Jump to content

Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Welcome to the education noticeboard
    Purpose of this page Using this page

    This page is for discussion related to student assignments and the Wikipedia Education Program. Please feel free to post, whether you're from a class, a potential class, or if you're a Wikipedia editor.

    Topics for this board might include:


    Of course, we should remain civil towards all participants and assume good faith.

    There are other pages more appropriate for dealing with certain specific issues:

    Shortcuts
    • "Start a new discussion thread". Use an informative title: ==Informative title==. If a thread is related to an ongoing discussion, consider placing it under a level-3 heading within that existing discussion.
    • You should generally notify any user who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{ping}} to do so, or simply link their username when you post your comment.
      It is not required to contact students when their edits are only being discussed in the context of a class-wide problem.
    • If no comments have been made within 30 days, your post and any responses will be automatically archived.
    • Please sign all contributions, using four tilde characters "~~~~".
    • If discussion is already ongoing elsewhere or if there is a more natural location for a discussion, please continue the discussion there, and put a short note with a link to the relevant location on this page.
    • If you cannot edit this page because it is protected, please place your comments on this page and they will be addressed.

    Managing threads

    If you'd like to make sure a thread does not get archived automatically after 30 days, use {{Do not archive until}} at the top of the section. Use {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} within a section to have it archived (more or less) immediately. A brief Archives page lists them with the years in which those now inactive discussions took place.

    Click here to start a new discussion



    Apparent student project on fish articles, uploading tons of copyvios to Commons

    [edit]

    It seems like just today, a ton of student editors have been publishing edits to fish articles (see here for apparent confirmation it's a student project [though most edits have been directly in mainspace]). Their edits have been OK on the balance, but they've also been uploading a ton of files to Commons with no or fake licenses (I've tagged a bunch of the ones with fake licenses which you can see in my Commons contribs, while the ones with no licenses have been auto-tagged on Commons). @Ian (Wiki Ed) et al, any chance you can help with this? I have no idea what the scale of this is since I've just run across a few pages while going through CS1 errors. Jay8g [V•T•E] 08:13, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Here are the users I've come across so far:
    Jay8g [V•T•E] 08:35, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Found the same thing while patrolling, and initially filed an SPI for it (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kynadine). Most contributions I ran across seem okay, but a couple involved superimposing numbers instead of putting refs (eg [1] instead of the actual format used for citations). 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) 10:13, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    More users have been listed at c:COM:AN#Student_editing_project_about_fish_on_enWP_leading_to_mass_copyvio_uploads_on_Commons. Also:
    Jay8g [V•T•E] 08:11, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This isn't a class we're supporting, but if you're able to get any information about the school or instructor, we'd be happy to try to help them. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:08, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @LiAnna (Wiki Ed): It might be UC Davis based on a similar unofficial project last year, but frustratingly, none of this year's students are responding to talk page messages here or on Commons. Jay8g [V•T•E] 00:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You would think responding to talk messages would be a requirement for participating in these kind of projects Trade (talk) 01:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    From what I'm seeing from checking a few talk pages, the students are getting welcome templates on Wikipedia and COM:AN notifications on Commons. Neither of those really suggest that they're expected to provide a response.
    As I said on a similar case in 2023 (where it took us three years to stop one teacher's runaway twice-yearly lesson plan), I think we need a boilerplate talk page notice for this kind of obvious, undeclared mass student editing problem (Hello, you appear to be part of a school project which isn't following Wikipedia guidelines for educational projects, and which is causing students to break some Wikipedia policies. Please direct your teacher to WP:BADEDU.), linking to an essay which lets their teacher know that they've overlooked something big in their lesson plan and showing how they can open a conversation with us. If every apparent student gets that template, somebody will pass the link on to the teacher. Belbury (talk) 11:20, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We may want a less derogatory shortcut. CMD (talk) 13:03, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yikes sorry my bad, I investigated that SPI and I guess I must have gotten distracted and never added notes. @LiAnna (Wiki Ed), I'm about 90% confident that's UC Davis. -- asilvering (talk) 11:32, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think we found the instructor at UC Davis; we're reaching out to them to try to get them to do it with us so we can provide guidance to hopefully avoid this problem in the future; it looks like we reached out last year but didn't hear back, so hopefully we will this time. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:06, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @LiAnna (Wiki Ed): If/when you get in touch with them, can we get a full list of the student accounts? I'm concerned we've missed some and we still need to get rid of their copyvio Commons uploads. Jay8g [V•T•E] 05:51, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, the person we though it was answered and it wasn't them! But they pointed us to the correct instructor, thankfully. The instructor is wrapping up the assignment for this term, but has agreed to work with us in the future so hopefully this problem won't reappear. We've asked them to either come here and post the list of usernames or email them to us and we will post them here. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:55, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @LiAnna (Wiki Ed): Any updates on this? Jay8g [V•T•E] 07:16, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The instructor hasn't replied to our request about usernames, but we'll ping again! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:22, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Course announcement for class in Telugu

