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Special report

WikiEd course leads to Twitter harassment

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By Sdkb

A Wiki Education course went awry last month when controversy over a deletion discussion spilled onto Twitter, leading to harassment of a 15-year-old editor. The course, Black Women and Popular Culture, was taught by Msia Kibona Clark. Clark, whose Wikipedia username is Mkibona, is an associate professor of African cultural and feminist studies at Howard University. As of press time, 12 out of the 24 articles linked on the course page are redlinks. One of those, about the activist organization Black Women Radicals (archive link), was nominated for deletion on December 13; it was deleted a week later, after a clear consensus formed that the group was not notable (editors also identified copyright violations and promotionalism issues).

Founders Library at Howard University

During the nomination, Clark posted on Twitter "I don't know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving" the article, in a thread where she tagged the group's Twitter handle. The AfD nominator joined the Twitter conversation, identifying themselves, linking to the canvassing guideline, and stating "I am 100% not trying to erase anything cultural. I based my decisions on notability guidelines and what other editors said about the content."

Other users, including the Black Women Radicals account, responded with hostility, particularly after the editor revealed that they were 15 years old. @uchenna (Uchenna Kema) wrote "Delete your Wikipedia account and go to school". @moontomysea mockingly paraphrased their comments as "yes i erased your nigger page from wikipedia and if you talk about it the rules say we can ban you", commenting "they sure do make white fifteen year old kids bold now don't they". The Black Women Radicals account tweeted "It's a shame the ways Wikipedia (particularly its overwhelming[ly] white editors) gatekeep what is considered 'notable' enough to have a Wiki article. Most of the time, Black women's work is not considered 'notable' enough." They also shared a screenshot showing that the nominator had blocked them.

The nominator brought the matter to the Education Noticeboard, where they expressed intense distress. "I am now scared of what they will do next, if they'll follow me into other social media or even here to make attacks or potentially doxx me as an act of 'revenge'," they wrote. "Please help."

Many editors responded. Ian Ramjohn, the Senior Wikipedia Expert for WikiEd, wrote "I'm horrified at what has happened here" and communicated information about how Wikipedia operates to the group in replies on Twitter. Administrator Joe Roe pointed out that many non-Wikipedians on Twitter likely misunderstood the role of an editor to be "someone with special authority over Wikipedia content", rather than anyone who edits.

Clark explained and defended her actions in the noticeboard thread. "I initially only turned to my community on Twitter because I was frustrated, I was not being heard, and I didn't know what to do," she wrote. "I needed help getting resources and ideas for the article, as well as help navigating Wikipedia. I also needed support from my community because it is not a good feeling to feel like you're not being heard and to feel powerless to do anything about it." Regarding the nominator, she wrote "when he went on Twitter, identified himself, and continued with the tone of criticism and chastising that I had experienced on Wikipedia, I anticipated the reaction. I wish it had not happened, but it did not have to happen."

In a statement for WikiEd, LiAnna Davis (its chief programs officer and deputy director) wrote "I'm very sorry this situation has resulted in multiple people feeling harassed." However, the bulk of her statement focused on thanking Clark for her work trying to combat systemic bias on Wikipedia, reminding editors to assume good faith about her intentions in going to Twitter, and urging the community to take into account the "systemic bias in our sources" when assessing articles. Administrator Barkeep49 criticized this response, saying that WikiEd was responsible for "blasé handling of demonstrable harassment". Davis later clarified that "my post yesterday should have read 'being harassed', not 'feeling harassed'. My apologies for my poor wording choice." Discussion about WikiEd continued from there, with the harassment issues referred to WMF Trust and Safety for private handling.

African Americans are severely underrepresented among Wikipedia editors, according to a 2020 WMF survey, which found that they make up only 0.5% of American editors, despite being around 14% of the American population. There remain many content gaps in Wikipedia's coverage of Black history and culture.

The incident highlights the ongoing challenges faced by WikiEd's student editing program. Supporters argue that a few troublesome instances overshadow many quieter successes, point to its thorough training modules, and note that it helps bring in a more diverse group of editors. Detractors emphasize the disruption to the community from courses that produce problematic content and note that few students go on to make productive contributions after their course ends.

The incident also highlights the challenge of communicating Wikipedia's complex processes to unfamiliar audiences, especially in heated situations where people may be inclined to view community decisions through a political or ideological lens. Marginalized communities, in particular, may be reticent to assume good faith after having endured systemic discrimination. "The experience was hurtful for me and for my students who witnessed it," wrote Clark in the noticeboard thread.


