Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/Opinion essay


 * The elephant in the room is that for some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War — and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge — get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment. We need to solve that problem before bringing in lots of academics. Otherwise academics who join the project will leave in frustration, and word will get around that contributing to Wikipedia is nothing but an exercise in futility. If that happens we'll be worse off than before. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:12, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's actually the problem you're making it out to be. The expert input into Hoxne hoard or Human papillomavirus, for instance, hasn't been removed by a mob of ill-informed editors. On the whole on Wikipedia, good contributions drive out bad. The same is true of good contributions from academics, so long as the academics are aware that the social norms of Wikipedia are different from those of academia (Note that academia isn't exactly a stranger to long-running flamewars, but theirs tend to be conducted at conferences and in learned journals!). The main challenge is getting busy academics to understand that contributing to Wikipedia extends their own personal reach and impact. The Land (talk) 19:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * On Hoxne hoard, this was a carefully engineered collaboration, so may not be typical. Rich Farmbrough, 20:46, 13 December 2011 (UTC).


 * I'm rather a fan of this piece. One of the biggest problems with the WMF is that they're apparently all dreamers. They charge ahead pushing noble ideas without adequately assessing the impact or laying out infrastructure ahead of time. Whatever else is accomplished by these noble charges, a great number of completely avoidable problems could have been... well... avoided, if the WMF were only able to start small and stay small until all the kinks were worked out. When we're talking millions of dollars and hundreds of users being thrown at something, you'd think that troubleshooting would take place well ahead of time. If they did so, they certainly did a piss poor job of doing so. We need to put a cap on the programs: they're not allowed to get bigger until Wikipedia can support them. As for the India outreach program, well some programs just need to be cut entirely.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  19:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is entirely fair to the WMF; the PPI was their attempt to lay out infrastructure, and they did a pretty good job with it. The USEP is not a major problem yet, though it is creaking a little; my argument is that we're heading in the wrong direction, not that the program is already broken.  I agree in principle that the right approach is small successes followed by gradual scaling, so perhaps the issue here is that the scaling is too rapid. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 20:02, 13 December 2011 (UTC)


 * We do desperately need experts, not so much because of specific deep knowledge, but because they understand how the balance of items at what is a basic level in their field should go - what is due weight, what is fringe but interesting, what is interesting but irrelevant, what has been debunked.
 * It behooves us though not to forget the flip side of this equation - academics are subject to the same foibles as other Wikipedians and people in general. When things get a little deeper there are turf wars in many  academic fields, discussions, sometimes friendly, sometimes bitter, run in the correspondence pages of learned journals for months, friends cite friends, peer review is not as "pure" as we would like, this is without systemic problems like publication bias.   We recently had fallacious figures from an academic reprinted in Signpost, so  this is not just a hypothetical.
 * These days, though, I don't think there is the same problem with academics having references demanded, they see how extensive the referencing on Wikipedia tries to be, and are happy to provide references. And often there are "semi-experts" or "lay experts" who will help with that. There is a general move too far in demanding references, I would agree, mostly due to an out of context quote being bandied around.
 * Rich Farmbrough, 20:44, 13 December 2011 (UTC).


 * Obviously recruiting experts is important, but academic experts make their names by disagreeing with one another, and I doubt Wikipedia is geared up to deal with that. I think Mike has missed one important point though, which is that if properly monitored students can learn the importance of sourcing and referencing. I recall during my first week as an undergraduate being dragged around the library and having drummed into me the importance of reliable sourcing. It may be that the failed projects have focused on the wrong things. There's no reason to believe, for instance, that a student in India, Pakistan, or anywhere else has any special knowledge of any social sciences topic, but they ought to be able to learn from trying to write an article on one. Malleus Fatuorum 21:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)


