Sub specie aeternitatis

Mount Allison University Class Projects

Hi SSA,

I would be glad to serve your students as an online ambassador. I don't see any Mount Allison courses listed on the Present Courses page of the Canada Education Program. Which courses are you teaching?

Neelix (talk) 02:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Connecting to the Canadian program

Hi Grant,

What's the best way to get in touch with you? Would like to speak with you asap about your interest in the Canadian arm of the Education Program.

Best,

Jonathan (Education Program Advisor for Canada) --Jaobar (talk) 08:05, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Some falafel for you!

wiki falafel from the back of the class ... learning how to use this website ! Koko1088 (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

A pie for you!

wikilove from the back of the class Ncjones61 (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violations

What have you told students about our policy and guidelines on copyright of texts? Have you asked them to read Wikipedia:Copy-paste and Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. I've just reverted a student here[1]. Note that they also signed their edits. I'm not sure how you want to handle this, but we probably need to check the contributions of all your students. Sorry about this, as it sounds like a great project, but we can't let copyvio creep into our articles. Dougweller (talk) 20:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello Dougweller, All students have been advised at the beginning of term to read the documentation on plagiarism. This documentation is included in the course template provided by the Education Program. I have also reviewed the basics around this with students in person. If contributing to Wikipedia, all students are subject to the relevant practices and they are also subject to any relevant university policies. If you wish to check any/all contributions for copyright violations I see no problem with that. I will be reviewing student contributions at the end of term, including looking for potential issues related to copyright and plagiarism but I cannot promise I will detect any/all possible copyright violations or cases of plagiarism. I support the Wikipedia practices around copyright violation. As for signing edits, I imagine this sometimes happens with new users and is inevitable from time to time. I hope that you support the structured way in which participants in the Canada Education Program are attempting to integrate Wikipedia in course-related assignments. Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 17:04, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea. It's a shame that ‎Ncjones61 (talk · contribs) ignored my friendly message and has just done the same thing again, adding copyright material (and signing it). I don't know if he/she noticed that I'd left a message or not, but that big yellow message at the top when he started to edit should have been a clue. If this editor does it again there's not much I can do except block as I would normally. Dougweller (talk) 20:15, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Disruptive edits by a Mount Allison University IP

With reference to this edit and this edit from a Mount Allison University IP that disrupted a deletion discussion about an article written by one of your students, maybe you could explain to your students that it is not helpful to vandalize pages just because the Wikipedia community decides their article may not be appropriate for inclusion on Wikipedia. Thanks. BabelStone (talk) 12:40, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Environment and Society

Hi! Sage Ross reminded me that there's still a need for Online Ambassadors for courses, so I was flicking through the one's running this semester and thought I'd check with you - did you still need an OA for the next course offering? If so, I'm happy to help out. - Bilby (talk) 19:37, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bilby, thanks for your interest in Environment and Society. I had invited an OA but have not heard back, so I enthusiastically accept your offer to help. Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 22:55, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Bilby, if you can be our OA, would you please add your username to the course page in the OA section? Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 16:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry I missed you reply earlier. That's great - I'll add my name to the page, then. It is a great topic, and it seems like an interesting mix of disciplines: I never studied archaeology, but I did work as a technician with an archaeology department before moving into academia, and my wife has an archaeology degree. :) - Bilby (talk) 16:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I think I fixed the problem you just asked Bilby about... sorry about that confusing bit.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

If there is something I need to do aside from what Sage already fixed just let me know - if nothing else, I've had a lot of experience with templates. - Bilby (talk) 17:21, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Re: Environment and Society

