If you take that into consideration, how might you
even begin to consider
that there are any consensual ordering possible? ...
you can not provide a well-order[ing.]
Referring to why I want to offer eligibility in the essay contest to
the top half of student editors, I agree with you that any assessment
of overall student rank from any set of metrics will not be a scalar
value, but a confidence interval or a central tendency and variance.
Therefore, since my actual intent was to offer eligibility to the top
35%, I nominally offer it to the top 50%.
The present value of outcomes is not always equal to nominal values,
e.g. in societies which could die of preventable communicable diseases
arising among the poor and thus would all be better off if the rich
are taxed to pay for the healthcare of the poor -- thereby increasing
the actual wealth of everyone including those whose nominal wealth
decreases -- but the proportion of optimal transfer incidence relative
to the expected amount of charity and philanthropy is another matter
for a future essay proposal.
what if "the best" essay writer in the pool
you are targeting will be on the contrary repelled by such a contest?
I'm not against fostering the idea of writing
orignal essays around and within
the Wikimedia movement....
maybe a dedicated project for essays might make some sense.
I am only proposing a periodic contest, to be archived e.g. on Meta. I
look forward to further engagement from the foundations. Back when I
was the only one arguing for market rate Foundation staff salaries,
some of the most fervent opponents were in the Foundation. It is not
uncommon to see people voting against their own interests
occasionally. It's quite common in some parts of the U.S. Thank
goodness the foundations have a higher grade of thinkers.
Best regards,
Jim
On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 1:57 PM, mathieu stumpf guntz
<psychoslave(a)culture-libre.org> wrote:
Saluton,
To my mind, this whole discussion doesn't make any sense as it is all
grounded on suspect hypotheses.
First, what do you call an essay? I think that for such a work the author
must instill selfness in it. As say Montaigne "c’eſt moy que ie peins". If
you take that into consideration, how might you even begin to consider that
there are any consensual ordering possible? Actually, a "commissioned essay"
sounds more like an oxymoron than anything else.
Concerning the proposed subject, I would advise any person considering
answering such a tricksy question to first question its premises. You might
even explore the strict opposite question: can any institution ever give
enough to a person for all the time dedicated into integrating its
expectations? All this time that nothing will ever give back, and not spent
in other life experiences that the said institution might not care about but
that would be far more enjoyable.
So, to answer the last question, that's not simply your dichotomy which is
false, it's the whole underlying premise set your are pushing that is total
nonsense. No, you can not provide a well-order relation on any set for any
property.
Moreover you seems to think that it suffices to drop money to achieve
attracting "the best possible essay" in the scope of your nonsense contest.
But what if "the best" essay writer in the pool you are targeting will be on
the contrary repelled by such a contest?
Now, I'm not against fostering the idea of writing orignal essays around and
within the Wikimedia movement. Currently, I don't think we have a clear
dedicated project for that, although I come across some of them which are
usually stored on Meta, in user namespaces, or on Wikibooks (for example A
Lecture on the Limits of Human Knowledge). So maybe a dedicated project for
essays might make some sense.
Eseete,
mathieu
Le 22/11/2017 à 19:05, James Salsman a écrit :
Thanks, Lucas. I am happy to discuss the idea.
I believe that there is strong evidence against the proposition that
the best editors are skilled in writing articles but not essays.
LiAnna and Tighe, do you have any reasons to believe that editors
skilled in composing both articles and essays are not superior to
editors skilled in articles only? Is there a false dichotomy in
believing that one or the other could be preferable to both?
Best regards,
Jim
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 6:18 PM, Lucas Teles <teleswiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Maybe you should first discuss any contest like this with community and
then come with a suitable idea.
Your willingness to invest on this is something valuable and should be used
on a project that fits with WMF goals.
Teles
Em ter, 21 de nov de 2017 às 14:19, Tighe Flanagan <tflanagan(a)wikimedia.org>
escreveu:
To echo LiAnna and Wiki Education's take, the Wikimedia Foundation's
education team support activities that get students to contribute to
Wikimedia projects as part of their learning. While the contexts may vary
from country to country and classroom to classroom, the students contribute
according to Wikimedia project norms (neutrality, citations, etc). This
type of proposed assignment/competition seems out of scope and we could not
support it on our end either.
Best,
Tighe
--
Tighe Flanagan
Senior Manager, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
tflanagan(a)wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 11:52 AM, LiAnna Davis <lianna(a)wikiedu.org> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:27 AM, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I offer $50 USD first prize and $25 for the runner-up for the best
twelve paragraph essay on the topic of whether college students are
likely to pay more in income taxes over their lifetime than the
present value of the entire amount of their college tuition, room, and
board expenses.
This contest is open only to the top 50% of participants in the
Wikimedia Education Program or WikiEd Foundation's student editors.
If there are any objections to this contest, please let me know. If
there are any reasons it shouldn't be communicated to the eligible,
please let me know. I ask both foundations to match my award, taking
the prizes to $150 and $75 if they agree. Thank you!
No. At the Wiki Education Foundation, we focus on teaching students to
write neutral, fact-based encyclopedia articles instead of essays; our
asking them to write essays would be counterproductive given the mission
of
our program, our organization, and the Wikimedia movement. We will not
support this effort, and ask that you do not reach out to them on your
own.
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Director of Programs; Deputy Director
Wiki Education
www.wikiedu.org
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