Hi,
I’m working in an Educational Program in Mexico with the Universidad de las Americas Puebla. I agree that adding a lot of bytes doesn’t necessarily contribute to the quality of an article. We have been working on the development of the nanotechnology entries in Spanish, since this topic is kinda new in developing countries but there’s a lot of research in the last 20 - 30 years. One of our goals was to improve the quantity and quality of references, in order to provide little but accurate information rather than a lot of unreferenced data. This standpoint was well perceived by the Spanish Wikipedia community as the entries has not been deleted but improved by other Wikipedia users.
You may know a little bit more about this program in https://mx.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proyectos:Programa_Educativo_UDLAP#Introducci.... (in Spanish). The report isn’t finished yet but it’s illustrative about the importance of working toward reference quality instead of volume (bytes).
-- Personal Sent with Airmail
En 28 de enero de 2014 at 18:42:23, Juliana Bastos Marques (domusaurea@gmail.com) escrito:
I forgot to mention a couple of important things I'm expecting to happen. First of all, I thought about measuring bytes *only after* the qualitative part is assessed (kinda like publishing guidelines, which I'm trying to make them acquainted with). But I think the reason this could work is because at least half of the enrolled students have already worked with me in other previous classes with Wikipedia editing. My idea is to make them help the other students learn how to edit during the course, together with the ambassador.
In the last course I offered, some students later got Good Article status, and they were very excited and proud (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotdel, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipa_de_Lencastre). This wasn't the main goal, but kept them engaged even months after the course. A Facebook group helped with continuous lively discussions - the students are always there, anyway. I'm also relying on word of mouth, which has actually been proven quite effective. ;)
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote: Indeed. The WMF repeatedly bandied around the number of bytes produced by education projects, and it was (understandably) hugely controversial, not least given the problems that the program has had with plagiarism (most notoriously with the Pune project).
I would strongly suggest that bytes are a very poor indication of success.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:31 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article may be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote: *NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
_______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Would a leaderboard which breaks down bytes by those advancing any good article criteria, bytes toward references added to un-sourced crucial statements, negative bytes reverted, and neutrally (e.g. no "points" for) other bytes added?
I have a feeling that if we tell students that is how they will be scored up front, it will work out better than otherwise, whether the subsequent scoring criteria are good or poor. If it were up to me I would ask students to search for inaccuracies, bias, contradictions, and missing topics, and most of those things fit into a few of the good article criteria, but not very explicitly.
Best regards, James Salsman On Jan 29, 2014 9:11 AM, "Pepe Flores" pepe.fls@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I’m working in an Educational Program in Mexico with the Universidad de las Americas Puebla. I agree that adding a lot of bytes doesn’t necessarily contribute to the quality of an article. We have been working on the development of the nanotechnology entries in Spanish, since this topic is kinda new in developing countries but there’s a lot of research in the last 20 - 30 years. One of our goals was to improve the quantity and quality of references, in order to provide little but accurate information rather than a lot of unreferenced data. This standpoint was well perceived by the Spanish Wikipedia community as the entries has not been deleted but improved by other Wikipedia users.
You may know a little bit more about this program in https://mx.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proyectos:Programa_Educativo_UDLAP#Introducci.... Spanish). The report isn’t finished yet but it’s illustrative about the importance of working toward reference quality instead of volume (bytes).
-- Personal Sent with Airmail
En 28 de enero de 2014 at 18:42:23, Juliana Bastos Marques ( domusaurea@gmail.com //domusaurea@gmail.com) escrito:
I forgot to mention a couple of important things I'm expecting to happen. First of all, I thought about measuring bytes *only after* the qualitative part is assessed (kinda like publishing guidelines, which I'm trying to make them acquainted with). But I think the reason this could work is because at least half of the enrolled students have already worked with me in other previous classes with Wikipedia editing. My idea is to make them help the other students learn how to edit during the course, together with the ambassador.
In the last course I offered, some students later got Good Article status, and they were very excited and proud ( https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotdel, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipa_de_Lencastre). This wasn't the main goal, but kept them engaged even months after the course. A Facebook group helped with continuous lively discussions - the students are always there, anyway. I'm also relying on word of mouth, which has actually been proven quite effective. ;)
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray < jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Indeed. The WMF repeatedly bandied around the number of bytes produced by education projects, and it was (understandably) hugely controversial, not least given the problems that the program has had with plagiarism (most notoriously with the Pune project).
