Hi Mathieu,
I was heartened to read your questions and conclusions:
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?
That is a risk well worth taking.
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@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@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@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@wikimedia.org education.wikimedia.org
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 11:52 AM, LiAnna Davis lianna@wikiedu.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:27 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@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 _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
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