Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Incidents/Archive 1

Various

 * Refactored from Test case at the old ENB

In addition to the motor system test case below, these problems:
 * Education Program:Boston College/Developmental Biology (Fall 2013),, , JMathewson (WMF)
 * Education Program:Case Western Reserve University/ANTH 302 Darwinian Medicine (Fall 2013),, , JMathewson (WMF)
 * Education Program:Rice University/Poverty, Justice, Human Capabilities, Section 2 (Fall 2013),, , , Mike Christie, JMathewson (WMF), , , , ,
 * Undetermined course,
 * Another potential undetermined course,, , , ,

From multiple different classes and students, I have spent most of my fall tagging, cleaning up, checking sources, fixing content, linking, copyediting, moving, patching, trying to get students to engage on talk (basically they never do), and in no case yet can I say that any article is better off or that I couldn't have written the articles myself with far less effort and time. The articles are longer, yes, and often where we once had a stub we now have text, but in no case do we really have any text of value, or if we do, it's because established editors have had to spend inordinate hours in cleanup.

Samples

 * Refactored from Test case at the old ENB


 * Education Program:Boston College/Developmental Biology (Fall 2013),, , JMathewson (WMF)
 * Education Program:Case Western Reserve University/ANTH 302 Darwinian Medicine (Fall 2013),, , JMathewson (WMF)
 * Education Program:Rice University/Poverty, Justice, Human Capabilities, Section 2 (Fall 2013),, , , Mike Christie, JMathewson (WMF), , , , ,
 * Undetermined course,
 * Another potential undetermined course,, , , ,


 * 1) One student edit results in 72 edits for Dolfrog and me, and the article is still fairly incomprehensible, and likely to stay tagged indefinitely.  (With the added twist that it was only revealed this week that we have two different classes editing the same article.) Student version before Dolfrog and I cleaned up.
 * Sure, "it can be incorporated into the table later", passive voice. Who will do this incorporation of a blob of new sandbox text, out of place in the article?  Wikipedia is not a sandbox.  Grades must be due this week, so plop it in and let someone else fix it.  (Someone else being Dolfrog and me.) In this editor's defense, at least she tagged talk before the other course appeared and pre-empted her work, and  is to be commended for generally good quality work.  Now, since there were/are two courses working in there, if one of them will finish merging the two different versions (table or not, and other inconsistencies).  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:45, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Five new redlinked accounts, editing the same way at the same times, reverting for each other, edits suggestive of fall term and class deadlines, but not a single post from one of them on talk; result, endless cleanup hours for me and Slp1, and the article still a mess.  As far as I know, we have no template we can use to query possible student edits, which look like meatpuppetry, but is most surely student editing so blunter forms of dispute resolution can't be used.
 * 2) Unproductive discussion, nothing will result.
 * 3) User talk:Sarmocid/sandbox, lengthy discussion, attempts to educate, no text will result, and no benefit will result to Wikipedia because these students do not have enough knowledge to be editing Wikipedia articles, and they do not stay around.
 * 4) If User talk:Lek39/sandbox is dropped in at term-end, it will be reverted.

There are many more. This is but one small portion of what I have spent the fall term doing. In every case, my time has been wasted and could have been better spent adding content myself. But if I don't do this work, these students will drop these essays into medical articles, and they all will end up reverted. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Additional medical samples I have uncovered

 * Refactored from Test case at the old ENB


 * 1) Koller's sickle just came to my attention via the notification system; it doesn't affect me, but is another example of the typical problem.  I can read the entire lead here, and have no idea what Koller's sickle is.  A page full of gibberish.  On the other hand, if I go back before the student edits, to this old version, I can at least understand what Koller's sickle is (and I could even fix that version myself to make it more clear, but I can't do anything about the mess currently on the page).  What are we to do with text like this and who fill fix it all?  The profs? The ambassadors?  Not in my experience.
 * 2) Postmenopausal confusion, new article, just dropped in as one edit from sandbox, I took time to add PMIDs (which these students should be doing first by now), flag the primary sources, copyedit the lead, and tag the article:   Once the text is cleaned up and the primary sources are removed, this is a likely merge to menopause.  Who is going to do that work?  I've already spent more time on this article than it merits.
 * Wonderful; now we have an article redirecting to a student sandbox. Will an admin active on this board please fix?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ugh. I've deleted the redirect.  If need be, the page can be recreated or (as you suggest) the material can be added to menopause. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 16:30, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks Jb! Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:32, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ongoing consequences of students trying to add content when they have only edited in sandbox, haven't engaged the project, and don't yet even know how to edit Wikipedia. Post at top of page, not bottom, and the student thinks Jbmurray moved the page, when the student is the one who moved the page.  This sort of thing takes enormous amounts of time.  And, the student hasn't even learned how to sign posts yet :)  Do we really want to promote addition of content from students who are still learning the most basic basics of how to edit?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:27, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * And, now the article is back, after multiple moves to the wrong places, with ... all of the work I did to flag primary sources gone. In other words, my time wasted.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:16, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I spent another hour and a half tagging and cleaning up this article (partial repeat of yesterday's work), and in its current status, don't see why it won't end up merged to menopause. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:26, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1)  Cholera, sex-selective abortion and every medical article I have looked at from this course.  Every medical article I have looked at from the Rice University course has inappropriate use of sources, or incorrect article structure, or essay-like content, or undue material.  Are the professor and students aware of how to apply our our medical sourcing guidelines and our our general medical guidelines?  Who is going to clean up, tag, copyedit, restructure, and remove poorly sourced material from these pages?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:30, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Sandboxes: an unintended (or at least unexpected) consequence
Please take a look at User talk:Tryptofish. One of the things that seems to be happening in Education Program talk:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013)/Timeline is that the students are working up their content in sandboxes – good! – and then moving them into mainspace when they feel ready to do so, even if they are incorrect about the appropriateness of the move. It seems to me that that defeats much of the intended purpose of sandbox editing. In this case, at Molecular neuroscience, the student completely replaced the existing page with the sandbox draft: (see the edit summary). As it happens, this was actually a big improvement of a previously pretty-shabby page, in terms of content (although there were lots of basic stylistic flaws that could easily have been corrected before moving into mainspace if anyone had been able to review it before the move, as would likely have happened, for example, at Articles for Creation). But the thought of student projects making a practice of blanking existing content in order to replace it with sandbox creations has the potential for situations that give me the chills. It seems to me that we never really intended sandboxes to be used in quite this way, and we may need to give some thought to recommending some feedback to student editors before moving content from sandboxes to mainspace, for the students' benefit as well as Wikipedia's. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:31, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Spondylolisthesis

 * Article:
 * Course: Unknown (Cal Poly?)
 * Instructor: Unknown
 * Online volunteers: Unknown
 * Students:, , ,

It looks like term-end student editing; I gave them {{subst:Welcome medical student}} Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:32, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * This whole thing was reverted; we'll see if it comes back after Thanksgiving. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:37, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, this is weird: Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 09:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 21:56 . . User account Calpoly90 (talk | contribs) was created ‎
 * 21:56 . . User account Khp412 (talk | contribs) was created ‎
 * 21:56 . . User account Vball26 (talk | contribs) was created ‎
 * 21:55 . . User account Jaykayfit (talk | contribs) was created

University of Manchester, AD

 *  Article:
 *  Course: Unknown, but user page edit summary indicates University of Manchester
 *  Instructor: Unknown
 *  Student:

