart kids contributing valuable articles to Wikipedia (I, for one, am an absolutely brilliant 3 three year old ;-) ). All this said, perhaps Wikipedia admins might consider creating - in conjunction with interested teachers - some form of Sandbox where projects can be parked until they can be verified and added to the general population. (Note: I am not familiar with Teletraffic, so if I have just described something already in place, I beg your pardon.) 23skidoo 03:23, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Yet one more agreement with Radiant! Bulk deletion seems inappropriate here. These pages should be dealt with independently. By the way, I'm not familiar with Teletraffic engineering either, but these articles as they now stand seem way above our average of student and high school vanity. vlad_mv 16:38, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Bulk deletion is too much work ;-), keeping track of projects is too much work ;-) Just treat every page like we'd treat any other wiki page, and do whatever is appropriate. Who knows, some of them might even be useful. ;-) Kim Bruning 14:10, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Trade in services is a very important topic that I am glad to find here. Thank you, students. I will try to help with the article because as I already noted on the discussion page trade in services is a broader topic than just GATS. Get-back-world-respect 09:44, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Other arguments and comments

 * Tariffing - this is gobblygook - Woohookitty
 * long-tail traffic - I have significant concerns about this page since it continually confuses the terms long-range dependent, heavy-tailed and self-similar. However, the edit required to fix it would be significant ...  -- Richard Clegg 17:18, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Has anyone attempted to contact said users and inform them of WP policies and guidelines? Radiant! 11:18, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * I first left a message on User talk:Vandenbr on Feb 19 - result: silence. I left a message on User talk:Caltox on Mar 2 - result: silence. And both these have made edits since my messages. Recent messages have been left on User talk:Barry22, User talk:Y.bata and mailto:Ian Kennedy - whose lecture notes are cited in a number of their articles. -- RHaworth 11:38, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * Could we get some Wikipedians knowledgeable in this particular field to do a couple of edits and link additions? If Vandenbr and friends can coexist with that, then they can be a valuable addition to the Wiki. If they revert that, they could be considered vandalists. Similarly, if there's a nonsensical page amongst those, tag it for VfD and see how they react. Radiant! 11:45, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * Since it was drawn to my attention, I have spent some time editing long-tail traffic. It is still far from perfect but I think it is improved and contains useful information.  I have clarified the worst misunderstandings and would like this page to stay even though it is still in considerable need of modificiation. --Richard Clegg 12:42, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Important aspects of GSM Teletraffic This appears to be a cut and paste of a section of lecture notes (the give away being the Exercise: part at the bottom. The article contributes nothing to an explanation of how GSM networks are dimensioned.  ChrisUK 21:21, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * The word Teletraffic is a quaint one. I have never heard it after 10 years in a GSM operator.  After searching on google, it is a fairly well defined term, but I suspect only in academic circles.  We normally call it dimensioning or sizing. ChrisUK 21:21, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * The articles are written like essays or reports, but not as encyclopedic articles. Even the main entry Teletraffic Engineering fails to clearly explain the subject. The contributors failed to understand what wikipedia is, who is the targeted audience, and what the rules are. It seems to me that they rushed into their assignment without taking the time to take any interest in wikipedia and the process going around it. Glaurung 12:45, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I concur, the effort seems misguided. Among other things, it would be useful if the FAQ on school pages was more prominently displayed somewhere. Radiant! 08:40, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * My concern is that projects like this will lead to wikicancer. When single, isolated pages appear, they stand a good chance of going through a thourough review/wikify/verify/clean process. But when entire families of pages appear all at once, they appear to be self-reinforcing. Someone stubling across a single one of the pages will be much less likely to do some critical work on it if the page looks like it fits well with a comprehensive family of articles. In this way, wikipedia will be open to clumps of articles that may be inaccurate/false/dirty/etc, but the clump of articles will be much more robust than a single bad article. Thus, a wikitumor is born. In a perfect world, there would be a clear tool for admins/editors to flag groups of articles like this for comprehensive review. Otherwise, they're much more likely to pollute wiki with bad information than a single article.Feco 20:22, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * As an aside, I've started thinking about wiki like an immune system in how it maintains and checks content, also in how different users take different roles in that process. Thus, the wikitumor and wikicancer terms above. May be original, maybe not.Feco 20:22, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Even though it took some effort to read through all the pages (comments on talk pages), I think that this is being a bit overblown. This could be relatively easily cleaned up with normal policies.  Consider Don't bite the newbies and just edit as normal.  If they revert then eventually they will be 24hr banned under the 3RR and that will give us time to make fixes. Pages should be treated individually.  Mozzerati 06:31, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)


