Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/Elections/Candidates/May 2011

Thanks to everyone who voted and everyone who ran! It looks like we have the new Wikipedia Ambassador Steering Committee. We'll try to schedule some meetings where members of the outgoing and incoming committees can talk together and start moving forward.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:14, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

User:Donald Albury
My name in real life is Donald Albury, and I am registered as. I have been an Online Ambassador since January of this year, so I am seeking a position on the Steering Committee as an Online Ambassador. I have long been concerned with how to improve the reliability of Wikipedia, and was aware of the perceived decline in new editor retention, and this project looked like an opportunity to contribute to addressing both problems. I have been a registered editor in the English Wikipedia for a little over 5 1/2 years. I have tried my hand at a number of things, but like adding content, particularly on historical and prehistorical (archaeological) subjects, the most. I have been an administrator for almost 4 1/2 years, but I don't use the tools a lot (see ). I hope that my experience in Wikipedia would be useful to the Project and to the Steering Committee. -- Donald Albury 22:19, 6 April 2011 (UTC) - Modified in line with Alex Stinson's comments on the mailing list about relatively neglected areas in Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury 12:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Votes

 * Support
 * Pharos (talk) 17:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Jan eissfeldt (talk) 19:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Donald is a trusted and experienced editor who has brought a lot of enthusiasm to the Online Ambassador role this term. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadads (talk) 17:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rock drum Ba-dumCrash 16:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose

User:Sadads
Hi my name is Alex Stinson, and I have been on Wikipedia for about 5 years under the username and have been editing very consistently for about 2-1/2 - 3 years. My major contributions have been in the Novels topic area. However, increasingly in the past year and a half, I have found that I am most interested in academic and cultural institution outreach. In that role, I have helped organize meetups with Wikimedia DC, the initial Smithinsonian collaboration events, and as an intern at the United States Army Center of Military History I helped integrate their public domain content into Wikipedia. Last summer, I was part of the first batch of Campus Ambassadors and an Online Ambassador since the inception of the program. I was only Campus Ambassador trained without a class in mind, and when I arrived back at JMU in Fall 2010, I recruited one professor for a Fall 2010 class and 2 professors for Spring 2011, and 4 additional Campus Ambassadors. In that role, I also gave several talks on the program. I was asked to be part of the first Steering Committee, and have participated with the committee since then. Additionally, while studying abroad in Oxford this spring, I am helping Wikimedia UK to create an ambassador program, or at least a corps groups to continue the creation of a successful Ambassadors UK. If elected, I would like to be a member of the 6 month group of Steering committee members, Sadads (talk) 22:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Votes

 * Support
 * Pharos (talk) 17:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Jan eissfeldt (talk) 19:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Donald Albury 12:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadads has been an amazing contributor to the ambassador program so far, as a steering committee member, online and campus ambassador, organizer of student clubs, and has even helped lay the groundwork for staring up the program in the UK. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Bejinhan  talks   02:56, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rock drum Ba-dumCrash 16:12, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose

User:Piotrus
I am Piotr Konieczny, and a lot of what I do is visible on User:Piotrus. I've been involved with WP:SUP for years, teaching several courses (see User:Piotrus/Teaching), and that lead to my involvement with the Ambassador program. I published a paper on teaching with Wikipedia back in 2007, and continued to develop wiki educational tools since (School and university projects/Piotrus course intro boilerplate, ). I will be teaching a course on Wikipedia in May-June, On the Steering Committee I'd share my experiences and press for 1) expansion of the program outside USPP 2) continuation of the WMF-side of the program (by which I mean that several salaried WMF staff members should keep their funding). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 01:03, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Votes

 * Support
 * Pharos (talk) 17:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Jan eissfeldt (talk) 19:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC) expert on operative questions
 * Donald Albury 12:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Piotrus is an excellent Online Ambassador, and his extensive experience with his own Wikipedia classroom assignments will be a valuable addition to the committee. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadads (talk) 17:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rock drum Ba-dumCrash 16:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose

User:Jan eissfeldt
Well, I'm Jan and what I do here and around can be investigated here, or at least the ambassador program related part of it (more or less fully documented since 2009.2). Since 2008 (wiwiwiki I), I performed several program-related roles, including Campus & Online ambassador, in different European national education systems (especially D-A-CH), the USA and elsewhere (via SUP), wrote a paper about the basic model (Eißfeldt/Sauer, 2011; will be published mid 2011), was substantially involved in the the basic project design of PPI and participated actively on a "if-needed" basis while monitoring the progress. Now, we are playing along with the structure globally and expanding in new thematic and geographic areas. I'm willing to help to ensure that, if desired.