Alzheimer's disease is a Featured article, meaning text added there must comply with WP:WIAFA and adhere to guidelines such asWP:MEDRS and WP:MEDMOS. There was no tag to indicate student editing, there is no course identified (but the editor says in edit summary on his talk page that he is with University of Manchester), and per WP:OWN, additions are best discussed on talk. This new content breaches MEDRS and MEDMOS and various other guidelines that affect Featured article status. It would be helpful to know what the course, instructor, etc is so they can all be brought up to speed. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Multiple other problems here:
 * Migraine Specific Quality of Life
 * Asthma Life Impact Scale
 * Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (LCOPD) questionnaire
 * The Quality of Life Assessment of Growth Hormone Deficiency in Adults Measure
 * Ankylosing Spondylitis Quality of Life
 * I'm afraid all of this editor's articles are going to need review. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Students seem to really like caps. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That is doubtlessly because they have been carefully trained, since their very first little one-paragraph essay in elementary school, that titles are supposed to use title case instead of sentence case. It is not reasonable to expect any new person to know that Wikipedia's Manual of Style has chosen the less-common convention.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Seriously, let's worry less about format issues and more about content and sourcing. Wrong assertions poorly sourced can be difficult to remedy after the fact. LeadSongDog come howl!  18:37, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * JamesOAdams' editing doesn't follow the typical pattern of a student editing for a class assignment (he wrote numerous articles). I think he might just be an editor who is in college and has indicated so on his user page. Also, it looks like another editor accepted those articles you mention through AfC, so haven't they already been reviewed? Anyway, I'll ping him and ask if he's editing as a part of class. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:41, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Jami, I'm reading all 'round the Wiki that AFC has a serious backlog and scanty review; I've seen numerous instances of that myself. But generally, there are so many incidents right now, that I'm not even trying to post them all.  I posted this one as a sample in the "how do we determine" if it's a student and if so what to do about it sense.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:50, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what to do about it other than to ask him if he's editing as a part of class, either. There's no other real way of determining when the contribution history and edit history of sandboxes doesn't lead to other editors. I emailed him earlier, since has an email linked here, in case that gets a faster response. For some reason, I just seem to have gotten kicked out of my email address connected to this account, but hopefully I'll hear soon if this is a class editing so we can contact the professor and try to work with her/him. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:08, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I am a second year psychology student and I started editing on Wikipedia a few months ago. I did this independently and it's not part of any program that I am enrolled in, I just thought it would be a useful experience. I realise that I have made some mistakes and I will definitely make sure that I correct them. I sincerely apologise for causing any issues. I put the articles that I wrote up for review because I wanted to make sure that what I had written was acceptable. They were accepted with a few minor edits so I thought I had a good grasp of what is required, which may not be the case. Please let me know what the next step is and what I can do to help. I have read the comments on this page and the Alzheimer's Disease talk page, and I'm going to read up on where I went wrong. Thank you for all your time and patience. JamesOAdams (talk) 15:53, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, JamesOAdams. We are trying to sort out how this incident noticeboard can be used for student editing, and you are one of the first cases here.  We can archive this incident, and I will work with you to evaluate and improve your content.  It may take me a few days to get to it, due the US Thanksgiving holiday.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Agraphia: we have a good one

 * Refactored from Test case at the old ENB

For all of my complaints about student editing, I need to highlight a good outcome and commend those involved. This was an interesting case because it was revealed mid-term that two different courses were working on the article. Ana Minchew with the Georgia IT course tagged the article page early on (23 September), so kudos to her. On 12 November-- before Ana Minchew had begun to work-- two new editors from another (unregistered) course added text to the article, and when I responded rather grumpily, their professor appeared. The three students are to be commended for using talk pages, and working together: a very good outcome was achieved. The article still has some issues, but not out of line with what we find in many newly developed Wikipedia articles, and it would be wonderful if they were able to finish addressing those issues before term-end, and then stay on as regular Wikipedia editors to help keep that article in good shape. Having commended Ana for tagging the article page early on, I do need to point out that the Georgia students simply do not understand Wikipedia's medical sourcing guidelines. Just yesterday-- as all of the Georgia students were dropping their sandboxes into articles-- and after much discussion on this article, Ana added two new primary sources. I should also point out that here we had three students overseen by two well-established medical editors (myself and ). The time we spent here was disproportionate, and I cannot say the outcome would have been as good as it was without our involvement. Nonetheless, I do want to commend the three students for helping create quality content. Regards, Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Article: Agraphia, version Oct 13, before student edits, and version Nov 19, as of this writing
 * Contributions since students began editing, (noting that I am a famously inefficient editor, often taking three or four edits to do what others do in one)
 * Class1, unregistered course,
 * Students: ,
 * Class2, Education Program talk:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013), , , ,
 * Student:

Georgia Tech's IntroNeuro course discussion

 * Refactored from Test case at the old ENB
 * Course: Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy)
 *  Instructor:  ,
 *  Online volunteers: , ,

I am the Professor teaching Introductory Neuroscience at Georgia Tech to biology and biomedical engineering seniors. They have been working all semester on a neuro-related topic of their choice that was not represented on Wikipedia or was a small stub at the beginning of the semester (Fall 2013). They have been through many lead-up assignments and several sessions with our Wikipedia Ambassadors, and have read many sources, so I can tell you with 6 years experience doing this Wikipedia Article assignment, many are well qualified to be Wikipedia editors, and many good new articles will result. With a class this large (98 students) there will be some who are not taking this as seriously as they ought to. I am surprised that Kevin Gorman's email today was the first I have heard of the many concerns you rightly have about what my students are doing. Thanks, Kevin, for pointing me to this discussion. SandyGeorgia, I am sorry this assignment has gotten you so upset. This is not a "bad bad bad program" and I am certainly not a "lousy professor" (I have won the highest teaching awards from both Georgia Tech (2011) and the University System of Georgia (2012)) so please let's keep this discussion civil and productive. Hundreds of my former students' articles were excellent and are now part of the corpus of neuro-related information available on Wikipedia. Some were reverted or merged and that is appropriate. I am not an expert in Wikipedia editing, and for the most part, delegate this responsibility to my Ambassadors (Lor Critz and Willie Baer, Georgia Tech librarians). I am open to suggestions about how to best prepare my students for this assignment, and have gotten and implemented fantastic ones from Biosthmors, an online Ambassador an excellent and experienced Wikipedia editor/writer.

My students have until the end of Nov. 27th to finish their articles, but are encouraged to continue improving them for as long as they wish. With productive and helpful comments from the Wikipedia editing community, and from their class peers, you will see much improvement on their pages in the next week. I have admonished them to stay in their Sandbox until they have resolved tagged issues.

If you have any comments or suggestions you would like me to pass on to the class as a whole, please email me. Here is my Course Page: [|IntroNeuro Fall 2013 at Georgia Tech] Thanks for all your help and patience, Steve M. Potter, PhD -- Georgia Inst. of Technology (talk) 17:51, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I have no intention of conducting Wikipedia business via email, and suggest that your lack of involvement here is what led to the problems encountered by your students. Your past awards and other work are irrelevant to this discussion; your current term work is dismal, and your course approach has problems.  I am preparing to add another update, regarding the agraphia article, which is the only success I've seen so far in the medical realm, and I will be pointing out the pros and cons of your class editing in that article (there were two groups involved).   As to specifics, your students do not understand our medical sourcing guidelines or our general medical guidelines. At all.  So they should not be editing Wikipedia medical articles. And it's too late to "admonish" your students to stay in sandbox; more than a dozen sandboxes were dropped in yesterday.  Update on agraphia coming this morning.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:05, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The biggest problem is the lack of willingness by the students to join wikipedia, and communicate with existing editors. Last year the phonological dyslexia was transformed from being about a subtype of Alexia (acquired dyslexia) to being about developmental dyslexia which is currently covered by the dyslexia article, this can only demonstrate the ignorance of the university and all of its academic staff regarding any basic understanding of dyslexia. So maybe the quality of the university and it staff should be considered prior to allowing any of their students edit medical articles, as incompetent teachers will be informing the student editors. We can only work with student editors if they make contact with us, which is not happening, they work on their own for the most part and ignore our comments. dolfrog (talk) 14:08, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. It needs to be made very clear that it took the two of us (Dolfrog and me) working quite a bit to keep agraphia on track, and that whatever past accolades have been conferred upon this course, I suggest they didn't involved knowledge medical editors.  Dolfrog knew the area and research; I helped with other policy/guideline stuff; the students wrote:  without all three, we'd have another failure. This course and its students do not know the minimum requirements of editing medical articles.  It is still troubling that it is being assumed that asking professors to instruct their students to look up a PMID at PubMed and include it in their citations so that the few of us keeping up with medical articles can check sourcing is viewed as extreme.  Further, if they took that simple step, they would be less likely then to use those primary sources.  Further,, I am  still troubled by the implications of this post. First, many of us did what we thought the WMF/WEF/whatever wanted, and now we find out that university professors can't apparently read plain English?  If university professors are unable to digest the very clear information at Student assignments, then I think you have made the case that these professors and their courses do not belong on Wikipedia.  If they can't understand that information, then there are cognitive issues and they shouldn't be editing.  Louisa May Alcott is not cholera.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:01, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * "I did not know about the Plagiarism. I thought as long as you have reference you will be okay to post materials in Wikipedia."