    [edit]

    See course announcement at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Wiki Ed course submissions (diff) for:

    Are we supporting classes given in India in Telugu now? I thought it was U.S./Canada only? Is this a new expansion, or did I miss the memo? Mathglot (talk) 06:21, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    No, you didn't miss anything! :) The course announcements page you linked includes every course page that has been submitted, not every one that has been approved (we review all submissions to ensure they meet our best practices before approval). Our orientation the instructors go through before reaching that point clearly says it's only for the US and Canada, but people don't always read everything carefully. We will decline the submission and recommend they reach out to m:IIITH-OKI for support. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:13, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That explains it. I'm not sure how I learned about that page; more interesting would be every course page has been approved, is there one like that? Mathglot (talk) 18:44, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The ones that have been approved are all listed in the term campaign on the Dashboard, so for example, the current fall 2025 term or the forthcoming spring 2026 term. Most courses do get approved (unless they're geographically out of our scope like this example), but we often will suggest changes to the assignment plan so it meets our best practices if we see something amiss in the instructor's proposal. Any changes like that would be visible in the page history of the on-wiki mirror of the course page. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:27, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Many thanks! Mathglot (talk) 09:07, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Is Wikipedia:Education program a net benefit to the encyclopedia?

    [edit]

     You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Is Wikipedia:Education program a net benefit to the encyclopedia?. Thryduulf (talk) 03:20, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Just to close the loop here, thanks for posting this here so I saw it! I did chime in on the discussion. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Undeclared student project by Cornell professor where students add/expand articles that rely almost entirely on his work

    [edit]

    Several drafts have been created in the past few weeks by new accounts that rely almost entirely on sources written by Cornell professor Marcos López de Prado. This behavior extends to existing articles, see e.g. this diff. This isn't new either, a few months ago, articles such as Hierarchical Risk Parity, Deflated Sharpe ratio, Meta-Labeling, and Purged cross-validation were passed through Articles for Creation by AfC reviewers. The timing lines up with a class the professor is teaching, and multiple accounts have "Cornell" in their usernames.