Hi. I've helped out on Wikipedia's ambassador program last year, and would be pleased to help you with your article-writing assignments. How big is your class size? I'm actually a current Canadian undergraduate student, and yet have been editing the wikiverse since 2006. Everyone at my school seems to know about my Wikipedia interests. Since I have an interest in the interplay between environment and human society, participating as an OA will likely benefit my own studies as well. For starters, an article I wrote a while back on a relevant topic is Tambora (culture). Please remember that I may take a few days to respond. In the meantime, I have added myself as the second ambassador. Thank you for contacting me and I hope that your students have a positive experience contributing to Wikipedia! Best wishes, ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 01:08, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi AH1, thanks for the response. Having a second ambassador is a very good thing for the students, particularly given your interests and background. There are about 40 in the class. Thanks for volunteering to help out! Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 01:22, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm currently listening in to a climatic energy balance lecture. Please let me know when your class needs help. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 13:33, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Just checking in. How is your class doing so far? Will any of your students need feedback on articles? ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 15:37, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi AH1, students are moving along with this and the class is starting peer reviews over the next 1-2 weeks. The course ends on November 29 and they will be finished with their articles before that. Any feedback you would care to offer would be much appreciated. The list of articles they are working on is here. Any of them you'd care to look at and comment on the respective article Talk Pages would be much appreciated. Thanks! Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 21:01, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Thanks for the help the other day! Cheers! Beaujayna (talk) 14:43, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Copyvio

I've just reverted some blatant copyright violations from Polar ice packs and Talk:Polar ice packs which were added by one of your students. I've advised them of this on their talk (User talk:Jimbo0619) and would assume you have their talk pages watchlisted. But in case you haven't, thought I'd leave you a note as well. Thanks, Vsmith (talk) 23:27, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Vsmith, I appreciate this. I do watchlist the pages associated with this course. I don't usually review the pages in full until the end of the course and I can't necessarily catch all instances of plagiarism or copyvio so it helps to have more eyes on this. I do watch them throughout the term. Usually it is a case of students not understanding the policies even though it is their responsibility to do so. I have posted on our course talk page about this to remind students and we have previously discussed in class meetings. Thanks, Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 18:09, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

And again. I think he needs a hint William M. Connolley (talk) 19:02, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

10-4, I've added another warning to user's Talk Page, thanks, Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 20:19, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Sub specie aeternitatis - In reviewing the contributions of your students, I came across User:Jimbo0619's further contributions to polar ice packs. They consist entirely of paraphrasing so close to the original source so as to constitute a copyright violation. I have removed all of the material that your student added to that article. Please see this message that I left on his talk page. Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:04, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Anthropology:Environment and Society - Just a heads up!

Hello! I am in your Environment and Society class. I just wanted to give you a heads up when you are going to check the peer reviews. The person that reviewed mine and Notlock's article posted their review on our talk page, not the articles. AdnaloyMTA (talk) 14:51, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Please advise them to put their review in the correct place: on the Talk Page for the article that you revised. I appreciate your comment but I cannot be sure I will monitor or review things that have not been put in the correct place, as per the assignment instructions. I'm glad you still saw the review, but if they are not in the correct place, the reviewer can receive no grade for them. This is not part of your grade as author, but part of other student's grade as reviewers. Thanks, Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 19:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Speciesism

Hi Grant, a problem has arisen with your students on Speciesism. One has added NPOV violations to the article (not borderline violations, but gross; see diff). In addition the material is about animal rights and veganism, not speciesism, and at least some of it seems to be unsourced.

I left the edits in place for a few days out of consideration for the education program, them removed them with an explanation once the first peer review was over. I have now been reverted and told off by another of your students, who is telling the first student what a great job she did. [2]

Also, in looking through that course, I see that copyright violations have been added to another article. I'm unsure what to do about this, as I don't want to be responsible for getting a student into trouble, but on the other hand it's difficult to have to sit watching this material be added to the encyclopaedia. If you could advise, and in general sort out the students' input (would user subpages not make more sense?) that would be appreciated. See Talk:Speciesism#Peer_Review for the exchange. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:08, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Grant, I've spotchecked a few more articles on that course, and there is quite a bit of copy-and-paste editing from websites, which should really be reverted. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:43, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

