Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-10-08/News and notes


 * How on Earth does a Wikipedia article infringe on Micro$oft's copyrights in their Win8, beta or otherwise? Orange Mike  &#x007C;  Talk  20:01, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It was automated, so that's a question for the computer algorithm. Google did not block access to the pages, though, possibly because Wikipedia is on a Google whitelist. See this. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:03, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Travel Guide logo voting is perhaps premature, but whether voting starts on the 12th or not, we need more ideas! (Frankly, we're still defining the parameters, so I don't see what good voting will do.)  Powers T 20:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * "Education Program faces community resistance"; bluntly put, no shit it does (none of this is intended as an indictment of the Signpost article itself). After the IEP and all the associated bullshit we had to put up with, be it cleaning up after literally thousands of pages created with or grossly disfigured by copyvios and/or incomprehensible attempts at writing or the unbelievable strain it put on our severely overworked NPPers, there should be.  Maybe it will be better, but I really don't see where the necessary improvements have been made; same people (only locations have changed), same general concept, same planned topic areas.  I'm not known for optimism, but I really don't see what there is to be optimistic about.  The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 20:40, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * There has been change. The IEP was bad; nobody wants a repeat of that. Classes now have more supervision, more upfront, and guidance is more closely tuned to what students need. However, we must make decisions on the margin - like it or not, wikipedia is part of the modern information society so classes will come here to edit, more each year - either we find them and guide them and make the most of their strengths, or they'll just edit anyway and produce another IEP (in other words, "Please don't delete this yet, I get marked on Friday"). We have to make decisions on the margin, and I think it's clear which has the best (or least bad) outcome.
 * The classes I've worked with have produced genuinely good outcomes for important articles, and hopefully a couple of talented and knowledgeable editors will have stuck around afterwards. I have even worked with one very large & challenging class which was completely outside the education-program (which wasn't able to take them on at the time) - with the help of another editor much more talented and hardworking than me, we steered them in the direction of what wikipedia wants rather than copy & paste 200 words before the next class. They definitely would have followed the latter path if left to their own devices (and many came close to being blocked on day one, simply because the community saw new editors with similar usernames and assumed the worst). bobrayner (talk) 21:30, 9 October 2012 (UTC) Disclaimer: I'm not speaking in any official capacity; I've just done a little ambassadorial work and indeed helped clean up some of the IEP mess.
 * This echoes my own experience. I think it would be a pity if people were to judge the US and Canada education programs by the results of the IEP. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 00:46, 10 October 2012 (UTC)


