Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plagiarism rate

Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by _fs on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @04:56PM (#5482028)

First of all, misleading title. The professor simply offered student extra credit to add a sentence to a psychology article of their choice. The sentence is supposed to include references and is not supposed to be plagiarized.

I know this is beating a dead horse, but I get really sick of hearing about abuse from Wikipedia editors who have gone power-mad. Edit-wars, blacklisting, and more is an ongoing state of affairs on the site. The fact that they are considering blocking the campus and a large chunk of the surrounding area from editing wikipedia in order to punish the professor is just stupid.

I understand that editors put a lot of time in cleaning up wikipedia, and that is great. But wikipedia is a system designed for public use, and that use includes editing and updating articles.

The problem that they have found themselves in now is that articles slowly evolve their own individual bias based on the managing editors point of view. New users and counter arguments are lost, as it's rare to find someone to edit an article that has the patience to start an edit war with a moderator who has babysat an article for years.

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by swang on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @05:08PM (#5482102)

I'm not sure if you read the same Wikipedia page I did. This isn't a turf war issue. A professor has been asked by editors to tell his students to stop editing Neuroscience/psychology articles because they are terrible edits that are unreferenced and plagiarized. This is bad because it opens up Wikipedia to liability. I haven't dug too much in but it seems like the Professor is brushing it off and refusing to really help that much which is why they are contemplating banning the entire schools IP range. It has to be really bad if they are even contemplating that point.

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by _fs on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @05:16PM (#5482149)

It's really not surprising that the professor reacted the way that he did. His intentions where basically to improve wikipedia articles in his field through a group effort by his students. Instead of praise and thanks from the wikipedia editors, he was ostracized and rejected. I'd wager this entire situation could have been averted if the editors initially reached out to the professor in a more positive way.

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by swang on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @05:28PM (#5482227)

They did, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WoodSnake#Copyright_v...

That was from last year.

This year there was no notice because apparently he decided to not publicly announce he was doing it again this year and it took them some time before they realized what happened. It seemed that he didn't like the fact that people were pointing.

I can't read through everything so I may have not been following everything correctly. This is what I've extracted about the situation by gleaning information off the various pages talking about this.

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by Permit on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @05:40PM (#5482301)

>This professor started under the education programme in 2011. Following a study of edits made by the 2011 class here with commentary here[1], the professor was asked to stop and work with Wikipedia to fix the assignment. Instead he went underground and choose, in his words, to "fly under the radar".

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Colin/A_large_scale_studen...

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by incision on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @05:51PM (#5482381)

Have you read much (any) of the material linked?

My impression after perusing a fair bit of it is almost completely opposite of what you're claiming here.

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by henrikschroder on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @05:28PM (#5482226)

> This is bad because it opens up Wikipedia to liability.

What? How?

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by octo_t on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @07:37PM (#5482973)

Student copies from copyrighted textbook onto wikipedia,

textbook copyright owner notices + sues wikipedia

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Re:Professor tells 1700 students to edit Wikipedia, 85% plag... by DanBC on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @06:05PM (#5482467)

I hate WP, and have said so here more than once.

This instance is a bit different. WP recognises the importance of student editors, even as part of student course work. There's an established program to welcome students and their teachers; to introduce WP to them; and to help them through the baffling bureaucracy.

This professor was invited to that program. They declined.

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