Hi Jennifer,

First, COI is related to editing Wikipedia in your own interests or in the interests of your external relationships. It does not forbid obviously writing about the things you're an expert on. If you are able to separate these two things, you're allowed to do it.

Related to the tracking of the alumni, I did it by creating a page where there were listed my students' constributions, so I could easily keep track of their progress. To count their editions, you can use this tool, which counts all user contributions, but it does not matter as usually the only editions that pupils make are the ones related to the project.

In addition, if the aim of getting editions done by alumni is due to COI issues, I think it's not the solution. The problem does not depend on the user that makes the edits but on the intention of the edits.

Pau.


2014-07-10 16:43 GMT+02:00 Jennifer Gristock <gristock@me.com>:
Greetings everyone. I'm still working on that system to encourage university professors to contribute to Wikipedia, a system that is concerned not through teaching, like the Education Programme, but through research.

I need some help. Can you tell me, in the Wikipedia API, is there a way to count the contributions that a user has made on behalf of another particular user? For example, a professor might ask a group of PhD students to make contributions involving his/her research on various Wikipedia pages, on his/her behalf.

I have been frequently told (at the Teahouse and elsewhere) that Professors are not allowed to contribute information about their own published research papers on Wikipedia pages, because this would be biased. (Which is rather a downer for the professor, because this means they are forbidden to write about the things they are most passionate and knowledgeable about.) 

If this is rule is true, then it must certainly be seen as a roadblock to academic engagement with Wikipedia. If it isn't, then it is editors' perception of the rule as true (as I have experienced) that is the roadblock.

It seems to me that the way to overcome this roadblock is to introduce a way of counting the contributions made by a person (say, a research student, or a colleague) on behalf of a Professor. So at the end of the year, the Professor can say 'my research contributed to X edits on Wikipedia' as easily as each individual student (who might contribute on behalf of many academic researchers) can count their individual edits.

Can the API accommodate this in some way? Perhaps through some sort of 'project' code or something?


Yours hopefully,

Jenny Gristock (Open_Research)

Sent from my iPad

On 9 Jul 2014, at 22:40, LiAnna Davis <lianna@wikiedu.org> wrote:

Hi all!

I wanted to draw your attention to the Educator Training we'll be having as part of the Wikimania Pre-conference on August 7:


The Educator Training is designed to give educators of all levels the knowledge they need to use Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects as a teaching tool in their classrooms. The training is open to educators from any country, and Wikipedia editing experience is not required. 

If you're interested in attending or you know someone who is, please see the page for more information. I especially encourage anyone who's thought about getting a Wikipedia Education Program going in your country to attend, as you'll learn a lot about the different kinds of assignments students could do.

LiAnna


--
LiAnna Davis
Head of Communications and External Relations
Wiki Education Foundation

Please note my new email address and update your contacts accordingly: lianna@wikiedu.org

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