A problem with using wikimedia for school projects?

[SB_Johnny]

I'm not entirely sure what I think about it, but I had a look at this on Wikiversity this morning: link.

It seems to run tandem with some of the issues with deleting files on commons, so thought it worth sharing.

[Mason]

Man, I get so angry when those "information wants to be free" douches insist on playing the "irrevocably released" card whenever some poor sap changes their mind about something they've uploaded.

you could have failed your course if you so chose

This is the same Claritas who recently lobbied on WP to get ScottyBerg/Mantanmoreland unbanned. Class act all around!

[thekohser]

This is amazing to me. It sounds like it might even be worthy of an Examiner article and/or WPO blog post.

[dogbiscuit]

Just so I have this straight, is this really her(?) lecturer arguing with her on Wikiversity and also altering the work so it is now claimed to be collaborative and should be kept?

That is all a bit weird.

[greybeard]

Just so I have this straight, is this really her(?) lecturer arguing with her on Wikiversity and also altering the work so it is now claimed to be collaborative and should be kept?

It appears to be that, and more.

One Wikiversity user "Jtneill", is a Prof. James Neill (LinkedIn), an assistant professor of Psychology at Canberra University, where the user in question is a student. "Jtneill" also professes (no pun intended) to be a "custodian" and "bureaucrat" on Wikiversity, which I suppose is the rough equivalent of admin on Wikipedia.

It appears that the Wikiversity user, now going by "Miz.mira", claims that in order to pass a course on "Motivation and Emotion", taught by Prof. Neill, she was required to "author a free, online, book chapter about a specific motivation and/or emotion topic" (language taken from the "assessment" section of Prof. Neill's course description on Wikiversity). The emphasis of the "free" and "online" requirement is mine.

I.e. Prof. Neill appears to be assembling a Wikiversity "book" comprised of work assigned to his students.

The user, Miz.mira, once through with the course, is objecting to this use of work (and possibly derivatives of her work) for this purpose, and is requesting that it be deleted. Her underlying reasons for wishing to deprive Prof. Neill the use of her work are her own: perhaps she got a poor grade, perhaps she wishes to publish the work separately, or perhaps Prof. Neill is merely an asshole.

Prof. Neill's argument, also untestable, is that the work was from the beginning, collaborative, and that Miz.mira does not have an underlying ownership right in it. However, as of 13 November, 2011, Miz.mira and an IP address likely to be her contributed the vast majority of the content. Edits to it prior to this can mostly be seen as simple copyedits, and most of them are by Jtneill (though some are by others).

On about 18 January, an IP address blanked the page, and again on 26 March, and Miz.mira emerged on 2 April to take a stand, requesting the deletion of the page.

So what we have is a Professor at an Australian public institution assigning his students to develop content for a section of an online site on which he is an administrator -- a "trustee" of sorts. When one of his students objects, post facto to the impropriety of this, he uses his position of trust on said website to argue against her.

I would personally counsel Miz Mira to file a complaint with the University's administration, questioning the ethics of requiring students to write a "free, online" book chapter on a site in which the professor has an interest, and preventing them from retaining authorship or exercising their rights of ownership in the creation. That there is an imbalance of power her is also obvious.

Perhaps someone will communicate this suggestion to Miz.mira.

That is all a bit weird.

You can say that again. But also "unethical" in an academic environment.

[HRIP7]

So what we have is a Professor at an Australian public institution assigning his students to develop content for a section of an online site on which he is an administrator -- a "trustee" of sorts. When one of his students objects, post facto to the impropriety of this, he uses his position of trust on said website to argue against her.

I would personally counsel Miz Mira to file a complaint with the University's administration, questioning the ethics of requiring students to write a "free, online" book chapter on a site in which the professor has an interest, and preventing them from retaining authorship or exercising their rights of ownership in the creation. That there is an imbalance of power her is also obvious.

Perhaps someone will communicate this suggestion to Miz.mira.

That is all a bit weird.

You can say that again. But also "unethical" in an academic environment.

Unethical indeed. Essentially he's saying, contribute to Wikiversity, or I'll fail you in your course.

Acquiring a degree should not be tied to active support of the free-content movement, any more than it should be tied to support of a particular political party, and handing out leaflets for that party.

[EricBarbour]

I was going to ignore Neill for the book, because he's a near nobody on en-WP and Wikiversity is a joke anyway.
But forcing his students to write for WV is quite disgusting, and so he just earned himself a wiki article.

The more I peek under the covers, the more of these "Aussie mafia" situations I find. There aren't very many
of them, but when they mess things up, they do it in a major way. Consider Russavia as an example, or
even Angela Beesley and Gerard. And looking at John Vandenberg's history makes me want to take a
shower. Everyone thinks he's one of the more honest insiders, but I keep running into cases of him diddling
the political situation to keep his Wiki-friends in power.
Like all great mafias, they also fight among themselves routinely.

Do note that the user above (Silver seren) is likely a user from Wikifur and FurAffinity (versions of wikis that cater to individuals lacking a solid foundation in reality and real-life human relations). Potentially a sockpuppet too, as his fursona is clearly a Siberian white wolf (Canis lupus albus) named Izael, though I don't know if the user in question has a yiffy account on Wikiversity, so perhaps not. Thekohser (talk) 20:43, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Heh heh. Isn't it odd that furries are usually incapable of self-criticism?

[Mason]

Do note that the user above (Silver seren) is likely a user from Wikifur and FurAffinity (versions of wikis that cater to individuals lacking a solid foundation in reality and real-life human relations). Potentially a sockpuppet too, as his fursona is clearly a Siberian white wolf (Canis lupus albus) named Izael, though I don't know if the user in question has a yiffy account on Wikiversity, so perhaps not. Thekohser (talk) 20:43, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Heh heh. Isn't it odd that furries are usually incapable of self-criticism?

Oh, that is awesome. I want to buy Kohs a beer.

[EricBarbour]

Just as an aside: Neill's work on en-WP has been pretty good and noncontroversial....with one exception.

In December 2005 he attempted to create a BLP about himself.
Rather lame, complete with "quotes". And AFDed twice. Replete with John Vandenberg defending his fellow Aussie academic.

If Wikiversity were a real university, Neill would be in BIG trouble by now. And Vandenberg would be on the carpet with him.
As I said: Wikiversity is just a joke.

[Fuzzgun '91]

Excerpted from a comment by Darklama, a Wikiversity admin:

I think Wikiversity cannot void the license agreement because, in part, Wikiversity isn't a party to or a witness to the real-world allegations and grievances that may have occurred, including any decisions that may have been made as a result. The only thing the Wikiversity Community knows for certain is that the work was submitted to Wikiversity with the intentions to release the work under the CC-BY-SA license.

This is a classic bit of misdirection that's typically employed in comparable situations on Commons. If the content has been irrevocably released, Wikiversity most certainly can void the contract, at least as a courtesy to the author of the material.

On Commons, these sorts of situations tend to pop up more frequently, and, when they do, Wikipediocracy members tend to advocate for the extension of courtesy deletions to image-creators. Perhaps those courtesies should be extended to certain text contributions as well. On Wikipedia, there's actually a "speedy deletion" criterion for this, numbered "G7":

G7. Author requests deletion.
If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content to the page and to the associated talk page was added by its author. (For redirects created as a result of a pagemove, the mover must also have been the only substantive contributor to the pages prior to the move.) Note that this does not apply to user talk pages, which are not deleted except under very exceptional circumstances: see WP:DELTALK. If the sole author blanks a page other than a userspace page or category page, this can be taken as a deletion request.

As if that language isn't needlessly restrictive enough, there are still more unwritten restrictions which many Wikipedia admins take into account when considering a G7 request. It's worth reading this short discussion from 2009, in which it is apparent that Wikipedia admins hold a range of conflicting opinions on G7 and when it can actually be applied. Unsurprisingly, things haven't changed since 2009.

[EricBarbour]

Yet another aside: look at the en-WP page for the University of Canberra.

Scroll down to this section.

See the video at the right? It's not a speech by the university's chancellor, nor of a rector, nor of any other official of the university.

It's a video of one James T. Neill, babbling about this very project......
inserted by Leigh Blackall, fellow University of Canberra staffer and fellow Wikiversity custodian. Isn't that interesting?

Um, is anyone reading this in Australia? I'd suggest printing all of this out and FedExing it to University of Canberra president Stephen Parker.

[SB_Johnny]

For the record, I think the UCanberra crowd's experiments are worthy of support.

I re-took my tools there (I'm a custodian and 'crat just like James is) because Ottava was getting all slobbery and pugnacious with them. They're very big on the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, and that's a movement I support... I'm not so old that I can't remember the pain involved in shelling out ridiculous amounts of cash for textbooks (even used textbooks).

OTOH, I see the points of the arguments above.

[EricBarbour]

For the record, I think the UCanberra crowd's experiments are worthy of support.

I would tend to agree. However, it's probably not a very good idea to force university students to generate content for it
involuntarily, AND then allow the lecturer who pulls this trick to use Wikipedia for self-promotion......

[thekohser]

Do note that the user above (Silver seren) is likely a user from Wikifur and FurAffinity (versions of wikis that cater to individuals lacking a solid foundation in reality and real-life human relations). Potentially a sockpuppet too, as his fursona is clearly a Siberian white wolf (Canis lupus albus) named Izael, though I don't know if the user in question has a yiffy account on Wikiversity, so perhaps not. Thekohser (talk) 20:43, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Heh heh. Isn't it odd that furries are usually incapable of self-criticism?

