Editing Eurovision Wiki:Education noticeboard (section)

== What is Wiki Ed policy re editing a draft copy of an existing article? ==

I noticed one of my [[WP:Mentorship|mentorship program]] mentees editing [[User:Mebarroso/Wetzikon-Robenhausen|this userspace draft]], a copy of the article [[Wetzikon-Robenhausen]] (created 2015; 8kb). There are now 30 edits to the userspace draft by two students in [[Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Carleton College/ARCN 101 The Human Story (Winter 2026)|their course]]. Besides the possible problems with [[WP:Edit conflicts|edit conflicts]] should someone edit the main article, there is also a possible issue with [[WP:HISTMERGE|history merger]], if they attempt to replace the live article with the draft using a [[WP:COPYPASTE|copy-paste merge]].

I don't see an issue with students trying out edits on a draft copy of an article just to see how their changes look in context, or to hone their editing skills, but it should be clear that when they are done with it, then the draft is dead. Changes to an existing article should be made to the article (or in an [[WP:Edit request]] on the Talk page). To the extent that they can copy snippets out of the draft into the article (along with proper attribution to all authors per Wikipedia's licensing requirement, if the snippet contains the work of more than one author), that's fine; that's an edit directly to the article. But imho, they should not attempt to paste the draft or large chunks of it involving many separate edits over content in the live article in a single edit where the original draft edit summary justifications would be lost. 

What is current Wiki Ed guidance on this? [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 19:46, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

:Our guidance is in [https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training/students/drafting-in-sandbox/editing-an-existing-article-v2 this training slide]. Most articles don't have any intervening edits between the sandbox move and their move back to mainspace, but they do occasionally crop up, and typically the student will reach out to their Wiki Expert for support in these cases. --[[User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed)|LiAnna (Wiki Ed)]]  ([[User talk:LiAnna (Wiki Ed)|talk]]) 23:21, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
:: Hi, LiAnna and thanks for linking that training slide. This user is violating the guidance on that slide in two major respects. The guidance calls for: 
::# "{{xt|copying a ''small portion'' of the article that you want to change}}"
::#: – but the editor copied the entire 8kb article to the sandbox;
::# "{{xt|Do not try to overhaul an entire article from the sandbox.}}"
::#: – since copying it over, two student editors have been editing the sandbox and it is now up from 8 to 22kb.
:: Even if there have been no intervening edits at the article, they should not attempt to copy the sandbox back on top of the article without first consulting their Wiki Ed Expert, who can coordinate with an admin or someone with the capacity to do a HISTMERGE. Thanks, [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:14, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
:::This is a broader comment than what Mathglot said (and I agree with Mathglot). The training slide correctly says to work with a small portion of the existing page, and not to use the sandbox to change large parts of the page. That's important advice, and I support that. But in my experience, it's still all too common for student editors to do big sandbox dumps in a single edit, leaving other editors in the position of just having to revert, because it often isn't worth the time and effort to cull the good parts of the dump from the bad. --[[User:Tryptofish|Tryptofish]] ([[User talk:Tryptofish|talk]]) 01:14, 5 March 2026 (UTC)