Yes, it is both a US centric and English Wikipedia Centric project. Have a look at the FAQ "which universities will be involvedhttp://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative_FAQ#Which_universities_will_be_involved.3F" section. Not really the WMF's fault given that the money is coming from a US donor who is personally interested in this particular area. This is billed as a pilot project to see how the WMF (and, by extension) Chapters, could best work out ways to get improvements in areas on Wikipedia that appear to not be getting improved "by themselves". A noble goal, for sure. I too harbour worries about this not being a good way of going about improving Wikipedia - but then again - that's exactly what this is supposed to test! Ideally, this would be something that the mythical Wikimedia-USA chapter should be taking on, but in the mean time I hope this project produces *documentation* about how to get subject-specific experts involved. I spend a lot of my time trying to get GLAMs involved so I hope this produces transferable information for the rest of us.
-Liam [[witty lama]]
On 5 May 2010 22:46, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
It would help if someone explained what "public policy" articles are. I've never heard of the term before, except vaguely in relation to politics and local and national government and lobbying in the area of governmental policy and legislation, but maybe I should have a look at the Wikipedia article on "public policy" first (it might be a US-centric term).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy
Seems I remembered right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_schools
Hidden category: "USA-centric" - that is an accurate label.
I think public policy is a mixture of what we in the UK call the civil service, local government, political science and various quangos and lobbying groups. A look through the articles in this category (if accurately placed there) may help UK readers of this mailing list to see what "public policy" means:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom
I haven't a clue what it is called in other countries.
My view? This seems rather a US-centric project.
Carcharoth
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Given that this was published two hours ago and, not published on Foundation-l, I forward it. It is rather intriguing. I am interested to learn what the community thinks of this and, if this is another en.wp
only
project. Thanks, GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Frank Schulenburg fschulenburg@wikimedia.org Date: 5 May 2010 19:50 Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Public Policy Initiative To: WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi all,
I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation received a
generous
grant from the Stanton Foundation for a 17-month pilot program that will help inform how to best engage new contributors in the improvement of subject-specific articles on Wikipedia. The Stanton Foundation also
supports
the Wikipedia Usability Initiative and other Wikimedia activities; we are very grateful for this ongoing support and interest. A public
announcement
of this grant will follow later this week.
Subject-matter experts have always been valued Wikipedia contributors,
and a
key goal of this initiative is to facilitate their collaboration with and among the Wikipedia editing community. We will experiment with different methods of using Wikipedia as a teaching and learning tool in
universities,
and ways to provide incentives and support participation by students, teachers, and volunteers. The overarching goal of this project, called
the
Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative, is to effectively increase the
quality
of public policy articles on Wikipedia, and to support Wikimedia Chapters with a model for working with universities to enhance other topic areas.
We have chosen the particular subject area of public policy because this topic area is interdisciplinary, and requires collaboration among many fields (including history, economics, law, and various social and hard sciences). We also believe this subject area is underdeveloped on
Wikipedia
and therefore offers a big opportunity for improvement. Furthermore we recognize that public policy articles may pose special problems -- they
may
center on issues and debates that are more controversial and less settled than other articles in the sciences or in the humanities. We feel that if
we
can succeed with public policy articles, other topic areas can be
improved
based on this model.
This is a completely new and exciting model for outreach with subject
matter
experts on Wikipedia. It's also a first for the Wikimedia Foundation, and something we hope will lead us towards new best practices and a solid foundation to better collaborate with our volunteers and with academic
and
institutional partners.
During the 17-month time frame of the project timeline, the Initiative
will
be led by a project team at the Wikimedia Foundation working with two
keys
groups of volunteer Wikipedia editors: "Campus Ambassadors" doing in-classroom training and face-to-face evangelizing, and "Online Ambassadors" providing online support, coaching and mentoring. The
Wikipedia
volunteers will support university classes, students and professors as
they
engage in quality improvement of public policy articles on Wikipedia.
The execution of the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative will take a
phased
approach. This will include the recruitment of an advisory Steering Committee of public policy experts, establishment of quality measures, baseline assessment of the current quality of public policy articles, and development of educational and training materials specific to this
project.
We will then pilot quality improvement activities with 3-5 schools during the fall and winter of 2010, learn from the experiences of the pilot schools, and scale up to run work with an additional 7-12 schools during
the
spring of 2011. The project will culminate in a conference at which best practices will be shared and prizes awarded.
We believe that the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative will both improve public policy content during the duration of the project, and also
produce
information and infrastructure that could inform the design and
development
of a long term sustainable model.
The Foundation will more publicly announce this new initiative later this week with a press release, but we wanted to give everyone advance notice
and
share these job openings.
The Public Policy Initiative will be led by Rod Dunican, our Education Programs Manager. Pete Forsyth and I will remain closely engaged as the project unfolds, and we will build a project team specifically around the initiative. We invite you to have a look at the current job openings:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings
For more information, click the links below to review:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative_project_details
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative_FAQ
If you have further questions about the Initiative or the current job openings, please contact rdunican[at]wikimedia[dot]org
Thanks for your interest,
Frank Schulenburg, Public Outreach
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