Hello. I have followed this noticeboard with interest for some time. You see, I was often tempted to help students until I realized how pernicious this enterprise often is (I refer you to appropriate viewpoints expressed here such as the "unpaid teacher's assistant" meme; the editing of material not understood by the author; plus the students disappear when they're done anyway, so what's the point? That one's the killer!).

I perused the list of articles in this class. One case was bothersome enough (though almost all were troubled) that I proposed it for deletion and informed the student. The article was Vision Rehabilitation, with two instances of copyvio and no pertinent material. I have pasted a portion of the student's polite response in bold above, which I just noticed (the reponse) today. (In turn because a participant here accidentally reverted an unrelated edit of mine, which I presume was a result of checking my contribution history because of my involvement with the student article! I thought perhaps they were counter-arguing, so I had to check what I'd done.)

You may find the shocking quote above by perusing the relevant histories, as my goal is not to impugn the student, but to highlight how eminently appropriate the criticism here has been. (Are we to hear from Steve Potter again?)

If this student's very honest response is indicative of the student editing enterprise on Wikipedia, then it is time to de-emphasize article creation, and emphasize more indirect methods of "learning from" Wikipedia, as I am told is quite often just as productive for the students, and much easier on Wikipedia. Graywash (talk) 20:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I've had the same response posted on my talk page. Look at Education noticeboard/Archive3. Sourcing, citations and attribution are all handled quite differently in an academic essay. It is no wonder students get confused by Wikipedia, particularly when the instructor doesn't understand the difference. Colin°Talk 21:06, 24 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Graywash, I read your insightful comments with great interest. I wonder how many other editors might also be getting discouraged from working with student projects. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Tryptofish.

Having noticed another twist, I think this assignment is downright unethical. The peer reviews being placed on the talk page of this class's articles include:

9. Used real name or has real name on User TALK page: [some point total]

For example:

9. Used real name or has real name on User TALK page: 0 -Need to put your real name somewhere.

No, they certainly don't "need to". Please, have some respect for your students. As we see above, other students are repeating this hogwash (not surprising, but that's an aside).

We are told that students are rarely if ever "forced to" edit wikipedia. Surely under no circumstance should a student, even having "freely" chosen to edit wikipedia, be differentially graded (in even the minutest way) for not publishing their name on wikipedia. This is awful. Does Steve M. Potter, PhD -- Georgia Inst. of Technology have a response? I, for example, have used the word "plagiarism" on the page of one of your students, a page that includes their real name. Do you wish for the requirements of your course to have potentially lasting effects on students due to the search engine effect? While it's not my place to be a granny here, I have to wonder why the right people aren't thinking this stuff through better. Graywash (talk) 10:12, 25 November 2013 (UTC) & roughly 11:40, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that there should be no requirement to use their real name. In fact, I say that should be discouraged considering the nature of the assignment is not a personal choice but one directed by the instructor. But it now becomes clear the students are marking each other. Yet another example of using this wiki as a cheap-to-run homework marking exercise. And the marking scheme for the students seems to give 0..2 points for each of the 10 "good characteristics" on the Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy) page. It is clear that the number of bytes in the article (15,000–25,000) is more important than whether it is comprehensive. Also the number of references used (10) is important. This is unlikely to be relevant and in fact the better the refs the fewer may be needed. So this encourages lots of primary research refs. And are there any "Outstanding" articles at all? -- Colin°Talk 11:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed (re use of wiki). As a housekeeping note, I edited my post after you posted a reply, which wasn't there when I started. Graywash (talk) 11:40, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * About the required use of real names, I know this has been discussed in the past, but (not surprisingly, given the amount of pixels that have been spilled) I'm hard pressed to remember exactly where. I know that some instructors believe that the use of real names leads students to act more like academic professionals, and to take greater responsibility for their work. However, I can see that there's a real issue of Wikipedia hosting a process where real names get associated with criticisms that become permanently Google-able, when students were not as free as other editors to make the choice of using a user name of their own choosing.


 * About students evaluating one another's work, there can be some educational value in students doing it, whether on-wiki or off. However, there is no control over friends going easy on each other (or going hard on others they dislike). There is no requirement that the instructor actually use those student evaluations to determine the course grade, and they should not use them. If, however, we have faculty who are just telling students to grade one another, having some TA compile the student evaluations, and turning that in as the grades for the course, then that's educational malpractice as far as I'm concerned, and it's exactly the kind of thing that makes me furious about my former profession. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * alleging that a specific person (with a real name) is guilty of plagiarism is a blatant violation of BLP and should be immediately erased, and the editor who made the allegation is liable to censure. (the WP:BLP rule says "a reliable, published source" is needed and "Users who persistently or egregiously violate this policy may be blocked from editing.")  Rjensen (talk) 20:55, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting theory, but it would seem to imply that if I were to start editing under my real name, I could never be blocked, because the blocking admin would then have to be blocked too. Of course all admins could edit under their real names, and then we would have no more admins. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think so! If people are involved with plagiarism and we bring it up it reflects badly on the person who has plagiarized not the one who brings it up. Who else would deal with it? Pretend it never happens? Wikipedia is live publishing and people need to realize that. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The BLP rule at Wikipedia is ironclad and hard-liners people who are so keen to enforce the rules on undergraduates and punish them hard will themselves either follow the rules closely or they will get called out & blocked for egregious misbehavior. better read WP:BLP before accusing anyone of plagiarism--allegations  "must be explicitly attributed to a reliable, published source". Rjensen (talk) 21:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That interpretation of BLP - that we cannot highlight editing problems without a "published source" because doing so is a slur on an editor's character - is outlandish. There is no chance of it being taken seriously. bobrayner (talk) 21:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not allowed to say student A has plagiarized. That violates BLP rule directly and flagrantly and it also violates the guidelines under WP:PLAG that say: "contact the editor responsible, point them to this guideline and ask them to add attribution. Given that attribution errors may be inadvertent, intentional plagiarism should not be presumed in the absence of strong evidence." Ambassadors are here to help students learn the rules, and I suggest that ambassadors should themselves follow the rules closely --even the ones they dislike--and don't think they are above the Wiki rules. Rjensen (talk) 00:44, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * You missed this big "intentional plagiarism should not be presumed in the absence of strong evidence". Which means that when there is strong evidence one can assume plagiarism. I will block any admin who blocks an editor for bring forth issues of plagiarism in good faith. User:Rjensen there is no consensus for what you write. When did BLP issues start applying to editors / discussions on talk pages? It is for article space (we are not generally writing biographies about ourselves and fellow editors). Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Jmh649 is unfamiliar with the rules here at Wikipedia when he falsely states that BLP "is for article space."

