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Contentious topics
Is there any guideline, recommendation, or opinion at Wiki Ed about whether students should be assigned articles designated as a
Contentious topic? Currently,
Gender and Technoculture 320-01 (assisted by
Brianda) has students assigned to
Gender-critical feminism,
Feminist views on transgender topics, and
Transphobia, all designated as contentious. (There may be others, I only checked the ones I thought would be.) I checked the archives, but the only discussion related to this topic was
this one, and it isn't directly relevant.
Tryptofish started that one, so might have an opinion on this.
Mathglot (
talk) 05:14, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the ping. My understanding is that we have a consensus that student editors should steer clear of CTOPs, and that WikiEd advises students of this. But of course, some students initially do it anyway. In my experience, once the WikiEd advisor finds out about it, they can be counted on to tell the students to find a different page, and point it out to the instructor. I expect this will happen here. --
Tryptofish (
talk) 21:12, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks
Tryptofish &
Mathglot. We do try to steer classes away from contentious topics, but given the large swaths of Wikipedia that are or were covered, we take a more nuanced approach. For example, climate change articles have rarely proven to be a problem for student editors (at least in the dimension of them being contentious), so over the years we changed our approach from steering classes away from those topics to encouraging certain types of classes to participate.
We've supported a large number of feminism-related classes (this class alone has run 22 times before this term) and improving the topic area is important. While the arbcom ruling is limited to "gender-related disputes or controversies and associated people", it isn't always clear up front what's disputed or controversial and what isn't. But telling instructors and students they need to stay clear of "gender", as a whole, on Wikipedia, probably would be.
We try to strike a balance between steering students away from categories of articles where they're unlikely to have a good experience, and trying to help them understand how to edit collegially. In this case, Brianda has gone over the list of articles that students assigned themselves and suggested that they might want to drop certain topics, while also trying to provide extra support in the event students do run into problems.
Ian (Wiki Ed) (
talk) 22:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Focusing my reply only on the following:
it isn't always clear up front what's disputed or controversial and what isn't
By "contentious" in my OP, I meant strictly: "article whose talk page has one of the (four, I think) contentious topics templates". If it has one of them, then it's contentious for the purposes of this discussion; if it doesn't, then it isn't. So students and instructors would have a way of determining it. Not yet ready for prime time is a template I'm working on which will detect this; e.g.:
Draft template examples here, but see below for dedicated "{{
Is contentious}}" template
(Don't worry about the icon; you can either embed it in an #if, or maybe I'll provide yes-no booleans later; also, this draft template may cease working or work differently at any time; it's still in development.) The point I wanted to make, though, is that "contentious" can be well-defined, if we want it to be, by associating it with presence/absence of Talk page templates.
Mathglot (
talk) 22:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Ian, one approach that I think would be helpful to WikiEd staff when deciding whether or not to steer a student away is to look for whether or not there is a CTOP warning template, or edit notice, on the talk page. If there is such a warning already present for a given page, then it should probably be pretty close to automatic to tell the student and the instructor. --
Tryptofish (
talk) 23:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Ian, I've written
Template:Is contentious which will detect this as a standalone template you can use, copy, or reengineer if you are using wiki ed dashboard software in a non-wikipedia environment:
Hope this helps.
Mathglot (
talk) 00:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)reply
The reality is that student edits to these high-traffic, highly controversial articles are simply going to be reverted. Frankly it's a waste of both the student's and community's time to be assigning articles like
gender-critical feminism as Mathglot mentioned, whose student editor just got
predictably reverted instantly. An article which has already gone through lots of debate and consensus-making is not going to be the type of article which is accepting of the (typically lower quality) contributions from student editors.
Endwise (
talk) 00:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I want to add that simply and predictably ending up reverted is a poor educational experience for the student. I realize that sometimes editors can be reluctant to say "no" to students or instructors about page choices, but we do the class no favor by having things go this way. (And I also want to add that editors should never hesitate to revert student edits that need to be reverted.) --
Tryptofish (
talk) 19:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Possible unknown class
There's been a sudden influx of brand new accounts over at
Pesticide drift, a contentious topic.
[1]. The edits definitely have the look of coordinated class edits happening at once, but I'm not seeing any indication of an class dashboard, etc.
I only had a remove a
WP:MEDRS issue so far, but do any WikiEd folks know what class this may be? As mentioned in the section above, controversial topics are best avoided for class editing, and this is one we've frequently had issues with student editors in. Hopefully it's nothing for this one, but I thought I'd check in on this one now rather than later.
KoA (
talk) 18:44, 14 March 2024 (UTC)reply
These editors aren't affiliated with us, but if you do find out any contact information or name for the instructor, feel free to ping me and we can try to offer our support! --
LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (
talk) 21:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Fashion/textiles class is back again (n+1)
Ayup, just like clockwork,
Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 23#Surprise, another semester, another undeclared school project making a mess of fashion articles is ramping up with one-off uncited edits to a not-small pool of articles. They never discuss. They often don't ever make a second edit. They do not always hit the same articles, so protection is not very useful. But they often do hit the same articles, so better to leave them unprotected as a honeypot with a hair trigger? That's really a horrible non-solution. I'm fairly confident I know which school it is.
DMacks (
talk) 03:13, 22 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Block the entire class. I know it's an extreme solution, but I think we've hit the point where anything less will not be sufficient.
Primefac (
talk) 13:46, 22 March 2024 (UTC)reply
While I do support that, the past two semesters they have switched to mostly single-edit accounts. As if the assignment has become as lame as "make an edit to a WP article related to our class" or even "prove that WP is editable by anyone". Is there a set of IPs that can be blocked to help make a dent in it?
DMacks (
talk) 14:14, 22 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Jeez... if that's the case, we're almost running into meatbot territory... could probably justify a rangeblock based on that.
Primefac (
talk) 14:24, 22 March 2024 (UTC)reply
It is still on-going, and as usual oozing into more and different articles. One of them confirmed on-wiki that it is a class project and has a username with the string "CSULA" in it. That confirms the school I had in mind, consistent semester-to-semester.
DMacks (
talk) 03:27, 29 March 2024 (UTC)reply