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  • Am I correct in assuming that Lianna Davis is a paid employee of the WMF? Her comments (defending an instigator of harassment against a 15-year-old volunteer) are very unprofessional. Schierbecker (talk) 21:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of Lianna's comments. I thought she made several reasonable points about the context. And it's also very unclear to me that @kibona intended to instigate harassment. The subsequent harassment is still unacceptable, of course. Chris Troutman's comments, below, also strike me as an overreaction. Ganesha811 (talk) 23:57, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm very thankful Sdkb gave this subject a fair write up, at my suggestion. I am appalled by Mkibona's conduct; these violations of WP:CANVASS and WP:MEAT call for a topic ban if not an outright block and removal from WEF's program. Because the harassment involved should have been prevented by WEF, LiAnna (WikiEd)'s failure to address this matter and her passive-aggressive "I'm sorry anyone was hurt" statement after the fact should result in her removal from WEF, as well. As I've read, this isn't the first time WEF's efforts created suboptimal results for en-wp which calls into question Helaine (Wiki Ed)'s leadership. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:19, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • WikiEd is a separate non-profit from the Wikimedia Foundation so Liana is not a foundation employee but is an employee of WikiEd. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am a paid employee of Wiki Education, not WMF. I fundamentally disagree that the instructor in this class instigated harassment. The tweet the instructor sent requesting support is quoted above: "I don’t know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving" two articles. This was not instigating harassment. The AfD nominator somehow found this tweet and responded to it. Other users on Twitter — none connected to the course or Wiki Education — did harass the AfD nominator (and I'll repeat my comment that the initial wording of my post was a mistake, not an attempt to minimize or deny the unacceptable Twitter harassment — it was harassment, and I'm glad Barkeep49 pointed that out at the time so I could clarify). But her asking for help identifying additional sources for two articles is not instigating harassment. It's also worth noting that while one article she requested help with did get deleted, the other one she asked for help for in the thread (Ratchet feminism) got some additional sourcing and is now an article. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It is still unacceptable to canvass votes at AfD. (t · c) buidhe 08:06, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • The disconnect between the thread you are replying to and the actual content of your comment is jarring. The exact content of the message says nothing about AfD votes. If anything, it is a call for editors to improve an article. And if an article is clearly being worked on and improved this is usually considered a reason to keep at AfD. Nothing untowards with that suggestion in itself. JMWt (talk) 09:01, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        It's clearly canvassing if you tweet to followers asking them to "save" an article at AfD, because it is a biased message. An unbiased message would be asking for input on a particular discussion, without specifying if you support deleting or keeping. See WP:CANVASS. (t · c) buidhe 09:40, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok sure, show me where the tweet specifically discusses a !vote at AfD rather than trying to improve a WP article. JMWt (talk) 09:46, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't get why I am "Administrator Barkeep49". The fact that I am an administrator is immaterial to this situation but this kind of labeling suggests it is. If you're going to name a PERM that matters in this context it would be "New Page Reviewer Barkeep49". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Three points from BHG:
  1. It seems that those running this course did not give (or did not succeed in conveying) to the students a proper grounding in WP:V, WP:RS and WP:GNG. Those policies are absolutely fundamental to writing any article on en.wp, yet the students who have commented seems to be woefully lacking in that understanding; one even suggested dding refs to press releases as evidence of notability. I count that as grave failing by the course director, and more broadly by WikiEd.
  2. A lot of the commentary refers to "harassment" by and of various parties, but none of the posts cited show any evidence of harassment. There are many critical responses, and some of those are heated or harsh ... but the harassment is normally used to describe a pattern of hostile behaviour, rather than just individual acts of hostility. This misuse of the word poisons our ability to discuss contentious issues.
  3. It seems to me to be very unlikely that a 15yo is suitably experienced to be able to assess the significance and availability of sources related to a politically-contentious topic which is not well-covered in mainstream media. I intend no criticism of the individual concerned, who I assume is diligent and well-intentioned ... but the ideal choice of person to assess such matters would be someone with a lot more experience. That is a structural problem arising from wp's fundamental policies relating to editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:42, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding 3.: Looking at the AfD discussion, it appears that five other editors agreed with the nominator's concerns about the sources cited, and two of them reported having made unsuccessful efforts to find suitable sources themselves. Do you think all five lacked competence as well?
And are there concrete examples of sources that were overlooked or misjudged in this case (in particular due to the alleged incompetence issue)? Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@HaeB: I am not here to re-run the AFD debate or to find sources.
I remain concerned at the lack of expertise and experience. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:51, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that those running this course did not give (or did not succeed in conveying) to the students a proper grounding in WP:V, WP:RS and WP:GNG. Sometimes there's a gap between what's written and what people take away from what's written, but we do communicate these concepts to thousands of students each term. We could say more in our trainings, but longer, more detailed instructions don't equal better retention (cf the existence of "tldr").
Those policies are absolutely fundamental to writing any article on en.wp, yet the students who have commented seems to be woefully lacking in that understanding; one even suggested dding refs to press releases as evidence of notability. I count that as grave failing by the course director, and more broadly by WikiEd. Yes, something didn't connect here. In a conversation with Mkibona after the blow-up, she mentioned that the students why they didn't use the sources she supplied in class, for some reason. Sometimes people don't get it. But there were almost 6,000 students last term, who worked on over 6,000 articles. The vast majority did much, much better than the average brand new editor - because of the training and support we provide.
I remain concerned at the lack of expertise and experience I suspect there aren't more than 100 people who have more expertise with article creation or policy than I do. And after supporting tens of thousands of new editors over the last 7+ years, I don't believe there's anyone who has more experience working with new editors. I did my best working with the students who wrote the BWR article, I exchanged many messages with them trying to help them understand the issues of V, N and RS. That I failed goes without saying. But it wasn't for lack of either experience or expertise. Guettarda (talk) 00:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Guettarda: it seems to me that WikiEd has three functions here.
The first is to teach the policies. I accept your good faith assurances that WikiEd worked hard to teach that.
The second function of WikiEd should be to test students learning of key policies, and make a pass compulsory before letting them loose to add content to the 'pedia. Is there a structure for doing such tests before students start editing?
The third function of WikiEd should be to provide a structure for reviewing the quality of students' work before it is moved out of draft space or userspace, so that a) it isn't left to volunteer editors to clean up after WikiEd, and b) the students get guidance on how to resolve any problems. Does WikiEd have any process or structure for such reviews? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:29, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do not support the idea that we should test new editors any more than we should bite them. I understand all the reasons why Wiki Ed students aren't the same as the random new editor but this cuts both ways. The typical Wiki Ed student has some qualities that are better than the average new editor and some qualities that make them more challenging. We shouldn't be testing new editors and bottomline Wiki Ed students are a kind of new editor so they should not be tested. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:42, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that the idea that new editors have to pass some test before they're allowed to edit is antithetical to the model of Wikipedia. And honestly, the only way to implement what you're asking would be to partially block - and then unblock - 6,000 accounts each term. Some of whom are experienced editors, either because they were Wikipedians before they signed up for a class that involved Wikipedia editing, or because they are taking their second or third class that includes a Wikipedia assignment.
Our current model scaffolds the assignment. They do trainings - some before they start drafting their work, some while they're doing it. They are taken through the process of evaluating an article, which is supposed to help them understand what makes a good article, and what some common problems are. They assign themselves an article to work on. They're supposed to construct a bibliography as an exercise to make them look at source quality. They draft their work in their sandboxes. They peer review each other's work using instructions about what an article should look like and a set of leading questions. A lot of instructors review their students' work before they move things to mainspace. The system isn't perfect, but working with these systems has made me a better editor, even after all this time. And to be clear - the vast majority of students aren't working on new articles, they're improving existing articles.
While it's impossible to monitor everything students do, we do monitor a lot of it. There are something like 20 different categories of notifications that the Dashboard send out regarding what students do. We're currently working on a system to use Headbomb's source quality script to monitor the kinds of sources students are adding to their drafts. (I wish there was a way to switch that on automatically for all new editors.) IIRC, something close to 20% of new editors in the active parts of the year come through Wiki Education. Each term several students take their work through GAN successfully. Lots more of the articles they expand are taken through GAN by established editors. As a volunteer I see lots of student work pop up on my Watchlist, but unlike a lot of contributions by new editors, most of the time it's not the stuff that needs to fix immediately. Guettarda (talk) 15:53, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @BrownHairedGirl very unlikely that a 15yo is suitably experienced to be able to assess the significance and availability of sources related to a politically-contentious topic which is not well-covered in mainstream media: I do not really see the concern here? If the nominator's assessment is wrong, the AfD process would typically result in the article being kept. Also, even in the case where there are sources out there somewhere that would show notability but they are not found during the AfD and the article ends up deleted... later, any editor who knows of or finds those sources can recreate the article, and the article they create would likely be better for using those sources than the deleted one was. Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 21:11, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @PJvanMill: I am touched by your faith in the collective wisdom of AFD, but I don't share it.
      Everyone at AFD missed the central fact: that the topic had been approved by an academic scholar specialising in this area. That should have led to attempts to engage in dialogue about the types of source which Wikipedia requires. But instead of reaching out, most of the AFD participants just robotically applied the rules. Even worse, when Mkibona posted on Twitter asking for help to improve the article (no mention of AFD), they were falsely accused of canvassing.
      So in this case I regard the AFD as at best a failure. At worst it raises unpleasant questions about the dismissal of some African American scholars who wanted to bring their skills to Wikipedia. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:16, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @BrownHairedGirl There is no reason to believe that an academic specializing in the area has a comprehensive understanding of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I have seen at least one course instructor explicitly approve an article as having enough sources to count for notability when it clearly, clearly did not. (Sorry, don't remember enough about this to find a diff; it was not the Chicana art class that ended up with so many articles going straight to AfD, but other than that all I remember was my horror.) In my despair I went looking for, and found, WikiEdu course materials. They are utterly insufficient on this topic, to a degree I consider unethical. I say this as an editor and a teacher. There are always going to be some student-created articles that are deleted; you can lead an undergraduate to sources but you cannot make them read. But the obvious, profound failure of some course instructors to understand even the basic idea of notability is a clear indictment of WikiEdu. Instructors are busy. Wikipedia policies can be arcane. But the basics? They're not that difficult. It can be so, so much better than this. -- asilvering (talk) 23:33, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not about the specifics of what happened in this case, but about the context in which it occurs. There is a desire to increase coverage of under-represented topic areas and to increase involvement of editors from under-represented demographics. However, combining the two isn't the ideal solution. Getting new editors to write new articles runs the risk of these articles having problems with notability and other policy violations and ending up at AfD or other unpleasantness. And, if the group of new editors from under-represented demographics is being asked to write about topics relating to their own demographic, then there is also scope for conflict of interest and WP:GREATWRONGS. I say this from the perspective of someone who has been involved in supporting edit-a-thons of this nature. While there is a lot of good intention from all involved, it creates a high-risk situation (as the story reported above illustrates). Put simply, inexperienced contributors and new articles is not a good combination. I think we need to de-couple the two goals. Initiatives to increase content on under-represented topics should involve more experienced contributors and initiatives for engaging new contributors from under-represented demographics should focus on improving existing articles on uncontentious topics in the first instance. More generally, I think we should be lifting the bar on the creation of new articles, which is currently 10 edits or 4 days since sign-up. While this threshold may be OK to predict intent to vandalise, I don't think it's sufficient experience for new article creation. Maybe 100 edits *and* a month since sign-up for entry into Article for Creation, maybe 1000 edits *and* 3 months since sign-up for article creation straight into mainspace. In that way, contributors will have more experience when they tackle their first article and we will reduce conflict-of-interest article creation. As a side benefit, it will make it harder for the undisclosed paid editors, who currently create a new account, do 10 quick edits to random articles and then create the article (and then presumably repeat the pattern with a new account). Kerry (talk) 22:48, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • There is a desire to increase coverage of under-represented topic areas and to increase involvement of editors from under-represented demographics. However, combining the two isn't the ideal solution. - But there's a reason these two are connected, and combining the two is unavoidable without telling people "please stop writing about the things that are relevant to you -- let people of other demographics write about them instead". Dealing with systemic bias, both on and off-wiki, can be high-risk (at least in the sense of the weight of context), and just the fact of being underrepresented (subjects or people) makes them a bit trickier and weightier in some ways. If we actually want to bring more people to Wikipedia and cover more topics, we have to be ready to face some of that risk and potential challenges. I do want to be clear, though, that my response, at least, is a bit of an abstract tangent in that I'm not saying any Wikipedian should have to deal with the kinds of Tweets mentioned above. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:06, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thinking about systemic bias is good. Thinking hard about systemic bias is good. Thinking about systemic and systematic bias as they impact Wikipedia as a supply chain issue is good. Thinking about the whole upstream and downstream supply chain issue for reliable sources around Wikipedia, without blame games, is even better. Then, perhaps, what goes on at AfD can be parsed in a way that makes more sense. Where is this explained? Charles Matthews (talk) 05:54, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • This seems like something I could put in the next edition's deletion report (which is a fairly new feature, and the non-statistical part of this month's report was mostly about the NSPORTS proposal. If you've got any topic suggestions, I'd be interested in hearing them. jp×g 07:48, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • I may misunderstand your intent here, but stating "let's all think hard about systemic bias, but let's not play blame games" is precisely how you get nods and a round of "quite right"s from members of the majority while eliciting some frustrated tweets from people who are actually affected by that systemic bias by virtue of their very existence. :P — Rhododendrites talk \\ 20:33, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • My point, made a while back on Twitter, is that Wikipedia, the tertiary source, can get the blame for an absence of enough secondary sources; while the actual effect of that deficit is that Wikipedia coverage then suffers. Shooting the messenger combined with victim blaming. That is why you need the supply chain metaphor. My intent is that it should not be elided. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:13, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • This page out of what is an interesting article by an academic (area New Hampshire Native American writers) shows that academics can get some of what is at issue here. The whole article is worth reading, in exactly the context of this Signpost report. I remember when I came across it thinking "but, but ... if these writers are significant, where are the academic secondary sources?" If it is only by setting writing assignments for students that academics realise the absence of the independent, third-party sources Wikipedia wants, what does that tell us? Charles Matthews (talk) 08:30, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • 1,000 edits seems unbelievably steep. The first article I wrote (1-pentadecanol) came after way less than that, and it's very unlikely I would have stuck around if the threshold were that high (remember that jumping in to make a bunch of gnome edits is much harder for newcomers). jp×g 01:21, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Kerry Raymond writes increase coverage of under-represented topic areas and to increase involvement of editors from under-represented demographics. However, combining the two isn't the ideal solution.
    Au contraire, WP:WikiProject Women in Red has combined the two with great success. It just needs to be run a lot better than this WikiEd course was. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:54, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, if it wasn't for an edit conflict, I would have gone on to make the point that such programs needs better risk management. Saying "we have to be ready to face some of that risk" begs the question of who "we" are. It is not just the people who design these programs who are choosing to accept the risk. On the contrary, they create risks for others who did not agree to those risks. A new contributor who has a bad experience probably didn't accept that risk (or didn't understand the risk they faced). The community members who responded to the problematic contribution have had their time wasted and, in some cases, will be accused of having taken their action because they are "anti" whatever the topic area is. They didn't agree to this risk. If the new contributor does not continue, then the movement has lost someone who might have continued if their early experience was more positive. The reader is impacted as they may see the problematic edits and misunderstand something because of them and they are also impacted by the loss of contributors as it leads to less content in the encyclopedia in the long run. Any analysis of risk must consider ALL of the stakeholders. I have been running Wikipedia training sessions here in Australia since 2013 and I have evolved them to reduce these risks, so I say these things from practical experience. Kerry (talk) 00:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break 1