Oh, that is awesome. I want to buy Kohs a beer.

I'd order a Pabst, or maybe even an MGD 64, then dump it on Thenub's head.

[Mason]

I'd order a Pabst, or maybe even an MGD 64, then dump it on Thenub's head.

Typical. I shouldn't be surprised. Meanwhile the post from Mr. "this is my second edit here, let me tell you how things should be" goes untouched.

Probably just an oversight, I'm sure.

I tell ya, it's a bit rich to see Silver seren post about the bad offsite people considering how prolific he was (is?) at WR.

[thekohser]

I'd order a Pabst, or maybe even an MGD 64, then dump it on Thenub's head.

Typical. I shouldn't be surprised. Meanwhile the post from Mr. "this is my second edit here, let me tell you how things should be" goes untouched.

Probably just an oversight, I'm sure.

I tell ya, it's a bit rich to see Silver seren post about the bad offsite people considering how prolific he was (is?) at WR.

I just couldn't let it stand, so here's Round II.

[lilburne]

I think you are being unfair to slugs there.

[thekohser]

Second verse, same as the first.

Methinks someone has a very tiny "nub" for which he's trying to compensate.

[Tippi Hadron]

Second verse, same as the first.

Methinks someone has a very tiny "nub" for which he's trying to compensate.

You may want to illustrate that with a lovely picture from Commons – for *cough* educational purposes. (NSFW)

[thekohser]

Here's something rather interesting:

• 12:04 April 12 - Rd232 makes his first edit in over 2 years to Wikiversity
• 16:54 April 12 - Gnetwerker makes his first edit ever to Wikiversity
• 17:13 April 12 - Silver seren makes his first edit ever to Wikiversity
• 17:27 April 12 - Cirt makes his first edit in over a month to Wikiversity
• 20:43 April 12 - Thekohser makes his first edit in almost 5 months to Wikiversity
• 00:40 April 13 - Thenub314 makes his first edit in over 7 weeks to Wikiversity

Which of these accounts, if any, are sockpuppets? Which are meatpuppets?

[EricBarbour]

We know who they all are in reality, except Cirt and "Thenub". The latter does nothing but write mathematical articles,
started in 2006, keeps a VERY low profile normally, and hasn't edited en-WP since January. He's a bigshot on Wikibooks,
the only WMF place where he is still active.
Bit of a jerk, too. No one has any idea who he is.

(His favorite en-WP project, Wikiproject Mathematics? Looks like it almost died out in 2008. Moribund.)

[Fuzzgun '91]

Which of these accounts, if any, are sockpuppets? Which are meatpuppets?

Would you think that I'm hopelessly naive if I were to say "none of them"?

We know that Rd232, Gnetwerker, and (obviously) you are all Wikipediocracy members who almost certainly became aware of the discussion after Johnny linked to it in this thread. Silver Seren was a member of WR, and I have no doubt that he's at least a reader here. That leaves Thenub314 and Cirt. Thenub314 is a "custodian"/admin on Wikiversity, which means that he probably still lurks around Wikiversity even if he edits infrequently. We all know Cirt's deal, and considering that he used to be a primary target of WR's, I suspect that he reads this forum to some extent. Of course, he's so completely submerged in all things Wikipedia that it's also possible that he monitors deletion processes on all Wikimedia projects in English. Regardless, I don't think that his addition of a few welcome templates is enough to get worked up over.

I tell ya, it's a bit rich to see Silver seren post about the bad offsite people considering how prolific he was (is?) at WR.

That must be why he decided not to join this forum. Now he can point out people from BADSITES without being accused of hypocrisy... or at least, that's what he'd like to think.

[lonza leggiera]

...
Um, is anyone reading this in Australia? I'd suggest printing all of this out and FedExing it to University of Canberra president Stephen Parker.

If you want, you can email it to him yourself—his email address can be obtained by searching the staff directory. Alternatively, you might (or might not) get better results contacting someone lower down in the hierarchy, such as the dean of Neill's faculty, or his head of department, and that probably depends on what exactly you want to achieve anyway. Just a few days ago the University of Canberra received some very unfavourable publicity here in Canberra over its heavy-handed dealing with journalism students who lodged a freedom-of-information request as part of a class assignment. In light of that I wouldn't currently be prepared to have anything to do with contacting the University myself. In any case it looks like the student concerned has decided to take the matter up with the University hierarchy herself.

[SB_Johnny]

Of course, it's even worse on Wikipedia, where signing up a class will attract the attention of the patrollers: link.

[Retrospect]

Now if Wikipediots knew that someone was editing to get benefit like passing a degree, they'd scream COI and ban the user and delete his article. But once the article is there and the chap fesses up and asks for a deletion, guess what? No deletion, hard cheese!