Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Changes in Governance and Funding in Education

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. ✗plicit 00:44, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Changes in Governance and Funding in Education

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This is an inscrutable two-paragraph essay on an unclear topic, not an article. Previously PROD-deleted and REFUND-ed. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 21:51, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This appears to be a student project that should never have been brought into article space. It's more like an errant fragment of a term paper than anything that could become an encyclopedia article. The title is too broad and vague to give a sense of what the intended topic might be ("changes" since when?). XOR'easter (talk) 23:46, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit irked that the how-to editing guide from the Wiki Education Foundation advises, Once you have a few well-cited sentences in your sandbox, you can create a new article, or bring your work over to an existing article to improve it. No, dang it, that's not enough for an article, and students shouldn't be told to move their own drafts into article space. Those drafts are just not going to be good, which means that either we waste our limited time as volunteers cleaning it up, or it lingers around as forgotten cruft. I would have guessed that the official advice would be, "Your draft is ready to become an article when your instructor approves." Imagine my surprise when I found that the handout given to those instructors was contributing to the problem instead. XOR'easter (talk) 14:56, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Beyond that, looking at the talk page for the "Wikipedia Expert" I mention below, it's filled with requests for help. More often than otherwise, Ian (Wiki Ed) advises people to go somewhere else for help: their professor, their local librarian, their "writing center," the WP Graphics Lab, the education noticeboard, AfC, RfD ... Ravenswing 19:57, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ravenswing: Only when it's warranted (the person I send to AFC has not been a student since 2017, and has never taken any of the rather extensive feedback I've given them into account). I sent someone to the graphics lab page because I can't tell someone how to save an image as an SVG without knowing what software they're using or their level of expertise. And the RFD advice was an instructor who wants to learn more and was asking if that was the correct page. (My talk page is also one of three venues where I answer student questions. Sorry if I'm coming across overly defensive, but you are mischaracterising what I do.) Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:50, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@XOR'easter: Yeah, that needs to change (that's a relic from before my time). Not that we're really using that handout any more - the students are supposed to go through a checklist (included on p. 15 of that handout) and use a scaffolding system (visible here to develop their work. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:28, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Shite student essays in mainspace due to university courses are nothing new, but the term is over and it has no purpose in mainspace. Hemiauchenia (talk)
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:13, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:16, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - personal essay that has no place on a general encyclopaedia. If, by any chance, this is kept, then it should be moved to a title that informs us that it's solely about education in Massachusetts as the current title doesn't establish this. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:18, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: The sorry fact that this was actually restored at WP:REFUND (with the threadbare rationale of "I still need the wiki entry for a course I am taking" ... and naturally, eight months later, we haven't seen the editor since) suggests that the REFUND process is deeply flawed. What is even more flawed, perhaps, is the premise that this instructor and this course may be requiring students otherwise unfamiliar with Wikipedia to create mainspace articles, a process that without serious oversight is almost guaranteed to result in wasting the time of other editors at PROD, CSD or XfD. (And, looking at the user page for the "Wikipedia Expert" for this course, it seems they do just that: "I am the Senior Wikipedia Expert for Wiki Education, a nonprofit that supports the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada, where educators assign their students to edit Wikipedia. We develop resources, consult on assignment design best practices, monitor and measure student contributions, and hope to bridge the gap between traditional educational institutions and Wikipedia.") Ravenswing 10:54, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.