Wikipedia's WP:BLP rules state that "BLP applies to all material about living persons anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages, edit summaries, user pages, images, categories, persondata, and article titles." People who want to enforce the rules ought to pay close attention to the actual rules here. Having a senior editor call a person a plagiarist is a much worse violation than what the student may have done. Rjensen (talk) 21:22, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Simply not true. Referring to a plagiarist as such is much less of an issue than plagiarism. Using your real name is not a get out of jail free card when it comes to copyright infringement. Maybe we need wider input / a RfC on this point. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:45, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * perhaps the problem is antinomianism, which is when insiders believe they are exempt from the laws that apply to everyone else. There is an interesting point whether BLP applies to a person whose real name is unknown (but who is known to be a student in a specific class who is writing about a specific topic.) Rjensen (talk) 22:18, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Or perhaps Wikipedia has a whole bunch of contradictory policies and it is about using common sense to apply them in a balanced manner. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:32, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Jmh649 perhaps thinks he's balanced--but I worry about that. He has announced that he will be the prosecutor, judge and jury in cases he selects, and that he will defy both WP:BLP and WP:PLAGIARISM when it suits him. He says there are (unspecified) "contradictory policies" but he seems to be prone to contradiction himself: he has not read the BLP rules (4 hours ago he wrote When did BLP issues start applying to editors / discussions on talk pages? It is for article space--all false) and yet he promises to retaliate against any administrator who enforces the BLP rules (he said: I will block any admin who blocks an editor for bring forth issues of plagiarism in good faith.) As a starter when dealing with plagiarism issues I suggest: NEVER mention who might be guilty. Quite apart from Jmh649, I fear that the rhetoric on his page shows a widespread "vigilante" attitude that makes for a profound mismatch between some ambassadors and the goal of helping students.  I think it suggests the ambassador system is deeply flawed.  As for plagiarism, DGG has explained here that in his experience to quietly show a student what the problem is leads to good endings nearly all the time. That is the way the guidelines read and I suggest ambassadors should follow that wisdom.Rjensen (talk) 22:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * In the hope that we can move on from what has become, in my opinion, an unproductive discussion, let me please suggest that it is, indeed, good practice to try to communicate helpfully with a class when copy-paste is discovered, before making public accusations. But that in no way changes the fact that it's entirely appropriate to revert suspected plagiarism as soon as it is discovered. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I completely agree and lets drop this dangerous business about threatening to call out students by name.Rjensen (talk) 00:02, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The Peer Evaluations by other students in my class are there to help the students create better articles. Input from Wikipedians is also being used. After Wednesday (Nov 27, 2013), when they are supposed to be finished with this project, I will be the one grading them, by judging their contributions from the History tabs. I emphasize using real names throughout this course because that is the standard for most academic scientific communications. The students need to get used to the idea of standing behind what they put into a permanent medium, whether online or in print. I am sorry if this is not standard (to use real names) in Wikipedia. I gave all the students the option of creating an alias at the beginning of the course, if my policy troubles them. Further, no student was "forced" to do this assignment. It is an elective course. They can drop any time. There are ample opportunities for extra credit if they decide not to do one of the assignments, for whatever reason. Regarding students dropping their articles once the assignment is over, this is an inevitable consequence of an educational assignment. That said, many of my former students have continued to maintain their articles and others' as well. I have encouraged students in this class to keep improving their article and others on Wikipedia after the course is over. Steve M. Potter, PhD -- Georgia Inst. of Technology (talk) 20:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'm glad to hear all of that, and I apologize if it sounded like I was criticizing you. Good luck with your end of semester. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I use my real name. Wikipedia is a rough place. This is live publishing and can get as nasty as any other academic battle in the real world / ivory tower. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:12, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Help needed for another student

 * Refactored from Test case at the old ENB


 * Article:
 * Course: Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy)
 *  Instructor:  ,
 *  Online volunteers: , ,
 * Student:

Again, same negligent situation, no prof on board, why am I here? I'm here because I feel horribly for the students, who are the victims of a bad professor and a bad course and a bad idea. This post appeared on my talk. This is presumably the cannabis student. We are talking about students who want to put articles in mainspace but haven't even figured out how to place a post on user talk or sign. He has no article. There is nothing I can tell him. It is not my job to ruin some kid's life and grade because he has a lousy, uninvolved professor and no place to turn when his grade is due and he doesn't know what to do. Someone here please deal with this. I am unwatched here; I came back here only to post these here. I find this whole experience horrible. Someone HERE needs to tell the professor that his grading has to happen by him getting off his arse and learning how to look at a diff. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 10:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I responded the best I know how.   Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 10:56, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * User:SandyGeorgia, unless I'm convinced otherwise, maybe the whole class should just be blocked for disruption and violation of Wikipedia policies. And trout the WMF for helping put students and us in this situation. I've tried to do my best with this class, and I'm about ready to give up per my thread at WP:VPM. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 11:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I am only here updating my response to the earlier request; I don't want to be pinged here anymore, and I will handle them myself from now on. I've found my sea legs and a workable solution that is fair to me, fair to the kids, and fair to Wikipedia.  I think advising the students to talk to their advisor, school newspaper, department chair, and parents is the best solution.  I'm a parent, and I wouldn't put up with this being done to my kids in a school where I paid the bill. Unwatch.   Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 11:29, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Why is this allowed?

 * Article:
 * Course: Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy)
 *  Instructor:  ,
 *  Online volunteers: , ,
 * Student:

Have a read of it. No you haven't stumbled onto the Daily Mail website. This is still Wikipedia. The huge "Charlotte Figi" section in the middle is entirely unsourced. Perhaps to hide the fact that is is essentially taken from the CNN documentary. This article was listed on the course page while still a draft. So the prof knew it had been chosen by the student. Now perhaps Cannabidiol will be the next ketogenic diet but this is a single case. And one documented by the popular press, not the medical profession. Why was the Cochrane Epilepsy Group's review "Cannabinoids for epilepsy" not mentioned? Perhaps because it completely contradicts the point of the article? Even the low-quality-evidence of "Report of a parent survey of cannabidiol-enriched cannabis use in pediatric treatment-resistant epilepsy" would have been better than CNN. Most of the sources cited are primary research papers on rats and mice.

Why was this subject not discussed with the prof, an outline of the topic/article produced, and the sources listed. All before anything was written. It would become clear that there is very little one can write about on Wikipedia on the subject of "Cannabinoids for epilepsy" -- stub at most. It properly just warrants a sentence in some other article, along the lines of the Cochrane conclusion.

