Now I am a huge supporter of encouraging students to edit Wikipedia. However last fall I can across a psychology class of 1500 first year students contributing content to psychology articles. There was four ambassadors / teaching assistants. Two of these never made a single edit to Wikipedia and the other two had only made a handful. The prof of this class never made a main space edit.<div>
<br></div><div>Three long standing editors from Wikiproject medicine took it upon themselves to review every edit made by this class as it was clear that no one involved with in an official manner was planning on providing any oversight. I brought my concerns to the profs attention and I guess hurt his feelings as he as left Wikipedia and stopped responding to my concerns. He also cancelled his next semesters plan to contribute. Our analysis can be found here <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Colin/Introduction_to_Psychology,_Part_I#Review_of_student_edits">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Colin/Introduction_to_Psychology,_Part_I#Review_of_student_edits</a> </div>
<div><br></div><div>There appears to be a mis perception from some in academia that anyone can just show up to Wikipedia and have at it. That we are little more than anarchy. We need to be very clear that this is far from the case. That while anyone can contribute, we have policies and procedures that vary from subject area to area and are supported by small groups of dedicated volunteers. And that if people / classes do not contribute in a possible manner than they will have their edits reverted and may lose their editing privileges.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Unless we go about these collaborations slowly and carefully we are only going to alienate those we are reaching out to and piss off our current volunteers. We need to make sure that if students are going to contribute content that it is of high quality and that mechanisms are in place to review their work. While Wikipedia can be used as a teaching tool it is first and foremost an encyclopedia. And we can not just expect the current community of volunteers to take on the task of providing guidance to large classes of students who are here as part of their classwork. This population is different than people who are here as simple volunteers, not only in the fact that there are more of them but also due to the reason for them being here.</div>
<div><br></div><div>A few things that IMO would make a difference:</div><div>1) The profs themselves must edit Wikipedia (preferably having brought something to GA or FA within their subject area). And if we are going to go with large classes than so must their teaching assistants. The only way to learn how Wikipedia works is by editing content.</div>
<div>2) There must be a number of hours of in class instruction on Wikipedia&#39;s policies and procedures. One does not begin writing for the New England Journal of Medicine without first learning their manual of style and referencing requirements.</div>
<div>3) If classes are working on content they should concentrate on improving the quality of one or a few articles. Assignments such as &quot;go out and make an edit to the subject area of this class&quot; should not be repeated.</div>
<div><div><br></div>-- <br>James Heilman<br>MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian<br><br><br>
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