Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academical Village

B & C
The line between these two is rather fuzzy. I'd recommend lumping humanites, art, and culture all together and setting apart perhaps the business-related ones such as the corporate legalities, technology, and professional development stuff. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 16:02, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The basic idea between splitting off C is that these are primarily focused on writing/composition on Wikipedia as such and developing the information literacy skills useful for that, rather than using Wikipedia to explore another subject. Perhaps this could be better worded, but I do think it's a meaningful and distinctive subset of the whole.--Pharos (talk) 09:50, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe go with A) Sciences, B) Arts, and C) Wikipedia? Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 17:50, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Educational peer review: objective, criteria?
Recently Frank Schulenberg posted to a list about the new educational peer review initiative here, but upon examining tagged pages like Wikipedia_talk:United_States_Education_Program/Courses/Intro_to_Dramatic_Lit_(Leigh_Clemons) I found I had no idea what was "up for review", what the objective was, or what criteria were supposed to be used to evaluate... whatever is under review. Could someone clarify this and create a page to detail this information, linked from the template and the category? Thanks. Dcoetzee 03:13, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Piotr and I have started a guideline section here: WikiProject Academical Village. Please help to improve it!--Pharos (talk) 17:25, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Failure of ASA Wikipedia outreach
I am posting this short summary here, as I am not sure where else to do it. Feel free to suggest a better place.

Last November, the American Sociological Association started a Wikipedia outreach project. It had a two-folded goal: 1) to increase the number of classes using Wikipedia as a teaching tool and 2) to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles on sociology.

As a caretaker of WikiProject Sociology, I've been involved in exchanging some emails with ASA, and I've monitored the goings-on so far. I am sad to say that from where I stand, the initative has so far been a total and complete failure. I am not aware of a single sociology course in United States Education Program/Courses/Present (to be clear: there are some interdisciplinary ones, but not a single one that was started as a result of the ASA initiative). Second, monitoring of sociology articles through a new article feed, and quality matrix, has failed to show any increase in article creation (or assessed improvement). There was one sociology-related course (see here) that led to some constructive edits, but I couldn't find information that it is related to the initiative in any way.

Here is a repost of an email I sent to ASA on 2 December:

There seems to be no ASA-channeled activity on the WikiProject    Sociology pages I am monitoring. There was a spike of page views of   the project within a day or two of the initiative announcement:    http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sociology but    since then it has returned to the previous levels. Perhaps close to   a hundred people have viewed the WikiProject page above the average    around the spike. Since mid-November, we have had two editors join   the project, which is the average rate; only one of them was a newly    created account and that editor is focusing on non-sociology areas,    so I'd be cautious in claiming that either of them has joined the    project as a result of our initiative. Notably, there have been on   questions of any kind on the talk of our project, and even the 17-18    November spike in page visitors has not transformed into a spike to    talk page visitors (yes, there is a spike, but it is not out of    ordinary, see    http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Sociology). There was also no additional activity of any kind in   sociology-related debates listed on and linked to from the    WikiProject page. I don't think we are also seeing any spike in new   sociology articles, although it seems that there might have been a    spike around the 17-18 Nov, but it seems to have gone away since    (moving average is here:    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:AlexNewArtBot/SociologySearchResult&action=history). Looking at sociology articles created since that time, six new   accounts have been created that focus on sociology-related edits;    whether any of them is a result of our initiative is hard to say, as    none of those editors have posted any identifying information about     themselves or joined the WikiProject. I'd need to do a little bit   more data digging to be able to say if those six represent any    spike.

Similarly, the activity on the ASA portal is not very high, and it   consists    of the two introductory posts I made on their forums on the day of    the initiative launch and a single query by another user, and few    replies to some of those topics. Only two users other than me have   posted in that forum (each with a single post). Since phpBB publicly   displays info on topic views    (http://hciresearch2.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/~rfarzan/wikipedia/ASA/forum.php?userid=10),    here are the numbers: 1) thread "How to teach with Wikipedia" - 5 views 2) thread "WikiProject Sociology at Wikipedia" - 1    view (sigh) 3) thread "Adding to the list of articles that need     improving" (14 views) last (posting) activity was on Nov 19. phpBB does not give me a    breakdown of views per day, but I've noted those numbers two days    ago and they have not changed, meaning that nobody has viewed those    threads in at least the past two days. On a side note, the cmu servers hosting the initiative were very    slow today; it took me over a minute to open the threads in    question. If this is a common problem, it could be discouraging    people from using the portal.

In February I noted that the software supporting the initiative is partially broken; that included the forums no longer being accessible through the initiative link (you may view them through my links above if you are curious). I informed ASA of it, but as of now the situation hasn't changed.

As of April, the number of views of mainpage of WikiProject Sociology is stable, at 40-50 per day, same number as in the last year. Stats for talk page views suggest some increase, but nothing that is yet forming a clear pattern, and not a single editor who posted there has declared they are involved with the initiative.

New article creation seems steady (we have stats since last October ).

So why has it failed? ASA's president, Erik Olin Wright, has made some good efforts to get the word out - he wrote two or three pieces for ASA website and newsletters, the website is up, it is linked from ASA's main page, it links to WikiProject Sociology, and mention of the initative were made on ASA's Facebook page.

There are several reasons for failure I can think of:
 * the dedicated ASA website (based on the ASP initiative - ) is poorly designed. It offers little in terms of functionality, and what it does is lost through crappy GUI. I expect that a significant number of potential contributors got lost/annoyed even before reaching real Wikipedia pages. (an interesting feature that the tool was supposed to have was to highlight student contributions, but the poor GUI likely turns people off before they get to the advanced stage where they get to use this tool)
 * I am not privy to the details in which APS made its software available to ASA, and I am not familiar with how successful/used is the APS site. It may be that the ASA software has not been updated as much as APS. A quick look at the APS portal (after logging in) suggests there is at least some activity, likely related to the 1+ psychology courses in our current ambassador program.
 * Nonetheless I'd rather suggest that Wikipedia/WMF would be better developing their own educational portal/tools, rather than letting others do it for them. Despite hearing about potential of such tools, my experience with the APS/ASA software so far has been disappointing (more layers for people to learn). I recall there was recently some beta testing of a WMF developed platform for educators, but I seem to have lost a link to it.
 * I also discuss why many academics may not find this initiative worth their time and how to overcome this here. I will not develop this argument here, but I do believe that the idea I present there offers the biggest potential for attracting academic engagement to Wikipedia I've ever heard so far.

On a final note, I'd like to point to the fact that last fall I redesigned the WikiProject Sociology page to make it more friendly to the anticipated new contributors with academic background, and enabled more features (new article feed, etc.) on it. WikiProject Psychology has not been changed for APS, it has fewer features than sociology portal now. It has about 4 times as many views than sociology portal, something that has been stable since before either educational initiative has begun. Ditto for its talk page. Overall, both for ASA and APS initiatives, there seems to be no engagement between the invited contributors (academics) and the WikiProject structures. I do wonder if WikiProject pages are still to "scary" for new contributors, or is it that they see no benefit in interacting with the community?

It would be interesting to try to understand why the APS initiative is at least partially successful, whereas ASA one is so far dead. (One factor to point out is that APS a WMF booth and volunteers including myself advertising the initiative last year, whereas a similar booth for ASA was cancelled). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 21:25, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Piotr! I just want to let you know that someone from the Wikimedia Foundation will definitely be at the ASA conference this year (2012). As you know, unfortunately we had to cancel our booth attendance last year due to budget reasons, but this year we are all set to have a booth and a teaching workshop at the ASA Annual Meeting. Also, I too am curious why we've seen many more classes from APS participating in the Wikipedia Education Program, compared to ASA. I think it's too early to say that the ASA initiative isn't working. I'd be very interested in chatting with you more about identifying factors that might have led to this difference in outcome, and brainstorming what can be done to bring more ASA-affiliated classes on board. Perhaps the folks at ASA have ideas about this too! Thanks. Annie Lin (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 22:14, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment
Project members: I am working on a draft for an "English Wikipedia Board of Education". Your comments would be appreciated. The working draft is at User:Pine/drafts/ENWP Board of Education. Please comment on the talk page. Thank you! Pine(talk) 23:06, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Replacing the course pages
We're replacing the course page system currently in use for the U.S. and Canada Education programs. Please see WT:Ambassadors and place followup comments there. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:24, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania Education Meet-Up
Are you going to Wikimania? I'd like to arrange an Education Meet-Up while we are all in D.C. this year. Anyone from any country in the world is welcome to join -- Ambassadors, professors, students, program organizers, people interested in starting a program in any country worldwide, etc. We'll even provide T-shirts and some food! Here's where we need some input: when would be a good time for the meet-up, and what kinds of activities would you like to do at the meet-up?

Please fill out this Google Form if you're interested in connecting with other volunteers interested in education around the world at Wikimania! Hope to see you there! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)