 * There is another way of getting more academics involved. By suggesting that they write articles/papers on the subject of their choice, get it peer reviewed by some colleagues, and put it up on a website, preferably with a CC by (something) license. Then, they can post a link in the relevant article, or it's talk page. The kick in it for the academic would be that the academics would have an easy outlet for their views, and would get credited for it. We would have more material and sources. They may be allowed to write new articles from their own work, with the caveat that they should not insist on keeping the WP version to their liking.117.198.51.14 (talk) 00:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Not really practical under the current system of academic funding/prestige. Which journal a paper is published in is important, and the journals end up with the copyright on the paper. Gerardw (talk) 21:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I half-agree - or maybe a bit more than half - with "USEP should change its focus in two ways: from growth to quality, and from students to academics". For the first sub-point, I totally agree; I made the analogy in Boston, when Sue demonstrated the contributions of the PPP with a large stack of photocopying paper - without wishing to disparage the tremendous work done, I felt that the whole idea of merely counting added-text was wrong-wrong-wrong, and we may as well have demonstrated it with a palette-full of toilet paper; we must get away from that extended version of "editcountitis". I disagree that "the biggest return on investment we can get here is the academics, not the students"; the students of today are the academics of tomorrow, and any work we can to do make them feel positive about Wikipedia is an investment in the future; academia in 20 years time will certainly use online resources in a very different way, and right now is the opportunity to lay good foundations regarding Wikipedia. However, I do think that Wiki-in-Edu is best driven from the top down; if the lecturers and the other 'wikipedia trainers' (online Ambs, etc) have a solid knowledge of fundamental Wikipedia ethics, and indeed an enthusiasm for the core values, then that filters down to the class-work; indeed, I think that was the major reason for the failings with the India programme - the "drive from the top" was inadequate. I also fear that WMF is taking too much of a back-seat; as the programmes expand, "we" (the projects and/or WMF) need to provide the tools and support to energize the key programme participants; it seems that the programme leaders want the programme to be self-perpetuating, and whilst it is admirable to want academia to go forth and create their own programmes, it needs careful guidance, to keep things on track. It's a tremendous opportunity for the long-term future; it's a very worthy investment, but we cannot expect it to grow without sowing seeds.  Chzz  ► 03:02, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a good article - thanks for writing it Mike. However, I disagree with your view that "all our resources" should be directed away from students and towards academics. While I agree that class-based editing is generally not worth the effort (and when it goes wrong can cause a lot of upset and wasted effort for the poor students and their lecturer), given that a high proportion of our most active editors are university students, I suspect it's an OK way to bolster their numbers. Surely some resources should continue to be directed towards peer to peer recruitment and support of student editors? Nick-D (talk) 10:29, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * We should support the students the best way we can, but right now the USEP is trying to expand as quickly as it can, and I don't think that's going to lead to good support for students or academics. My argument is that if we give concentrated high-quality support to those academics who are willing to learn about Wikipedia, we will be expanding the pool of support for students, which in turn will enable us to support more classes since those academics will need less from Wikipedians. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 11:32, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I also agree this is a good article and important subject. However, as both a professor and Wikipedian, I must confess I am mildly skeptical about the participation of my fellow academics in Wikipedia, especially those who aren't particularly interested in becoming Wikipedians in the cultural sense, i.e. understand the new project they're participating in and its values (some of the mathematics-professor Wikipedians are excellent in that regard). But as for more specific problems. One, I've found academics to be extremely bad at restraining themselves from self-promotion. More edits by professors than you'd think are to things as absurd as an article about themselves, or if not themselves, then their research group, institution, results bearing their name, etc. Two, I've found them often a bad judge of "neutrality", especially in areas they are too close to; as in politics, someone themselves engaged in a dispute is not the best person to write about it. And, many academics are engaged in acrimonious debates within their field, or between their field and others, and they can have very different views of what "neutral" is. Of course, some of these problems can be overcome or mitigated; when I try to recruit new Wikipedia editors from academia, I usually suggest they start with articles broadly in their area but not their specific area, so e.g. if you're a theoretical computer scientist, start with an article on an important theoretical-CS result that is not one you personally are strongly invested in, and try to cite as sources papers written by people who are not you. Medium-low luck so far. --Delirium (talk) 13:23, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * These are all good points, but Wikipedia has fairly strong selection mechanisms that I think will filter out some of these problems automatically -- that is, an academic who insists on self-promotion is eventually likely to get frustrated with the opposition from other editors (not specifically from ambassadors) and will leave. That's the right outcome in that case.  If it turns out that academics who are willing to try editing Wikipedia and capable of doing it well are very rare, then my proposed approach is no more efficient at using ambassador resources than the existing approach.  However, I know enough academics who do edit Wikipedia well to think that there's no need to be too pessimistic on that score. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library)
 * That seems reasonable. I'm somewhat wary of these initiatives because I worry they sometimes take on a tone of: let's figure out how to fix Wikipedia culture so it's more like academic culture, when I think Wikipedia culture has the better side of the argument in some (though not all) cases. :-) But it doesn't seem like that's what's happening in this case, so I agree more outreach to find the professors who would be good editors is good. --Delirium (talk) 13:01, 15 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Mike, thanks for your thoughtful essay on Wikipedia and academia. I did want to correct one misconception here as the person running the WMF's U.S. Education Program. We absolutely agree that the USEP should shift its concern from quantity to quality. Since I started, I've been working on how to support our students better next term. One of the USEP's major goals for next semester is to improve our support and resources for students, professors, the community, etc. For this reason, we've aimed to maintain our current number of classes that are a part of the program (in other words: not grow!) so we can focus on deepening our support structures.