I'm sorry, but any class (instructor, assistants) who let this go from draft to mainspace should be stopped now. I don't care if the prof claims to have 6 years of experience. There is quite clearly absolutely no effective supervision or control in place with this class. So, WEF, what are you doing about his? Both specifically this class, and in general to stop it in future? -- Colin°Talk 13:31, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Folks here might not now that Colin is the author of the Featured article ketogenic diet, which was externally peer reviewed as well as internally. He knows just a thing or two in this realm.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:24, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't had time to review all of them, but with the exception of agraphia (after a large effort by dolfrog and myself), everything that I have seen from that course needs to be reverted. If this board doesn't do something, ANI is next.  We do not have time to deal with all of this-- and several dozen articles were dropped in this week, not to mention what is still to come from other courses.  It looks like Jami et al are not going to be dealing with this, or not able to deal with this, and it may be time to bring in more effective dispute resolution. Full article listing, for ANI resolution. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:40, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * As Mike mentioned, I'm on Pacific and have spent my morning catching up on this. I have spoken with the professor in the past, though less so going into this semester (As far as I'm aware, his class didn't produce any big problems last term). User:Biosthmors has been the medical contact on this class—since Wiki Project Med has been around, we've tried to pair a medical ambassador with those classes to make sure the MEDRS and other subject-specific concerns are met. Biosthmors, I'm not sure if you had the chance to work closely with Dr. Potter this term, since you aren't in Atlanta right now? Anyway, I'm happy to reach out to him right away; I don't have the medical expertise that you guys do, so it would be helpful to have clear points of what to convey to him. Do we want to delete all of their articles/revert any edits to existing articles? If that's the plan of action, I will definitely relay the message. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:42, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've tried to do what I can with this class. That's why you see WP:MEDRS on Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall_2013), but I don't think the students are being graded upon making sure the edits follow MEDRS. Also, I don't think the students understand the policy WP:PRIMARY. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 19:18, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It is wonderful that you are happy to reach out to him right away, Jami. However, you are at least a week late (if not two years, since his course has been doing this for a while, and I have been raising the red flag for over two years).  He dropped about 100 essays into mainspace this week, in spite of it being pointed out in advance that there will be problems and that his students didn't understand medical sourcing and that he hasn't engaged Wikpedia.  And then I get an email claiming that these kinds of articles are the normal Wikipedia model (new editor, bad content gets dealt with over time). No, 100 mostly bad essays at once is not normal, and not something we can handle with the normal model and normal ratio of established editors to new editors, working to guide and train them bit-by-bit, as they make smaller edits.  You all need to be proactive.  There is no such solution as now, after the fact, doing something right away is not the issue.  Unless you think you can convince him to prod all of his essays and revert all of his primary sourced edits, since there are not and never will be enough of us to review all of his course's bad work, along with all of the other unregistered coursework that will be dropped on us during this week as term-end approaches.   You will chase us out.  And then I hope you all are happy with your students who never return.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I salvaged the one sentence that this student contributed to Wikipedia and merged it to its rightful home. And prodded the article. It had copyvio, uncited original research, essay-like editorializing, non-MEDRS sources, off-topic content that belonged in other articles, and one salvageable sentence. I can see that this is a valuable learning experience for the student and may teach him more careful research habits. I can't see that Wikipedia benefitted. Further, it is curious that students seem to be exempt from the usual procedures in dealing with copyvio: an admin cleaned it up and no warning was issued. I saved it to my sandbox, then removed the copyvio. , would you mind if I merged this section to the rest of the Georgia IT section above, so it will all archive together? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 03:12, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Sandy. I checked my browser history and I did have the user's talk page open to issue a warning at 18:27 my local time; the edit must have failed to save in one of those Wikimedia-error things I am getting so often lately. Sorry about that. -- Diannaa (talk) 03:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting us know, Diannaa; that's one ping I can cross off my checklist. Not a problem in the grand scheme of things-- too much to get through with too many student edits, and they all dump in at the same time, just when folks are beginning holidays (same thing last November went on here), I can only imagine how many little and big glitches I've made, too.  And by the way, I too have been getting Wikimedia errors with almost every edit for at least two days; that has meant just about every edit has to be made twice, which has been quite frustrating.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:12, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Cholera

 * Article(s):,.
 * Course: Education Program:Rice University/Poverty, Justice, Human Capabilities, Section 2 (Fall 2013)
 * Instructor: ,
 * Online volunteers:, ,
 * Student:

See this conversation on my talk page. The student posted a section to the Cholera article on the role of governments in preventing cholera, and the impact of political instability. I'm reading through it (and the related MEDMOS/MEDRS sections, which I'm not very familiar with) and would like other opinions. So far it looks to me as if the majority of what the student posted is useful material, but doesn't fit the usual approach to disease articles; it's about societal considerations and is not primarily medical information at all. There have been prior discussions about the separation of this sort of information from disease articles and I'd like to hear more discussion of this point, and other comments on the material the student added. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)


 * When compared to an appropriate section, the text jumps out at me as incredibly wordy, WP:UNDUE, and essayish. In my opinion, it is unencylopedic writing, plain and simple. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 15:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)


 * This "incident" is nowhere near as bad as what we usually encounter with student editing, so I'm unsure an "incident" report is even needed; the issues in this article are correctable, and the WT:MED folks will probably get in there fast and do it. But in case it is instructive for the professor, my comments from the article talk page are copied below.  User:Kimmyfromtexas has done much better work than we see from, for example, the Georgia IT class or a typical psych class. However, Mike, it is incorrect to say that the new section is "about societal considerations and is not primarily medical information at all".  There is a good deal of information in there that belongs in other sections (prevention, causes, history, screening), rather than Society and culture, and some of it does need better sourcing per MEDRS.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:43, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Problematic additions
I have only glanced at a large new addition here and see some problems (there are others, but for a start): Independently I haven't yet even looked at the Zimbabwe article to see if it is appropriate or an essay, but here we seem to have the creation of a new section which has some elements of being an advocacy piece rather than an encyclopedic entry. All of the new text needs to be vetted for WP:MEDRS (which will be made more difficult than necessary because Kimmyfromtexas has provided no PMIDs, that is PubMed identifiers for her sources), and whatever portions of it are salvabeable need to be moved to the correct sections. Again, this appears to be editing of medical articles by a class that has never been informed of MEDMOS or MEDRS, and since it is easier for the prof to grade material put into one section, the creation of one non-MEDMOS section for the addition of new content. The following may be helpful: Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Kimmyfromtexas removed the appropriate for WP:MEDMOS "Society and culture" section, and
 * 2) replaced it with a section that is actually text that belongs in numerous other sections (causes, prevention, screening, history and others), and
 * 3) added material to the cholera article that belongs in the Zimababwe cholera article (assuming a Zimbabwe cholera article is even needed-- I haven't yet checked whether it is compliant or an essay, and curiously, it is not even linked in this article ...),
 * I was incorrect and my apologies to ; a good deal of the content in the wrong section was there before Kimmy started editing. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:18, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) used a few sources that don't comply with WP:MEDRS for medical statements (not as bad as what we usually see with student editing, but some nonetheless).
 * Our medical guidelines
 * Guidelines for organization of sections in medical articles
 * Our medical sourcing guidelines
 * Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches explains how to search PubMed and use PMIDs.
 * Hello, and thanks for helping to develop the cholera article. What you have done in the past couple of days is great - I hope that you stay around to work with the community as we respond to your proposals. Thanks also and  for critiquing this content. I came here because of the notice at Education_noticeboard/Incidents.
 * Good job updating this date reference, clarifying the sari filtering practice, and developing the transmission section.
 * You retitled the "Society and Culture" section to "Influence of Political Systems", and when you did that, it triggered a lot of scrutiny. As SandyGeorgia said, we have a medical manual of style which includes a recommended outline for how articles for diseases should be structured to maintain consistency in Wikipedia. While there are always exceptions in Wikipedia, everyone here expects exceptions to be thoughtfully made and articulated in light of the years of precedent and many people who have reached consensus to structure articles in this way. Please review the usual structure. In looking at this, some people are saying that all the content on Zimbabwea brings WP:UNDUE weight on that topic into this article, and perhaps would be better placed at Zimbabwean cholera outbreak. I think this is a suggestion worth more thought.
 * Perhaps other people will have other thoughts - are you staying with us to discuss this? You said that you made your final submission. Wikipedia is not really every finished, and sometimes discussions do not end when the assignment does as this is a live and working community space. If you did not account for more time to stay around for the discussion, could you say so? We sometimes have problems trying to work with students who disappear after a class ends, and that can be discouraging for volunteers. Thanks.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   15:44, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Diffs from Kimmyfromtexas's changes
Sandy, I'm glad to see your comment that this is better than most student work. I would have started an incident report just on the basis of Biosthmors' comments -- the student was alarmed, not unnaturally, to see that description, and she contacted me to see what could be done to improve the article. The question of how to include economic and social context has come up before so I think this is a good example to use for that discussion.

The following three diffs represent all of KimmyfromTexas's work; the third one includes an IP contribution that is from Rice, so is likely to be her. It also includes some reference formatting by others.
 * 
 * 
 * 

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Have listed some concerns here  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:17, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, Mike, in the vein of this "incident" being instructive for professors and others not that familiar with MEDRS, there is often confusion because some sorts of text (societal, history, legal) etc might not require MEDRS sourcing. That is not universally true, by the way, but for now (hypothetical), let's assume it is.  The problem with this addition was that, as it created an essay about certain aspects of cholera prevention and included that all in one section while neglecting our usual order of sections, it did mix material that belonged in other sections, was not strictly "society and culture", and should be and could be better sourced, per MEDRS.  I'm not sure why we're sourcing medical material to bakerinstitute.org, but haven't looked closely at that-- it's hard to imagine there aren't journal reviews in this area.  Also, as Doc James has pointed out, information was duplicated.  What would be most helpful would be for students and profs to a) learn how to use PubMed and add PMIDs, and b) understand where to place content per WP:MEDMOS so they don't end up duplicating content.  Also, the Zimbabwe info here was WP:UNDUE, and not even linked.  As a final note to the prof, please, please please have your students propose their work on talk to save us all a lot of time.  This addition was not anywhere near as bad as what we see daily from student editing, but (and I regret to say) the addition of marginally correct text creates more work for other editors than a clearly bad addition does, as the clearly bad one is more easily reverted, while the marginally good one takes more study.   As student editing goes, I think Kimmy gets an "A", but cholera is not Louisa May Alcott, and this text should have stayed in sandbox. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:32, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * (ec) Good point about marginally good edits; I'd like to come back to some of your points, though, because I'd like to get a couple more bits of information down first.
 * Kimmyfromtexas did post on the talk page about her intentions for the article, here, but there was no response (which is the usual outcome when students do this).
 * The section "Society and Culture" was added by Kimmyfromtexas (first diff above) -- of course she also subsequently changed it. All the text in that section, unless I'm misreading the diffs, was contributed by her, so there's no question of her deleting an existing compliant section.
 * The professor doesn't require students to add work in a specific section to make it easier to grade; I've read the grading rubric and can be definite on that point. In general students in this class don't do that; in fact if you look at the diffs above you'll see Kimmyfromtexas didn't do it either.
 * The student didn't dump everything in at the end of the class; the three diffs are dated 20 October, 5 November, and 26 November, and each has substantial content.
 * More in a bit; I suspect an (ec) coming up so want to get this posted.... Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * On your first point, Mike, I am happy to address that. I've had this on my watchlist since Kimmy posted, and have been raising the concern at WP:ENB since then.  What needs to be understood is that there are not enough of us medical editors to go around and the education program is creating more than we can deal with.  I have not had time to address every student.  And, adding to the resentment, these students push to add their edits just as the "rest of the world" is trying to prepare for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hannukah.  I have family here visiting.  This is horribly unfair to regular editors.  We're doing as much as we can.  This program needs to get these courses under control so that we do have enough free time to engage the students-- I'm sure you know that no one here can say that Doc, Colin and I have not been working overtime, and that I haven't engaged as many students on talk as time has allowed.  I'm sure you know that if I type any more on this topic, I am likely to pop a circuit breaker again, so Happy Thanksgiving, I have turkey to do.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes this student added the "society and culture" section in these edits The refs are poorly formatted. One gives this url which is simply a google scholar search. This one goes nowherereally The link to the Baker Insitute is used frequently

This bit is already in the section on prevention "In terms of prevention, cholera cases are much less frequent in developed countries where governments have helped to establish water sanitation practices and effective medical treatments."

This bit should be in a section on epidemiology or history "The United States, for example, used to have a severe cholera problem not unlike those of current developing countries. There were three large cholera outbreaks in the 1800s, which can be attributed to Vibrio cholerae's spread through interior waterways like the Erie Canal and routes along the Eastern Seaboard." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If a "regular editor" posts semi-correct text but with a number of issues such that starting over is preferable to cleanup of what is there, the edit is moved to talk for refinement and discussion. The "regular editors" engage, the "new" editor learns, the text is cleaned up, what is salvageable eventually goes back in.  With student editing, they want the text added before Thanksgiving for their grade, they don't come back to discuss on talk after term-end, and we all lose.  I hope Kimmyfromtexas will stay around to see that the good parts of her work are incorporated.  Another point-- just raised at WT:MED by Doc James-- is that as much really bad text is going in to medical articles today, and has gone in these last two weeks from students, we cannot keep up with the articles on obscure topics and stupid new stubs and pages with few views.  We have to prioritize our work to important topics that have many pageviews.  You cannot take 200mg too much of Louisa May Alcott; cholera is an important topic.  I'm glad Kimmy chose an article that matters, rather than creating some stupid new stub that barelyh meets notability on a topic no one cares about; for that, she gets an A.  But we must prioritize and we can't get to everything: we do have to get to articles like this one.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:05, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes hope this student stays around. Working to get cholera to GA would be important. It they could start formatting the refs with PMIDs per WP:MEDHOW that would help. Have added some of the content back in. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:08, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Glad to hear those positive comments. Doc James, you reverted to a version of the article that has Kimmyfromtexas's "Society and culture" section, but not her final version of that section. Any objections if I return that section to her final version, as of yesterday? I'd retitle it "Society and culture", but otherwise leave it alone. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:20, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes would be cool with that. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:32, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Done, and thank you. I'm going to mark this incident as closed. Sandy, I have a request for you that I'll put on your talk page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 18:52, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Reopened per Sandy's comments on the talk page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:23, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Reopened; comments
Doc James & Sandy (and anyone else): did you realize that Doc James only reverted part of Kimmyfromtexas's work -- the last of the three diffs listed above? Doc James' edit summary refers to the version prior to that diff as "the last stable version"; are you OK with the changes prior to that? They date back to 5 November and 20 October. After the revert, Doc James made a couple more edits, one of which (diff) readded a sentence Kimmyfromtexas had originally added. I then re-added the most recent version of the "Society and culture" section. So the only difference between Doc James version of the article and the current version is the "Society and culture" section. Before we discuss what needs to be done, can we agree that this change (diff) is the only area for discussion? Or should Doc James have reverted further back? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:23, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I am okay with leaving the society and culture section this person added. I also have no issue with someone moving it. IT still needs work. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:20, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm okay with what is there for now, and willing to wait for Kimmyfromtexas to come back after Thanksgiving, engage on talk, and finish cleanup. The problems are not so egregious that harm is done by leaving them on the page for another week.  I'll give more feedback on talk after the holiday. The reason I wanted this incident re-opened is that we haven't heard from either the instructor or the student, and in the event the student doesn't return to cleanup, one of us has to do it.  More importantly, it would be good to be sure the instructor is aware of the problems for future reference and in terms of next semester's course design.  I will re-engage after the holiday.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:03, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Kimmy responded on my talk; she had not planned further work on this article, she may come back after the term ends. So, I say it's fine to revert her changes, but keep this incident open until I can go through and show (per Mike Christie's request) the problems, in the hopes that her instructors will learn a) how to use medical sources, and b) to instruct their students in WP:MEDMOS. I don't see any reason to wait three weeks, hoping a student might return, when we know they never do. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Kimmy copypasted the same message to me. Sandy's plan is best.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   04:20, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Before reverting the additions, I'd like to specifically ask about the Cholera section, which is student work. Sandy and Doc James have mentioned that there are problems with the section.  Reading through it I see areas for improvement, and I am sure Sandy and Doc James can point out problems I've missed.  But I'm alarmed to think that this material would be deleted.  Prior to Kimmyfromtexas's work, the article contained nothing about the relationship between disease and the social and economic factors that influence the course of the disease.  This is important information that was missing from the article; the student added it, with references.  Why should this section be removed?  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 14:30, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I will try to get to this today, Mike ... and the problems in the Zimbabwe article ... I think it important to detail the problems here so the instructors will have a chance to adapt their course approach. The question of why revert ... this course (and courses like it) creates more work than we can keep up with.  I'm trying.  I'll get there.  Something shiny (a walled POV garden in our cannabis articles) came up while I was dealing with this course's student essay on cannabis and epilepsy.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:46, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * is at work on the article, so I'll deal with the Zimbabwe article for now. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:48, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Sandy alerted me to this discussion--thanks. IMO, the new section was a great idea, but it needs a great deal of work.  I'm not sure that students and their instructors realize what a tremendous amount of time it sometimes takes to make even small edits to WP articles.  Unless one is already very familiar with the subject, many hours can go into research because the entire topic must be well-understood.  The cholera article has a special interest for me because I worked on the Haiti earthquake article and am responsible for most of the updates.  Haiti received enough aid money that every victim could have been given almost $40,000, and instead here they are with many still living in tents without clean water or sewage systems, the United Nations still refusing to admit they are responsible for the epidemic, and the Hatians are still dying from cholera.  So you can see my connection...  I was going through the article to try to learn more about cholera and have reached the History section.  I will be very happy to stop with my edits if Sandy is willing to make the needed edits to the new section. Gandydancer (talk) 17:03, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Nope, after spending two hours in the Zimbabwe article, I've seen enough and I'm done with this series. I say revert. More below.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:56, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Upon further analysis of the diffs (as Mike has repeatedly and correctly urged), I was wrong, and Kimmy's edits improved the cholera article. I am more concerned about Zimbabwean cholera outbreak.  Continued below.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:16, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Followup from User:SandyGeorgia
Here are Kimmy's edits to cholera. See the section below, where I discuss the problems with citing medical content to a political think tank, while not attributing those opinions to that think tank. I see now that the Baker Institute was cited in our cholera article before Kimmy started editing, and that the Society and culture section duplicated information that belonged in Prevention/Screening or History before she started editing. Kimmy did not create those problems in the cholera article, and a revert is probably not helpful, as she mostly copyedited. It is apparent that (as has been trying to say :) :)  the problems in this article were present before student editing, except: This is the edit that changed the heading name.  It is correct that the poorly sourced, unattributed, off-topic content, or content that belonged in other sections, was present before Kimmy touched it.  This edit is mostly copy editing (helpful). Similarly, it looks like this edit just moved bad text around, but didn't add it.  Same here.   So, I'm not sure where we are now; Doc James had to fix something on Sari, but we can probably go back to Kimmy's latest version if Doc is able to fix the Sari portion from there.   However, that is not the case with the Zimbabwe article, detailed below. So we have more of a problem in the Zimbabwe article than the Cholera article, but it can probably be said that Kimmy was only doing more of what she already found present in the article. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 19:14, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) This edit sources medical content to the Baker Institute.
 * 2) How to (we don't do that).


 * I left a followup note for Kimmy. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:28, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

And, now I've been back through the cholera article. The Society and culture section had been reverted back to Kimmy's version, so I went through it. It was almost a full duplication of the Zimbabwe article, with the same problems in the Zimbabwe article (lack of attribution), so I chopped a good portion of it, attributed what I left, fixed the citations, linked to the Zimbabwe article, removed a whole lot of editorializing and info that was redundant to the Zimbabwe articles, and moved some portions to the correct sections. And flagged an important definition in the lead that is cited, incorrectly, to the Baker Institute (we don't need to be citing medical content to a think tank). Unless anyone else has any other business here, I'm satisfied that the cleanup is done. From this example, we do need to remind courses and students a) to stay on topic within articles, and remember that we use wikilinks for content that is already developed elsewhere, b) to follow MEDMOS section suggestions, c) to use proper medical sources for medical content, and d) to attribute editorial opinions anywhere when using think tanks and medical editorials as sources. A news editorial printed in the The Lancet is an editorial nonetheless, and the Cato Institute and Baker Institute are political think tanks, not medical organizations. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 22:10, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Zimbabwean cholera outbreak
Since we now know it is unlikely that Kimmy will be back to maintain these articles, let's deal with this article. First, I believe it should be moved to Cholera in Zimbabwe. Why not Cholera in Venezuela (I was there for that), Cholera in whatever country ... it makes no sense to title an article "Outbreak", when the 2008 "outbreak" is ongoing, and the article deals with the History of cholera in Zimbabwe, current policy, etc. Any consensus on moving the article? Going in to clean up some now ... I see that most of Kimmy's work was in the Political Influences section (I realize it's trivial, but with a course that has been running this long, can the instructors not explain WP:MSH by now?) Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Zimbabwean cholera outbreak
 * What I am finding in this article is very troubling. Very troubling.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:18, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Summary: I have spent two hours this morning in the Zimbabwe article. First I spent a little less than an hour reading, sorta checking, and copyediting the parts of the article that existed before student editing. I found the article to be in surprisingly good shape, mostly needing updates from a time when the article was likely In the News. I was ready to applaud the article until I turned to the section edited by the student. I invite anyone interested to scroll through my edits, one by one. These are the changes I made. I had to find the sources (which were generally incorrectly identified and linked), and I had to attribute every single source. The new content is cited to think tanks (like Cato Institue and Baker Institute) and news editorials. And that was done without attribution. Besides all of the problems with that kind of editing, I am troubled that this course is at Rice University and the think tank whose opinions are now in our cholera articles (the Baker Institute) is also at Rice University. I have no problem with anyone wanting to do a hit job on Mugabe in our article-- maybe he deserves it-- but they should learn about attribution of opinion on Wikipedia. And there is a potential COI here, which troubles me, because I saw that a lot of the new content in the main cholera article was cited to bakerinstitute.org. The sourcing in cholera needs to be checked; medical sources would be preferred, and news and think tank opinion needs attribution. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:05, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Am a little worried by the COI possibilities here, too.  Also the Cato and Baker Institutes have very decided political standpoints (very right-wing).  Some balance would be necessary here, and certainly note in the main text as to who exactly is providing the opinions cited.  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:34, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. I can assure you that if I tried to blame various diseasters in Venezuela on Chavez, using the Cato Institute or the Baker Institute as a source, the text would not last a New York minute.  I've chopped a lot from the main cholera article-- will leave it to others to determine if they want to chop further or if attribution is enough.  I hope the instructor will learn some sourcing lessons from this.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:13, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's a COI concern -- there's no reason to suppose a student at a university shares the goals of any particular institute based at that university. Of course I agree that balance can be an issue with sources of known ideology. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 10:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Wrapup
Will anyone be checking the rest of the Rice course articles for sourcing problems of the type I encountered in the cholera articles? Political think tank opinions and news editorials should be used appropriately, if at all, and attributed. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 22:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Admin help needed by student

 * Article: Postmenopausal confusion
 * Course: Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy)
 *  Instructor:  ,
 *  Online volunteers: , ,
 *  Student:

Could an admin or someone who better understands the sandbox/article moving issues here please help this student? Talk:Postmenopausal confusion. I'm not sure how to advise her. What she has now is content that should be merged to menopause, so ... I don't know. Thanks, and unwatch. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:59, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Sandy, this could easily be moved back into the student's sandbox and then the appropriate text from that version merged into the menopause article. The move would delete the Postmenopausal confusion article, but preserve the edit history in the userspace.  Once the merge was completed, the userspace draft could be deleted.  This is consistent with advice at WP:Userfication.  I can certainly handle the move back to the userspace if no one objects, but someone in tune with the content ought add the relevant text to the menopause article.  Once that is done, I can advise the student how to deal with the user draft. Let me know. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:55, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * It's very nice of you to respond to me (she said through clenched teeth), even though I am unwatched, I posted here as a courtesy, and I happened to see this only because I came back to post the next one. Presumably you all will contact the professor who dropped 100 sandboxes on us.  Oh, but ... I do care ... because ... oops ... Do you see up here on this same page?  Jbmurray already did this once for this student. I did all the work of looking up her sources, adding PMIDs, tagging the primary sources, it was moved to sandbox, the article was deleted to make way for her move back, the same crap came back to mainspace for a second time, and I had to repeat all my work again. So now, she wants us to do it all again, so it can come back a third time and I can do the same work the third time?  And why would we do something like this, that I personally have never had to do for any regular editor?  Oh, so their professor can tell exactly what is their work and won't have to go through diffs and won't be inconvenienced and so they can get a grade.  Right!  Because their professor set deadlines and stuff was moved into mainspace prematurely, and he can't go back and look at a diff.  So I'm supposed to do the work three times so he doesn't have to. Nothing whatsoever to do with normal Wikipedia functioning as it would with normal editors.   I am here typing now, and will do the work on the article three times, so her professor who isn't engaged on Wikipedia and who dropped 100 sandboxes that weren't ready into mainspace, won't be inconvenienced.  I came over here in a good mood.  Really I did. Until I realized this was the second time I've done this for this student and wonder what will be the education program's approach to this very same probem next year when Thanksgiving approaches and students are desperate.  No wonder some editors just simply won't deal with students.  You engage one and then you have to feel horrible when you let them down and their grade is affected. I can't believe I am here typing this again, but here I am because I came back to post the next student mess (see next section). What is wrong with this picture?  Next ... Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 10:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Never mind, I responded the best I could:  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 11:25, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Update

 * Article: Postmenopausal confusion
 * Course: Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy)
 *  Instructor:  ,
 *  Online volunteers: , ,
 *  Student:

See earlier discussion at WP:ENB I have now twice cleaned up this article for non-MEDRS sources and prepared it for merge. But the student needs a page to be graded by today, so continues to re-add non-compliant text. Must I clean this up a third time? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:26, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * here,
 * here, and also
 * Talk:Postmenopausal confusion.
 * In a case like this (and I don't have time to look at it myself now in any detail), in which an editor repeatedly adds non-compliant text, do you--or anyone else--think it is worth simply protecting the relevant article? I would be prepared to do that, if that were the consensus of any such discussion. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:10, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've taken a look at it, and it's honestly not that bad. It is a bit long-winded in spots, and it omits a fair bit of normal information (like what counts as "confusion"), but I think it's a reasonable start that could be improved upon.
 * I've just asked SandyGeorgia on its talk page why two new review articles have been tagged as being unreliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No, Jb, I don't think we are at that level. For gosh sakes, it's the prof's fault the students are confused, and we probably shouldn't have moved it back to sandbox the first time.  Where is the prof doing his/her grading?  It's just that the history has already been lost once.  I post this as a sample of the problems with student edits.  We moved it out of mainspace once back to sandbox once, she wanted it moved back to sandbox a second time.  The prof needs to understand that published is published.  And no, it's not as bad as for example the Cannabidiol effect on epilepsy article, which I prodded after merging one salvageable sentence.  There is salvageable content here, but not enough that it can't be covered in menopause.  WhatamI is willing to leave a whole lot of text that could be covered via wikilinks-- fine.  I unwatched; I'll let her do the cleanup the third time.  That makes me happy. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:55, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Ecstatic seizure

 * Article(s):.
 * Course: Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy)
 *  Instructor:  ,
 *  Online volunteers: , ,
 * Student:

There are problems with the Ecstatic seizure article from Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy). The article is very close to its sources. Some text literally copied, others only minor changes. Much sourced to a popular science book by Oliver Sacks. This topic in epilepsy is controversial. Some researchers see this form of seizure as a clue to why people are religious; others reject this utterly. The topic also covers the issue of an epileptic personality (Geschwind syndrome) which is also highly controversial with many researchers doubting its existence. The statement "Those with temporal lobe epilepsy normally develop Geschwind syndrome, as did Dostoyevsky." is completely false and quite harmful. The article is very much not NPOV.

Once again this elementary class in neuroscience has attempted a subject beyond their remit and got unstuck. This is not a topic the prof can assess (even if that actually achieved anything for Wikipedia -- it just seems to result in a grade). I think it is time those on the WEF review this class and either ask the prof to stop or get him to significantly downsize the scope of the assignment. There are just too many things wrong here.

Who fixes this article? Can any of it be kept? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin (talk • contribs) 13:19, November 29, 2013‎


 * Oliver Sacks as a source for anything medical? Really?  Did this course give these students any grounding at all in WP:MEDRS?  Absolutely not.  That is right up my territory (Tourette syndrome), so I'll go have a look (I've a good dose of years' worth of hearing what his medical peers think of his work).  If the article is highly sourced to Sacks', nuking is the best option.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've looked-- another example of why we need help from the participants of this board in dealing with articles like this one. In theory, there is some salvageable content, but who is going to do it?  Colin is our most knowledgeable editor on seizures, and it is Not His Job to clean up a mess like this.  Nuking it, prodding it, or asking the professor to remove it is the best use of our time, since we know from experience that no one from the course will come back and do the hours of cleanup needed.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:26, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I have now looked up the PMIDs (this instructor could save untold amounts of work if s/he would require students to add PMIDs), and flagged the dubious sourcing. In addition to Sacks, I found case reports, letters to the editor, and a source for which the PubMed entry indicates a followup journal letter claiming basic inaccuracies in the journal report.  I suggest this article should be prodded, or reduced to a stub, depending on what Colin says can be done with it. This is a student essay; the instructor of this course needs to be instructed to no longer have his/her students work in mainspace.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * My biggest concern right now is plagiarism here. It looks too close to me. I'd be interested in what our plagiarism experts think. Does it pass these automatic detectors? Who is assessing these student essays while in draft to ensure they are ok? If the prof marks it and notices it is effectively a patchwork of the source text wording, does he remove it from WP? If it wasn't for the plagiarism, then it may be harder to argue for nuke because it just becomes a POV poorly sourced article like so many others on WP. Which brings us back to the point of the education program -- is it just to fill WP with more poorly written poorly sourced articles? I think we should expect and demand more from academia than merely "no worse than any other newbie". -- Colin°Talk 23:32, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

No followup, I stubbed the article. Besides the paraphrasing/plagiarism concerns, it was poorly sourced or uncited, and (as we often see with student editing) a good deal of the content was off-topic (that is, not specific to this article, but better covered in other articles). I found one review in PubMed that might be used to expand the article, but I'm not convinced the article shouldn't be merged to seizure. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 01:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Oral health

 * Article(s): Dental emergency, Dental phobia, Dental sealant, Dental therapist, Dental hygenist
 * Course: La Trobe University ??
 * Instructor: Maybe Leighblackall?
 * Students: At least 26 of them.

Sort of a course page on Wikiversity, asking students to edit Wikipedia. It would be nice to have a Wikipedia course page for coordinating work and making sure they source medical content correctly. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013)

 * Refactored from Test case at the old ENB


 * Course: Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) (temporary copy)
 *  Instructor:  ,
 *  Online volunteers: , ,


 * I As I've always said, November 18, they all start dropping in articles, just before term-end, just as regular editors are gearing up for holidays, and these students had all term to engage the project.

OK, that is only a smattering of what is being dropped in from sandbox all at once, obviously there's some course deadline today, it's not possible to keep up with, or correct the amount of work from this course. Who's doing it? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 00:05, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Sandbox to published in one hour. Uncited text, no PMIDs, will take a lot of work to determine if MEDRS is met.
 * Primary sources, formatting problems, essay-- will end up merged if anything can be salvaged, and who is going to do that cleanup?
 * Cerebral atherosclerosis, no PMIDS, needs to be checked for secondary vs primary sources. It is hard to imagine this content isn't covered somewhere on Wikipedia, but as there are few useful wikilinks, hard to tell where to look ...
 * Central Nervous System Fatigue, no PMIDS, needs to be checked for correct sourcing, and needs to be fixed for WP:MSH (why oh why is this professor not explaining MSH), and moved to correct name if this article even belongs once sourcing is checked and if it is determined if the content should be merged elsewhere. Who is doing this checking and sourcing cleanup?  If the students would use PMIDs, checking for primary sources would be much easier.
 * Congenital distal spinal muscular atrophy, Another one just dropped in from sandbox, narry a PMID in there, so I would have to look up every source to determine if primary sources or MEDRS-compliant sources are used.   Why has this professor-- at this stage of the game-- not explained PMIDs to these students? And why is something as simple as WP:MSH not explained?
 * Thanks for raising the issue User:SandyGeorgia. I've emphasized MEDRS multiple times to the classroom, but it still appears that it's not being followed by the students, to be honest. I think it was back in October during a Skype meeting when Professor Potter started to begin to understand how WP:PRIMARY vs. WP:SECONDARY and WP:N worked. Given that the class doesn't appear to understand MEDRS, blocking students who are working with topics that fall under MEDRS isn't off the table, in my opinion, as a preventative measure. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 10:07, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

All of these articles still need to be addressed; will the instructors be doing cleanup once the term ends? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)