    I am especially concerned about conflict-of-interest issues, since the students seem to be heavily citing the professor's work. But I might be missing drafts that don't cite the professor at all. How should this project be addressed, if at all? Helpful Raccoon (talk) 06:53, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Since some of the drafts might be moved to mainspace soon, they are Draft:Causal Factor Investing, Draft:Casual Factor Investing, Draft:Causal Factor Investing (New), Draft:Triple-Barrier Method, Draft:Forming Bars, Draft:Financial Labelling, Draft:Sequential Bootstrapping, Draft:Bar Construction (Financial Data). Helpful Raccoon (talk) 07:23, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Robert McClenon I see you have engaged with one of the students. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 10:19, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for pinging me, User:Helpful Raccoon. Actually, I have engaged with several of these students about a class project that has created three drafts on the same topic, Draft:Causal Factor Investing, Draft:Casual Factor Investing, and Draft:Causal Factor Investing (New). I tagged the drafts to be merged into one draft. I thought it unusual that multiple accounts were preparing drafts on the same topic, and asked whether this was a class project. They answered that it was a class project, and I asked who the instructor was, and what instructions had been given to the class. I asked about the instructions because I, and other editors at this noticeboard, have seen cases where the instructor gave instructions that were contrary to Wikipedia guidelines and practice. I haven't looked at the other drafts.I now see that this is a sort of proxy conflict of interest, because the instructor, Marcos Lopez de Prado, is using his classes to publicize his academic work in Wikipedia. This is a different concern than I have seen in the past. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:52, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I see that this has resulted in at least two reports of sockpuppetry, which are false alarms. There were concerns because multiple new accounts were writing about the same topic. It is not sockpuppetry, because there are different students behind the accounts. That doesn't answer whether it is a conflict of interest. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:03, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I took a quick look, and setting aside all the other issues raised here, this does indeed look to me like a COI problem. Even though this isn't socking, it's meatpuppetry in order to spam the professor's work. Perhaps it would be worth posting about this at WP:COIN. I'd also strongly recommend tagging all of the drafts for having "connected contributor(s)", so they don't get moved to mainspace unawares, and also putting a link to this discussion on their talk pages. It might also be a good idea to similarly tag the pages that have gotten past AfC and gotten into mainspace. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:34, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We will reach out to this instructor and see if they are willing to teach with us (and learn more about COI rules) in the future to avoid such issues! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:22, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you, @LiAnna (Wiki Ed), for reaching out, and for your willingness to assist. I first became aware of this discussion when I received an email from your colleague Helaine yesterday.
    I would like to clarify several points raised on this Education Noticeboard. Several assumptions in this thread are incorrect, and an accurate record is important.
    • 1. First and only semester involving Wikipedia editing
    This Fall 2025 is the first and only semester in which Wikipedia editing has been part of my course's assignments. No student edits prior to November 2025 were connected to assignments. Any suggestion otherwise is incorrect.
    • 2. No direction to write about me or my research
    Students selected their own topics. A few chose some of my contributions to the literature of financial machine learning, which naturally are included in the course's syllabus, but these decisions were entirely their own.
    • 3. No coordinated editing, meatpuppetry, or proxy advocacy
    There was no coordination among students, no attempt to influence any article collectively, and no effort to promote my biography or research. Students edited independently, under their own accounts. Allegations of meatpuppetry or coordinated influence are unfounded.
    • 4. No conflict of interest on my part
    I did not edit, direct, or shape edits to articles about myself or my work. I neither supervised content nor provided editorial guidance. My involvement was limited to grading the quality of each student’s research and sourcing at the end of the course. I receive no compensation from Cornell for teaching, which I do pro-bono, and I have no financial or professional incentive tied to Wikipedia content. Almost all of my publications are available for free at www.quantresearch.org
    • 5. No intent to bypass disclosure or policy
    Because I did not edit or direct edits related to myself, I did not anticipate that any conflict-of-interest disclosure requirement applied. I support transparency and would be pleased to work with Wiki Education to follow best practices in the future.
    • 6. Assignment structure and expectations
    The assignment was not designed to produce advocacy, autobiographical editing, or promotional content. Students were evaluated on research quality, sourcing, and compliance with Wikipedia norms: neutrality, reliability, and verifiability. Some edits were reverted for common beginner errors, not for policy violations or intent.
    • 7. No past history of classroom editing
    The Noticeboard discussion cites years of earlier editing. These edits have no connection to me or to any course I have taught. This misunderstanding should be corrected.
    I welcome the opportunity to align any future assignments with Wiki Education’s established processes, including course registration, training resources, article selection guidance, and disclosure protocols.
    However, I ask that allegations of conflict of interest, meatpuppetry, or coordinated editing be formally withdrawn. These claims are inaccurate and risk unjust harm to my students. Given the above details, I hope it is clear that everyone acted in good faith.
    My students are capable contributors, and with appropriate support they can add value to Wikipedia, including by sharing advanced material taught at leading universities. I look forward to working with Wiki Education to ensure that future engagement is fully consistent with community expectations.
    — ProfMLdP (talk) 08:42, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @ProfMLdP Which articles and drafts have your students edited? Helpful Raccoon (talk) 18:40, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I want to add a couple of things. First of all, if you are going to have your students edit Wikipedia as a course requirement, you should register all future classes with Wiki Ed. That will eliminate all suspicions about previous history, because each class will be logged, and it will make some important resources available to you as the instructor, as well as to your students. I also strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with WP:ASSIGN, which will help you better understand how teaching on Wikipedia works.
    Please understand that Wikipedia is not here as an unlimited tool for you to use in your teaching. There are mutual obligations that come with your decision to send your students here, and what happens here occurs under Wikipedia's rules, not yours. I'm saying this as a (retired) tenured professor at a US research university. Any assignments I would give my own students, I would expect to read myself, and take professional responsibility for supervising their work. Any experienced Wikipedia editor reading the contributions from your students would come to the conclusion that their edits have a pattern of highlighting your work. If you were more familiar with Wikipedia's way of doing things, you would have realized that this created an appearance of WP:Meatpuppetry with a WP:Conflict of interest, and you would have guided them away from creating this appearance. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you all for the guidance and for the constructive feedback. If we decide to run this assignment for a second time in Fall 2026, we will be sure to follow Wiki Education’s recommended processes and engage with Wiki Edu from the outset. Thank you to LiAnna for offering assistance; it is very much appreciated. Best wishes — ProfMLdP (talk) 06:34, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Genetically modified food