 * Just like to second Richard's request for long-tail traffic to stay. Pretty useful. The style has diverged from an encylopedia one to more of a text book write-up, but then again why not? Otherwise there will be a gap between wiki and the articles referenced to give more details. As for the assignment I don't think it is appropriate for every student to submit something. But a more disciplined approach may work: e.g. all the class (maybe in groups) first produce their own articles offline, and then the class selects the best article to be uploaded (after going through a class review and improvement process). This way they get to understand some of the review process too. The end result should then be of a reasonable standard and not a cluster of self-affirming pages. Aarghdvaark 07:42, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Action being taken
The students involved will give serious (read: mark-affecting) attention to the received criticism. For example, the tariffing section should correctly be zapped as soon as possible. Subtleties between (long tail) terminologies will be clarified. Temporary work-arounds introduced in attempt to get permanency at wikipedia will be rectified forthwith. Ian Kennedy.


 * That's probably perfect. Thank you :-) I hope their Wikipedia experience isn't too bruising! - David Gerard 13:39, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I've commented on all the talk pages where there wasn't yet a comment and it seemed needed. Please respond there. Mozzerati 06:31, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

I have now listed for deletion individual pages which I thought needed it. I don't think a consensus to delete in bulk has developed. At the same time I've also gone through putting on cleanup tags etc. Mozzerati 21:29, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

Student Response
Firstly, I would like to appologise for the silence. It was a result of a misunderstanding as to our mode of interaction with the wiki community and was certainly not intended to suggest any lack of respect for any wiki users or the rules and procedures. My fellow students and I are taking steps to rectify the situation, and we would request a grace period to enable us to so so. We appreciate the feedback received via this page and will use it to guide our remedial actions. Many thanks, Vandenbr 19:36, 14 Mar 2005 (GMT)

Marking
In consideration of the above posts, is there a better tag we can put on these articles to indicate that they are freely known to be drafts and will be worked on by the original posters ? - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 03:34, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * In general, people who want to work on draft articles without having them edited by other people create them in subpages of their user pages. --L33tminion | (talk) 00:39, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * But, considering this is not the case anymore, template seems a suitable choice to me. vlad_mv 11:52, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * No, never, the only legit place to stop other people working on your article is the user space of a logged in user. Anything else blocks the working of the Wiki.  Mozzerati 06:31, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

The Overall Policy Issue
I don't believe that using wikipedia for student projects should be accpetable policy. My fear is that it would make any page a sandbox. That is clearly against policy. As a new user myself, I'm finding that this is not as easy as many would think. Would a better approach be to set up a wiki project of some kind for activities like this, maybe even with suggested topics or entries. Then on a periodic basis, the older entries could be evaluated and either deleted or moved to another wiki with tags like "cleanup" as needed. Stubs should not be kept.Vegaswikian 08:16, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a compromise position would be in order, with class projects being able to use the sandbox or a similar area for the project itself, and with an option for students who feel their work is appropriate to wikipedia to then post said work, which will then have to pass the same criteria and scrutiny as any other entry. -- Glen Finney 21:46, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable.Vegaswikian 07:26, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, Foundation Principle. Anyone may edit wikipedia for any reason. If class projects want to work on wikipedia, FINE, but their contributions shouldn't be given any special treatment. If the articles they produce are brilliant? That's cool. If the articles suck? We edit them mercilessly, or even delete them, just like any other article. Let me just reiterate that foundation principles are an exception to the rule on wikipedia: they are not up for debate. Kim Bruning 14:21, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Semantics. Making a practice "against policy" in the WP paradigm equates to summarily deleting the content that is unwanted, and "allowed" equates to not being summarily deleted. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 19:04, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting concept. I haven't seen it before, please elaborate? Kim Bruning 19:18, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Go look at WP:CSD. It's full of examples of contributions someone can make to the database that will be summarily deleted. Effectively then, they aren't allowed. The only difference is in whether the enforcement of this disallowment is performed before the fact, or after the fact. But in result, there is little difference. So arguing that "anyone can edit for any reason" precludes the notion of "disallowed" is fallacious. You interpret "disallowed" to mean only before the fact, which is not the case in the way it is generally understood in WP. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 19:45, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
 * I still have trouble following you, could you elaborate yet further please?. WP:CSD seems to be based on the articles that have been written being very clearly unencyclopedic indeed. I don't believe there is an argument that says we can do the same for articles that are clearly encyclopedic. However, if you believe CSD is at odds with the foundation issues (Though I am not convinced of that yet), have you moved for CSD to be stopped? Kim Bruning 16:23, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't know how I can make myself clearer, but I've certainly failed to make myself clear to you. What I'm saying is that bringing up the "anyone can edit" principle is an invalid argument against the notion of what should be summarily deleted. You only seem to take issue with the term "not allowed". I argue it's mere semantics. In the end, whether you decide that something is "not allowed" or that it "should be summarily deleted", the same outcome will result. Picking on choice of words doesn't make a difference. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 05:17, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * How about this... the appearance of a new school project will (likely) be obvious to the New Page Patrollers. As soon as they find one, they should notify the rest of the 'Pedia, for instance at the Village Pump. Then, our main concern should be making sure those school people make good edits and articles. I'd suggest,
 * Creating a centralized talk page for the entire school project, and making sure each project page links there
 * Contacting the teacher involved, and convince him to have his grades relate to quality of edits
 * Creating a template 'school project' and add it to each related page
 * Said template should be similar to the 'welcome newbie' template, and give suggestions on 'proper' editing and formatting - not to mention integration with the rest of WP
 * Other than this guidance, treat them as normal edits, and mark them for cleanup, merging or VfD if appropriate.
 * Radiant_* 15:37, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)