I would strongly suggest that bytes are a very poor indication of success.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:31 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article
doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article may be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com
wrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of
bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a
reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
In fact I find the "good article" and "featured article" criteria very helpful, whether or not a class's aims are to enter their work for such reviews. Not least because they do deal directly with quantitative as well as qualitative measures, and they certainly quite explicitly address problems such as "inaccuracies, bias, contradictions, and missing topics."
After all, the second criterion for an FA (at WP:WIAFA) is that it is "comprehensive"; the third that it is "a thorough and representative survey." At no point is it suggested that a featured article has to be *long* (indeed, there have been repeated discussions about brief featured articles on talk).
In fact, the GA criteria provide a useful caution when they state that a good article should stay "focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail." I often find that, for instance with articles about literary works, there are whole chunks (usually plot summary) that need to be cut down, sometimes quite drastically.
More generally, students focussed single-mindedly on bytes added, beyond being immediately tempted to copy-paste (frequently from dubious sources) are also unlikely to look out for errors and/or plagiarism etc. that already exist in the articles they are working on.
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 5:42 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Would a leaderboard which breaks down bytes by those advancing any good article criteria, bytes toward references added to un-sourced crucial statements, negative bytes reverted, and neutrally (e.g. no "points" for) other bytes added?
I have a feeling that if we tell students that is how they will be scored up front, it will work out better than otherwise, whether the subsequent scoring criteria are good or poor. If it were up to me I would ask students to search for inaccuracies, bias, contradictions, and missing topics, and most of those things fit into a few of the good article criteria, but not very explicitly.
Best regards, James Salsman
On Jan 29, 2014 9:11 AM, "Pepe Flores" pepe.fls@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I’m working in an Educational Program in Mexico with the Universidad de las Americas Puebla. I agree that adding a lot of bytes doesn’t necessarily contribute to the quality of an article. We have been working on the development of the nanotechnology entries in Spanish, since this topic is kinda new in developing countries but there’s a lot of research in the last 20 - 30 years. One of our goals was to improve the quantity and quality of references, in order to provide little but accurate information rather than a lot of unreferenced data. This standpoint was well perceived by the Spanish Wikipedia community as the entries has not been deleted but improved by other Wikipedia users.
You may know a little bit more about this program in https://mx.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proyectos:Programa_Educativo_UDLAP#Introducci.... (in Spanish). The report isn’t finished yet but it’s illustrative about the importance of working toward reference quality instead of volume (bytes).
-- Personal Sent with Airmail
En 28 de enero de 2014 at 18:42:23, Juliana Bastos Marques (domusaurea@gmail.com) escrito:
I forgot to mention a couple of important things I'm expecting to happen. First of all, I thought about measuring bytes *only after* the qualitative part is assessed (kinda like publishing guidelines, which I'm trying to make them acquainted with). But I think the reason this could work is because at least half of the enrolled students have already worked with me in other previous classes with Wikipedia editing. My idea is to make them help the other students learn how to edit during the course, together with the ambassador.
In the last course I offered, some students later got Good Article status, and they were very excited and proud (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotdel, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipa_de_Lencastre). This wasn't the main goal, but kept them engaged even months after the course. A Facebook group helped with continuous lively discussions - the students are always there, anyway. I'm also relying on word of mouth, which has actually been proven quite effective. ;)
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote: Indeed. The WMF repeatedly bandied around the number of bytes produced by education projects, and it was (understandably) hugely controversial, not least given the problems that the program has had with plagiarism (most notoriously with the Pune project).
I would strongly suggest that bytes are a very poor indication of success.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:31 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article may be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote: *NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Hi Juliana and all! This discussion seems great! As Jami pointed out, WMF does count bytes as a way of assessing how much it has been contributed, as it's hard/impossible for WMF to evaluate quality in every article edited in the education program in different languages.
I do agree that the side effect of it might be a wordy/prolix writing.
But I guess that having a set of criteria such as: number/quality of sources added, new sections created, bytes added, language accuracy and style, as well as balance and objectiveness, together, may help you evaluate and encourage better contributions.
I think having it selected as good/featured article could be a bonus, but since it has to go through discussion in the community and sometimes this can be frustrated by things unrelated to the article itself (i.e. having a long list of articles to be discussed and voted for good/featured), I'm not sure I'd bring it to the center of the assessment criteria.
Oona
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray < jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
In fact I find the "good article" and "featured article" criteria very helpful, whether or not a class's aims are to enter their work for such reviews. Not least because they do deal directly with quantitative as well as qualitative measures, and they certainly quite explicitly address problems such as "inaccuracies, bias, contradictions, and missing topics."
After all, the second criterion for an FA (at WP:WIAFA) is that it is "comprehensive"; the third that it is "a thorough and representative survey." At no point is it suggested that a featured article has to be *long* (indeed, there have been repeated discussions about brief featured articles on talk).
In fact, the GA criteria provide a useful caution when they state that a good article should stay "focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail." I often find that, for instance with articles about literary works, there are whole chunks (usually plot summary) that need to be cut down, sometimes quite drastically.
More generally, students focussed single-mindedly on bytes added, beyond being immediately tempted to copy-paste (frequently from dubious sources) are also unlikely to look out for errors and/or plagiarism etc. that already exist in the articles they are working on.
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 5:42 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Would a leaderboard which breaks down bytes by those advancing any good
article criteria, bytes toward references added to un-sourced crucial statements, negative bytes reverted, and neutrally (e.g. no "points" for) other bytes added?
I have a feeling that if we tell students that is how they will be
scored up front, it will work out better than otherwise, whether the subsequent scoring criteria are good or poor. If it were up to me I would ask students to search for inaccuracies, bias, contradictions, and missing topics, and most of those things fit into a few of the good article criteria, but not very explicitly.
Best regards, James Salsman
On Jan 29, 2014 9:11 AM, "Pepe Flores" pepe.fls@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I'm working in an Educational Program in Mexico with the Universidad de
las Americas Puebla. I agree that adding a lot of bytes doesn't necessarily contribute to the quality of an article. We have been working on the development of the nanotechnology entries in Spanish, since this topic is kinda new in developing countries but there's a lot of research in the last 20 - 30 years. One of our goals was to improve the quantity and quality of references, in order to provide little but accurate information rather than a lot of unreferenced data. This standpoint was well perceived by the Spanish Wikipedia community as the entries has not been deleted but improved by other Wikipedia users.
You may know a little bit more about this program in
https://mx.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proyectos:Programa_Educativo_UDLAP#Introducci.... Spanish). The report isn't finished yet but it's illustrative about the importance of working toward reference quality instead of volume (bytes).
-- Personal Sent with Airmail
En 28 de enero de 2014 at 18:42:23, Juliana Bastos Marques (
domusaurea@gmail.com) escrito:
I forgot to mention a couple of important things I'm expecting to
happen. First of all, I thought about measuring bytes *only after* the qualitative part is assessed (kinda like publishing guidelines, which I'm trying to make them acquainted with). But I think the reason this could work is because at least half of the enrolled students have already worked with me in other previous classes with Wikipedia editing. My idea is to make them help the other students learn how to edit during the course, together with the ambassador.
In the last course I offered, some students later got Good Article
status, and they were very excited and proud ( https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotdel, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipa_de_Lencastre). This wasn't the main goal, but kept them engaged even months after the course. A Facebook group helped with continuous lively discussions - the students are always there, anyway. I'm also relying on word of mouth, which has actually been proven quite effective. ;)
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray <
jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Indeed. The WMF repeatedly bandied around the number of bytes produced
by education projects, and it was (understandably) hugely controversial, not least given the problems that the program has had with plagiarism (most notoriously with the Pune project).
I would strongly suggest that bytes are a very poor indication of
success.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:31 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au
wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article
doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article may be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques <
domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of
bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a
reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Yes, but as I suggested you can make use of the good (and featured) article criteria, even if you aren't asking students to submit their work to those processes. Those criteria can be the benchmark for what students accomplish on Wikipedia. Indeed, setting any other benchmark is odd, as it sets you in conflict with Wikipedia's own aims. (Yes, this is what the WMF did when it established its leaderboards; no wonder its educational program provoked such resistance.)
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 5:10 AM, Oona Castro ocastro@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Juliana and all! This discussion seems great! As Jami pointed out, WMF does count bytes as a way of assessing how much it has been contributed, as it's hard/impossible for WMF to evaluate quality in every article edited in the education program in different languages.
I do agree that the side effect of it might be a wordy/prolix writing.
But I guess that having a set of criteria such as: number/quality of sources added, new sections created, bytes added, language accuracy and style, as well as balance and objectiveness, together, may help you evaluate and encourage better contributions.
I think having it selected as good/featured article could be a bonus, but since it has to go through discussion in the community and sometimes this can be frustrated by things unrelated to the article itself (i.e. having a long list of articles to be discussed and voted for good/featured), I'm not sure I'd bring it to the center of the assessment criteria.
Oona
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote: In fact I find the "good article" and "featured article" criteria very helpful, whether or not a class's aims are to enter their work for such reviews. Not least because they do deal directly with quantitative as well as qualitative measures, and they certainly quite explicitly address problems such as "inaccuracies, bias, contradictions, and missing topics."
After all, the second criterion for an FA (at WP:WIAFA) is that it is "comprehensive"; the third that it is "a thorough and representative survey." At no point is it suggested that a featured article has to be *long* (indeed, there have been repeated discussions about brief featured articles on talk).
In fact, the GA criteria provide a useful caution when they state that a good article should stay "focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail." I often find that, for instance with articles about literary works, there are whole chunks (usually plot summary) that need to be cut down, sometimes quite drastically.
More generally, students focussed single-mindedly on bytes added, beyond being immediately tempted to copy-paste (frequently from dubious sources) are also unlikely to look out for errors and/or plagiarism etc. that already exist in the articles they are working on.
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 5:42 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Would a leaderboard which breaks down bytes by those advancing any good article criteria, bytes toward references added to un-sourced crucial statements, negative bytes reverted, and neutrally (e.g. no "points" for) other bytes added?
I have a feeling that if we tell students that is how they will be scored up front, it will work out better than otherwise, whether the subsequent scoring criteria are good or poor. If it were up to me I would ask students to search for inaccuracies, bias, contradictions, and missing topics, and most of those things fit into a few of the good article criteria, but not very explicitly.
Best regards, James Salsman
On Jan 29, 2014 9:11 AM, "Pepe Flores" pepe.fls@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I’m working in an Educational Program in Mexico with the Universidad de las Americas Puebla. I agree that adding a lot of bytes doesn’t necessarily contribute to the quality of an article. We have been working on the development of the nanotechnology entries in Spanish, since this topic is kinda new in developing countries but there’s a lot of research in the last 20 - 30 years. One of our goals was to improve the quantity and quality of references, in order to provide little but accurate information rather than a lot of unreferenced data. This standpoint was well perceived by the Spanish Wikipedia community as the entries has not been deleted but improved by other Wikipedia users.
You may know a little bit more about this program in https://mx.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proyectos:Programa_Educativo_UDLAP#Introducci.... (in Spanish). The report isn’t finished yet but it’s illustrative about the importance of working toward reference quality instead of volume (bytes).
-- Personal Sent with Airmail
En 28 de enero de 2014 at 18:42:23, Juliana Bastos Marques (domusaurea@gmail.com) escrito:
I forgot to mention a couple of important things I'm expecting to happen. First of all, I thought about measuring bytes *only after* the qualitative part is assessed (kinda like publishing guidelines, which I'm trying to make them acquainted with). But I think the reason this could work is because at least half of the enrolled students have already worked with me in other previous classes with Wikipedia editing. My idea is to make them help the other students learn how to edit during the course, together with the ambassador.
In the last course I offered, some students later got Good Article status, and they were very excited and proud (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotdel, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipa_de_Lencastre). This wasn't the main goal, but kept them engaged even months after the course. A Facebook group helped with continuous lively discussions - the students are always there, anyway. I'm also relying on word of mouth, which has actually been proven quite effective. ;)
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote: Indeed. The WMF repeatedly bandied around the number of bytes produced by education projects, and it was (understandably) hugely controversial, not least given the problems that the program has had with plagiarism (most notoriously with the Pune project).
I would strongly suggest that bytes are a very poor indication of success.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:31 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article may be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote: *NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
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Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
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On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
If you allow me, perhaps I should rephrase:
***After all requirements of quality are assessed and evaluated***, what would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Indeed, maybe this question overlaps with some of the criteria for GA/FA, but I also suppose they are not the same for all Wikipedias.
Juliana.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray < jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF
has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Maybe we should follow the peer reviewed literature and construct a weighted rubric of different indicators: bytes, references, and article policy criteria advancements:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096751611000492
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED424257
http://www.pareonline.net/pdf/v17n4.pdf
I would much rather see paid advocacy bytes removed than POV essay bytes added.
Best regards, James Salsman
On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 7:31 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
If you allow me, perhaps I should rephrase:
***After all requirements of quality are assessed and evaluated***, what would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Indeed, maybe this question overlaps with some of the criteria for GA/FA, but I also suppose they are not the same for all Wikipedias.
Juliana.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Juliana:
This question has been asked a lot on wiki. The following link might help a first stab at an answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles/By_length
Though I'm not sure how accurate the list is, as #4156 on the list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene_%282005%29) as well as #4160 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Brown_Saw_the_Baseball_Game) both appear to be rather shorter than #4161 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_luridus).
See also:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles/Archive_6#Whi... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria/Archi... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
and so on.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 3:31 PM, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
If you allow me, perhaps I should rephrase:
***After all requirements of quality are assessed and evaluated***, what would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Indeed, maybe this question overlaps with some of the criteria for GA/FA, but I also suppose they are not the same for all Wikipedias.
Juliana.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote: Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Thank, Jon. I'd also love to know about the requirements of other Wikipedias, they may not be the same.
James, I believe we always have some room for experimentation in grading. Countries are different, schools are different, courses are different, goals are different. Guidelines are great (aren't we just creating them right now?), but they should not be rules, IMHO.
Juliana.
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray < jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Juliana:
This question has been asked a lot on wiki. The following link might help a first stab at an answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles/By_length
Though I'm not sure how accurate the list is, as #4156 on the list ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene_%282005%29) as well as #4160 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Brown_Saw_the_Baseball_Game) both appear to be rather shorter than #4161 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_luridus).
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles/Archive_6#Whi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria/Archi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc.... ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
and so on.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 3:31 PM, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
If you allow me, perhaps I should rephrase:
***After all requirements of quality are assessed and evaluated***, what
would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Indeed, maybe this question overlaps with some of the criteria for
GA/FA, but I also suppose they are not the same for all Wikipedias.
Juliana.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray <
jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single
thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF
has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
I thought we created earlier rubrics in 2009, but not sure what got pushed out to ambassadors. On Feb 1, 2014 9:41 AM, "Juliana Bastos Marques" domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
Thank, Jon. I'd also love to know about the requirements of other Wikipedias, they may not be the same.
James, I believe we always have some room for experimentation in grading. Countries are different, schools are different, courses are different, goals are different. Guidelines are great (aren't we just creating them right now?), but they should not be rules, IMHO.
Juliana.
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray < jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Juliana:
This question has been asked a lot on wiki. The following link might help a first stab at an answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles/By_length
Though I'm not sure how accurate the list is, as #4156 on the list ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene_%282005%29) as well as #4160 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Brown_Saw_the_Baseball_Game) both appear to be rather shorter than #4161 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_luridus).
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles/Archive_6#Whi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria/Archi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc.... ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
and so on.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 3:31 PM, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
If you allow me, perhaps I should rephrase:
***After all requirements of quality are assessed and evaluated***,
what would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Indeed, maybe this question overlaps with some of the criteria for
GA/FA, but I also suppose they are not the same for all Wikipedias.
Juliana.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray <
jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single
thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF
has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Hello!
I have been a Wikipedia assistant to a course in my local university for three years. The course is mandatory for third year students of natural and technological sciences (from computer technology through physics to biology) and is mainly about written expression in Estonian language (our native language) - how to write well about their respective fields and topics of research and study.
One of their assignments is a Wikipedia article. Minimum length is 8000 characters (incl. spaces, excl. references, 4 or 5 pages on paper). Yes, characters, not bytes. They write their articles first in sandboxes. Guidelines are given to them how to write good wikiarticles and they should write well sourced and accurate texts with all necessary wiki markup. Then some assistants like me read their articles and give them feedback mostly on what is the goal and purpose of the course - if the text is understandable and language is correct. If they spot any dubious content (copypaste, errors) or unsourced paragraphs, they point it out too. Then students correct their articles.
The minimum limit of characters is only there to give students somewhat equal assignments so they know how long is expected. I measure it by highlighting the text and copying it to Word which counts characters for me. Some students write barely enough and their text usually needs some more work anyway so I encourace them to add 500 characters or whatever is lacking. Most write a few thousand characters more, but I tell them to not exceed the minimum length too much and to concentrate on the quality.
As they are studying technology and sciences, they are not really used to paying attention to language so sometimes they are grumpy and unpatient about me demanding understandable and well written text, but Wikipedia is really the best way to teach them that not only their fellow scientists need to understand them.
2014-02-01 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
I thought we created earlier rubrics in 2009, but not sure what got pushed out to ambassadors. On Feb 1, 2014 9:41 AM, "Juliana Bastos Marques" domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
Thank, Jon. I'd also love to know about the requirements of other Wikipedias, they may not be the same.
James, I believe we always have some room for experimentation in grading. Countries are different, schools are different, courses are different, goals are different. Guidelines are great (aren't we just creating them right now?), but they should not be rules, IMHO.
Juliana.
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray < jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Juliana:
This question has been asked a lot on wiki. The following link might help a first stab at an answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles/By_length
Though I'm not sure how accurate the list is, as #4156 on the list ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene_%282005%29) as well as #4160 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Brown_Saw_the_Baseball_Game) both appear to be rather shorter than #4161 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_luridus).
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles/Archive_6#Whi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria/Archi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc.... ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
and so on.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 3:31 PM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
If you allow me, perhaps I should rephrase:
***After all requirements of quality are assessed and evaluated***,
what would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Indeed, maybe this question overlaps with some of the criteria for
GA/FA, but I also suppose they are not the same for all Wikipedias.
Juliana.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray <
jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single
thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the
WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions.
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I
mean
both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the
most
into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
[1] =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Pol...
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Hi Teele,
I think that is a good way to learn how to write, and science students must understand that while working it is neccessary to write correct to your boss or the costumer so that they understand what you are up to.
I used to write smaller wikipedia articles and to expand others in the subject i currently was reading, to learn better and get a better grip of the subject. In the same time I made lists on a sub page so I easily could look at it while studying to the exam. I marked articles controlled and sourced by me Nd lett my fellow students use the lists too, hoping they too would co-operate in my project, because they to was helped of it.
Maybe you could tell you students about this way of learning too, because it improves wikipedia for them to use for exams, and for the quality too.
Here is one of my lists. Words marked with xx I have checked, and the last headline, extra, is articles I created. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Adville/Medicinsk_teknik
Best regards Harald
Skickat från min iPad
8 feb 2014 kl. 04:22 skrev "Teele Vaalma" teele.vaalma@gmail.com:
Hello!
I have been a Wikipedia assistant to a course in my local university for three years. The course is mandatory for third year students of natural and technological sciences (from computer technology through physics to biology) and is mainly about written expression in Estonian language (our native language) - how to write well about their respective fields and topics of research and study.
One of their assignments is a Wikipedia article. Minimum length is 8000 characters (incl. spaces, excl. references, 4 or 5 pages on paper). Yes, characters, not bytes. They write their articles first in sandboxes. Guidelines are given to them how to write good wikiarticles and they should write well sourced and accurate texts with all necessary wiki markup. Then some assistants like me read their articles and give them feedback mostly on what is the goal and purpose of the course - if the text is understandable and language is correct. If they spot any dubious content (copypaste, errors) or unsourced paragraphs, they point it out too. Then students correct their articles.
The minimum limit of characters is only there to give students somewhat equal assignments so they know how long is expected. I measure it by highlighting the text and copying it to Word which counts characters for me. Some students write barely enough and their text usually needs some more work anyway so I encourace them to add 500 characters or whatever is lacking. Most write a few thousand characters more, but I tell them to not exceed the minimum length too much and to concentrate on the quality.
As they are studying technology and sciences, they are not really used to paying attention to language so sometimes they are grumpy and unpatient about me demanding understandable and well written text, but Wikipedia is really the best way to teach them that not only their fellow scientists need to understand them.
2014-02-01 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
I thought we created earlier rubrics in 2009, but not sure what got pushed out to ambassadors.
On Feb 1, 2014 9:41 AM, "Juliana Bastos Marques" domusaurea@gmail.com wrote: Thank, Jon. I'd also love to know about the requirements of other Wikipedias, they may not be the same.
James, I believe we always have some room for experimentation in grading. Countries are different, schools are different, courses are different, goals are different. Guidelines are great (aren't we just creating them right now?), but they should not be rules, IMHO.
Juliana.
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote: Juliana:
This question has been asked a lot on wiki. The following link might help a first stab at an answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles/By_length
Though I'm not sure how accurate the list is, as #4156 on the list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene_%282005%29) as well as #4160 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Brown_Saw_the_Baseball_Game) both appear to be rather shorter than #4161 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boletus_luridus).
See also:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles/Archive_6#Whi...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria/Archi...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc......
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/arc...
and so on.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 3:31 PM, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
If you allow me, perhaps I should rephrase:
***After all requirements of quality are assessed and evaluated***, what would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Indeed, maybe this question overlaps with some of the criteria for GA/FA, but I also suppose they are not the same for all Wikipedias.
Juliana.
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote: Well, a little unfair perhaps. The education program was not a single thing, and I certainly acknowledge your own valuable contributions throughout, that consistently ensured (and continue to ensure) a more thoughtful approach to counteract the editcountitis and bytecountitis that was prevalent in other quarters. Still, there's no denying that the focus on quantity (seemingly at the expense of quality) has always been, and continues to be, one of the major sources of tension between the education program and the Wikipedia community. Hence there is good reason to think and talk in other ways about how to assess and encourage student work.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:23 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Jon Beasley-Murray jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca wrote:
> > In short, focussing single-mindedly on bytes contributed (as the WMF has repeatedly done in the past) in counterproductive and goes directly against Wikipedia's own criteria for what are (rightly) valued as its most important and valuable contributions. >
Jon, I think you're being unfair here. Despite being much harder to measure, quality has been part of WMF's education programs since the beginning. During the Public Policy Initiative, we created a system for quantifying article quality (and how the work of student editors impacted it) that was directly based on WP:WIAFA [1].
It should be uncontroversial to say that what we -- and by "we" I mean both WMF and the editing community -- want is large quantities *of* high quality content. From what I saw, the leaderboards were pretty effective at motivating a handful of most involved classes during the Public Policy Initiative -- classes with instructors who were the most into the goal of improving Wikipedia -- and for those classes, the quality was also high. For the classes that were doing lower quality work, from what I remember they were also the ones that did not take an interest in the leaderboard. (I also suggest that the Pune pilot would have gone just as badly with or without leaderboards; counting bytes was not among its critical problems.)
(I agree that, for evaluating an individual student's work, bytes added is not a great metric, and in general there are some dangers to incentives based on quantity of text.)
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Hi LiAnna,
Has anyone published a set of actual Education Program student evaluation criteria and evaluations with which we could try the process described in http://www.pareonline.net/pdf/v17n4.pdf to get some idea of its suitability? Perhaps there are some existing criteria and evaluations that teachers or ambassadors have which could be quickly anonymized if they aren't already published?
Developing a short robust evaluation criteria seems to be what the Education Program needs most, based on the discussions of problems and community friction. I thought that there were already some evaluation criteria published from a few years back, but I can't find them. The Factor Analysis routine mentioned in that PARE paper is the same as R's factanal() function.
If this can't be published for volunteers to try, can you try it internally?
Best regards, James Salsman
There's a large section on assessing student work in our Case Studies brochure: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Case_Studies
Any instructors who have found additional methods of assessing student work they'd like to share with other instructors are encouraged to create a Case Study for their own work -- just follow the instructions on that page.
LiAnna
On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 12:51 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Hi LiAnna,
Has anyone published a set of actual Education Program student evaluation criteria and evaluations with which we could try the process described in http://www.pareonline.net/pdf/v17n4.pdf to get some idea of its suitability? Perhaps there are some existing criteria and evaluations that teachers or ambassadors have which could be quickly anonymized if they aren't already published?
Developing a short robust evaluation criteria seems to be what the Education Program needs most, based on the discussions of problems and community friction. I thought that there were already some evaluation criteria published from a few years back, but I can't find them. The Factor Analysis routine mentioned in that PARE paper is the same as R's factanal() function.
If this can't be published for volunteers to try, can you try it internally?
Best regards, James Salsman