 * "Opposing arguments mainly stem from experiences with the Indian pilot." This isn't true, see User:Colin/A large scale student assignment – what could possibly go wrong? and User:Colin/Introduction to Psychology, Part I. MER-C 05:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * That would have been better expressed as "Opposing arguments in the RfC mainly stem ...". I'm aware of the article quality issues, particularly in the area of psychology (SandyGeorgia's involvement there comes to mind), but those were not clearly expressed in the RfC. Thank you for now doing so. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Great article Ed. Sue Gardner's post (which I agree with) seems to be an acknowledgement that the WMF needs to revise its approach to avoid anything like the IEP happening again. It's a shame that that fiasco has given the other university-based projects a bad name (as far as I can tell, university students are the perfect editors; they have time on their hands and easy access to excellent references and subject matter experts). Nick-D (talk) 10:03, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * University editors should be encouraged. I am just concerned regarding "forced" university editors. I am do not like getting pleading emails that poorly written content should be left so that students can get their marks. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm disappointed to see the author of this piece characterize RfC opposes as "mainly stem[ming] from experiences with the Indian pilot", especially considering that no oppose cites IEP as a reason and that this section of the RfC specifically discusses how that's IEP is not the reason for opposes. I don't mind being quoted as a poster-child for opposers, but I do mind my position being misrepresented, so I'm going to clarify here: I don't feel that there has been adequate evidence provided that education programs run by The Education Program (as opposed to run by individual Wikipedians who teach, etc) produce high-quality content that outweighs the cleanup work the community needs to do behind them, especially since most of the student editors don't stick around after their semester ends. Allow me to stress again: this opinion has nothing to do with IEP. This has to do with an RfC being launched on "yes! let's continue this program!" (which it was not presented as, until I pressed the organizers on the issue, at which point they addmitted that supporting the RfC would be interpreted as approving of the EP in general), without providing evidence that the program worked or benefited the community. It is my personal opinion that even with the evidence the WMF has belatedly provided, after the RfC garnered opposes, the "evidence" addresses neither cleanup issues, nor editor retention issues, and that until we have a full picture of those factors, I am unwilling to blindly support the program's perpetuation. Again: nothing to do with some sort of "zomg IEP" kneejerk, just one editor's opinion based on how the WMF and the working group have failed to make their case. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:45, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd like to add an additional point of clarification -- Fluffernutter is right about the exchange in which I agreed that someone who opposed the EP would presumably want to oppose the RfC too. It was never the intention of the working group (nor, I'm sure, of the WMF) to tie the two things together, but I can't really blame an editor who treats the RfC as a proxy for the EP in general -- after all, anyone who supports the creation of a new 501c3 for the US/Canada EP is unlikely to be thought of as an opponent of the EP.  The reason I (as a working group member) didn't think of overall EP approval as being part of this was partly because that wasn't the charter I was given by the WMF.  In addition I think there was some time pressure at work: the WMF had decided not to continue internally funding the EP by May 2013, and I think they treated this as more of a change in organization of an existing program, and not as a referendum on the program itself.  But as I say, it makes sense for an editor like Fluffernutter to treat it as they are treating it.  After all, if there is a community consensus that the EP is a bad thing, the WMF needs to hear that.
 * Fluffernutter, I'd be interested to hear more about why you don't feel the evidence provided is enough -- I pushed for that study to be done, because I wanted to be able to cite something like that in discussions of the EP. The results seem to me to be quite positive, and on the other side of the argument, the suggestions that the EP is a burden on editors don't seem to me to rest on as much solid data as the study -- there are anecdotal accounts, but I haven't seen anyone make a good case that they add up to more burden than is worth it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 16:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The thing is, I don't think your study is wrong or anything, so much as I think it ignores other aspects of the issue. I see at least three "axes" of characteristics for a program like the EP. There's the "are the students adding good content" axis (let's call it Ax1), which is what you looked at, but there's also the "how much community cleanup is being required by these editors" axis (which you looked at a little, but in sort of a limited, niche way by sticking to talk pages of known "improved" articles, let's call this Ax2), and the "are these students sticking around" axis (Ax3). By focusing on Ax1, it is possible to come up with a conclusion that says "See, 80 students improved 90 articles 5x!" (all numbers here made up off the top of my head; just for example purposes) while ignoring the possibility that, say, 79 of those students misunderstood talk pages, 73 of them vandalised, 20 of them posted essays that experienced editors had to clean/remove, 55 of them added copyvios in some spots as well as original content, 18 of them had username issues that needed to be sorted out, only five of them edited an article more than once, and only two of them stuck around after the semester ended. Suddenly those 90 good article edits look small in comparison, you know? Being able to say "Our study shows X good article edits" is a piece of evidence about one aspect of how these students interacted with the community, but it's a very limited piece of evidence, and taken alone doesn't give us adequate perspective on the whole of the program. Given the lack of detail available on that sort of stuff, and though it may be a bit ABF-y of me to factor in previous semesters of EPs, I lean to thinking that until we do have evidence that the "other stuff" isn't outweighing the "good stuff", I'm not willing to assume it does/will. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:09, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, it sounds like we agree on axis 1, and I'm willing to agree for this discussion that the students aren't sticking around long enough for axis 3 to provide any positives. So let's talk about axis 2.  When we came up with the attempted metric for this I was trying to avoid a labour-intensive metric, but I now think I need to do what it takes to get this metric. I'll go off and think about how this could be done, but do you feel that if I (or someone else) were to review, say, a thousand random student edits, and provide details on just how much cleanup (etc.) was needed for each one, that would be the sort of data you were looking for?  I'm thinking of a table looking something like: Student X, contrib link, assessment of value (basically just positive/negative), response from other editors (has been reverted, still in place, talk page messages in response, etc.).  What do you think? Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 17:32, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

