Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-02-27/Opinion

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• Thank you for writing this article. Following the discussion last month, I was unconvinced that the problem lay with WikiEd, but instead was inherent to Wikipedia more broadly. I am consistently impressed by the work of student editors. Being a newbie on Wikipedia is intimidating at the best of times - when your class grade depends on you contributing substantially, whether to new or existing content, that only ups the pressure! Whether student editors stick around or not, it's clear that they add a lot of value to the encyclopedia. Ganesha811 (talk) 20:38, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I absolutely agree. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:46, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
• I think that there needs to be more attention to directing student editors to articles where their contributions would be most helpful. I've had both great and disappointing experiences with student editors. IMO they do their best work when an article is short and needs more development, but should be steered away from articles that are assessed GA or higher. (t · c) buidhe 20:53, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I agree. We encourage them to focus on Stub or Start class articles. If a student assigns themselves a GA or FA, both them and their instructor gets an email pointing them away from it, and I try to follow up with these to make sure they happen. In the past this was less structures: originally students were just strongly discouraged from editing them in the training material. Then it was a notification to us, which I used to discourage them. Over the last year (or so) it's an email to them and their instructor. This seems to be more effective, but can still require follow-up to explain why this matters. In a few cases there have been students or instructors who tell me [x] is missing from this GA, and we want to add that section. I'm fine with that. Guettarda (talk) 21:19, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
• There's no doubt students can be a tremendous potential resource for Wikipedia—my university years are certainly when I was the most productive, with easy research database/free ILL access and no "adult responsibilities" in the way, and that's when I wrote the lion's share of my featured work. But the clear problem that has been exposed is that WikiEd has some clear organizational deficiencies, none of which I see addressed in the above piece. The WikiEd fiasco of last month was notable primarily for the fact that the person involved clearly had no notion of how Wikipedia's policies on notability and consensus work, sandwiched with a blasé attitude from organizers who clearly viewed sacrificing current editors to a Twitter mob as an acceptable price to pay for bringing in new editors. I don't see how that could have happened if the oversight and training procedures as outlined above exist. Maybe the large pot of money Wiki-Ed is working with should go into making sure that someone overseeing these editors has been better prepared? Otherwise it's just adding more work to an overworked existing corpus of editors, and making sure that edits under the program are going to be treated warily. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:59, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

  +1 (t · c) buidhe 21:05, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

  blasé attitude from organizers who clearly viewed sacrificing current editors to a Twitter mob as an acceptable price to pay for bringing in new editors The people responsible here would be me, and Helaine. I don't feel like that's a fair characterisation of either our actions or attitudes toward Wikipedians. It's easy to ascribe motive, I but I don't honestly feel like what you're doing is fair. Guettarda (talk) 21:31, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

  • Well, ignoring what just happened within this article while highlighting the project's successes (which do have merit of their own right) does seem tantamount to viewing "sacrificing current editors to a Twitter mob as an acceptable price to pay for bringing in new editors". But to Wiki-Ed's credit, some reforms were taken during the process (are they enough, guess we'll find out) and were mentioned here in the comments Guettarda made in response to my own. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:33, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
• I'm pretty sure Ian's job relies on Wiki Education continuing to exist in its current form, so we should consider taking this COI editor's opinions here with a grain of salt.

In all honesty though the problems with student assignments aren't with the Wiki Education Foundation. It's the overwhelmingly decline in academic standards at many North American universities and in academia as a whole. Credentialism and an overemphasis on university degrees has meant that a 4 year program is the minimum to get a wide variety of jobs. Standards are lower now to accomodate this and universities focus not on training students to critically think/evaluate sources, but on learning how to write cookie cutter essays in grievance studies or wherever else. As a result, students try to do the same thing on Wikipedia but fail abysmally, since grievance studies do not allow for neutrality, assignments have loose citation requirements, and generally have low standards. On Wikipedia, however, people actually check your citations and will tell you that your work sucks.

