Lennart's exactly correct: The primary goal of our program is to improve the content of Wikipedia by reaching out to academia. We're of course very excited if a student becomes a Wikipedian (and many have), but that's not our primary goal.

And yes, our students do get slapped on the hand for failing to follow Wikipedia policies to the letter--just like all other new contributors do. One key difference, though, is our students have access to Campus and Online Ambassadors, who are able to encourage them to fix any problems -- they are a mentoring role to the new editors who provide that crucial welcoming voice from the community. Copyright, notability, and other issues are covered during in-class and out-of-class Wikipedia labs with students, and they're given reference materials about the policies, but not all students listen the first time around -- that's just part of working with people. :)

In terms of mentoring female Campus and Online Ambassadors -- please do! And feel free to encourage any female students as well. Links to our three programs operating right now:

http://enwp.org/WP:CANADAEDU

http://enwp.org/WP:INDIAEDU

LiAnna

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <l_guldbrandsson@hotmail.com> wrote:

Sarah's conclusions are in sync with what I've heard from the team at the Wikimedia Foundation. But, and that's a crucial point, the goal with the collaborations with the universites is not to make everyone a Wikipedian. I know, that may be strange or counter-intuitive. It certainly was for me. Instead, the goal is to increase the quality of those articles that they university courses are working on, and if some of those who edited during the course stays on as Wikipedians, that's terrific, but it cannot be the goal. I am sure that Frank Schulenburg, Rod Dunican, LiAnna Davis or the other people in the (now) Global Education team can provide more insight into their original thinking. Or Pete Forsythe, for that matter, who I know is on this list.

I know that is but one of the aspects of Sarah's email, but it's the one aspect I know something about :-)

Best wishes,

Lennart

Lennart Guldbrandsson,
Wikimedia Sverige http://wikimedia.se
Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05 Epost: l_guldbrandsson@hotmail.com Användarsida: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal Blogg: http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/

Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 10:30:10 -0400
From: sarah.stierch@gmail.com
To: fredbaud@fairpoint.net; gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Supporting Campus Ambassador programs [Fwd: Issue of Copy-Pasting]

I took some time last week and actually went through the "female" editors (many of the students openly identify their real names and/or genders) participating in class programs.

1) Most don't edit Wikipedia after the class is over - and this goes beyond gender. I determined this by studying their user contributions and also using a tool to examine contributions and gender for specific WikiProjects (specifically WP:Public art which developed as a program with students before the Campus Ambassador program existed)
2) A nice amount of them generally get slaps on the hand for their lack of understanding on "How Wikipedia Works"

I'm not sure if this means that something in the system is broken (i.e. we're not educating students and professors on how Wikipedia works write, we're not providing ongoing outreach - which seems to be a problem in a lot of areas of WP outreach...), that the students genuinely have no interest (and that's fine, they are "forced" to do it, after all), or what..

Some of these problems involve image deletion (due to lack of understanding on how fair use/copyright works in Wikipedia), article deletion, blocking of accounts, or just plain calling people out on their talk pages. I didn't gather all this information in a pile - I've looked at upwards of a thousand female editors accounts over the past two weeks - but, it's there, if you dig around a bit.

-Sarah

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net> wrote:
Help is needed.

Fred

--------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Issue of Copy-Pasting
From: "Hisham" <hisham@wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, October 7, 2011 7:46 am
To: "Wikipedia Ambassadors India"
<wikipedia-ambassadors-india@googlegroups.com>
wikipedia-online-ambassadors@googlegroups.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Team

This problem is continuing and is fast approaching disaster proportions.
Please see these comments

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program#Queries_from_the_Wikipedia_community>
and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors#Concerns_over_impact_on_article_quality>

Please urgently do the following

a) Constantly repeat to every student that copy-pasting is not acceptable
b) Monitor the work of your students - and make sure they edit in their
sandboxes before they go live (and only go live after you ok it.)
c) Please let's have the Campus & Online Ambassadors working closely with
each other to do point (b) and to track, monitor and correct the work of
your respective students.

In the next few days and weeks, the problem is going to explode unless we
control it because many students' deadlines are approaching.

Please treat this matter with the highest urgency. The very future of
our program is at stake.

Many thanks.

hisham

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and
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Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.
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