  • Hi, I'm the editor who was harassed. If anyone has any questions, please ask me. wizzito | say hello! 00:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Well I hope you are doing well now. I am not 100% up to date regarding the situation, but no one, and I mean no one, derserves to be harassed and called names, for simply taking good faith actions regarding the enclyopedia. Rlink2 (talk) 00:23, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Wizzito: as far as I can see, you were subjected to some criticism. Why do you call that "harassment"? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:17, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I felt harassed. People were insulting me for my age and accusing me of being racist. wizzito | say hello! 01:34, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
BrownHairedGirl, how do you not see this as harassment? It is a vile personal attack, and when such behaviour is repeated by multiple accounts, it is harassment. They have not had the grace to delete it; the tweet is still live on Twitter. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 03:05, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI: I see that tweet as a cry of frustration from members of a community who face obstacles and worse at every turn, and have now faced yet another setback.
As I wrote above at more length, I think it is thoroughly wrong for someone as young as 15 to be taking the lead on removing content from an encyclopedia. I am saddened but unsurprised to see that the response to that complaint is determined offence-taking.
There is plenty of documentation on the structural and institutional barriers which African Americans face when trying to tell their story. An older person might have more awareness of this, and understand where the complaint is coming from, but there is no sign of any such awareness in wizzito. Instead, when faced with African American people having difficulties in telling their story, wizzito and a few others are trying to make the white guys the victims in a dispute about how to tell African American history. That is a very bad place to be.
I stress that I am not suggesting that wizzito is racist. My point is more subtle: that wizzito is unaware of how actions which wizito perceives to be reasonable look very different to people who have spent a lifetime on the receiving end of often-violent prejudice and pervasive discrimination. It feeds into the longer experience of discrimination and invisible barriers, and some of the people who have been on the receiving end of that can be blunt in how they express themselves.
African Americans are woefully under-represented on wikipedia, and African American history is under-represented in our articles. That is a systemic failure of WP:NPOV. This attempt to remedy it has not gone at all well for anyone involved, and we need to do a lot better. But if the takeaway from this is that nasty black people monstered poor white person, then we will have inverted the societal reality and erected even higher barriers to African American participation on en.wp.
What I would like to see coming out of this is for all the editors involved to collaborate on writing encyclopedic articles on these topics. Both wizzito and Clark could learn a lot from that.
And more broadly, I contrast the pile-on to delete this article with the outcomes at AFD for the sports topics which attract the young white males who dominate wikipedia. The notability rules have been rigged by that dominant demographic to give an automatic free pass at AFD to hundreds of thousands of sports biogs which fail GNG, while subjecting topics such as African American women's activism to a much higher standard. This has gotten so extreme that my research found a few month ago that bout half of all biographies of people born since the 1930s were of sportspeople. That is a massive, systemic imbalance.
Wizzito did not create that double-standard, but I do hope that there is some way in which the community can reflect on how this double standard has created a form of structural discrimination which understandably infuriates people interested in the topics which face these structural barriers. The talk pages of WP:WikiProject Women in Red contain many many long discussions of how those barriers seriously impede their work. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The 15-year-old has demonstrated more expertise in reliable sourcing than the freaking Ph.D. So maybe it's the professor that lacks maturity and who shouldn't be editing Wikipedia. The ageism shown in your comments is incredible. Schierbecker (talk) 04:14, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I fully agree regarding the NSPORTS issue but I think it is problematic to say that wizito should not be nominating articles like this for deletion when as far as we know his decision was the correct one. Further, there was no "determined offence-taking"; wizito was harassed (see the discussion at WP:EDUN) and we cannot blame the victim for their harassment, and we definitely cannot blame them for it on their basis of their ethnicity and gender. BilledMammal (talk) 04:32, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"There is plenty of documentation on the structural and institutional barriers which African Americans face when trying to tell their story. An older person might have more awareness of this, and understand where the complaint is coming from" I find this a bit ironic. From all I've seen, heard and read, in the US at least, while perhaps the average 15 year old has less understanding of such things than the average 25 year old or 35 year old, I expect the average 55 year old actually has less understanding than the average 15 year old. Nil Einne (talk) 20:12, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I note that Mkibona herself has said on Twitter that she found the experience emotionally taxing. When the very person who started the chain of events and who is surrounded online by like-minded people on her side herself feels emotionally taxed, it is by her own definition harassment when her followers go after an editor who cares about WP guidelines and accuse them of racism of the sickest kind (and, in one case, even paedophilia). I note also that Mkibona has put out several tweets talking about her problems with Wikipedia's processes, but not a single one asking her followers to not harass or to stop harassing the editor. Indeed, in response to Mkibona's thread, BWR themselves plainly ignored V, N, and RS, and went after the editor, painting them as some sort of villain, and continued to be passive-aggressive in their tweets to Ian Ramjohn from WikiEd. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 04:27, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was astonished to read that you (User:Wizzito) went to twitter to try to explain what you were doing on Wikipedia. It would never occur to me to try to explain the workings of Wikipedia to people who aren't in it. "The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club." One would have to expect that they wouldn't understand what we are doing, why we are doing it, or how we are doing it. If all you got were nasty comments like the one linked to above, you must have been dealing with an exceptionally restrained and forgiving audience. And look, they even said you were bold -- how could you not be grateful for that? Bruce leverett (talk) 00:34, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, Bruce. I have looked at all the tweets I can find in this storm, and I was surprised by the mildness of the snark. In the corners of Twitter where I follow mainstream European politics, the tone of discourse routinely includes a lot of stuff which is way more robust than this.
Wizzito's action in going to Twitter, identifying themself as a kid, and then trying to school actual academics was at best utterly crass. It's easy to see how some black people would regard that as deeply offensive and patronising, and I would expect a much much harsher response than about half-a-dozen snarky tweets.
I assume that Wizzito was in no way aware of how badly that would come across, and had no ill intent. But that lack of awareness is a function of the lack of experience at the core of this saga. If we did not have 15yos making decisions on deletion, we would not have one of those 15yos making a foolish foray onto twitter, foolishly outing themselves, and then kicking off a whole child protection drama over a small dose of mild snark. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:11, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Bruce leverett, you said I was astonished to read that you... went to twitter to try to explain what you were doing on Wikipedia. It would never occur to me to try to explain the workings of Wikipedia to people who aren't in it. I would agree, but that is not the situation here. Wizzito did not tweet to random people complaining about the deletion discussion, but to Mkibona, who was (and still is, apparently) a Wikipedia editor and WikiEd course instructor. While it is true that one would not expect a non-editor or a brand-new editor to understand what we are doing, why we are doing it, or how we are doing it, one would expect someone who has made editing Wikipedia a part of their profession to do so, especially at WikiEd where they make their students do it too. As for And look, they even said you were bold -- how could you not be grateful for that?... I sincerely hope that was in jest, and that you do not actually suggest our editors should be grateful for receiving personal attacks. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 11:39, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the observation about "bold" was intended to be comic relief. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:21, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, okay. Even so, it doesn't seem to be in good taste, but that's just my opinion. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 14:41, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The canvassing issue is minor, although it does demonstrate a failing of WikiEd that Mkibona was not aware of the guideline. However, Mkibona appears to justify and blame the victim for offwiki harassment, and that is not minor. BilledMammal (talk) 00:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm assuming that Mkibona was initially acting in good faith, that her thread started out as an innocent request for help with finding better sources. But when she, in her own words, anticipated the reaction, why did she not preemptively stop the harassment? Or tell her followers to stop once the comments clearly got out of hand? Or apologise at all? Or am I missing those tweets? (There's a lot of deleted stuff in that thread)
Such actions by Mkibona and BWR are actively harmful to the very causes they seek to support. We desperately need editors like them, with their lived experiences, to help bridge Wikipedia's knowledge gaps. But when they refuse to understand core guidelines and, on top of that, disrupt our environment of collaboration, coverage of those communities suffers. Speaking from experience, it feels difficult and very lonely to edit in niche non-Anglosphere topics, doing one's best to stick to guidelines (amid all the lack of RS, spotty coverage, lack of verifiability and copyright violations) while everyone else around you in your niche keep getting reverted, blocked and banned for failing to understand those guidelines despite repeated attempts to teach and warn. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 04:28, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I posted my concerns about the structure of WikiEd and pinged both Ian and LiAnna to the noticeboard with regards to this incident several weeks ago, and got no response, not even an acknowledgement. You can read my concerns about the process at length there, but long story short I think good editing ethics and understanding of notability need to come before trying to fix content imbalances. It doesn't help that WikiEd and WMF basically encourage WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, or simply don't know to separate that from WP:CSB, which can be done if you know your stuff. I am not currently confident that if this event repeats in the future there will still be improvements or changes to WikiEd, simply more "Uh oh, well, what can you do?" -Indy beetle (talk) 05:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Responding to this comment: i think you have it entirely backwards. Notability is a thing in and of itself, what we have in AfD is a bunch of guidelines we use to assess it. It is entirely fair for a group - particularly composed of under-represented people - of editors to believe that a specific campaigning group for the recognition of a minority group are notable. It is entirely fair to believe that the editors are aware of that campaigning group and the impact within the minority group to an extent that the rest of us struggle to understand and which may not be obvious on a quick Google. None of those things make an article unsuitable for WP. One can, in my opinion, legitimately ask what else the WikiEd editors were expected to do: here is an organisation they feel is important to note, they've made an effort to source and reference it but have fallen short of notability guidelines that not only would it be unreasonable to expect them to know about, may even actually illustrate and exacerbate the exclusion that they are talking about in the first place! JMWt (talk) 07:52, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • @JMWt: I would direct you to my comment at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard for a fuller take on my views (unless that is what you take issue with, not just my comment here, I can't tell). I think we should give them (the student editors) a basis for understanding our notability guidelines before encouraging them to write Wikipedia articles. That way, the sources they provide when they write the article are obvious so the AfD discussion, should it crop up, is not so bitter. AfD is not meant for quality control, but it's much harder to delete articles if SIGCOV in RS is demonstrated up front. That is an ethic that has to be emphasized up front. But what can you expect from people who didn't really volunteer to spend weeks observing how Wikipedia works and writing encyclopedia articles (a strange hobby of ours), they just signed up for a class and were given an assignment telling them to do it for a grade without the necessary orientation. If the best Wiki-Ed can do is yell "Fight racism! Edit Wikipedia!" then toss a book of guidance at the instructor and duck out the door, we might as well abolish the program. And, realistically, I'm afraid Wiki-Ed does not have the oversight capacity to do much more than that. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:14, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't know if I can be bothered to process and then discuss here your views on WikiEd, which at best seems like a tangent to the main topic of importance. I hear what you appear to be saying here about editing for class credit but personally I think that's probably of minor importance (outside of things like medical articles, where there are other processes and monitoring to ensure accuracy etc). Personally, I think more editors with more perspectives and knowledge about issues the rest of us are unaware of are a good thing. In the main, I think articles should only be deleted for extremely good reasons (of which I don't think being part of a class assignment is enough in itself) and that there is way, way too much gatekeeping going on in AfD discussions at times.JMWt (talk) 08:28, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • Personally, I think more editors with more perspectives and knowledge about issues the rest of us are unaware of are a good thing. I wholeheartedly agree, I just think that the message will never be found if the people with the other perspectives are dragged in by an externality (class assignment), fundamentally don't know how to edit properly, and aren't properly guided. I'm not at AfD often enough to feel super qualified commenting on generic trends of gatekeeping there, though I am admittedly probably more of a "deletionist". -Indy beetle (talk) 08:40, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
            • Take it from someone who has spent way too much time in AfD discussions that there are many ways that even seasoned editors can fall foul of the notability guidelines and that it is entirely unreasonable to expect anyone to have a full understanding of the "proper" way to determine notability. Particularly when the trends of AfD are like shifting sands depending on who is paying attention at any given moment. JMWt (talk) 08:46, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
              @JMWt Definitely. But there are some things that are very easy. For example: book articles. Read an academic book. Write a summary. Grab some reviews to keep AfD away. Students (should) already know how to do this to a reasonable degree of success. You can also easily cut off a lot of non-notable topics by telling students something like "don't write about an organization that was founded in the last five years" or "don't write about someone early in their career". Does wikipedia have some articles on topics in those categories? Of course. Will students be significantly less likely to fall afoul of notability policies if they avoid them? Yes. -- asilvering (talk) 23:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Indy beetle: If the best Wiki-Ed can do is yell "Fight racism! Edit Wikipedia!" then toss a book of guidance at the instructor and duck out the door, we might as well abolish the program. And, realistically, I'm afraid Wiki-Ed does not have the oversight capacity to do much more than that. Per my comment above, we have a lot more oversight capacity than that. And, of course, we do nothing like yell "Fight racism! Edit Wikipedia!. We spend far more time saying "improve species articles!" Guettarda (talk) 18:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • @Guettarda: So what went wrong then, and how can we and Wiki-Ed try to avoid it in the future? Would you consider this an exceptional case (I know most Wiki-Ed courses don't result in this much drama and chaos, but the overall results seem decisively mixed). -Indy beetle (talk) 22:29, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
            • @Indy beetle: So that's the thing - I don't really think the results are mixed. I'd characterise them as "mostly positive". I mean, granted, it's a bit of a challenge to decide on what basely to compare them with (and I think it would be bad form to go pick out a lot of other programmes that are doing valuable work and say "we're doing better than you?") I don't expect you to just take my word on it, and I'll try to put together something concrete to support what I'm saying as soon as I have the time. I'm a Wikipedian first, a Wiki Education staffer second. If I didn't think this was a positive for Wikipedia, I would have found another job.
            • How do we avoid it in the future? There were problems specific to this class. The ratchet feminism article was declared non-notable and redirected despite the fact that a few seconds on Google Scholar made it clear that there was a fair bit of scholarship on the topic. That's the kind of thing that would have been an easy fix I was editing myself. But it got worse because the instructor got involved directly - by her own words, she felt guilty because she had brought her students into an environment where they felt harassed, and felt a responsibility to shield them. (And honestly, I think some of what they experienced was BITEy.) [An aside: a lot of people complain about instructors not engaging with the community, but the worst incidents seem to happen when they do engage. While some instructors engage very productively with the community, there are a lot of times when things go better if we act as a go-between, translating messages full of references to policies and TLAs.] So yeah, part of the problem was me. Since the course was over, I thought it could wait a while, and I told the instructor I would come back to the ratchet feminism article once things quieted down. I was bothered by that one because it was being declared "non notable" by people despite the fact that a few seconds on Google Scholar made it clear that there was a fair bit of scholarship on the topic. I also said that I wasn't sure what to do with the BWR article, because it's almost impossible to figure out if this is a notable topic when the name is also a generic phrase. (This is probably what prompted her to ask for help with sources on Twitter in the first place.)
            • This Fall, it really became apparent to me that we were running into new problems with students. It could be related to pandemic stress, or remote learning, or a changing culture among students...I don't know. But I was planning to make concrete changes in the way we do things, in the way I do things, even before this incident reached Twitter. An unusual number of students were moving their sandboxes to mainspace after they added their contributions to existing articles in mainspace. (As an aside, the vast majority of students contribute to existing articles.) Around November I started watching the "new user moving page out of userspace" tag as a way to catch these sorts of things (I don't know why I never thought to watch that before). At some point I asked Sage to build functionality into the Dashboard to send me a notification when things like this happened. Since this incident began with student work being moved to mainspace that wasn't ready, I think this would help in the future. I can't call it a response to this incident, but it is something that should help.
            • The first thing we did was to meet with the instructor, to try to understand what happened from her perspective. Some things are specific to this class, and probably won't help avoid future incidents. Some things apply to more situations. We've revamped some of the ways in which we're going to support classes working on a certain intersection of topic areas.
            • The second thing we did was to change the wording in the leading questions we pose in the bibliography assignment. It's easy to tell people "use good sources (like these ones)", but an awful lot of people can't tell a bad source from a good one (which is why we have the problem we have with misinfo). But when you ask someone "what makes this source reliable" and you provide them with clues to look for, they do better. Hopefully these changes help. We're also looking into ways to monitor student sandboxes for hits against User:Headbomb/unreliable.js. That isn't going to catch everything, but it should help us head off a certain subset of poor sources.
            • There's also the issue of how we communicate with instructors and students. The longer you leave problems unresolved, the worse they get. Convincing students to approach us first, when they encounter problems, gives us the best chance of a good outcome. But people (students and instructors) tend to want to figure things out on their own instead of "bothering people". That's how humans work, I suppose. Getting past this - making students feel like they can ask me questions, making instructors feel comfortable asking Helaine or me questions - is important. Making instructors aware of what went wrong in a previous class is also important. Helaine did office hours last term, and an introductory session. I hope to show up to more of these.
            • The last big "drama and chaos" was five years ago, iirc. After that we changed things - we did more to limit class sizes we would support, we did more to ensure that the instructors or TAs working directly with the students did the instructor orientation, and were in directly contact with Helaine. We haven't had anything of that magnitude since.
            • You'll note I haven't said anything about telling instructors not to post to Twitter, and I'm definitely not planning to tell Black academics that they can't participate in Wikipedia. For starters, just because someone works with us doesn't mean they surrender their right to participate in their peer community. It wouldn't work if we asked them, and it would be unethical to ask. So while this is a cautionary tale, the post to Twitter was only the icing on the cake. Guettarda (talk) 00:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • What bothers me about this incident, and much of the discussion above, is the failure to appreciate that there is in and of itself systematic bias when we look for sources relating to excluded groups. So we have the frustrations of that minority group who feel like things they hold as being important are held to an unfair standard at AfD.
Second, I think there are some who have a strict, rules-based attitude to the notability guidelines which can sometimes get backs up, to the extent that it can feel like a small number of editors are ganging up on another group to get content removed in a deliberate and systematic way that underlines the unwelcome attitude that in general keeps away that minority and/or unrepresented group from en.wp. One needs to have a thick skin to rewrite and recreate articles that have been to AfD, my guess is that many who feel like they have been bruised by the process never bother.