On that note, I'd like to remind editors that the only person who suffered any consequences for the fiasco prompting this was the volunteer 15 year old that was harassed for knowing how to write an encyclopedia article better than an actual university professor. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:04, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

That 15-year-old knew nothing about how to write a Wikipedia article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:19, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: Excuse me? I didn't want to continue talking about this situation, but I want to have you know that I have wrote two articles that went to DYK (Francis Bourgeois (trainspotter) and Slutty Vegan). If I "don't know anything", then how have I wrote multiple articles, two of which were at DYK? Please reconsider this comment. wizzito | say hello! 05:42, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Reconsidered. Minimum standard for DYK. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:22, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Can we move on from discussing Wizzito? Please? What happened to them on Twitter was awful. Continuing to discuss their actions like this on-wiki just compounds it. Guettarda (talk) 14:10, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7, I am 16 and has already made 7 articles GA, several DYKs, and two FLs. Soon to make an article FAC. Age does not matter in editing, I have seen adults that do more mistakes than younger editors do. Correlating an editor's mistake (sorry, a newbie's mistake) with their age is messed up. Instead, a civil teaching is needed; as others noted, encourage them to edit only Stub/Start articles. If it wasn't for the amazing editors helping 14-year-old me without judgment, I wouldn't be experiencing this massive improvement. It's the same basis as no discrimination based on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, political beliefs. GeraldWL 07:51, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Gerald, I could not agree with you more. Look forward to seeing you at FAC. Best of luck. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:51, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: This is an entirely gratuitous and inappropriate snipe to make, regardless of how you feel about the underlying merits of the dispute that triggered the original wave of harassment. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 20:21, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

@Chess:: My original draft was over 1,000 words longer, and one of the people reviewing it suggested I cut this because it sounded too defensive. But FWIW: For me, it comes down to the fact that I’m a Wikipedian first, and if I didn’t think that what Wiki Education did was a large net positive for Wikipedia, I wouldn’t be doing this job. If I didn't believe in what I was doing, I'd be hunting for another job. Guettarda (talk) 05:07, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

• Beautiful piece! I enjoyed viewing all of the student work you linked and mentioned! I had no idea WikiEd had this impact. Please keep doing what you're doing. This inspires me to build tools for normal editors like WikiEd students are given so that we can have even more high-quality contributions! Lectrician1 (talk) 04:36, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• I don't think that all WikiEdu contributions are bad, quite a lot of them are good, it's just that I see quite a bit of problems, ranging from minor ones like how quite a lot of students don't title their sections in sentence case (MOS:SECTION) to more serious ones such as copyvio and the creation of articles on non-notable subjects. TBH, a lot of the problems happen in areas such as politics, LGBTQ+/racial history, etc. Topics like science have much less or no problems. wizzito | say hello! 05:47, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• It's unfortunate that we only notice when something's gone wrong. XOR'easter (talk) 07:29, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• Minors do not find it easy to edit Wikipedia. Recent examples include theleekycauldron RfA, the topic ban of CycoMa1 and the comment of a 9–10 year old encouraged to edit Wikipedia. Note that there is now an official Age Appropriate Design Code which is having a significant effect on the way that internet services handle children. See the NYT for details... Andrew🐉(talk) 12:01, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Andrew Davidson: The second person you mentioned isn't a minor. They're 20 according to their user page.[1] Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 14:17, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  The age of majority goes up to 21 in some locations. In any case, they say that they are in school and so are a student. They have been criticised for their immaturity and lack of competence and so seem to be a relevant example. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:03, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

  Many college students in the United States are in the 19/20 year old range. -Indy beetle (talk) 15:43, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

• I think minors and children are sometimes hard to edit Wikipedia, and now I only edit in some limited parts of this wiki (it's hard for me to understand notability/find reliable sources) Thingofme (talk) 01:10, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
• Bravo, Ian. It's quite impressive that there have been so few incidents with WikiEd classes over the years. It speaks quite highly to your and your colleague's work. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 03:35, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, mostly we notice the explosions. Which are more likely in contentious topics. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:40, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
• While younger and less experienced editors will no doubt pose some challenges, they already do so as unregistered or independently registered editors. At least under the Wiki Education banner they are more visible and have resources to help them. I for one think this is a great endeavor, not only with the aim of improving Wikipedia; I'm of the opinion that Wiki editing should be part of every English class as early as secondary school. The majority of the English speaking world, and beyond, use Wikipedia as an information resource on a regular basis, but very few understand how it works and that it truly is a collective of self-directed and (mostly) independent editors. In addition, many do not understand the importance of properly sourced information and that, when reading Wikipedia, it is therefore just as important to note if there is a citation, and to check it for yourself to see that A) it is "reliable" and B) whether the cited work actually supports the sentence it is supposed to be supporting. This is an important lesson when ingesting any type of media. Keep up the good work Helaine and Guettarda! One cannot grow without some growing pains. Marchije•^speak/_peek 15:05, 5 March 2022 (UTC)