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Best Practices for Teaching Students to Write Effective Lead Sections

Hello everyone,

I am an instructor guiding students in composing medical articles for Wikipedia. Currently, I am focused on updating our guidelines and have several questions that I hope you can help with. My questions here are generic questions concerning the lead section.

In our academic setting, we emphasize the importance of supporting claims with citations, and our grading reflects this by marking down submissions that lack adequate citations. However, the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section suggests that while the lead should be well-sourced, citations are commonly found in the body of the article rather than the lead.

Q1: Are we being too stringent expecting our students to include citations in the lead section since this is not an expectation from Wikipedia? Is it a major problem if they do provide citations throughout the lead? What justification can we provide for not including citations in this section?

My second question is on structuring. We currently teach our students that the lead section should not only summarise the main content but also reflect the order of that content as presented in the body of the article. We use Wikipedia's "featured articles" as exemplars and models for this. However, we recognise that Wikipedia articles are subject to ongoing edits and updates that may shift the content and structure over time. This dynamic nature can lead to discrepancies between the lead and the body of an article, especially if the lead does not consistently mirror updates made to the article's main content.

Given this:

Q1: Are we guiding students correctly on the arrangement and order of information in the lead?

Q2: When significant changes are made to the body of an article, is it a common or recommended practice to revise the lead accordingly to ensure it remains an accurate and concise summary of the article and mirrors the order of the content?

Thank you in advance for your advice and suggestions! G.J.ThomThom (talk) 01:25, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@G.J.ThomThom I personally enjoy the essay Wikipedia:How to create and manage a good lead section, I highly suggest you take a look at it as it covers a lot of these smaller details. In general if content is sourced in the body of the article it does not need to be cited in the lead. The exeption to this is controversial material. However quite a few medical articles will have citations in the lead because pretty much anything in the feild of medicine can be considered controverial in a way. As far as order I do typically follow the order of the body of the article but I don't think that is a strict rule. If siginificant changes are made to the body the lead should reflect that as well. IntentionallyDense (talk) 02:15, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Firstly, thanks for the link! We've had disagreements as teachers about what we mark down re citations. We understand that citations are required if the points being made are controversial but alas it's not always easy to identify if the content is controversial. So far we have told them, if in doubt, cite! Secondly, I take on board your suggestion regarding stubs. This is something I will bring to the team G.J.ThomThom (talk) 02:26, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I would generally agree that with medical content it's better to cite than not to cite. IntentionallyDense (talk) 02:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

First, your course on medical topics is relevant to two boards, this one, and wP:MEDRS, but given that most of your questions are about citations, WP:MEDRS is the governing principle here and this discussion would have been much better placed at WT:MEDRS, and not here, in order to get definitive answers to your citation questions. I urge you to move it there (see {{Discussion moved to}}; if you agree to move it but need technical assistance to do so, just ask).

Briefly:

• Too stringent? – maybe, but they don't hurt, and no one will complain unless you pile up five at a time. There is no guideline saying you cannot place citations in the lead, so your are not violating anything by doing so.
• Order: the lead need not follow the same order as the body, though often it does. Editing order is: body first, lead second (because it is a summary of the most important points of the body).
• Discrepancies: Yes, revise the lead after altering the body if the changes there significantly alter the most important points of the body. A great many body edits will not be in this category, and require no changes to the lead. A typical newbie mistake is to head straight for the lead and start altering it (or worse, the lead sentence, with no consideration for the body. I have often thought it would be useful to programmatically prohibit lead changes from new users, but there is no general support for that view that I am aware of, though it would save many experienced editors lots of time undoing edits to the lead by new users.

Think about moving this. Mathglot (talk) 05:36, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot Happy to move this and yes to technical assistance please G.J.ThomThom (talk) 12:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine § Best Practices for Teaching Students to Write Effective Lead Sections

Please add your comments and feedback there, not here (unless specifically relevant to ENB and not WP:MED). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:45, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Women's Rights Pioneers Monument

I think the recent edit history on Women's Rights Pioneers Monument might be some kind of education project. Many of the editors also edited Wikipedia:Sandbox in the same one-hour period precisely one week ago. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:49, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

If you find out what class they are from, let me know! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:45, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe it's the same group of students that have been editing The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives for an English class, though I'm not sure from which school. One left me the most recent message on my talk page. Mellamelina (talk) 20:25, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Are there translation projects?

