It has been brought to my attention that maybe my initial comments were not sufficiently clear. The issues we are facing are primarily from classes not supported by the WMF Education Program or the Education Foundation.
The question is what do we as a community do to verify that students have the instructions that they need for their work on Wikipedia to be successful for all involved.
James
On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 4:05 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
I would like to clarify that I do not have any issues with the formal "education program" itself or with any of the individuals involved with it. I think the education program is a good idea generally.
The issue I have is the current methods we are using to bring students to Wikipedia. I think we need to take a step back, return to pilots and try something different.
Best James
On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 3:12 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Hey All
We must scale back the education program working on English medical articles immediately. It is simple not working.
Students are filling our medical articles with plagiarism, poorly sourced content, and duplicate content. This is not good for Wikipedia, it is not good for the students, it is not good for their Universities and it is not good for the community of Wikipedia editors.
There appears to be little oversight other than the few volunteer that make up the core community of editors. It is more than we can handle. We will go the way of Google Knol if this is scaled up. I believe in the collaboration between schools and Wikipedia in theory but not like this.
Evidence is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Incidents#I_si...
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian Clinical Professor, University of British Columbia President of Wiki Project Med Foundation
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com