If you suspect COPYVIO, please follow the appropriate WP procedures for dealing with copyright violations. Concerns can also be expressed here. As these policies seem to indicate, there must be clear evidence such as a URL cited as a source for the alleged copying. Any students that I discover doing copy and paste edits will get an F on their project, assuming I have reasonable grounds and a source page to back up the allegation. A "few articles" and "quite a bit", while appreciated comments, are not actionable. If you find any alleged cases of copy/paste, please follow WP policy - reversion is not necessarily an automatic process - there appear to be other options. Reporting it to me, while appreciated, it not covered by WP policies. Perhaps these alleged violations can be reported on article talk pages and brought up as a suggestion/question on user talk pages. I will be reviewing all student contributions and I will be able to see any alleged such cases as long as appropriate WP policy is followed and someone notes the allegation. I do not routinely search all contributions for COPYVIO but it does come up. I will contact all students and remind them of this issue and the potential consequences and hopefully they will revert any questionable content themselves. Thanks for your concern, which I appreciate. Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 20:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I looked at four articles and found that three contain word-for-word copying from the source material, and the fourth contains close paraphrasing. The sources are cited in a footnote, but not noted in the text. Looking at the history of one of the articles, the student composed it by copying and pasting from websites, without citations, then a few days later inserted footnotes and tweaked the writing (very slightly) so that it wasn't an exact copy.

There are ethical issues here. I don't want to be responsible for students failing a course. (In general I don't like to see Wikipedians suffer real-life consequences because of their edits.) The other issue is that volunteers shouldn't have to deal with this. As I said, I found these issues in three out of four articles, so routine spot checking would be a good idea. I could revert, but would have to explain why, and you saw what happened when I reverted at Speciesism (not one of the articles I'm referring to here, by the way).

Perhaps you could email your students to emphasize that copy-and-paste editing is not acceptable, and that when they closely paraphrase a source, they should add in-text attribution, in case they think that adding a citation to a footnote is enough. Hopefully the ones who have done this will then go and fix their articles. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Courtesy note

Hi Grant, just letting you know that your course has been mentioned in this discussion. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:04, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

User:Esorayrus - outright plagiarism

Hi Sub -

I've detected another case of what seems to be outright straight up cut and paste plagiarism by one of your students. In this edit, your student Esorayrus cut and paste a large section of text from this website directly in to the article. Kevin Gorman (talk) 09:14, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi KG,

First, let me thank you for bringing this to my attention. I know that it takes time and effort to deal with these matters and that there is concern on the part of some in the community that these problems are widespread. Given what I have seen in terms of policy changes at a number of universities over the past several years, the issue is increasingly common and problematical in any student work, not just Wikipedia.

Second, in reviewing that article, I note that one of the other students in the class, and one of my students from last year, in fact made some improvements in general and did some cleanup. I would like to make sure that we don't lose sight of the fact that many students are very diligent and are doing good work, though of course that will not be the case for all students.

Third, I can assure you that I will deal with any allegations of plagiarism seriously insofar as university policies allow. I have noted this elsewhere on my Talk Page and I have posted stern warnings on user Talk Pages in the past. I will not comment on details of specific outcomes because of privacy concerns. I have posted comments on the course Talk Page here. Further, the issue has been discussed at length in class meetings both at the beginning of term and in November. I have emailed the class about it and had discussions with individual students. When a general allegation was made earlier this term, the problem of COPYVIO and plagiarism was again reviewed in class and I advised all students to revert any such edits themselves, to discuss specific cases and concerns with me if they had any doubts about proper citation, and to make sure that all contributions were properly attributed. The example of copying text from Web sources was specifically discussed and specifically forbidden (as was always the case). I think that it is important to remember that there is much more to these assignments than is obvious from what can be gleaned from reviewing solely what is available on Wikipedia itself.

Fourth, I can assure you that I read all changes that students make to articles and I deal with all cases of suspected plagiarism. This term, as noted on the course page, students were trying to improve existing stub, start, or C-class articles. They were not creating new articles. Their instructions were to post suggested changes to article Talk Pages, along with sources, weeks before making any actual edits to the articles. This is not always what happened and grades will suffer for not meeting deadlines. My thorough review of all contributions is not done as the class has just ended and I am now grading. When I see anything unusual, such as a lack of citations or text that seems suspect, I do investigate fully and I have identified cases of plagiarism in the past and dealt with them accordingly - it is a serious issue of academic misconduct. These situations are not limited to Wikipedia assignments and I have in fact noted an increase in this problem in recent years and I have, as a result, increased instruction around the issues. I cannot guarantee, however, that I will identify all such cases, no matter how hard I try. I also cannot guarantee that students will stop doing it, no matter how much instruction they are given about it. I view plagiarism as completely unacceptable. This is why I am rather grateful when any editor brings a specific allegation with a specific source document to my attention. If I find the allegation to be true, I take action. There are privacy policies governing such action and the specific consequences are therefore not something that is disclosed.

In closing, I would like to note that I am deeply concerned about this issue and that despite my best efforts (e.g., discussing the issue in class repeatedly, posting warnings on Talk Pages, requiring that students read WP policy related to the matter, working with students individually to avoid violations) these cases still happen. This gives me pause to reflect on further improving instruction around issues of plagiarism. Lastly, I do welcome any specific allegations of plagiarism or COPYVIO being brought to my attention because I can act on evidence. That is not to say that I am not reviewing all student work for those same issues - I am doing so. I have no expectation whatsoever that student editors will not have their work changed, reverted, commented upon, scrutinized, checked for COPYVIO, and so on, at any time throughout the term or thereafter.

All the best, Sub specie aeternitatis (talk) 12:43, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, it is greatly appreciated. I definitely do understand that a lot of students, many of yours included, have been improving Wikipedia in significant ways. I am, in general, a gigantic proponent of the education program, and think it has the potential to do great good. Unfortunately, recurrent plagiarism issues are drastically souring elements of Wikipedia's community on the program as a whole, which is one of the reasons why my initial email to you sounded so cranky - I wish to avoid a project that has the potential for such awesome benefits being harmed (or even, worst case, killed) by problems of this nature. I'll continue reviewing the contributions of your students as I have time, and will bring additional problems to you as I find (and absolutely confirm) them. As a heads up, there are at least several more students in your class that appear to have significant copyvio issues, although many of them involve extensive excessively close paraphrasing rather than simple cut and paste plagiarism as occurred in this situation.

I'm a bit pressed on time currently, but will respond to you in more detail later - I just wanted to express my appreciation for you actively engaging with these issues. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Grant, I think the issue is that it would help if you would be more pro-active about this, rather than leaving it to Wikipedians. This is live publishing, and ideally the teacher would quickly remove any serious problems. Also, are you certain that your students know what plagiarism is? You posted on the course talk page that, "You must attribute all information in your edits to properly cited sources." And they have done that, in all the cases I looked at. But unfortunately they're also copy-pasting from those sources. In looking at one of the fixes a student made, after I raised the issue of plagiarism in those articles in general, s/he went back and added the name of the author to the citation, whereas before it had just been a link to a webpage. This makes me wonder whether the students have misunderstood what in-text attribution is, and believe it's okay to copy (or very closely paraphrase) text so long as the author is named in a footnote. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:33, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

User:Jemacleod -- plagiarism

Hi Sub -

Unfortunately, in reviewing the work of your students, I've come across another instance of outright no-doubts about it plagiarism.

In this edit User:Jemacleod, one of your students, copies text wholesales from this source. The student later added a footnote citing this source, but that doesn't make it any less a copyright violation. In the same edit, the student also directly cut and paste content from this source in to the article. Both of these are clearly instances of plagiarism - no attempt at paraphrasing was even made (not that that would have excused the problem.) Later edits by non-students changed some of the wording, but they were still closely paraphrased enough as to constitute a copyright violation, so I've had to blanket revert the entire article - and the original edits by Jemacleod, as demonstrated by the diffs and links I've posted, were definitely outright plagiarism. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:54, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

duplication

It's not a problem of anywhere the same magnitude, but your students seem to have made an article most duplicating other WP content -- see my comments at WT:Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? (It's actually the online ambassador who has the primary responsibility for checking that the students avoid such duplication, & that their good work is not futile--I've left a note for him.)- DGG ( talk ) 01:50, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

As I said on the article talk p., I had made too many assumptions, and thoroly misunderstood the article. I apologize. There are only minor problems. DGG ( talk ) 20:20, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

You've Got Mail

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Women in Red World Contest

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!