 * One of the ways we are trying to prevent some of these problems is by altering our training materials. After some great feedback on the USEP talk page, we are creating a professor orientation that will expose them upfront to some of the challenges students are facing in adapting traditional assignments to a Wikipedia assignment. Another aim of this orientation is to encourage professors to make edits themselves, as it will give them a better foundation in Wikipedia-editing.


 * I'm also intrigued by the idea of focusing on professors editing rather than students, but as others have mentioned here, getting that to work has been difficult. But I'd love to see someone take this on and develop a pilot program to get professors editing -- perhaps this could be a Wikimedia_Fellowships project? JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, Jami -- thanks for the comments. I'm glad to hear that we're focusing on quality; that's great news. That prompts two questions: first, do you have a goal for the right number of students per ambassador?  At the moment I think we're running at something like 75 or 100 students for each ambassador, which seems much too high to me.  The second question is how we are planning to measure quality.  There are two kinds of relevant quality, I think: quality of work and quality of teaching (by which I mean the quality of the student/instructor experience).  The quality of the work done is an issue to the community, and I'd like to see some version of the PPI metric used.  The WP:MED followup (linked in Doc James' comments at the end of this page) is another way to do it.  These are labour intensive, unfortunately, but if the students are actually generating more work for the community than they're adding in value we need to know that (and conversely it's good to know which instructors or classes are doing the best work, so we can try to understand why).  Are the questionnaires that were put together for the instructors and students the way you plan to evaluate the quality of the students' and instructors' experience on Wikipedia?  E.g. did they get enough support from the ambassadors?  Were there benefits from working on Wikipedia?  What interactions did they have with the community and did this help them learn?  If so, then I think that will be very helpful -- for example, if we universally get comments that the classes received enough help from their ambassadors, then it's clear I'm wrong about needed to reduce the number of classes we're supporting.


 * I also am glad to hear about the expanded training materials and professor orientation. I assume this will be done by the campus ambassadors?  I think this is a very positive step.