I have been perusing WP:Translation, which contains the section § Classroom collaborations, and which links Wikipedia:Student assignments (without mentioning Wiki Ed) as a good way to set up a classroom translation project. Are there translation projects extant among Wiki Ed classes, and have there been in the past? If so, can you provide a few links? Mathglot (talk) 00:24, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mathglot, we do support a couple of them each term, but it's not very popular, unfortunately. I wish there were more translation classes! Here's one that translated to Portuguese from the spring, and here's an example from this fall of a small med school elective that focused on Spanish translation. We also offer a training module specifically for instructors on designing a translation assignment. Hope this helps! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:49, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it does, thank you! If you (or anyone) knows of other translation projects, past, present (or future), please do link them here. In the meantime, I was planning on adding a link to Wiki Ed from the WP:Translation page which landing page do you think it should link to? Thanks again, Mathglot (talk) 01:59, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Thanks! Probably teach.wikiedu.org would be the best, but you can also link to m:Wiki Education Foundation if you want to keep it on-wiki. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:56, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

LiAnna, I've updated section WP:Translation § Classroom collaborations, please have a look. I felt I had to mention the US/Canada-only coverage and the into-English-only translation direction if only to forestall pointless inquiries. (Am I correct about that? Do you have any translation projects going into French, say, in Quebec, or into Spanish in the US, and would you accept such a Wiki Ed class project if it were proposed in an inquiry?)

Inevitably, some viewers are going to have questions about class projects elsewhere, or translations into other languages, and I would like to add a third paragraph to the section about that, but I don't know what to say about it. I'm sure you've dealt with those questions a thousand times before; do you think you could edit that section directly and address those questions, or else point me to where I can find what to say about those two questions? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:19, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Looks great! Thanks! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:47, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Can we say something about those two issues? Mathglot (talk) 19:12, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

In terms of non-U.S. and Canada, I don't have a particularly good answer; maybe reach out to your local Wikimedia affiliate (m:Wikimedia movement affiliates)? I know most of the people doing education work globally so I usually individually connect people to someone who can help in their region, but that's not an easy "general guidance" answer. For non-English in the U.S. and Canada, they should still reach out to us and we'll try to guide them to our best practices. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Multiple students publishing a lot of redundant, sometimes essay-style, content with weak MEDRS sourcing at pregnancy

It looks like students in this course are publishing their individual responses to (seemingly) the same writing prompt at pregnancy#exercise, resulting in basically quadruplicated content of wildly varying quality. The students should also be instructed not to add descriptions of primary research studies as a general rule (and yes I realize it's a little more nuanced for experienced MEDRS editors). JoelleJay (talk) 01:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

JoelleJay I've emailed the instructor and asked them to intervene with these students. Thanks for bringing it up. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:33, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! JoelleJay (talk) 01:13, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Crosspost from WP:AN: possible group of West African student editors

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#New seemingly-related group of good-faith but deleterious West African copyeditors. Remsense ‥ 论 06:33, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Group accounts created for Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/North Carolina State University/Engineering in the 21st Century - Section 002 (Fall 2024)

@Ian (Wiki Ed) and Helaine (Wiki Ed):

I was looking around at Offshore wind power in the United States and noticed that it appeared to have been edited by a classroom group account. Wikipedia's username policy prohibits the creation accounts with names that imply shared use, and our sockpuppetry policy prohibits the sharing of any account by multiple people. Looking more broadly at the course, the following usernames appear to be accounts in clear violation of the aforementioned policy:

• Group 6 E102 2024 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Group12e102 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Group4E102 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• E102RealGroup11 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• E102Group7 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• E102Group3 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

I am a bit loath to block these accounts right before the course deadline of 3 December, so I won't at this moment. That being said, any administrator who encounters these accounts in the wild might block them on sight.

It's really common for professors to assign group work, and small group work has pedagogical value (as you recognize). But I do think that we might have a bit of a gap in training materials; the student policies training doesn't mention anything about shared accounts/username policy, and I don't really see this sort of thing explicitly highlighted in the new instructor orientation either (though, in both cases, it's possible I've missed something).

Do either of these trainings explicitly inform students or professors that they should not create accounts that are shared between multiple individuals? And, if not, would you be willing to add a module to them explaining this? I'd be happy to draft up a short paragraph for you if you'd like to create a module.

— Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:15, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

As a note, the companion section also has a similar issue, with accounts like E102Group5, E102GROUP6, E102group17, E102Group11, Raiuigroup20, 2024E102Group19, E102team1, and Team12E102F. I don't think this changes much substantially other than identifying that it isn't just one professor who has had this issue, but I'll include it for completeness's sake. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:24, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping @Red-tailed hawk. The message at sign-up for students says:

Hello! You’ve been invited to join [course title]. To join, you need to log in with a Wikipedia account. If you don’t have a Wikipedia account yet, sign up for one now. Your username can be as anonymous — or as personally identifying — as you wish. (Shared accounts are not allowed.)

I'm pretty sure there are other places where we tell students to be more private in their username selection, and tell instructors that shared accounts aren't allowed. But I'd have to talk to Helaine and Sage to figure out where specifically that is.

As far as the accounts go, it doesn't look like anyone in this course or the other one has edited in the last two weeks, so I'm hoping they are done. That said, there is often someone who decides they want to try to do the assignment at the last possible moment, but a block that forced them to get in touch with me and figure out what the cause it might not be a bad idea.

I was going to say it's better to wait, but I think I'll block these accounts now. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the community has already stated at the information page that shared accounts should not be used; see WP:STUDENTUSER. Of course, this isn't the same thing as WikiEd training materials. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Yet another class creating promotional articles

Alicia Bjarnason was created by students from Earth 209 and is a hopelessly promotional article (though they have toned it down slightly since I tagged it, after initially edit-warring to remove the tag). I looked through other edits from the class and the same problem happened at Wendy Todd, Judi Wakhungu (though to a lesser extent), Karen Hudson-Edwards, Ethel Shakespear, and Karen Hudson-Edwards -- pretty much every article the class was involved with. This seems to be a systemic problem with student projects (almost every class project I've run across has had at least some students adding promo/puffery), and there's a clear need for much better training and/or proactive monitoring to make sure student editors are following WP:NOTPROMO and WP:NPOV -- I know I've reported several very similar problems here, and there are others that I haven't bothered to report. :Jay8g [V•T•E] 19:00, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if we should provide clearer options to editors dealing with student assignments. It's very frequent that student editors come onwiki, (usually unknowingly) go against a policy or guideline, and end up with a dispute.

Currently, "Communicating with Others on Wikipedia" assumes that editors will give specific feedback to the student on what to change.[1] However, that's more difficult for an article like Alicia Bjarnason where the issues aren't simply "change x to y", or when multiple students in a course have an issue with promotional phrasing.

The status quo appears to be "write something to Wiki Ed on the Education Noticeboard and hope they discuss it with the instructor", but is there a better way? Perhaps editors should have a more structured way to give feedback on courses akin to course evaluations. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:30, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

@Chess: It's a lot to ask of editors. I suppose it might not hurt to create "tips for responding to student editors", but some people would definitely respond with "I'm not here to be your free TA" (and they wouldn't be wrong).

The onus on us to do a better job in terms of building better systems and guardrails. We are experimenting, there are a lot of changes I'd love to try if I had more time, but I'm always interested in other ideas. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:10, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

This follows quite closely from what Ian just said, but WP:NOTTA does contain advice of this sort. But for the more specific issue of evaluating courses, that strikes me as something potentially useful. For now, it would seem like the main option is for editors, and not just limited to WikiEd people, to leave comments on the instructor's talk page. Of course, the instructor might respond with something like "it's not my professional responsibility to care what some random person on Wikipedia thinks", but once they have decided to make use of us as a teaching tool for their class, that makes them responsible to our policies, whether they like it or not – and that leads back to this noticeboard, if not ANI. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:38, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

@Ian (Wiki Ed): It's beneficial to distinguish between informal and formal advice. Informal advice is me suggesting a course should teach students about promotional language or venting to you about how a course is being run. Formal advice is me setting specific expectations because I'm unhappy with a course's impact on-wiki. When I give informal advice, I might want Wiki Education to present that feedback in a non-confrontational way. When I give formal advice, I'm looking for clear commitments that certain behaviour won't happen again.

I would give informal advice to other editors on their user talk pages and give formal advice at ANI. The education noticeboard tries to deal with informal and formal advice in one place and I don't think that's working. The structure of a noticeboard incentivizes formal advice, but privately bringing up concerns to the professor is a response one would take for informal advice. This mismatch might be why editors are feeling unheard. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 08:41, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

@Jay8g: I wouldn't say it's a systemic problems with student work (it's a small portion of the ~4,000 articles edited this term) but yes, there's too much promotional language here. Creating bios is hard for new editors because they are writing about people they feel are cool or interesting (just look at the torrent of stuff on AFC or Cat:CSD). We depend on our training and reminders from instructors to counter this urge. And after you've done it for many years like this professor has, sometimes a reminder is needed. I will email the professor today. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:05, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Students asking at RSN as part of an assignment

There appears to be a student assignment to discuss the reliability of a Korean-language source at WP:Reliable Sources/Noticeboard. An example of such a thread is Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Is 'hankookilbo(한국일보)' a reliable_press? and has some discussion about the course itself. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:01, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Piotr has been running assignments on Wikipedia longer than Wiki Education has existed, probably longer than this noticeboard has. I'd agree with what you said there, except that I think "we" (the predecessors of Wiki Education) learned a lot about the Wikipedia assignment from Piotr, back in the old days. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:58, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Having some trouble with a class

Hello,

I initially posted this to User talk:Deepfriedokra, who recommended that I come here. I am having some issues with students in this UMich class adding semi-sourced edits to LGBTQ+ media and Media portrayal of LGBTQ people and wanted to know if there was some way to escalate the situation if any more disruptive material is added to other articles.

I checked some more diffs of people in the class, and they are better than nothing, but still add a lot of biased, semi-cited material to the pages. Example diffs from other articles, found from Students -> random student -> article -> history:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foster_care&diff=1261524664&oldid=1255402058
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transgender_pregnancy&diff=1261160646&oldid=1248453970

JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 07:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

There's also a lot of unsourced editing going on here, and - sorry to be the bearer of bad news, @Mossbeach -- some of this gives off chatGPT vibes. -- asilvering (talk) 12:00, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks JuxtaposedJacob, Looks like the main problems are two students - Zoecosgrove and Michigan2020. If the class wasn't finished yesterday I'd definitely ask them to stop editing. Beyond that there are some WP:MEDRS issues that I need to follow up on. I'll get in touch with the instructor.

I agree that this edit feels like AI. I wish they were either drafting on-wiki or editing live, it's this kind of in-between stuff that always makes me fear the worst. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:49, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Bluegrass music in Europe (wikiedu.org course)

Hi folks,

Linked course: Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Roots Music History I

Article: Bluegrass music in Europe

One of the article authors came into the IRC Live Help chat asking how this article could be published - they'd already (malformed) moved it from Sandbox to Mainspace, but I wasn't sure it quite met our standards (I wouldn't have accepted it through AfC) and so I draftified it and left a message on the author's Talk page.

The author unfortunately moved it back to mainspace without explanation soon after and the article has now been tagged with the essay-like maintenance template (one of my original concerns).

After realising it was made via WikiEdu, I don't really want to re-draftify it. Having never worked with edu programmes before, I'm not wholly sure what to do. Maybe it only needs a little cleanup and can stay in mainspace, but...

Pinging @Average Archtop Enjoyer (Based) (the author) and @TechnoSquirrel69 who tagged it. qcne (talk) 09:20, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Another editor in the same class is responsible for Special:Diff/1262200485, which I've reverted. Pinging @Helaine (Wiki Ed) and @Sage (Wiki Ed), looks like this class needs some help. -- asilvering (talk) 11:30, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Qcne and @Asilvering. I've contacted the instructor to loop him in on those problems and offer help. If the student doesn't clean up the 'bluegrass in Europe' article soon, I'll plan to copyedit it next week; I think there's enough of a core to keep as an article, if the writing problems are fixed. Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:42, 10 December 2024 (UTC)