 | This is aninformation page. It is neither anencyclopedia article nor one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels ofconsensus andvetting. |
 | This page in a nutshell: When students edit Wikipedia as part of an assignment, it should improve Wikipedia – without any serious violations of content norms. This page contains advice to all parties involved. |
This is an overview page of best practices and advice concerningstudent assignments.
If you have any questions about anything related to student assignments, please ask atthe education noticeboard.
TheWikimedia Foundation (WMF) supports a global Wikipedia Education Program that can be contacted throughtheir page on the Outreach Wiki and has resources formany countries. The program's purpose is to help instructors and students learn about Wikipedia and avoid common pitfalls.
There is also a separateWiki Education Foundation (WikiEd) that offers support for classes held at institutions in the United States and Canada.
Either the Education Program or WikiEd (depending on the country where the course is based) shouldalways be contacted prior to starting classes.
All class instructors should follow theinstructions for setting up a class project.
An assignment's course page is created via the dashboard for the class. It is available in two versions:
The instructor should always use the Dashboard to create acourse page for the class every time that the course is taught.
The course page should identify theuser names of: theinstructor; theliaison to the class from theWikiEd staff; thestudent editors; a listing of thearticles the students are planning to work on (even if they don't yet exist); and the locations of anydraft versions (such asthe user's sandbox). It is especially important that there be a complete listing ofall Wikipedia pages that students in the class will be editing.
Course pages help editors track classroom progress and distinguish between classroom-specific and editor-specific issues, so that constructive feedback is targeted to the right place. Consequently, a class that does not have a course page may be seen by other editors asdisruptive, and those editors may end up undoing the students' work.
Students should post acourse assignment template on thetalk pages of any page they plan to improve. If a new article is written, students should ensure that the template is also placed on that article's talk page. The top of each student editor'suser page should also have a link to their course page, and to any articles ordraft articles that they plan to be (or are) working on for the assignment. Seeexample, complete withWP:Diffs to the relevant edits for the assignment.
Each student editor should register their own editor account. Under no circumstances should more than one studentedit under the same account.
On Wikipedia, an editor may choose to use theirreal name as theiruser name, whereas others may choose to use anon-screen pseudonym, and never to reveal theirpersonal information.
In the past, some instructors have required their students to use their real names for class projects on Wikipedia, so as to encourage taking responsibility fortheir contributions, and to mimicacademic journals. However, instructors should consider how students editing under their real namesin public could irreversibly impact the students'reputations, and therefore the potential effects it could have upon their future. See alsoOnline community#Problems.
Wikipedia takes pride in being"the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and theWikipedia community is based on volunteers who attempt to follow the norms of the site. Because students may edit to meet the requirements of a class (which might not align with the norms of Wikipedia), rather than out of a voluntary desire to executeWikipedia's mission, this dynamic changes. Because of this fact, Wikipedia justifiably expects instructors to take responsibility for their students' work, both for the students' sake and for the good of the encyclopedia.
Instructors are expected to have a good working knowledge of Wikipedia, and should be responsive to community concerns, and be willing to help addresscore content policy violations in student work. Instructors should make sure they can reply to their user talk pages, or either provide contact details or anenabled email address (which will not be disclosed unless you reply to received emails or use Wikipedia to send an email).
If editors contact an instructor, they should try to be helpful. Likewise, if an instructor receives constructive feedback on a classroom assignment, they should be responsive. If issues such ascopyright infringement develop, rapid contact with the instructor can be necessary in order to resolve issues before they negatively affect students' experiences.
Student editors should learn to communicate via the normal Wikipedia channels, such as onarticle talk pages anduser talk pages.
Everyone – instructors, students, and other editors – should practicecollegiate civility, should understand what constitutesdisruptive editing, and should be aware of Wikipedia's policies ofdispute resolution.
Student assignments can help improve Wikipedia, but they can also cause the encyclopedia more harm than good when not directed properly. For example - depending on how classes are organized - students may have different priorities from established editors (class grades rather than improving Wikipedia; making a few changes and not coming back; etc.).
Students and instructors participating in assignments can feel overwhelmed by multiplepolicies and guidelines,style preferences,coding complexities, and encounteringunpleasant Wikipedians. Wikipedia can have a steep learning curve, especially when editing incontroversial subject areas, or areas related to health, medicine, biology, or psychology (which have their own norms describedbelow). And if student work has systematically failed to adhere to Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines, the edits may bereverted, and the page may risk beingdeleted.
And while the volunteer community here can be verywelcoming to new student editors, when experienced editors encounter the results of a poorly performed assignment, they can feel as if they are acting as unpaid and unthankedteaching assistants.
And when many student editors (showing up at the same time), cause large numbers of multiple content or format issues in articles over a short period of time, volunteer editors may feel overwhelmed with the burden of fixing poor-quality edits, cleaning up or revertingoriginal research, mergingcontent forks, anddeleting articles.
Editors also may find it difficult to get students to pay attention to editorial advice, especially when students do not usetalk pages to reachconsensus on disputed material.
Even experienced Wikipedia editors who are classroom instructors have had mixed experiences.[1]
Despite the difficulties, successful assignments and classrooms do exist. When knowledgeable instructors, competent students, and experienced editors collaborate based on those norms, an assignment has a good chance of succeeding. This information page is intended to point the way to achieving good outcomes.
First, welcome to Wikipedia! Wikipedia welcomes new editors, and we hope you will want to stick around after your class is over. Writing and editing here is an expression ofencyclopedism using afree andgratis[2]wiki.
You will find that editing Wikipedia will feel quite different than any other assignment you have done for school. When you do schoolwork, you produce work privately or with a team, and submit it to your instructor with your name on it, by a given deadline. Editing Wikipedia is nothing like that. Here, you will be contributing to an article that is publicly available and that has been created and maintained by members of a community of anonymous editors, any one of whom may change or even remove edits that you make to it, and none of whom have a deadline.
As soon as you start to edit Wikipedia, you become a Wikipedian, and you are obligated to follow all of the the samepolicies and guidelines that other editors must follow (though occasional lapses by newcomers are recognized as part of the learning experience). These policies and guidelines were put in place by the editing community over the past 24 years, and they cover both content and editor behavior. Other members of the community will generally be forgiving as you start to learn how Wikipedia works, but you do not have special status in Wikipedia as a student. Non-compliant edits are likely to bereverted. And repeatedly editing in unhelpful ways may be considered to bedisruptive. No person or entity (not even your class!)owns articles here, and everything you publish here instantly becomesfreely-licensed to the public, which means that others are free to rewrite, reuse, or modify it for any legal purpose, as long as they credit the original source.
Wikipedia has its owncore content policies,style, andediting structure. The traditional writing assignment of theessay (with its necessary point of view) is not suited for publication here because ourencyclopedic style requires aneutral point of view.[3] Wikipedia is a tertiary source, so what you will write needs to be based mainly onsecondary sources, and not onyour own interpretations. Similarly, you should not write about your ownopinions, and you should avoidlanguage that tells the reader what to do, such as"note that... ".[4]
Of particularly high importance, please read carefully what this page says about plagiarism and copyright infringementbelow, and please take itvery seriously!
If you plan to edit an existing article but you want to practice with test edits first, then copy and paste the article intoyour sandbox for practice. You can also start new drafts there. Please be aware that it is a very bad idea to copy a large amount of text into a Wikipedia article all at once, especially at the end of the semester. Before placing such large edits into articles, please have your instructor review and approve the text. Also post at the article talk page well ahead of time, allowing established editors to look at your sandbox draft and give you feedback. Otherwise, you may find that your work will be deleted. You can request the deletion of your sandbox at any time. If you are starting a new article (which can appear as ared linklike this when linked or can be aredirect), then your topic should benotable (see thegeneral notability guideline) and worthy of a separate page (see the reasons formerging). It's possible someone else wrote an article on the same subject that you plan on creating, so please check for alternate titles.[5]
Experienced editors might give you advice or might revert your contributions with anedit summary. Please consider their advice attentively; it will usually help your assignment be more successful. Be responsive if they start discussing your edits at a talk page (the article should be on yourwatchlist). If someone removes or changes your work, read their edit summary in the article'shistory. (Do not "edit war". SeeWP:3RR.) If you disagree with an edit, it might be best to open a discussion on the article's talk page, politely explaining why you believe your version is better. Please usepolicy and guideline-based arguments on the talk pages. Sometimes other editors may add a template pointing to a problem, rather than making any change to the article content.[6] These should not be removed without addressing the issue identified, but if you are unclear on what is needed or you disagree, starting a talk page discussion andpinging the editor who placed the template is appropriate.
Wikipedia is a collaborative environment that depends upon communication. If you think editors are being an impediment to fulfilling your assignment requirements, then please say so to the WikiEd liaison for your class (privately if helpful) or at theeducation noticeboard. You can also seek help using the{{help me}} template, or using{{admin help}} if you need assistance specifically from anadministrator. Also please raise your concerns with WikiEd or at the noticeboard if you think your assignment is asking you to violate any Wikipedia norms, as article space content which is not policy-compliant will likely be quickly removed. Editors and WikiEd people can help by consulting with your instructor to optimize the assignment design. To receive help, you also can always ask a question at thehelp desk orTeahouse. We hope your experience will be pleasant. Happy editing!
Thank you for introducing your students to Wikipedia, ensuring that they fit in well here, and helping them leave behind a positive contribution for many readers!
Ideally, you already have some experience as a Wikipedia editor.[7] If not, there are materials available and people willing to help you learn. Available people might include another instructor who has experience with Wikipedia assignments, theWikiEd liaison for your course, or Wikipedia editors at theeducation noticeboard.
We recognize that you may be an expert in your field, and in how to teach it. You may, with good reason, perceive Wikipedia as populated by editors who lack your experience and judgment, but please understand that many editors are also experienced academics, and any editor, expert or not, may cross paths with your students. Often, volunteers may have a niche area they contribute to, which may coincide with a class assignment. And so, because there may be many eyes on the articles where students work, and because you cannot control what Wikipedia editors will do, or when they will show up to make edits of their own, careful attention to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines from the start of the course will improve students' experiences – and may save you from potentially aggravating and time-consuming incidents just at the time when you are submitting your grades.
A successful assignment should be based on a knowledge of, and in accordance with, Wikipedia's basic norms - Wikipedia'sprocesses,policies, and guidelines. Learning these norms should therefore be one element of any assignment. With this in mind, your assignment and grading rubric should be aligned with and reinforce (and certainly not contradict) Wikipedia's norms. Please do not give studentscourse credit for writing an arbitrary quantity of words or bytes. If something in your class assignment turns out not to work as well as you had hoped, please correct it before you repeat the assignment in a subsequent semester.
Please ensure that your students understand and follow the advice on this page - please make this a requirement to receive assignment credit, perhaps by making this information page assigned reading for a quiz.[8]
Make sure your students understand the differences between the style and content appropriate to term papers and other academic forms, and those appropriate to an encyclopedia, whereoriginal research is not permitted. (Seecore content policies, which is also linked to in the student section above.) When assigning topics to students, please understand that Wikipediadoes not publish advocacy ortopics that are new, simply because they are new, even if your course is about topics such as social change. Please ensure that your students understand that#Plagiarism and copyright infringement are not allowed.
Consider encouraging your students to work in asandbox and know that it is an option to have their assignment graded there for course credit. It is usually best to develop articles on the students'user pages, or asdrafts. In particular, please require students to obtain your approval before moving content from sandboxes into the main article space. Students should not abruptly move large amounts of text into articles without first having the material reviewed either by you or by experienced editors, because otherwise everything that the student has done may end up beingreverted.
If you decide to allow a student to directly edit an article, you should monitor the edits they make. Do not assume that Wikipedia editors will always fix the mistakes your students make, and do not assume that the fact that a student edit was not reverted means that other editors have accepted the edit. And it is often better to have the student improve a short article that is only in the early stages of development. Articles that are already well-developed before your course starts are likely to be watched by many editors, and so your students may find more editors objecting to changes at such articles, particularly if the articles are already of good quality.
Assignments sometimes include student comments about existing Wikipedia content, rather than changes to the articles themselves, or include comments on article changes made by other students. If so, those comments need to be in line withtalk page guidelines, focusing on article content in a constructive and objective manner. Incorporate responding to feedback into the grading rubric. Reward students who give good advice on Wikipedia. Reward students who seek out advice from experienced editors and then make improvements to the article based on that advice. Penalize students who do not address the points that were raised by non-student editors. If other Wikipedia editors give feedback to your students, you should make sure that your students respond.[6]
Have students post specific suggestions for improvement directly on the talk pages of their peers' articles, and not offline. However, "reviews" in which students only praise each other, or comments that debate the topic and are not based on reliable sources, are inappropriate. Please consider carefully whether you are asking for edits or discussion that could be a problem in any of those ways; if so, those edits or discussions might be better suited touser space, studentdraft pages, or submitted off-site.
Pointing out missing content (preferably withreliable sources) is welcome[9], as is noting areas where there isundue weight, inappropriatesynthesis of sources,bias, etc. If an activeWikiProject exists around the content you'll be assigning your students to edit, encourage students to notify editors there.
TheArticles for creation,Peer review, and other Wikipedia processes for reviewing drafts of articles or evaluating new articles, are strongly discouraged asnot appropriate for class assignments. Please do not direct your students to use these assessment processes, as the students may find the experience unsatisfying. For one thing, the time frame involved is unpredictable and typically incompatible with the editing schedule of student assignments, and the nominator would need to be around - probably weeks later and after the end of the course - to deal with review suggestions.
Wikipedia has a system forgrading article quality which is used by the variousWikiProjects (groups with interests in particular content areas). New articles can take a while to be assessed (at present, nearly 10% of Wikipedia's articles have no grading) and the timing of re-assessments following substantial editing is also unpredictable. To achieve any of the three highest grades (Feature Article (FA),Good Article (GA), andA-class) an article must be nominated and be supported by consensus following a formal evaluation by independent editor(s). Lower grades can be assigned or re-assessed by any editor but may not be accurate or reliable, especially when done by an inexperienced editor. These grades may be considered as a coarse filter of article quality, useful mainly within the editorial community.
There is no benefit for students who are inexperienced editors in trying to assign grades on article talk pages, and any self-assessment task should not involve formally assigning Wikipedia article grades. Students may not sufficiently understand the quality expectations of those processes; student nominations may overwhelm those process pages; reviewers are sometimes reluctant to engage a nomination, or fail a nomination, when they know a student's grade may depend on the outcome; past cases of students pressuring reviewers to pass nominations have come to light; and the quality of the reviews and speed at which they are conducted can vary greatly. Consequently, they are ill-suited to an instructor's assessment of students' contributions, and article grades should not be employed as assignment goals.
Established editors should be welcoming to instructors and student editors. As always,WP:CIVIL,WP:AGF, andWP:BITE apply, but student editors should be treated in the same way any new editor is treated, without any special considerations that other editors do not receive.
If you see problem edits, explain your concerns on article or user talk pages. Make edits you consider appropriate, as you would in the case of other new editors. You are entitled to revert content or move it to the talk page, or to nominate a page for deletion if appropriate, especially when there are serious policy violations. (A student can always request that anadministrator userify a deleted article.) Class projects neverown the pages they are working on. Once you have politely expressed your concerns, you are not obligated to keep repeating the advice.
You are never obligated to be an unpaid teaching assistant. Please do not let student projects diminish your enjoyment of editing. Do not feel bad about reverting edits that justifiably should be reverted. Student grades are not your responsibility, nor is any other aspect of teaching the class, unless you personally choose to involve yourself. If you do not want to fix all of the problems on a page, feel free to leave it for other editors to work on, rather than becoming stressed by the effort of doing it alone.There is no deadline, so consider addingTemplate:Cleanup or asimilar template to the page. If students are not satisfactorily responsive to concerns, consider drawing the matter to the attention of the instructor. Be professional and polite, remembering that instructors are professionals. If you do not get a timely or satisfactory response, please report the matter to theeducation noticeboard.
You can point editors who appear to be new student editors in the right direction by usingTemplate:Welcome student, or, in the case of content related to medicine or health,Template:Welcome medical student. Please note that these templates do not merely welcome students; they also point the students towards how to avoid common problems.
When students become interested in editing cooperatively, it can be a genuine pleasure to work with them. If you see a valuable student editor, please consider giving themThe Excellent New Editor's Barnstar by placing{{subst:The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar|1=Put your message here. ~~~~}} on their talk page. Likewise, if you have reason to single a class out for praise, also consider posting at the noticeboard.
As you are getting to know your way around Wikipedia, and deciding which topic you want to write on, you will notice that wikilinking allows readers to easily access text in other articles by clicking on the link. Consider when adding text whether you are adding the content to the right article; if the content you want to add fits better in another article, readers can get there via a link. As an example, in the articleJumping Frenchmen of Maine some information about George Miller Beard and the startle response is needed so the reader can understand the topic, but detail about Beard and the startle response is expanded in the articlesGeorge Miller Beard andStartle response. Take care not to add content to the wrong article, as you may be duplicating work that has already been done, or you may be spending time generating content that will be moved or deleted if it's in the wrong article.
Be more cautious about removing existing content than adding it, and if you are removing more than a few lines it is a good idea to explain why on the talk page. Some students entirely replace the existing text and metadata such as categories; this is almostnever a good idea, and is likely to lead to reversion of all of their edits.
Wikipedia has a large number of articles that are calledstubs because they are very short and in need of expansion. Such pages are particularly good choices for class projects, because the addition of more material will be welcome. In contrast, adding material to an article that is already extensive in its coverage may lead to problems if the added material is not written and formatted exactly right, and student edits of such pages are more likely to be reverted by other editors.It is almost always better for students to expand short pages than to try to change long ones.
Some highly contentious topic areas (some dealing with political matters, current events, or religious conflicts, as well as various other controversial subjects) have been placed underspecial rules called General Sanctions andContentious topics that are intended to prevent disputes between editors. When such restrictions are in place, editors who violate the rules may be quickly blocked from editing, including student editors who may not recognize the intricacies of such rules and be taken by surprise. Instructors should familiarize themselves and their students ahead of time with the sanctions that are applicable to the areas in which students might edit, and avoid these areas. A current list of these topics ishere.These topics should be avoided entirely.
If you are starting a new article, the subject needs to pass the test ofnotability. Judging whether your subject does so may be difficult, and you may need to make your case with other editors. In a new article more attention to following Wikipedia policies and conventions over matters such aslayout and style is needed. Please be aware that Wikipedia has aNew Pages Patrol, a group of editors who monitor all new articles for acceptability as Wikipedia content. These editors may significantly alter your work soon after you publish it, and they will generally have good reasons for doing so. They may also nominate your work to be deleted entirely, if it does not conform to the guidance you are reading here. As with moving new content into an existing article, it is a good idea to start a new article inyour sandbox, and consult your instructor before moving it into the regular article space.
Students and other new editors sometimes mistakenly believe that as long as added text is cited to its source, copying that text (or closely paraphrasing it) is acceptable. It is not. Plagiarizing could earn you an "F" in the course or being thrown out of the university; copying too closely can also be copyright infringement. If you are editing under your real name, the plagiarism can follow you for life. Students should realize that a potentially large number of persons may be silently observing all edits on a Wikipedia page, and consequently there is actually a very high probability that someone will notice plagiarism.
Some established editors are reluctant to "blow the whistle" on student plagiarism because of the consequences that can result for the student, and believe that it is the professor's job to review articles for plagiarism and copyright infringement. However, it is just as probable that another editor will come along subsequently, and pursue the misconduct at any time, and so it is in the instructor's interest not to leave any problems unresolved.
The following pages are helpful reading:
The role ofartificial intelligence in student assignments,including large language models, is a rapidly evolving issue. However, at the English language Wikipedia, any student content created by using AI tools, or any talk page comments generated via AI, are likely to be deleted. It is counterproductive to attempt to write content for an assignment here using AI, as it is very likely to be received negatively by Wikipedia editors.
Improvingmedicine and health topics often requires particularly careful use of sources. Specificexamples of best practices are also shown below.
Wikipedia has unique sourcing and style guidelines covering health information. Health and mental health-related content in any article (not just medicine, biology and psychology articles) should be supported by independent "secondary" sources, such as expertreviews in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, university-level textbooks, professional guidelines, etc. "Primary" sources, such as reports of randomised controlled trials, case reports and comparative studies (even if they are published in a peer-reviewed journal) are rarely adequate support for assertions in this field. If health-related information is not covered in current textbooks, professional guidelines or high-quality independent reviews, it is unlikely to be suitable for Wikipedia. The distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources is discussed atPrimary, secondary and tertiary sources. For many journal articles, you can determine if a source is a secondary review or a primary study by looking up the article inPubMed's search engine. Please provide aPubMed identifier (PMID) with your journal citations, so other editors can help check your sourcing.
Students editing health-related content should read these pages that explain how to write and organize medical articles, how primary, secondary and tertiary sources are used in health-related content, and where to find ideal sources:
One way students can have a more rewarding Wikipedia experience in adding health information to an article is to begin by posting a list of sources they plan to use to the article's "talk page" (via the tab at the top of the article)before they start writing content from those sources; that will allow experienced editors to guide them towards optimal sources and comment on the appropriateness of the planned article expansion.
Please ask at theeducation noticeboard. Thank you!
Templates:
{{educational assignment}} to tag the talk pages of articles and drafts from the student{{Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment}} to tag the talk pages of articles and drafts from the student who is doing a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment.This discussion from 2013 provides an example where a student assignment caused disruption and necessitated substantial clean up efforts from the Wikipedia community, and led to an academic deciding not to participate further in Wikipedia, a bad outcome from all perspectives.
An unusually serious problem occurred in a 2017 course about controversial current events where, aftermultiple discussions acrossdifferent noticeboards, conversations on article and user talk pages, and deletion discussions, editors and the instructor failed to reach an understanding aboutneutral article content andinappropriate advocacy.This article is, however, a good example wheretalk page discussions with students successfully led to policy-compliant content, but community consensus ultimatelyimposed a block on the instructor that included a ban on running future class projects. This was an extreme case, but it does demonstrate the problems that may develop when communication breaks down, and that the Wikipedia community can and will act to protect the integrity of the encyclopedia.