For example, here's a table showing what I mean. These are two students from one class; I looked at the same students that the Spring 2012 quality analysis looked at, since that will make the results comparable, and that was a random sample. Would this be useful if done for all the classes in that analysis? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:55, 10 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I think that detailed analysis of "Did student editors improve articles?" is very important. I'm passionate about evidence-based decisionmaking. It's easy for all of us to make decisions about our educational work based on gut feeling or a couple of encounters a couple of months ago, but higher-quality inputs would lead to better decisions. bobrayner (talk) 09:47, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * That looks great, Mike. Obviously there's bits of gray area that could appear ("Was this a problem edit, or just an edit that needed cleanup?", etc), but that's inevitable. It would be really interesting to see the results of an analysis like this across all students in each EP (though I'll settle for just the US/canada one for now!) A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:25, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll get to work. I agree it's subjective but so long as I include diffs, people can easily check my assessment.  I'll start with two students from each class -- the same two picked for the quality assessment, so we have comparable data.  I'll find a page for it somewhere and post a link here so you can keep an eye on it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 14:37, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I've created the table here and will gradually fill it out. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:13, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

This entire thing is a spectacular failure on the part of the WMF. It's truly incredibly how they hired staff that had absolutely no knowledge of Wikipedia and made them "in charge" of these projects. Absurd! 134.241.58.251 (talk) 21:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I have volunteered with the education project in the past. Where the professor is a Wikipedian and understands WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NEUTRAL and the basic guidelines, and believes in our mission, the projects can be helpful.  But in the other cases, the only reason that the chosen articles improved is because I improved them.  Some of them are still sitting with a big fat REFIMPROVE tag (or lots of CNs) after the students abandoned them.  Requests for page numbers in book references went unanswered in nearly every case.  So, I guess I agree that the project should be scaled back to more like the 2010 size and built more deliberately, with MUCH better training for professors.   -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)


 * It is confusing that the WMF employees behind this epic-failed project are still employed. We, the community, must insist on much higher standards for WMF employees who are "in charge". If the WMF continues to ignore or obviate the community then we may have to take drastic action, up to and including banning the WMF employees behind these disasters. 134.241.58.251 (talk) 16:21, 12 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I completely agree with the observation by Ssilvers: There should be much greater focus on educating the professors. There is something sublimely ridiculous about professors assigning their students to do something at which they are not themselves proficient. It should be quite easy for academic professors to achieve proficiency in short order if they are interested. It is a remarkable lapse of professional judgment for them to assign work they are not competent to profess. Teacher: teach thyself. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:19, 12 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I think this sentence in the article "with a split between working group members and educators supporting, and Wikipedia community members opposing" is either badly phrased or else much too broad: after all, many of us are both educators by profession and 'community members' by avocation. Referring to both the comments above, the article and RFC itself, having an "us versus them" mentality here (whether it's versus the WMF staff, the educators in the program, or the community) is deeply unhelpful. For one thing, I promise you that everyone commenting in this discussion is an expert in a different part of Wikipedia, and everyone commenting here could learn something about the site from the other folks: we are none of us absolute experts. And for another, implying (or believing!) that "the Wikipedia community" holds one opinion about how to do outreach is as ridiculous as thinking "the educational community" has a single stance. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 02:46, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * At the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Education_Working_Group/RfC&oldid=516576798 time of writing], the supports were almost exclusively composed of working group participants and professional educators, and the opposes were almost exclusively composed of community members (and one educator, who is also a community member). To me, this signified a split between the members of the Education Program and regular Wikipedia community members. Perhaps it was poorly worded, but I believe the sentiment was accurate. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:54, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I get what you're saying, but I think it would be more accurate and less sensational to be precise: most (though not all) of the opposes are from people not directly involved in the education project or the working group, while most (though not all) of the supports are from people involved in one of those things. To make the distinction as being between 'educators' and 'community members' implies that somehow educators can't be community members, or that all of the people supporting are newbies to Wikipedia or are only involved for a very narrow educational purpose, which is not true (to pick an example, Mike Christie who drafted the proposal has been editing since 2006 and has twice the edit count I do; and I'm pretty sure we both identify as 'community members'!). -- phoebe / (talk to me) 03:42, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Obviously the two groups can mix, but there was a distinction between Education Program-affiliated people and non-Education Program people. While I suppose that as-worded the statement is not perfectly accurate, it was a relatively obvious trend, and I don't think I needed to note that two of the supporters and one of the opposers did not fit the overall profile. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:40, 15 October 2012 (UTC)