 * I agree that it will be hard to get the professors to edit. I don't think it could be a fellowship project, unless I'm misunderstanding the parameters for that; fellowships aren't for things that could/should be done by volunteers, so I don't think it would be possible to make this a fellowship effort.  What I do think we should do is something like this: when professors sign up for the spring semester, they should be notified that we may not have enough volunteers to adequately support every class, and we will notify them if we can't provide any ambassador support so that they can decide if they want to continue without that support.  We should also ask them as part of the signup if they would be willing to work on improving an article in their own field as part of learning how their students will be engaging with Wikipedia.  Any professor who answers "yes" to that question should be given top priority in getting support -- they should get ambassadors for their class who are prepared to work with the professor as well as the students.  Finally, if we decided (e.g. from the questionnaires being sent out) that the right student/ambassador ratio is, say, 15:1, then we should identify the classes we will support and ask ambassadors to assign themselves to classes in that list, and keep a list of unsupported classes so that additional volunteers who come along mid-semester can find more classes to support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 11:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Good essay. Trying to stimulate growth in a community that needs to grow organically is a real balancing act. I have long thought that the Ambassadors' skills would be better invested in teaching interested instructors about the wiki way, rather than serving as teaching assistants for instructors who may not understand the subject—wiki editing—well enough to teach it themselves. Instructors would be well advised to gain significant on-wiki experience, have their work and their community interaction critiqued by an Ambassador, and review case studies of successful and unsuccessful class exercises. Anyone can edit, but not everyone can teach wiki editing without preparation—professors with a sense of professional responsibility should already know this. Leveraging knowledge by teaching those who want to teach is a powerful way to accelerate organic growth. The hard part is stimulating interest in teachers to really take it on. ~ Ningauble (talk) 19:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this essay Mike. I agree with a lot of it. Successful article writing depends on editor ability, motivation and support. Students studying the elementary aspects of their subject are no more able to write or contribute to a professional encyclopaedia article than any reasonably bright person. We really need to move up to the level of graduate student or those with academic or professional careers in the subject before their degree has much influence on the quality of their writing. Traditionally, Wikipedia contributors have been intrinsically motivated volunteers. These student assignments mark a shift in the editor population towards extrinsically motivated writers. There is a pressure to complete the assignment even if one is not proud of the result -- whereas a volunteer might give up or try something less ambitious. And not all the students will be any good. Previously, a dire essay would end up as so much paper in a drawer. Now such bad writing might harm an article read by thousands of people every day. Obviously, the opposite is also true: great students will get the chance to have their fine writing reach a worldwide audience. But these students aren't getting sufficient support.
 * I note the comment above about the difficulties getting the professors to edit, and some of the issues academics face adapting to the goals of WP. But unless these students can be inspired to write for WP rather than just instructed to write for WP, we won't retain them. Unless they can get ready access to been-there-done-that support from their institution, they will struggle. There is a risk that a poor experience of writing on WP as a student could put a generation of young editors off the idea altogether.
 * Lastly, I don't believe the Randy in Boise issue is as bad as some make it. Sure it happens, but some of our burnt-out experts sought conflict by playing whack-a-mole with the POV pushers. There are thousands of serious and important topics on WP that one can edit without conflict, where the edit traffic is so low one could go on holiday for a month and see no edits while away. Writing for WP is a unique challenge that requires a major shift in writing style for some. Some just don't get it, and then blame WP when issues arise. I think it would be valuable to write an informal guideline or essay to help those used to academic writing adjust to what is expected on WP. That would help both the profs and the students. Colin°Talk 20:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree; and I think that's something that could be included in the additional orientation Jami Mathewson mentions above. Do you want to write it? Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 15:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * While reviewing the psychology student's edits (see below), the same mistakes kept coming up. And every now and then, WP:MED see some new "expert" writer appear who just doesn't get WP. Such as writing an article like a review of the primary literature. Or just not understanding WP:V and WP:NOR at all. So I see the disconnect between academic and WP writing from the WP point of view. I can only guess at some of the reasons for the mistakes, but I'm sure some of my guesses would be right. There are many people on WP who are in academia or have much more experience of it than me who could help make such a guideline. If someone wants to say where to put the essay, then I could dump some thoughts and ideas on the talk page and we can see what happens from there. --Colin°Talk 20:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea. I left a note on Jami Mathewson's talk page about this suggesting she contact you; I would assume she's coordinating the orientation material. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 17:20, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The Randy problem is specifically bad in areas affected by off-wiki ideological conflicts. For instance, I can't imagine any academic wishing to waste time editing our articles on climate change or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when there are legions of Randies ready to jump in and trash the articles (and their authors) whenever the latest faux outrage hits Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. For a more micro example of the problem, I can offer Cyrus Cylinder, an article I've been working on for a while. It's worth contrasting that to Hoxne Hoard, which Rich Farnborough mentioned above, about another British Museum item. The Hoxne Hoard article was written by a group of editors (including me) as a highly focused collaboration with experts from the British Museum. It was successful and effective not just because there was a good bunch of people involved with it, but also because nobody has any ideological difficulties with the subject matter. The Cyrus Cylinder article is about an artifact a few hundred years older than the Hoxne Hoard which has had the misfortune to become a symbol of Iranian nationalism, complete with pseudohistorical claims and outright falsifications. I've collaborated with a couple of academic experts to develop the article. However, although the article has been improved significantly our only reward has been to experience denunciations off-wiki by Iranian nationalists (some of whom are frankly a nasty bunch) and repeated episodes of Iranian Randies attempting to hijack the article and delete academic views that they dislike. Frustratingly, other editors have usually tended to avoid getting involved in resolving disputes, even though the article has nearly 100 watchers. The bottom line is that often the only thing protecting articles against Randies is an active and involved editorial community, and for specialist subjects this is all too often absent. Prioryman (talk) 21:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that's a good characterization of what articles are likely to get Randyized. That sounds like something that should be included in professor orientation too, so that the professors understand some of the nuances of article selection for their students.  It's not just Randy-magnets that need to be avoided; just today I saw someone having to userfy student essays such as Global Media and Newspapers.  The teacher for that class either did not understand or did not successfully convey to the students what makes an article encyclopedic. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 15:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Good essay, Mike. You explained the current situation with background and made specific recommendations, including how to measure the success of those recommendations.  There are several methods for dealing with the "Randy" issue, such as by putting all featured articles on sighted revisions, but WP should be aware that this may have a downside in new editor retention and the like.  Anyway, good job. Cla68 (talk) 00:09, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have been encouraging my colleagues in academia and education publicly to criticize Wikipedia at every turn because students use it too frequently and there is no rigorous content review process. I also advocate that if academics feel the need to correct or add something to Wikipedia, they can most easily avoid the special sorts of pain alluded to in the WP:RANDY, WP:CRUSH, and WP:MMORPG essays by contributing as IPs &mdash; identifying themselves with their real name and academic position in their talkpage signatures if they think it important. Even though there are parts of the encyclopedia that are locked out to IP editors, I've found that contributing as an IP removes much of the problematic aspects of Wikipedia culture and allows content to speak for itself. Content is, after all, the only reason an academic would want to associate themselves with this somewhat seedy website. Leave the user accounts, administrator roles, and other advanced-levels of Wikipedium to the wikiholics, drama-mongers, and gamers. Keeping the expectations low is the best way to avoid problems. When an academic expects to be treated badly, they aren't as upset when it inevitably happens. 128.59.169.46 (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I think there are two main groups in academia that are apt to be fruitful for contributions to WP in the future — students (who are already here) and emeritus professors. The time aspect is major, with publish-or-perish more than just a catchy slogan and teaching duties sapping all available hours. Retired profs have more time at their disposal, no such requirement to write, and — we can hope — an interest in passing on their knowledge to future generations. Logically the group to target, it would seem. The major impediments are Wikipedia's oft-times nasty internal culture and the lack of some reasonable approximation of WYSIWYG content-writing software. (We still expect our contributors to write code, albeit simple!) I think the Randy-in-Boise phenomenon is a fictional cartoon, the real problem relates to unrestrained POV warriors escaping discipline. Hopefully and presumably WMF is at work on the software issue. The internal culture issue is necessarily a work in progress. Carrite (talk) 03:03, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I cannot express how strongly I agree with the sentiments here. I am saying this as somebody who has been involved with the teaching with Wikipedia approach (and with teaching students) for quite a few years. Hear, hear! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 16:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I very strongly support the ideas expressed in this essay. I support quality over quantity as an emphasis, and I support the idea of principle focus on academics and encouraging/assisting them to wade into the Wikipedia edit space, difficult as that can be for some of them, for the main reason that they might want their field, which they clearly care about enough to study for many years of their lives, to be better represented in Wikipedia articles.  I am a mentor in the ambassador program (was involved on the Public Policy initiative last spring) and am also an academic.  My experience with the students I mentored, in the main, was like the vast majority of students I teach.  Student participate as part of a means to an end (passing a class, or getting a degree) -- only a very small number are intellectually interested in the topic, or in contributing to a growing body of knowledge called Wikipedia.  Getting more academics productively contributing to this emeging body of knowledge is the much better objective.  Cheers.  N2e (talk) 22:49, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Stats on value of student edits
Doc James recently left this note on my talk page, which I'm reproducing here: the link show exactly what value was introduced by each student edit for a given class.
 * We are currently crunching some numbers at WP:MED here . Things do not look that upbeat in Canada. Have been involved with a great deal of outreach as seen here and the effect has been mixed at best. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 19:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

So far it doesn't look very positive. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Ouch! Indeed not!  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:36, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The numbers are very much what I'd have expected in the first place for this type of an assignment. I don't see what's so negative - unless somebody is under the illusion that students are going to be jumping through "learn how to be a good Wikipedia editor" hoops for 3% of credit. In fact, that about a quarter of them tried at least a little, is quite positive to me, as I'd expect a much smaller amount to try it at all. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 16:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)