Additional point: Setting up this committee is vital for the next step of the process and I strongly encourage every volunteer, who participated strongly & in practice in PPI (you!), to run for a seat. The areas ahead aren't as unknown as you might think (Piotr already indicated that) and serving on a Wikimedia committee isn't that unpleasant (as I can assure you, based on my experience). Thus, please give it a try, best regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 15:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Votes

 * Support
 * Pharos (talk) 17:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Donald Albury 12:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Jan is one of the pioneers of systematically supporting and organizing Wikipedia classroom assignments, and has been contributing as an adviser to the PPI team since this project started. He'll make a great member of the committee.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadads (talk) 17:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rock drum Ba-dumCrash 16:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose

User:Pharos
My human name is Richard Knipel, and I have been on Wikipedia for about 6 years under the username. I have been an organizer of the Wikimedia NYC chapter and numerous local academic/cultural outreach events, and also a member of the GLAM Ambassadors Steering Committee, and I hope to act as a bridge between these two complementary efforts. I have started as Campus Ambassador to NYU this Spring (completed class results), and hope to fill a Campus Ambassador slot on the committee.--Pharos (talk) 02:22, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Votes

 * Support
 * Jan eissfeldt (talk) 19:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC) very capable wikimedian
 * Donald Albury 12:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Pharos has been an excellent Campus Ambassador, and his extensive off-line Wikimedia organizational skills will be a big asset. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadads (talk) 17:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Bejinhan  talks   02:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rock drum Ba-dumCrash 16:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose

User:Epistemophiliac
As some of you might know, my real name is Christopher Cheney and I am a MBA Student (focus Supply Chain Management & International Business) at Michigan State University. For this past semester I have been a Campus Ambassador helping with both undergraduate and graduate classes. Hence I would like to be nominated for a Campus Ambassador spot - if elected, it will be my objective to focus on two highly intertwined aspects of the program: User Retention, Recognition of Efforts done by students in the program.

To do this I want to look into the possibility of creating a formal journal to expand recognition beyond the somewhat strict DYK/FA process. This journal would be setup like an Academic Peer-reviewed Journal - realistically published as a PDF by the Wikimedia Foundation to being with - and would include the "best" improved/new articles created that past semester. This journal would serve three primary objectives: allowing students to "add a line to their resumes", providing "advertising" for grants and material to attract new professors to the project.
 * Note this is just a rough idea, so the below numbers/titles are a rough draft so please don't bite on that aspect ;-) and the idea itself would require research/community input before moving forward, but to avoid a few (potentially) common questions about the idea
 * "Best" articles would be determined by a vote of all those involved in the program at large, and to remain competitive (and increase quality) would be limited to a maximum of ~1 article per 2 classes involved in the project
 * Hopefully this would be "published" two or three times per year (Say around Jan 15, May 15 & Sept 15 - with Jan/May being the main issues - Sept catching any summer classes and perhaps an honorable mention from those articles that did not make it to the Jan/May editions)
 * Any grant giving organization (to prevent abuse say min donation of $100,000?) would have the option to write a forward/their thoughts about the project
 * The same option would be given to a professor or two, to include a forward/article about their experience with the project
 * Publishing credit would need to include the Wikipedia at large community, but would also give a "Lead Contributor" credit to those students (and their online mentor?) for resume purposes.
 * "Subscriber" list would be anyone who wants to receive a copy (since the cost of sending additional PDFs/Article Link(s) is effectively zero) but initially would include professors/ambassadors/students given "Lead Contributor" credit

Outside of this main project, I hope to bring a slightly less traditional background to the committee (as my only real knowledge of USPP is because of this project/watching the news) and bring some of my knowledge as an MBA to help do analysis on program structure/job requirement balancing (ie: looking into the Region Six debate for Regional Ambassadors) Epistemophiliac (talk) 03:13, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Votes

 * Support
 * Pharos (talk) 17:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Jan eissfeldt (talk) 19:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Donald Albury 12:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Christopher is an enthusiastic and capable Campus Ambassador, and I look forward to seeing what his energy and ideas can do for the program. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadads (talk) 17:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I really like the journal idea --In actu (Guerillero) &#124; My Talk  15:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rock drum Ba-dumCrash 16:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose