Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Assessment

Discussion of Metric Assessment Analysis and Results
I will post comments here soon. If you have thoughts or questions please put them down or contact me. ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 18:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My initial thought is that the deviance is likely because of the type of writing which Wikipedians expect out of Wikipedia articles. Unlike academics or other public policy experts, who are consistently reading and writing content in order to argue a point, Wikipedians are writing Encyclopedic content which means two standards must apply:thoroughness and neutral point of view. I am willing to bet that the largest deviance in categories which points are assigned is in these two sections. For a scholar, the expectation is less to have a thorough set of precise facts, but the more general overview that is easily conceptualized. Also, perhaps, the scholars feel less invested in the quality of the content, whereas most Wikipedians feel a certain pride in the content and feel that in some way the entire encyclopedia reflects on their own investment in the project (I know I certainly feel that way). Students I talk to in relation to the Campus Ambassador work, genuinely feel that the Wikipedia writing process makes them think about things more precisely in presentation of facts, makes them more concerned about every statement they put forward. I think this in some ways reflects the difference in teaching Wikipedia writing and a standard term paper. But I digress, non of this can be ascertained from three histograms, I would really like to see a breakdown by category of points assessed, Sadads (talk) 06:19, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadads, my reaction is the same: that the policy experts did not generate higher scores because they didn't know the material, but because they didn't have as clearly defined idea of what a good Wikipedia article is. You are correct that the greatest deviation in scores is in comprehensiveness and neutrality, of course comprehensiveness also had the greatest point range. I will try to have a more complete report (with more graphs and a description of the analysis) up on the outreach wiki by the end of the week, but it may take a little longer. I have a lot on my plate at the moment and I am learning R for the analysis as I go. ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 06:41, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Recruiting a few more Assessors and Preparing for Spring semester
hi Assessment Team Members,

Thanks for checking in here. I wanted to try to initiate some discussion about ideas for recruiting a few more assessment team members to reduce the load on all of you and get some more Wikipedians involved in this project. We have a lot more classes this semester, so I think we need more people. I am shooting for a group of about 20 Wikipedians to assess article quality (I am also revamping efforts to recruit policy experts). I will leave an individual message on 10 user talk pages within the next week. If each team member also leaves a message on at least five different user talk pages then we'll see how many we can recruit to help assess for spring semester.

I am also looking for feedback on how to make participation in assessment rewarding. Mike_Christie started an excellent thread (on the Ambassador email list) about how easy it is for ambassadors to get discouraged; I responded with some research results which I hope gave a picture of how big an impact the ambassadors and assessors have had. We all want this project to be a positive experience for everyone involved, so if you have ideas on how I/we can send good vibes to assessors or ambassadors please post them here. Spring semester is off to good start, thanks you all make my job very rewarding. ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 06:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC) I also hope that I can be of some help here, and I will try to find new assessors for the project. All the best. –p joe f (talk • contribs) 10:09, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Hello Amy, I hope you and your precious little one are well.
 * Hi Amy, it's good to hear from you again. I've enjoyed working with the project and look forward to contributing further in the future. I'll be on the lookout for qualified editors to recruit as assessors. I'll also gladly pass along any ideas I may have that might be helpful to the project.--JayJasper (talk) 15:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Great!! - ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 18:32, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I just left messages on about 12 hand picked user talk pages, so if anyone new is sniffing around and I'm not available, I hope someone on the assessment team will welcome them. BTW, during Pacific standard time 10am-5pm I am usually on IRC in the wikimedia-outreach channel. ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 03:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If you need here is the text I started with, then personalized for each person I contacted:

== the Public Policy Initiative Assessment Team wants You!== Hi USERNAME,

I saw some of your contributions on an article that falls within the scope of Wikiproject: United States Public Policy, and I was hoping you would be interested in assessing articles with the Public Policy Initiative. There is more info about assessment on the 9/13/2010 Signpost. If you're interested or just curious you can sign up on the project page or just contact me. Thanks! ~

That sounds like an interesting project. Keep me in the loop, particularly along the lines of "how I can help". --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 08:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Piotrus, will do.ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 18:21, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Question for assessment team
I always check after I've assessed an article to see how well my scores tally with others, and usually they're not far off. I'm sure the other assessors do this too. However, I noticed that I was giving a much higher score to Victoria Espinel than the other two assessors who rated it, and I thought it would be interesting to discuss the reason.

It occurred to me when I looked at that article that there probably weren't many sources on Espinel; her career is recent and she's not very prominent. A few minutes with Google convinced me that the article already included most of the obvious sources, and by and large they were good sources -- government websites. So I scored the article 7 out of 10 for comprehensiveness, and 6 out of 6 for sourcing -- and I considered going higher, to 8/10. The other assessors scored the article at 4 and 5 out of 10 for comprehensiveness, and 2/6 for sourcing. I think the comprehensiveness score is particularly interesting: the article would rate a 4/10 if there were truly other sources out there, because it does not include a lot of material that you would expect to find in a biographical article. I don't believe good sources for Espinel are going to be easy to find for the material that is missing, so does that make the article not comprehensive? I think "comprehensive" means it includes everything that is available from the sources. This is a matter of conjecture for assessors, since we're not experts in the field of public policy. Hence the wide divergence in the scores. I'd be interested to hear other opinions on this article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:51, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

99 Percent Declaration
I recently created the 99 Percent Declaration article, and now it's been nominated for deletion and rescue. I have lots of possible sources on the talk page, but I would feel more comfortable if there were other editors. Would it be appropriate for your article assessment team? Thank you. Dualus (talk) 19:29, 2 November 2011 (UTC)