User talk:Ian (Wiki Ed)

Class assignments & "main space"

Hello, Ian,

I hope as the semester winds down, you good folks at WikiEd will be in line for a little break for the summertime.

I was following up on a student's multiple page moves to different namespaces and in trying to get the draft back into the editor's sandbox, another editor pointed out this instruction in a syllabus. It took me aback! This wording is exactly the problem regular editors on the project face towards the end of the school term. If you review instructors' syllabi please be sure there are no instructions, especially in the headline, not just advising but telling students to move their work into the "main space" of the project.

While there are some courses who train student editors to do excellent work, who write properly referenced draft articles and clean up the drafts like removing sandbox page tags and giving the draft a proper page title, this is not the case for the majority of student work we come in contact with. And it seems like students are not advised about Article for Creation review so if a draft gets a positive peer review, they think it's good to go! So, if any instructions to students to move their work into the "main space" of Wikipedia could be changed or altered so that students aren't given misleading instructions that would help them out as well as the regular editors of the project especially those on the New Page Patrol who could simply tag these drafts for deletion.

Thanks again for all of the good work the WikiEd team does all year. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:50, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Ian. Just FYI: this message (or one very much like it) also appeared on Brianda's UTP, and I requested that it be copied to ENB. It's an issue worth airing, and fragmenting the discussion like this seems less than optimal to me, as others may wish to opt in, and it deserves a central forum for that. Mathglot (talk) 03:02, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Liz and Mathglot - LiAnna has been extremely busy the last couple months (Wikimedia Summit, our annual planning, and a lot of other issues) but I will bring this to her. She's the best person to make decisions on things like this. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Liz:! Apologies for the delay in answering your question. Just for context -- our students in the spring 2024 term (which is winding down; only the quarter system schools are still active) have edited more than 5,600 articles; of those, only 412 were new articles. So the vast majority (92%+) of our students are working on existing articles -- and thus will always have their work in mainspace, which is why our materials are framed the way they are.

Let me touch for a moment on your actual question, which is about the ~8% of our students who are creating new articles. I absolutely respect the work you and the other NPPers do, and I thank you for all your efforts with our students you come in contact with. Typically, our Dashboard system creates alerts for the Wikipedia Expert (Ian or Brianda) assigned to the student's course whenever someone moves work live; when student editors do so incorrectly, the Wikipedia Experts are then able to jump in and fix the problem, hopefully before it impacts Wikipedians like you. Unfortunately, that alert broke earlier this year, and we didn't catch that it had broken; thus, there were a larger than usual number of poor drafts that we didn't catch. We've fixed that bug and hopefully it won't re-appear, so there will be less impact on you and the other NPPers in the future, as our staff will be able to catch bad drafts in a more timely fashion.

In terms of your suggestion for AfC, we did try that many years ago (when our program was a lot smaller), and it overwhelmed the process. Students were frustrated because reviews didn't happen before the end of the term, and then reviewers were unhappy that when they did invest the time in reviewing, the student editors had disappeared, since their term was over and they'd long since given up on getting their articles live. At that time, AfC reviewers requested we stop sending student work through their system, and review them ourselves. Thus, our plan to have our Wikipedia Experts review each article (which, again, does happen when our Dashboard alert system isn't broken). You and any other NPPer should also always feel free to just leave a note for Ian or Brianda and ask them to move work if you don't want to bother and you catch something before they do.

I'm of course open to re-considering if AfC reviewers would now welcome several hundred student articles on a wide variety of topics that would all need to receive reviews within 1–2 weeks of submission each term. But I honestly think our current system (again, when the Dashboard isn't broken) works better for everyone involved. If you're still interested in discussing this, though, I'd agree with Mathglot -- please bring it out to WP:ENB and we can have a wider discussion.

I know you see a lot of new articles our student editors create, but if you're ever interested in learning more about how our program works more holistically I'm also happy to set up a Zoom with you and walk you through the bigger picture of our program; just reach out to me via email at liannawikiedu.org. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:53, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Mary Jane Patterson

Hello! I have been working on the article Mary Jane Patterson to see if I can get it up to Good Article status for the June 2024 GA green editathon. I submitted it for a 20-minute assessment and have worked on the points raised in that. Now I am considering learning how to submit it for Good Article status. One of the first things is to make sure that you and the student editors of the page are happy about my doing this. Can you let me know? Thanks! Balance person (talk) 07:04, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Balance person. Student editors don't have any special claims on articles, you should treat them like any other editors. As for the ones who worked on that article, their class is done. There's nothing here you need to worry about. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

That is great! Thanks for letting me know. Balance person (talk) 14:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)