JMWt (talk) 06:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    • This would be less of a problem if we had a way to better ensure that novice Wiki-Ed course editors were familiar with our processes. It would also be less of a problem if organizations such as Black Women Radicals didn't try to hijack the situation for self-promotion (apparently nobody bothered to mention WP:COI during the orientation process). It is a true shame this how things turned out; Howard University probably has a wonderful library on minority people/subjects that aren't covered on Wikipedia, and it seems those resources were never fully brought to bear. The problem is that Wiki-Ed courses seem to welcome activist editing (bound to piss off plenty of the regs here) but has no effective ways on keeping tabs on student editors for quality control. Meanwhile half of the students involved probably just want to get an A on their assignment without turning it into an extensive research affair and will rush about using poor sources to write an article for a topic they chose at random, only to be horrified that its been deleted and are now fearful they'll fail their course. The system seems built to cause agony for everyone. Most of what I write would fall under countering systemic bias topics, but that does not make me blind to the serious issues with carrying on like this. -Indy beetle (talk) 07:03, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think there's an argument that the AfD has failed in this situation - to the extent that I'm tempted to rewrite the article and have a more informed AfD debate myself. I'm not involved in this organisation, I knew nothing at all about it before seeing it here and cannot now see how the original WP article was written. But I think the AfD 'warriors' need to have a better debate than simply discarding an article because they can't effectively use Google. The fact is that the group in question has had research funding from a third party foundation and is named as an on-topic source in several major media outlets. If I spent a bit more time I think it may well be possible to make a much better argument for 'keep' at a informed AfD. For me this is a much deeper issue about systematic bias within AfD itself than a rather circular discussion about who might have created the article and for what purpose - which, I'd note, is not really a major point of discussion on 99% of WP articles. Generally speaking, a small group of WP editors should not unilaterally be able to decide that an organisation which clearly a) exists and b) is considered notable (in the most literal sense) by major media outlets should be considered non-notable however the WP page currently looks. That's it up and down. JMWt (talk) 07:36, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • My two cents on this: While the canvasser's behavior was unacceptable (which may warrant an indef block for MEAT and CANVASS), the AfD nominator was not very wise in replying to the comment. They should've reported this to admins in an appropriate manner. Instead, they replied and even disclosed their age, causing harassment and other safety issues.
Regarding my thoughts on the canvasser, I pretty much agree with Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI and BilledMammal that the canvasser was pretty much complicit (and even supportive) of the harassment and abuse of the victim. Firestar464 (talk) 06:34, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break 2

  • I hate to say, but what if this associate professor was a Right-wing activist who was overseeing their students creation of articles for small time Candace Owens type figures and that during a deletion discussion, that professor appeared to canvass ideological allies who went on to harass the nominating editor? Seems like there would be quite a different conversation going on, which is in my view the severe problem right now. These gaps that are being created in deference to perceived marginalized groups can be exploited by groups who may have beliefs quite the opposite of the people being differed to. Wikipedia should never be taught to fist time users as a place to push a certain ideology. There are tens of thousands of red linked plant species that would be a far more appropriate creation project for first time student editors. Thriley (talk) 08:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Riiiight. You are seriously suggesting that instead of trying to improve this encyclopedia's coverage of issues relating to visibility of black people, student editors should direct their efforts to plant species. JMWt (talk) 08:09, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I am suggesting that first time editors should first learn the foundational rules of the encyclopedia before anything else. Making a simple article for a species of grass would be helpful. Thriley (talk) 08:14, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • If you lack the self-awareness to see the problem with that suggestion, in this context, I can't help you. JMWt (talk) 08:20, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • I am not looking for help! Thank you, Thriley (talk) 08:24, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      JMWt, I think you're jumping to coclusions there. I do not see an "instead of" argument in Thriley's message, but rather a "before" one. Do you not think it is a good idea for students who are new to editing and the policies around it to first create some simpler articles before delving into complex ones? (WikiEd as an organisation itself apparently encourages that, scroll up to read Guettarda's long reply to Indy beetle) W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 11:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think I fully agree with the premise, though I can imagine that if the Heritage Foundation or some other uber-conservative group launched an edit-a-thon with as much political inflection as these things tend to attract there would be hardly any sympathy for those aggrieved. If the editor who was attacked on Twitter was in fact of a racial minority minority group and was mocked by a racial majority, I'd doubt we'd see any excuses on behalf of the aggressors from Wiki-Ed or the community. Bigotry is bad. Systemic biases are bad. Edit-warring is bad. Editing from an ideological point of view is bad. Knowing how Wikipedia works is good. These can and should all be understood in tandem by everybody with regards to everybody. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:34, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, that’s more the point I was inarticulately trying to make. Thriley (talk) 08:36, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Nobody disagrees with this. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:17, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • How sad that someone says "hey, POC, come write about POC and the things most relevant to you" and here on Wikipedia that bunch of people will always frame that as "pushing an ideology". Yep, if you're from an underrepresented community just here to write about things that are important to you, you're by default trying to "right great wrongs". edit: added a link to clarify common wikijargon. When a Wikipedian accuses someone of "righting great wrongs" they mean it in a bad way. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:17, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Indeed, and one of those "great wrongs" is well illustrated here when one editor tells another that not only should they not be creating articles on issues they find important, but that instead they should be helping the wider en.wiki community create articles on something entirely different - and which require specialist skills and knowledge in Botany. JMWt (talk) 16:46, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • Botany? That's actually where my PhD is :D Guettarda (talk) 18:19, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        JMWt, as someone who has created several articles about newly found species, I can assure you that writing articles about them does not involve any specialist skills or higher-than-middle-school knowledge of botany (or zoology... or taxonomy :-)) W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 11:50, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I understand the point you're getting at, but I think it's pretty obvious that political topics are not a great place for new editors to start out, especially if they're being guided in their journey by someone who isn't themselves familiar with processes on the project. This doesn't mean that the topics are unimportant. Clearly, they are very important, which is why people spend hundreds of hours arguing about them here. New editors deserve to be treated better than being thrown into the deep end of ongoing, decades-long Wikipedia drama with no explanation. If it's really that important to the program that a student article be written on a contentious topic and written as a new article and not an edit to an existing one, the professors and TAs (who are getting paid for this) should be copy-editing them and reviewing them before submission to make sure they're viable articles. jp×g 20:14, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • But people don't spend nearly enough time editing about these topics. I've been coming to this website almost every day for the last 17+ years. And every day I have to contend with articles full of casual racism, with articles that ridicule my culture and question my humanity. We keep saying "we need to address underrepresented topics" but we aren't doing it. FFS, I get comments in a GAR which ask me to add quotation marks, if not, please remove (as OR and POV) to a (sourced and contextualised) statement in an article that mentions that enslaved people were, in fact, humans with their own cognitive abilities. Our current editor base has shown itself unable to address the casual white supremacy in our articles. According to WMF's survey of editors, less than 1% of our editors in the US are Black or African American. My experience talking to Black editors and former editors makes it clear to me that the reason for this has little to do with their interest in contributing, and lots to do with the overall atmosphere here. But you're saying that if people want to contribute to this, they need to meet standards that we don't ask of any other editors? Guettarda (talk) 20:46, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          Tsk tsk, @Guettarda. You'll get yourself monstered by the people who deplore any discussion of this.
          All you are allowed to say is that the African Americans were wromg. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:58, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • I do entirely disagree with the premise that was offered above that people should be discouraged from writing about topics relevant to them (as long as COI isn't breached and people have demonstrated their ability to be neutral). That, for example, is largely how we got so many great articles and photos of places in the Western world, because the editors who were from there decided to contribute in that way. I am excited that Wikipedia activity is picking up in new places, such as West and Southern Africa. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • I understand the point you're getting at, but I think it's pretty obvious that political topics are not a great place for new editors to start out This, to me, is illustrative of the whole problem. There are ongoing edit battles and wars on en.wp, but a) they are not always on "political topics" and b) Black American marxist thought does not seem to be obviously an area that new editors should avoid - and only became a controversial topic when someone decided to AfD and critique stubs relating to a WikiEd class. I'm not a doyen of the botany pages on WP, but who is to say that there are not swirling controversies there that a new editor could get entangled with? The fact is that for some on wikipedia, pages which document black political action are deemed by some controversial in a way that many others are not. I repeat; there was nothing objectively controversial about the topic that this class was working on, the edits were not universally of a high standard but were not universally terrible and there was no obvious reason why the stubs created couldn't have continued for a very long time. The fact that we have to grapple with is why their work was undone so soon after it was completed. If that's not an example of systematic bias (which, to be clear, is exactly what the Black Women Radical organisation is campaigning to highlight - if it was entirely accidental then WP has ironically given them further stories about how they are shut out of cultural discourse and held to a higher standard than others) then I don't know what is. JMWt (talk) 07:28, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • There's a long list of topic areas where the Arbitration Committee has officially instituted discretionary sanctions on all editors. These include "all edits about, and all pages related to post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people, broadly construed" and "all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related disputes or controversies or in people associated with them". "American politics" sanctions have existed since 2014, so I'm not sure what you mean when you say that it "only became a controversial topic" when an AfD nomination was made in November 2021. And AP2 is almost always the most active area of arbitration enforcement; per the chart I made for the November arbitration report, it made up 143 out of 809 enforcement actions in the year 2021 up to that point. I'm also not sure what you mean when you say the student editors are being "held to a higher standard than others" -- every editor is subject to these sanctions, and every editor is held to higher standards of collegiality in these topic areas than in (for example) botany or machine learning. The fact of the matter is that editing (or writing) articles about hot-button political issues exposes you to a bunch of drama, and this has been the case for a long time. I don't understand how student editors could be shielded from this if we're actually treating them like normal editors, because normal editors get thrown on their asses and have their articles deleted in this topic area constantly. jp×g 08:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
            • I'm sorry, are you seriously trying to tell me that young and new editors should be discouraged from editing or starting new pages on black radical politics because of a superseded and very general Arbitration case from 2015 about 'American Politics' and a 2021 Arbitration case which concluded

              "Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people.

              . These are not applicable to this situation - what is it that you think you are saying? Black radical politics are uniquely important and controversial that students shouldn't be allowed to start pages on the topic? JMWt (talk) 08:55, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
              • I am not seeing where AP2 has been superseded. There was a motion in January 2021 changing the cutoff from 1932 to 1992 -- the sanctions very much remain in effect. What I'm saying is that I do not understand what changes you'd prefer be made on Wikipedia, or what about the current state of affairs you dislike. You've said that you don't want student editors to be "discouraged" from editing about political topics, but you've also said that they should be treated the same as everyone else. But everyone else is subject to AP2/GENSEX sanctions. For that matter, everyone else is also subject to sanctions on the Liancourt Rocks. If I were teaching a college class about geography, students had to pick a topic for a new Wikipedia article, and one of them picked the Liancourt Rocks, what should I do? Tell them nothing, and just let them get BTFO when there's a bunch of drama? jp×g 09:29, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
                • We appear to be talking past each other - I don't believe there is any reason to sanction or restrict anyone from starting or editing pages on black radical politics and I don't believe that your lawyering efforts to bring in unrelated sanctions are relevant. These things exist, they're not relevant to this topic. Bringing them into this discussion is another example of systematic bias. JMWt (talk) 09:35, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
                  • I'm not sure if you read the pages I linked or not -- an ArbCom discretionary sanction does not mean nobody's allowed to create or edit pages in a topic area. It means that people who do so are expected to adhere to policies and guidelines more strictly than in other topic areas. Surely, "radical politics" at an organization founded in America in 2018 falls under the topic of "post-1992 American politics". jp×g 09:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is only 'american politics' in the sense that almost everything could be considered American politics. It only becomes contentious when people start having heated edit wars about the contents: in the situation described there is no dispute about the facts on the deleted page whatsoever. Black Women Radicals as an organisation exists, their activities are well-known and can be described. There's absolutely nothing for which the guidelines you erroneously link to are in any sense relevant. JMWt (talk) 09:56, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I don't know how to explain to you what I am trying to say here. jp×g 11:00, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • I have written a fair amount of content about Black American Marxism, and it is true that Black history and culture topics are often scrutinised excessively because of some unconscious racism and often quite conscious racism. This, however, is simply not an example. This narrative falls apart not because there isn't racism and systemic bias, but because it just doesn't fit the situation. WP:N is the reason the article was nominated for deletion. Massively overstretched and overworked Wikipedians doing a thankless job (that can get them harassed on Twitter and attacked by WikiEd paid staff and other Wikipedians) is the reason that the ideal BEFORE does not always happen. There is no control variable in this situation because you've not seen how similar articles on non-Black organisations are treated.
          JPxG has explained quite patiently about AP2 but you have chosen not to listen. — Bilorv (talk) 17:42, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          @Bilorv: Why is it that only white people are acceptable arbiters of what racism is? Why is the judgement of the rest of us never good enough? Based on my experience living more than half my life as a non-white person in the US and Canada, I would say that the edit summary here which described the topic as OR content fork with insurmountable issues and no indication of independent notability for stand-alone article suggests that a the very least implicit bias comes into place here. And, can you explain what you mean by attacked by WikiEd paid staff? I assume you're talking about me here (it's obviously not LiAnna, and I don't believe anyone else has weighed in). If I did anything that can be construed as attacking someone, please let me know and I'll try to do better in the future. I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Guettarda (talk) 18:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          No, I am referring to LiAnna, who caused considerable offense by describing a victim of harassment as merely having perceived harassment ("... multiple people feeling harassed"). I thought the majority of your comments here were insightful and important to the discussion, but you let yourself down with the inflammatory non sequitur Why is it that only white people are acceptable arbiters of what racism is? I see nothing out of the ordinary in the edit summary you link (I see such styles of writing everywhere across my watchlist, NPP work, AFC work etc. in all topic areas), but your views on the matter are just as important as mine. Either of our views, however, will be much better-informed than a non-Wikipedian's. — Bilorv (talk) 20:39, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          LiAnna clarified the miswording of that particular comment immediately after Barkeep49 pointed it out. I was also following the incident closely as it unfolded on-wiki and on Twitter, and I can tell you that among Wiki Education staff, there was never any confusion about the fact that Wizzito was harassed on Twitter, nor any intention to minimize that.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:33, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          @Bilorv: I don't see it as a non-sequitur at all. Despite the fact that Mikonia saw it this way, despite the fact that I've already raised the issue, you felt comfortable saying it just doesn't fit the situation. It doesn't matter that it wasn't just one edit summary, but a whole slow-motion car wreck. It doesn't matter that I've spent the last 17 years watching one Black editor after another flame out after a death of a thousand little cuts - each of them "nothing out of the ordinary", until suddenly an Angry Black Person™ emerges "out of nowhere".
          It's not a non-sequitur when it's a constant experience - you talk about your experience, and white people feel comfortable saying you're overreaching, that there's no racism here. Everyone gets the benefit of the doubt except us. I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong. While it was inflammatory, that statement is consistent with my experience, and it seemed fitting here. Guettarda (talk) 21:49, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Across the Wikimedia movement, "education" is understood in different ways. This may not be such a bad thing; but my experience is that it presents some problems. In the volunteer context, there is always a need to address both motivation/consciousness raising and know how/making what volunteers do comprehensible. A balance needs to be struck. I am actually not much of a fan of the WikiEd approach, but then I'm probably in a different part of the forest as far as education goes. This story suggests to me that WikiEd needs to take a look at the balance I mention. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:27, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The initial response to the harassment was not ideal, but it is comforting to see the general support against it offered here, and so no need to add to what has been said on this topic. However, reading through the discussions, another point surrounding WikiEd struck me that I do not believe has been discussed. The statement by LiAnna (Wiki Ed) that "Wiki Education supports more than 300 instructors each term, and it's rare that we have an instructor as dedicated to engaging with the community as she is", if true, highlights a problematic situation. Engaging with the community is a core aspect of editing Wikipedia, for any editor. It is as important as understanding policies such as notability and COI. For an instructor, it is even more crucial, as they will likely be the interface for communication between the community and their class. It should be a core requirement, rather than something seen as effort above and beyond expectations. Any program which promotes editing here without an understanding of the editing community is going to run into issues again and again. CMD (talk) 15:28, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is just nonsense, in my opinion. There is no obligation on any editor to engage with the community here in precisely the form that you appear to want - and frankly, it often feels like a total waste of effort anyway when people seem more interested in destroying each other than improving the content of this encyclopedia. Engagement takes many forms, but if one is an instructor of a class of novice editors who are seeking to improve pages in an area which is dramatically underrepresented as a whole the priority may well not be to engage with people who - it might be perceived - only want to rain on the parade. The instructors cannot largely will never win a battle when there is well-versed opposition to the created pages from people who can quote the guidelines.
And anyway, the fact remains that systems exist. If a student creates pages that are total garbage either a) nobody notices because it doesn't matter or b) eventually it is edited or removed by the community as a whole. I don't believe in the main the WikiEd pages or edits are garbage, so I don't really understand why people here seem so keen on being critical. As always, if you don't like the pages that they produce, then either focus on another area or improve them yourself.JMWt (talk) 17:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I am not sure what the "precisely the form that you appear to want" refers to here, as I did not specify any precise ways that editors are expected to engage. However, to the general point, Wikipedia operates by consensus, which by definition requires engagement. The structure of Wikipedia, with its talk pages, edit summaries, and community discussions, is built around this principle. An editor who does not engage will likely find their editing less successful than otherwise. CMD (talk) 18:29, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • Nobody, individually, is forced to engage at all. Of course, if they don't things are likely to happen that they don't like. But it is you here who seem to be saying that it is of critical importance that instructors engage with the community, and if you don't mean engagement with discussion about the guidelines and debate about edits on talkpages, what do you mean? Consensus clearly doesn't mean that absolutely every editor engages in any of the ways you want them to. JMWt (talk) 18:36, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • In general, nobody is forced to engage as nobody is forced to edit. However, this seems to be a situation where some, ie. the students, are forced to edit, given it is part of coursework. It is incumbent on those in a position of responsibility over such requirements to be able to provide reasonable support and facilitation. As to your point about consensus, I do not understand what it might mean if it does not include guidelines and discussions over editing. Those are the methods through which Wikipedia consensus is developed. CMD (talk) 05:29, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • If you don't engage you basically lose the right to revert others' edits or contest things you disagree with. Refusal to communicate is how many an ANI ban have occurred. If no one questions your work obviously you don't need to engage with anything. But if one is going to say to a student editor that they're not obligated to communicate with us, then we are just as much not obligated to try to understand them. That's a recipe for disaster. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:26, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • This has always been one of my biggest issues with WikiEd since looking into it after having to clean up a lot of their 'work'. Not only do most teachers never actually log in and monitor their students, the WikiEd instructions, last I read them, actively encourage the students to not engage with other editors - they have special sandboxes and are told to message each other, review each other, etc. Some have been scared and wondered how editors not from their class managed to leave them a message, and I don't know if some of them think they are editing a private Wikipedia or whatever, but it causes massive conflicts because many of them think their edits are indestructible even though they haven't been through all the training modules they need to (because teachers can't be bothered). Very little work actually gets done because of this, but I know more edits are taken to fix or delete it all. I also do not think it, except in one exceptional case I have seen, ever achieves the goal of getting more students into editing Wikipedia, not least because they are thrust into an editing bubble and don't get involved in the community. There are better ways to encourage participation, like hosting more edit-athons at universities, but having them add three sentences to an article for an easy A is not it. They do it for the real grade. Kingsif (talk) 21:56, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break 3

  • I just want to leave a general note about the privacy of Twitter accounts on Wikipedia and how it applies here. In general, it is a violation of Wikipedia policy to post another editor's personal information on Wikipedia, unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia: see WP:OUTING. An editor's Twitter account (or other social media account) is considered personal information. In such cases, the Twitter links could be suppressed per the oversight policy. In this case, it appears that the various parties involved in this incident have indeed previously self-disclosed their Twitter accounts at some point, so I would not suppress anything here. Nevertheless, I want to be clear that this article should not set a precedent for linking to the Twitter accounts of any Wikipedia editor in the future. If you believe that another Wikipedia editor is harassing you using an account on another website (e.g. Twitter), but you're not sure whether you would be allowed to post links to those off-wiki accounts, I would encourage you to first contact the Arbitration Committee by email (either by using Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee or by directly emailing arbcom-en@wikimedia.org). Part of their responsibilities is responding to incidents where privacy precludes public discussion, and off-wiki harassment is a prime example. Mz7 (talk) 18:47, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just another reason WikiEd should be scrapped; we have seen student editors be upset but gracious at their poor efforts (led by poor instructors) being deleted before, but for an actual course convener to go to social media and lead first a canvassing and then harassment campaign is almost inconceivable. That tells me that the course convener thinks of Wikipedia as their tool and any of its processes as hurdles, rather than wanting to edit Wikipedia as (and for the benefit of) Wikipedia. Not that I have really seen any WikiEd course benefit Wikipedia - even decent new articles require hefty cleanup, but I am always more concerned about the kids whose courses ask them to review existing articles and them suddenly thinking they have divine authority over a 10yo FA. Burn it, burn it all before it gets worse. Kingsif (talk) 21:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Also, permaban the course convener. Blaming the editor for 'getting themselves harassed' because they tried to educate her after she deliberately riled up her followers against them is absolutely vile. Even if she felt frustrated, it is more than a minor lapse in judgement to rally twitter activism for things that are absolutely not their business and for which they can't even affect change - especially begging specific groups in order to form a mob mentality. That terrible teacher has undoubtedly done more to harm Wikipedia's reputation among those minority groups than letting a bad article be deleted would, too. Kudos that a teacher actually stuck around for their course, as most are useless, but I am almost glad if they would all treat Wikipedia like their playground. Kingsif (talk) 21:47, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @Kingsif: please link to the tweet(s) or other posts in which you claim the course convenor deliberately riled up her followers against them (i.e. against wizzito).
      I have not seen any such posts or tweets, but am happy to look at whatever evidence you can present. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BrownHairedGirl: Er, it is the first one linked and quoted in the special report; saying "come to Wikipedia because they're not listening to me", when referring to the AfD that was started by the user and leaving out any reference to Wikipedia policy, is deliberately misleading people so that they go on a warpath against someone innocent, whether they understand that's what they're doing or not. In comments above I can see you have been consistently trying to deny the convener and her twitter army have done anything wrong, so I would question your judgment, too. Kingsif (talk) 01:18, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Kingsif: the special report does not contain any quote of the words "come to Wikipedia because they're not listening to me". If you want to invent a quote by putting quote marks around a phrase which is not present in the original, please have the decency to refrain from casting any aspersions on anyone else's judgement.
    So I ask again: please link to the tweet(s) or other posts in which you claim the course convenor deliberately riled up her followers against them (i.e. against wizzito).
    At this stage it looks like you prefer fabrication to verifiable evidence. However, I am still open to evidence in support of your extreme claim -- if you choose to actually provide it, and if you are willing and able to distinguish between a) the words written by someone else, and b) your interpretation of those words.
    I also note that you appear not to understand the word "deliberately". Merriam Webster defines it as "with full awareness of what one is doing : in a way that is intended or planned". wikt:Deliberately sys "Done on purpose; intentional". However you write that they were "deliberately misleading people so that they go on a warpath against someone innocent, whether they understand that's what they're doing or not". That is self-contradictory: if they were not aware of doing that, they were by definition not doing it with intent and not doing it on purpose, so they were not deliberately doing it.
    That's the problem with this sort of discussion on Wikipedia. There is always a risk of the discussion being disrupted (as this one has) by someone such as Kingsif who cannot or will not i) quote accurately; b) distinguish between words written and their interpretation of those words; iii) cannot use simple dictionary terms without contradicting themselves ... and yet who is ready to rudely disparage the judgement of others. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:22, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BrownHairedGirl: As mentioned, the first quote from the special report: During the [AfD] nomination, Clark posted on Twitter [linked] "I don't know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving" the article - that is just as I described it, no? It's being deliberately obtuse to take my offhand summary extremely literally so you can continue to hound someone. Stand down, it seems like you have hijacked this discussion to try to defend the indefensible actions of the convener, repeat policy breaking and going to social media when they don't get their way, and to rag on everyone who criticizes them. The tweet was a deliberate act, the omission of context and implication of racism and unfairness was a deliberate act - the tweet and its intentions were deliberate even if they didn't understand how far it would go - don't try to school me. Writing three paragraphs with no other content or purpose than effectively calling me a disruptive idiot breaks WP:CIVIL, so I suggest you don't engage further, BHG. Kingsif (talk) 03:29, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Kingsif: wow!!!!
    Let's unpick that.
    In your post of 01:18, you wrote:

    the first one linked and quoted in the special report; saying "come to Wikipedia because they're not listening to me", when

    Now at 03:29 you write

    m the special report: During the [AfD] nomination, Clark posted on Twitter [linked] "I don't know where the Black (& allies) nerds are, but I really need support in editing & saving"

    Each time you put the words in quote marks, indicating that the words are taken verbatim from the original.
    But those two quotes are completely different. Your 01:18 quite is a complete fake: despite being quote marks, it is not a quote. It is your interpretation of what was written, but you do not acknowledge it as your interpretation, you present it as a quote.
    I expect that a civil editor would apologise for that misrepresentation, and apologise for your comments about my judgement based on your misrepresentation of the source. But instead of having the basic decency to apologise for your own misconduct, you chose to :
    1. falsely accuse me of having hijacked this discussion to try to defend the indefensible actions of the convener. I have not "hijacked" anything, and believe that you and some others had radically misunderstood (and/or misrepresented) the actions of the convener.
    2. still provide precisely zero evidence in support of your 21:47 claim that the course convenor deliberately riled up her followers against them. In her actual words, she asked others to edit the article, and did not express any antagonism.
    3. Post a templated warning[1] on my talk page accusing me of a personal attack and civility violation for having objected to your personal attack on me and for dissecting your misrepresentations and misquoting.
    Shame on you. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a separate note, I have yet to see anyone link the Education noticeboard discussion and the convener's disgusting victim-blaming there, where she says the twitter harassment wasn't real and the perpetrators she rallied aren't in the wrong because they have 'been silenced before', saying that the harassed user is trying to shift the narrative and shouldn't have started a twitter discussion (which they didn't) if they didn't want to be harassed (which should never be an inevitability of trying to engage). Not a user I would want to engage with, and their activist goals aren't for Wikipedia. Kingsif (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've seen really good stuff come out of WikiEd. One recent article is easily GA. It is an economic history topic, not controversial, fairly technical and obscure. New editors tend to want to do controversial 'important' things and get into trouble because those are the hardest topics. Instructors should discourage hot button controversial topics to help students succeed. -- GreenC 22:43, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @GreenC WikiEdu students aren't new editors who want to do controversial things. They're students doing academic work to receive a grade. If your course is on a contemporary political issue of some kind, you don't really have a choice as a student to write about something that isn't controversial - or at least, not an obvious one. -- asilvering (talk) 00:41, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Then perhaps those courses shouldn't be invited to participate in the WikiEdu program. BilledMammal (talk) 00:43, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lack of ability to educate themselves on the basic principles of Wikipedia has left Mkibona indirectly responsible for the vile harassment of a child more mature than an associate professor. I am a feminist and an anti-racist. Both of these values are related to my belief in empathy and community self-governance. Some members of the Black Women Radicals have made clear their rejection of these values, building a bad reputation for what I can only assume to be an organisation with worthy principles and important goals.
    I am glad wizzito used the term "ageist" in their summary of the harassment they received, because it's an important word. On Wikipedia, we do (or should) not care how old a person is, only how mature they are—what they are capable of contributing (as an editor) and what value we can provide to them (as a reader). The world would be a better place were this value universal. Those who waste their precious time on Twitter rather than contributing to the largest educational resource in the world, may feel proud about causing harm to a child, but at the end of the day it is the mature young adult who is doing something valuable with their time.
    The discussion above about "righting great wrongs" is a strange and unproductive one. Wikipedia has a systemic bias problem and the way to solve that is with dedicated editor attention and increasing our numbers of editors, but all of this must be done within Wikipedia's guiding principles. Sometimes you think something is notable but the community will disagree and it will be deleted. Tough. You need to respect the outcome.
    As for where WikiEd stands, I see its value, but it does not seem to me that it is very wise in its choice of article topics. There are a thousand books on Black history that have no article and pass WP:NBOOK#1, in a way that can quickly and easily be checked by an expert Wikipedian providing guidance. There are another thousand stubs on Black-related topics that demonstrate notability but need expansion. But WP:NORG is one of our most complicated SNGs, and creating an article one of our most difficult tasks, so why WikiEd would have any part in recommending or condoning the creation of borderline notable or non-notable organisation articles is beyond me. It has been my experience for a while now that the choice of articles is the #1 problem with WikiEd. — Bilorv (talk) 22:52, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Bilorv There are a lot of things about the culture on Wikipedia that are arcane, confusing, or even simply invisible until you walk into them headfirst. I don't think it's fair to just say "Tough", especially when the culture here at times becomes rules-for-rules'-sake about things. This AfD [2] still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. No one's harassing anyone. The project's guidelines are being followed. It really was not a borderline case. But to this day I cannot comprehend the lack of empathy shown there.
    On everything else, though... yes. Last term, I wrote to WikiEdu, as an undergraduate course instructor myself (I mention this because I like to think this gives me some idea about how to make teachers' lives easier), about WP:NBOOK. Stubs and WiR lists would be another great place to start. No response: fair enough. But watching WikiEdu editors commenting here as though they have no way to solve or even ameliorate this problem... well. I'm not looking forward to March. -- asilvering (talk) 00:34, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I am not a fan of how jargon-heavy and unintentionally hostile our dialect on Wikipedia is, nor how steep the technical and social learning curve is. Nonetheless, I expect a WikiEdu instructor who is encouraging students to create articles to be aware of basic norms around the area. I'll be specific: I'm not asking anyone to know how the community views posting on Twitter. I'm asking someone to be aware of where to find the pages Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and then consult them for more information when AfD is invoked.
    I would not even recommend WiR lists for WikiEdu (at least not Wikidata-based ones) because they may seem falsely authoritative on topics that are appropriate for Wikipedia, whereas many entries are non-notable. For intermediate and experienced editors, they are fantastic, and I've been inspired to make several articles from them. On the other hand, it is good that someone is trying to bring WP:NBOOK to WikiEdu's attention. — Bilorv (talk) 17:30, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • As an admin who primarily sees drafts on their way out of Wikipedia, I don't think that "student editors" have less skills than our average new editors and I dislike some of the generalizations I read above my own comment. And we have NO idea, absolutely none, of what goes on in the teaching about writing and editing on Wikipedia as none of us have been in the classroom or Zoom room, however the classes are conducted.
I will say that towards the end of every school term, I do run into some students who seem to think that their grade is dependent on getting their draft article out of their sandbox and into the main space of the project, which is almost always premature, but when I have brought it to the attention of WikiEd instructors, like Ian, they have always reached out to the student and moved the page back into User space, I have found them consistently helpful and considerate in guiding students and they make themselves incredibly accessible and available to them when they have questions. At times, when I have suspected a problem, I can see in the page log that the instructor has already addressed it.
As for harassment, as someone who was doxxed repeatedly during the Gamergate period, I sympathize with our young editor. Not only have I been doxxed but once I randomly criticized a TV show host on Twitter who ReTweeted my message and I saw all hell rain down on my account. It's no fun to be attacked. So I can empathize but also say that I think it was a bad decision to go on to social media, enter into a discussion where your actions are being criticized and you are clearly not wanted and try to correct the readers. It was naive to think your "feedback" would be welcome. I think it would be akin to going into a local sports bar and telling the occupants why their team sucks. And I think the decision to engage and to reveal personal information about oneself does show a casualness about social media communities that is a sign of youth. Liz Read! Talk! 00:08, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And we have NO idea, absolutely none, of what goes on in the teaching about writing and editing on Wikipedia - really? Ha. We can see the teaching modules, we can read all the advice essays, we interact with students who have been left floundering by their teachers. It's a shambles, it is, because as an editor (what does your adminship have to do with this) who has had to intervene on more than one occasion and follows most new courses as a precaution, I know that student editors may have the same skills as other new editors but they: are not integrated into a community to get feedback from experienced editors; at least some feel they have been given the authority to OWN articles they have been assigned; and, without wanting to stay on Wikipedia very long, they have no desire to improve. Their editing skills may not be technically worse, but the way they are introduced to Wikipedia is inherently non-collaborative, and I don't think there is any way for WikiEd to fix that. Having conveners that are either never on Wikipedia to help or who attack Wikipedia when their course isn't treated like god, is not helping its legitimacy at all. Kingsif (talk) 01:18, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • BrownHairedGirl noted (above) that the word harassment "is normally used to describe a pattern of hostile behaviour, rather than just individual acts of hostility." That is correct. For clarity and precision, let us instead say that at least one person on twitter assailed and vilified the 15-year-old editor. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 03:54, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Markworthen: thank you for agreeing that the charge of harassment is false. That is progress.
    However, I have not seen any post which I would describe as having assailed and vilified the 15-year-old editor. The posts which I have seen would be better described as snarky. They are way milder than stuff which I routinely see on twitter elsewhere.
    You seem to disagree, so please identify by link and/or verbatim quote the tweets which you believe assailed and vilified the 15-year-old editor. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:30, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In the past week alone at least seven baseless ANI reports have been opened on Wizzito by different IP's, which appear to be related to this. I would consider that a "pattern of hostile behaviour". BilledMammal (talk) 04:42, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @BilledMammal: I took a quick peek at the current ANI page and the most recent archive, but I found no such activity. Maybe my quick scans were too fast and I missed something ... but please help out by linking to these alleged seven baseless ANI reports. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:02, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Some of them have been revdeled, but there are still a few accessible. BilledMammal (talk) 05:11, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, @BilledMammal. Those 3 ANI posts seem to be all from roughly the same area of Colorado. The juvenile-style text looks identical, but that doesn't mean that the poster(s) were juvenile. However, there's nothing threatening in them, just childish gibberish which could have been written by an 8yo.
    Maybe the redacted posts were more serious. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • We should evaluate an editor's ability and skill based on the quality of their contributions regardless of their age, ethnicity, gender identification, etc. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 03:59, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Markworthen: AIUI, the issue of Wizzito's age was brought into play by Wizzito.
    Having chosen to make their age a factor in a dispute, it seems to me that they have little grounds to complain when others treat that factor as a negative. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:44, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    As an editor of the same age, no. I've seen immature adults and mature teens, some more mature than I am. And I've seen adult vandals more immature than the 15-year-old. I have to admit that I mess up sometimes while editing, but I don't think you can just say it's my age that causes that mistake. I have autism and I don't wanna play the autism card all the time but it can take me places. Instead of blaming my age and making it seem like I'm unworthy of editing, I would prefer a civil discussion, and being treated like other editors. I've been in many of these and it made me a better editor, as it's constructive criticism. Age may be a factor but bringing it up isn't gonna bring discussions anywhere. GeraldWL 19:00, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough. I intended my comment as a general guideline. IMHO of course. ;^) Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 05:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, "assailed and vilified" is probably too strong. Looking back, I like how the Signpost article characterized it: Other users ... responded with hostility. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 05:58, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Having further researched aspects of this story, there are various other aspects that are troubling to me. First, the narrative would have us believe that there is a 15 year old editor that is so active on the WikiEd noticeboard that they are actively and regularly critiquing class edits in real time and is seeking to make dramatic changes soon after certain classes finish via AfD nominations. Second, this same 15 year old appears to be so engaged and enraged by something (exactly what, I'm not sure) that they go looking on twitter for further engagement relating to a deleted page. It isn't for me to make a judgement about the specific twitter engagement, but it is surely factual that if the AfD-nominator had not gone looking for a continued discussion on twitter then the likelihood is that nothing would have happened to them personally. In general, I think it is troubling when one self-identified young person hangs around on a noticeboard looking to critique the WP edits of other young people. Even if this isn't a direct effort to remove content that they disapprove of, it is surely not something particularly constructive for them to be doing. I'm not sure it is something particularly useful for anyone to be doing to be honest, and to me this is an important part of the whole affair. Finally, having reviewed the work of the class in question, I think on the whole the edits are solid, so I really can't see why this is said to be an example of WikiEd somehow failing beyond repair. Again, I fundamentally disagree that any of the pages should have been deleted by the AfD process. JMWt (talk) 07:03, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I personally don't find it very hard to believe that a 15-year-old could be an involved Wikipedia editor. I mean, you can look at their contributions if you really want to -- this information isn't being hidden from anyone. The deletion isn't entirely on the nominator, either: there were five other people (perhaps of ages you consider more acceptable) who !voted to delete as well, and an administrator who closed it. jp×g 08:48, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Believe what you like. If you think it is normal and healthy for a 15 year old to make many hundreds of daily edits, including admonishments and engagements on other editors talkpages, and for that person to get so far into the weeds on en.wp that they're a regular feature on a noticeboard and in taking pages to AfD, then you have a different definition of the words to me. JMWt (talk) 09:08, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, no, I think anybody who edits Wikipedia is a little fucked in the head, but it's not like adults are the only ones capable of being bonkers enough to edit an encyclopedia for fun. I'm a bizarre nerd now, and I was also a bizarre nerd when I was 15. jp×g 09:35, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That may or may not be the case, that doesn't mean we have to support the behaviour when it appears to be contributing to the general sense that there is a form of systematic bias acting against editors who wish to include subjects that are deemed unworthy by a different 15 year old. I accept that the AfD process was followed but the result was wrong. JMWt (talk) 09:38, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JMWt: please retract this comment. As well as a personal attack against a specific individual, it also insinuates mental illness (that a person is "[not] normal [or] healthy") among a large number of people in our community, who are or have been child editors, including myself. — Bilorv (talk) 17:58, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree with Bilorv's request - JMWt, your comment is way off-base in a general sense, and uncivil (and just incorrect, on top) in an individual sense. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:37, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
JMWt your continued harrasment is dispicable and needs to stop. Aircorn (talk) 10:33, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • A related discussion was the recent application of a 16 year old to be an Administrator.[3]. They didn't make it, partly because of their age. But in the discussion somebody said that people as young as 13 have become Administrators. Changing the subject, what I think is incumbent upon Wikied is to ensure that teachers and student editors understand that they may get a lot of grief whatever they do on Wikipedia. That's part of being a Wikipedia editor. Teachers and student editors should also be warned that going off Wikipedia to complain will not likely win them much sympathy.Smallchief (talk) 18:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a fucking shitshow. Therapyisgood (talk) 02:47, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Per a database query, currently the fifth-largest shitshow in the history of the Signpost after only three days of discussion. jp×g 08:18, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Far be it from me to avoid the fifth largest shitshow @Wizzito: I just thought I'd reaffirm that this definitely was harassment (while people can feel harassed without actually being so, this was not a case of thin-skin-itis), and that your on-wiki actions were perfectly correct, and that regardless of whether it was wise or not to post on-twitter, you had every right to do so. That @BrownHairedGirl: seems to be suggesting that your age alone is enough to rule you out of not merely something like adminship but content-work and core processes of Wikipedia is disturbing to me, and I repudiate that position to the strongest degree I can, let alone the position of one editor above saying that editors of your age shouldn't edit at all. Bonkers. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:37, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Finally, having reviewed the work of the class in question, I think on the whole the edits are solid, so I really can't see why this is said to be an example of WikiEd somehow failing beyond repair. Again, I fundamentally disagree that any of the pages should have been deleted by the AfD process.
Unless you were watching all the new pages/drafts as they came out of the class, your impression is very strongly biased towards the minority of contributions that are visible to non-admins. You could not have seen the copyvios or the content of the now-deleted articles, for example. Issues with the class were brought up much earlier here, apparently leading to a conversation between WikiEd and the instructor. Evidently the extra guidance was not enough to prevent the Twitter shitshow (why didn't the instructor reach out to the same WikiEd people who assisted her earlier and ask for help navigating the redirect/AfD processes? This avenue was clearly available).
As for whether any of the articles should've been deleted via AfD...why should WikiEd contributions be protected from normal collaborative editing? Like others said above, the edit summary about OR/claims to notability was entirely routine and appropriate, a standard AfD situated around WP:NORG was held, and a consensus was achieved that SIGCOV in multiple independent, secondary reliable sources could not be found to support GNG. It's not like no one looked; Ian directly asked BWR on Twitter to send him links to coverage they said they had garnered. I don't know if they ever followed up on that, but the article remains deleted so I would guess these sources were largely mere mentions rather than SIGCOV. JoelleJay (talk) 02:13, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JoelleJay: I had forgotten about that. No, I never heard from anyone. Guettarda (talk) 03:50, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • If we look at the U.S. population, 21 percent of us are between 10 and 24 years of age [4]. If we look at Wikipedia: Who writes Wikipedia we see that 27 percent of Wikipedia editors are 21 years old or younger. In other words, we have a larger percentage of young people editing Wikipedia than young people in the general population. That raises the question: why do we need WikiEd to attract younger people? We're already attracting a large number of youth as editors. The quality of the willing volunteer editor is probably better than that of the coerced, i.e. the student. Smallchief (talk)
    I did not know that! Thank you for sharing those stats Guettarda. My experience with WikiEd students has generally been positive. They tend not to accept offers of help or reply to encouraging messages left on their talk pages, but there are understandable reasons why this might be the case. Most importantly though, as a group they write (edit) content that improves Wikipedia content. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 14:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    They tend not to accept offers of help or reply to encouraging messages Part of the problem is that many don't see messages. I can't remember the stats, but shockingly many of them edit on mobile devices or tablets, and the mobile editor apparently doesn't show notifications (or didn't, as of Wikimania this summer). Guettarda (talk) 15:00, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Guettarda: Perhaps a benefit then that as of late last year this is supposedly no longer the case on Androids (see euphemistically named Wikipedia:Mobile communication bugs). CMD (talk) 17:49, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Having read through all the above, and having viewed the deleted content, I'd like to simply observe that, personally, I see nothing special about the deleted article - it's typical of many that are deleted every week for being either non-notable or promotional, and which come from all corners of the globe and on all forms of interest or minority groups. It's unfortunate that behind the editing activities there lay, off-wiki, a small number of somewhat zealous people who were encouraged to help save that article, but went about it in quite the wrong way. It seems unfortunate that the AfD nominator appears to have tried to defend their position on social media too. This is never a good idea, whichever standpoint on an article one takes. I would make the following observations:

  • Prior to its AfD, the article had already been been deleted twice for copyright violations (a key policy we take extremely seriously and that all course tutors would be expected to make clear)
  • Based on their AfD History, the nominator (with over 8,000 edits over the last 13 months) can hardly be accused of having a habit of targeting deletion discussions on related topics. They have average AfD stats (67% success rate) that are similar to many who stand and pass at WP:RFA, though they could be better.
  • The AfD nominator gave a far more detailed and better deletion rationale than we often see at AfD, finishing with the following line: "And before anyone comments that this AfD is meant as an erasure of black people or accuses me of erasing minorities, I am not. I am simply stating that the article does not fit notability standards, in my opinion."
  • The AfD Nomination garnered 5 deletes (including one from an administrator) and one 'keep'. There did not seem to be any evidence of outside involvement in the AfD itself, nor anyone coming in new to try to help 'save' the article with additional sources.
  • One experienced user who voted 'delete' (and whose userpage says "I enjoy focusing on BLPs for women and non-binary people, both underrepresented categories on WP.") commented that " It looks as if the instructor of the course is canvassing on Twitter"
  • It appears the AfD Nominator then took to Twitter, perhaps to defend or explain themselves, but I have not looked in detail at off-wiki evidence.
  • Unusually, the nominator then returned to AfD to report that they felt they were being harassed. They also reported the incident to WP:EDUN (see here)
  • To me, the deleted article seemed typical of so many that are created by well-meaning groups out of enthusiasm or commitment for their interest area, but which unfortunately fail to meet WP:NCORP at this time, being based upon mostly insider sources, brief mentions or interviews. It could simply be WP:TOOSOON for this organisation, formed in 2020.
  • No editor should have to face unpleasant off-wiki communications for their routine contributions here. And all contributors and course leaders should encourage participants to engage on wiki to improve articles so that they can be welcomed as a part of the editing community, rather than as outsiders who might then feel aggrieved at how things operate here.
  • Apart from regretting that they tried to engage on Twitter to explain their editing stance, I am personally impressed to see a 15 yr old editor with autism handle this AfD nomination and its subsequent fallout with such maturity and calmness. There are many 'grown ups' that would not fare so well.
  • Having personally adopted (mentored) an elderly professor and a high school student on Wikipedia, I found they came across equally as competent and as mature as one other. It was a surprise when I discovered the younger person's age. We have some incredible young editors who contribute to Wikipedia, and it saddens me the attitude that some above have taken when they see intelligent young people making worthwhile policy-based contributions to this encyclopaedia - possibly using their time during periods of prolonged lockdown to help maintain this encyclopaedia.

Declaration: I'm white, middle-class, European, and old enough to feel suitably experienced to be able to assess the significance of cited sources in articles. OK, I might just have voted 'weak keep' at AfD myself, but more to help add a small voice to highlight some of the content imbalance that we do see here on Wikipedia than because of any inherent notability of this young organisation, wherever in the world it is based (something that wasn't even stated in the article) Nick Moyes (talk) 22:55, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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