 * The problem I have with WP eargerly inviting school projects is the amount of cleanup work involved when a teacher directs his entire class to hop into a collaborative project, insert a slew of poorly developed material without regard for the project's conventions or existing content, and then jump out at the end of course, get their grade, and leave their waste product behind for us to clean up. The work involved to clean up that mess results in this practice being disruptive to the project.
 * I do not think that such material especially en masse like this should as a rule be given the same level of attention as other contributions. On the odd chance the contributed material has clearly useful content that can either stand on its own or easily merge into existing articles, great. But if there is no clearly useful content, time should not be wasted on digging through it just to be nice to the fly-by-nighters. Leaving the mess around for a prolonged period, especially when much of it duplicates existing articles, can be detrimental to the project. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 19:30, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * And furthermore, if we encourage this, what happens next semester? We get another slew of duplicate articles, some even duplicating the last slew? - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 19:31, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, I see your point even if I don't fully agree with it. But let's face it, you're never going to get consensual agreement for automatic bulk deletion of school project generated articles. I'd suggest that you be bold instead, take a look at the recent bunch of school articles and submit them to heavy editing (cutting away trivial or POV info, add {expand} {cleanup} etc, or list them on VfD, whatever is appropriate. Radiant_* 19:50, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * I still don't like the idea of inviting cleanup work with the expectation that experience WPers will willingly and happily serve as janitors. (That's not to say I have anything wrong with the addition of rough content, with substance, as I do it myself all the time; but I don't enjoy the notion of basically inviting unnecessary refuse.) IMO the reactive catch-up method is no good. The above plan advocates: 1. trying to get unexperienced contributors who clearly have not bothered to familiarize themselves with convention or policy to cooperate in a central project page for their work; 2. trying to get the attention of a teacher who clearly did not himself take the time to learn the conventions or policies of WP ahead of time and pass them on to his pupils. Unnecessary waste of effort for contributions with little merit or added value. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA&amp;lt;nowiki>] 05:17, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * To me, the problem is not the articles created by students. The root cause traces back to the objectives and instructions given by the teacher.  In the class projects I've been involved with cleaning up after, the teacher had at best a cursory understanding of Wikipedia's goals, objectives or conventions.  None were established contributors before they made the assignment.  As a former teacher, I consider that inexcusable laziness on the part of the instructors.  If an instructor just wants his/her students to "learn about collaboration", Trilobite is right - the instructor should download the wiki-software and do whatever they want on their nickle.  If they really want the students to contribute to the encyclopedia, they need to understand what that means first.  Unfortunately, the only sanction we have available against the instructor is through the students' articles.  While I understand Radiant!'s argument for keeping those articles that have a kernel of value, my experience has been that there have been relatively few kernels amongst a great deal of chaff.  When class-based articles are nominated for deletion, I view them with more skepticism than articles from random contributors.  ...  So after that diatribe, what do I propose to do about it?  I recommend:
 * that we beef up the School and university projects guidelines
 * that we aggressively market those guidelines to potential instructors before they make their assignment (not sure how to do that yet)
 * that we reserve the right to summarily delete the project's articles if the instructor flouts those guidelines (that right to be exercised after a single VfD-like discussion covering the instructor's behavior and instructions?). Rossami (talk) 20:06, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * This particular incident was clearly one where there was next to no chaff; more to the point, massively unnecessary duplication of intellectual material. I imagine the majority such incidents are about the same. If they were really interested in helping this project, they'd take the time to learn about it before dumping on it. Perhaps even they could be eased into it over the course of the class. You know, the incremental method of education. - Keith D. Tyler &para; [ AMA ] 05:17, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Why are people always of so little faith? I think that a class project is less troublesom than most vandal attacks. Let them come, let them edit. That's what the wiki is here for. All you need to do is read 'em all through, and worst case it's 2 clicks per page. I can do that all by myself if I have to. But I won't have to, because there's 100s of people here all day. :-) Kim Bruning 00:40, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't see that this is a big deal. Many people (probably including me) have inadvertently created more "difficulties" than they intended. The way forward seems to be firstly gentle encouragement to both supervisors and students to fit in with the culture (as was done), secondly the standard "self healing" of the wikipedia, and thirdly that this type of change is more easily monitored than the same number of individuals doing a similar thing, but not co-ordinated. Also in terms of the "expertise" level, remember why nupedia isn't wikipedia. Rich Farmbrough 16:23, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The wiki software is freely available. If schools want to use wikipedia-type articles for projects, they can feel free to set up their own on their own server, rather than screwing up a valuable public resource like WP--Cynical 13:48, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Clean up underway
Just to announce that the course convener is now fixing the half-truths etc that the students have inadvertently incorporated. Best Regards, Ian 12:06, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC) Today I cleaned up after the first student. It should go faster with the rest now I have got the hang of wiki. Sections 2-4 Still to be cleaned up.


 * Hi; please consider getting an account since it will make it easier to communicate.  I am writing here since I understand you edit from several addresses.  Please don't bother correcting the articles which have been listed on WP:VFD (see the list above) since they are likely to be deleted in some days anyway.  We would definitely welcome you to stay around and work on the telecommunications articles where your knowlege would help very much.  This will also mean that next time someone suggests doing a project like this, you'll be able to arrange it so that (almost) everybody is happy and your students get more benefit, including review from those of us more on the commercial side of telecomms.  Mozzerati 19:58, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

The (surviving) pages and links inserted by my students have now been cleaned up extensively. Could the links to this deletion policy page now please be removed?

I am willing to do the work, as long as the community agrees. Ian Geoffrey Kennedy 8 July 2005 11:51 (UTC)