As I wrote in my previous email, I get the impression that this program was relatively
expensive compared to the number of content contributors (who in this case are academics).
I am keeping in mind that this was a pilot, and that initial planning and the first
iteration for many programs like this require some one-time expenses and some debugging.
My guess is that for future rounds WikiEd can make the program be more efficient, and that
this will be a work in progress.
This program is not without financial costs, both for the pilot and for future rounds. I
return to the questions that I asked LiAnna in my previous email: who funded WikiEd's
expenses for this project, and what thoughts does WikiEd have regarding how the project
can be scaled up in a way that is more efficient in terms of cost per participant?
I am hoping that WikiEd has a reliable funding source for the next round, and that WikiEd
is currently planning how to increase the cost-effectiveness.
Stepping back to consider the larger problem of too few knowledgable volunteers supporting
too many novices throughout the wikiverse, I get the impression that WMF is spending
increasing amounts of money on training and one-on-one help for technical and content
contributors, both by directly funding WMF employees and by providing funds to grantees. I
anticipate that the trend will continue, and I am anxious to see it be effective in
increasing content contributor longevity, content quality, content quantity, diversity of
contributors, and measues of community health. I am glad to see WikiEd working in this
domain with academics, and I would like for this program to be successful, financially
sustainable, and cost-effective in the medium to long term.
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
-------- Original message --------From: James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> Date:
5/23/18 7:07 PM (GMT-08:00) To: Wikimedia Education
<education(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re:
[Wikimedia Education] Evaluation report on Wikipedia Fellows pilot
Pine, why would you be concerned about the cost-effectiveness or
sustainability. This program looks great to me, except for the
mismatch between needs and recruiting.
On that point, there is an alternative to
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/files/2015/09/figure-1-wikipe…
(Beyond expanding it from the sciences to the humanities and ranking
it by the damage quality issues do to society for each topic.)
Which is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7cHxlGgEt4&t=46m
Math is the most valuable topic for donations. I'm interested in
suggesting improvements to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frobenius_manifold
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi LiAnna,
Thank you for this report. Increasing the number of good-faith contributors to Wikipedia
is always nice to see. I believe that at least a few people in WMF, the affiliates, and
the long-term volunteer population have been interested for many years in increasing the
number of academics who contribute to Wikipedia.
The program sounds like it was relatively labor intensive on the part of WikiEd, and the
number of academic participants was small. Who funded WikiEd's expenses for this
project, and what thoughts does WikiEd have regarding how the project can be scaled up in
a way that is more efficient in terms of cost per participant?
I would like to see this project scale up, but I am concerned about its
cost-effectiveness and financial sustainability.
As you probably know, I am continuing my development of training materials, primarily
videos, for new Wikimedians, although the audience that I have in mind is more typical of
ENWP's volunteer population instead of being focused on the specific interests and
mindsets of academic contributors.
Regards,
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
-------- Original message --------From: LiAnna Davis <lianna(a)wikiedu.org> Date:
5/22/18 9:51 AM (GMT-08:00) To: Wikimedia Education
<education(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: [Wikimedia Education] Evaluation report on
Wikipedia Fellows pilot
Greetings, all!
At the beginning of 2018, the Wiki Education Foundation ran a 3-month pilot
to engage academic experts (mostly professors at universities in the U.S.)
to improve English Wikipedia articles related to their areas of expertise.
We're pretty happy with how the pilot turned out -- we had some great
improvements to articles, and, more importantly for a pilot, we learned a
*lot* about how to run a program like this successfully.
The team that worked on it put together this extensive evaluation report on
what we did, what we learned, and what the outcomes were from the pilot:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation/Wikipedia_Fellows…
I also put together a short blog post about it:
https://wikiedu.org/blog/2018/05/22/wiki-education-publishes-evaluation-of-…
We already have calls for applications out for additional cohorts to begin
in June, and we're eager to learn even more from future iterations of the
Wikipedia Fellows program. I hope sharing our learnings like this can be
helpful for other education programs in the Wikimedia movement who might
also be interested in engaging subject matter experts to edit.
We're happy to answer questions on this list or on the talk page of the
evaluation report on Meta.
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Director of Programs; Deputy Director
Wiki Education
www.wikiedu.org
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