    [edit]

    That page falls directly under the GMO CTOP, and as such really should not be edited at all as part of a class project. However, multiple students have been editing it as part of this WikiEd class. Courtesy pings to Ian (Wiki Ed) and Helaine (Wiki Ed), who are the assigned staff people. The students have been adding (at what appears to be the last minute for the class) a bunch of new sections, which range from middling to inappropriate (because of editorializing, undue weight, and essay-like writing style), and suffer from various formatting problems. Because of 1RR, I'm going to have to wait awhile before removing everything that needs to be removed. But these students should not have have attempted this particular page to begin with, and it's regrettable that this slipped through the cracks. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:57, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I should get notifications when students assign themselves this article, but I don't seem to have, which is odd (give that it's in cat:Wikipedia controversial topics). Need to figure out why that's (not) happening. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:25, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, Ian. Perhaps this fix by Sage (Wiki Ed) will take care of it: [1]. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:51, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It should. "Wikipedia controversial topics" is not the category that indicates discretionary sanctions, and the handful of GMO-related articles with that template (some of which were not even in the "controversial" cat) were not triggering our alerts since it didn't add Category:Wikipedia pages about contentious topics. (Weird naming scheme we have for these!) Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:36, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure how a "controversial topics" category would really be defined, but indeed it is unlikely to be helpful to WikiEd in finding pages that are subject to CTOPs issued by ArbCom. And as much as I like the idea of keeping student projects away from all "controversial" topics, I think the community's concern has always been in regard to CTOPs, because that's where a student editor risks unintentionally violating a serious restriction and perhaps getting blocked or hauled off to WP:AE. Category:Wikipedia pages about contentious topics is the correct category to track that. (The name "contentious topics" is the successor to "discretionary sanctions", and there's a very long history of how that name change came about, but it refers to something very precise in terms of ArbCom-related sanctions.) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:56, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    By the way, I think the page is back to the way it should be now. A few other editors made a bunch of fixes before I got there, and I think I fixed everything else that needed it. I was able to save some of the student content, and some other student content simply had to be removed. It took me damn near an hour to do it. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:10, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    And now, another class with the same thing. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:13, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    California_State_University,_Monterey_Bay/Biochemistry_I_(Fall_2025) won't follow MOS

    [edit]

    I keep running into edits from this class project that blatantly violate the MOS (with the most obvious issue being the constant addition of "introduction" and "conclusion" sections) and which are extremely poorly sourced. I have reverted quite a few of these, but the students keep edit-warring to restore their versions. I've noticed @Boghog also trying to clean up these messes on a lot of articles. Can someone intervene with this class? Jay8g [V•T•E] 08:13, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I've now gone through every article edited by this class, and nearly every one of them has either been reverted or required massive edits to clean up the mess left by the student editors. I've run across plenty of bad student projects in my time, but this one is quite possibly the worst in terms of wasting editor time, especially considering they're operating in a WP:MEDRS subject area. Jay8g [V•T•E] 08:44, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks Jay8g. In addition to the unnecessary introduction/background sections (the lead is not an introduction, it is a summary, see WP:LEAD) and the discouraged conclusion section (summaries are redundant because the lead already summarizes the whole article), as well as the issues with poor sourcing (see WP:RS and WP:MEDRS for medical claims), I would urge the students to follow WP:MCBMOS for protein articles. Boghog (talk) 08:49, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also edit-warring to insert their disputed content. I wonder if we'll have to resort to landing a few blocks to shake out a response. DMacks (talk) 08:56, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a case where the Wiki-ed people should get on to the "instructor". Johnbod (talk) 14:03, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that's User:Ahaffa. ~2025-38483-04 (talk) 14:13, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll note that on their tp, there is a warning about MEDRS from a few years back. Happy Editing -- IAmChaos 16:23, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi everyone, just letting you all know that I've been in touch with User:Ahaffa about the issues in her course this term. The students are done with the project, and I'll be having a follow up conversation about the issues her students faced this time around. Thanks again. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:01, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Howard University/AFST 111-01 African Systems of Thought (Fall 2025) adding promotional content

    [edit]

    Pretty much every student in this class has been adding promotional/non-WP:NPOV content to various biography articles. I've had to revert most of their edits. Can someone intervene with this class too? Jay8g [V•T•E] 07:18, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Brigham Young University/HIST 362 US Immigration History (Fall) and WP:CT/AP

    [edit]

    Just a heads up that there's another class that's editing in a contentious topic area, something that is generally discouraged. The most obvious example is Draft:Extreme Vetting in the Trump Administration (which @MadisonCurtis has been edit-warring to move into mainspace), which is about as contentious of a topic as you can get without hitting one of the ECR areas. And to be honest, even the articles from that class that aren't obviously contentious are generally not great, and some should probably get sent to AFD. Jay8g [V•T•E] 00:33, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Note that according to the class page, a live Wikipedia article is required. I thought this was against WikiEd policy? There is also what looks like a related course called “Latinos in the US” scheduled for winter. ~2025-39039-84 (talk) 02:40, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi, we're already in touch with the professor for this class. Be assured that while he requires the students to move their work live, the work is not graded based on whether it stays on Wikipedia or not.Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:44, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Except that the work is required to be live on the last day of class, as according to the instructions on the WikiEd page. If a student has uploaded a page, and had it removed, what else are they supposed to do? The mark requires the page be live on a certain date. ~2025-39541-36 (talk) 14:21, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also the final paper requires the student “Explain how your article makes a public contribution to Wikipedia and those that will read it.”
    If the grade is not contingent on publishing, then wouldn’t this question be moot? ~2025-39541-36 (talk) 14:25, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Many of our faculty want their students to have the experience of actually moving work live. This does not mean the work has to remain live, and the grade is not dependent on whether it remains live or not. Similarly, in the reflection piece, faculty are usually looking to understand the process that their students went through in order to make their contribution. They want the students to talk about how they hoped to improve an article whether that article stays live on Wikipedia or not. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:42, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Banners heads-up

    [edit]

    Just a heads-up that Wiki Education is requesting a series of banners running January 5-9, 2026, ahead of the upcoming spring term, for logged-out Wikipedia readers geotargeted to a list of college towns in the United States (think Oxford, MS; Morgantown, WV; Missoula, MT; Chico, CA; Clemson, SC; etc.). These banners are designed to encourage college instructors who might be interested in teaching with Wikipedia to do so through our program, so we can provide support for them (hopefully heading off some of the problems that have been brought here recently with unaffiliated instructors). We'll test if this works, and we may do more in the future. Since they will also reach some non-university-affiliated people in the town as well, we'll add a link to Help:Introduction as a general editing encouragement as well. Let me know if you have any questions! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:16, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I think this is potentially a good thing, with one note of caution. It needs to be very clear to instructors reading the banners that the invitation is, indeed, to work with Wiki Ed, not just to use Wikipedia for their class without working with you. There needs to be no room for misunderstanding that point. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:34, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard&oldid=1326622288"