On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Hisham hmundol@wikimedia.org wrote:
I thought I'd share with you a couple of links that are of relevance to the India Education Program. As you are aware, we are running a pilot of the education program in Pune. We are collating hard numbers to evaluate the pilot - and we'll share a full evaluation as soon as it is ready. However, it is clear that there are a number of mistakes that have been made - some of which ought to have been avoided (especially with regards to communicating stronger with the global wikipedia community, not agreeing to so many students signing up, anticipating the copy-pasting issue, etc.)
There've been many learnings that we're taking from it and Nitika has been collating these at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Educati... Please do note that this page is a draft and is very much work-in-progress. In addition, do also check out the discussion page - which we are trying to have as a focal point for all discussion regarding the education program.
In addition, Signpost covered the education program on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-11-07/Intervi... and there are some very nuanced and insightful comments on it.
Many thanks for sharing these links, Hisham. I spent the last couple of
hours poring over all of them before my eyes started glazing.
I read this talk page [1] from top to bottom - it was particularly useful in seeing how the whole copyvio issue started, then grew bigger and bigger.
Apart from the content, I was struck by: *the helpful, purposive and constructive suggestions and analysis from editors *a general absence of combativeness or baiting *an overall openness to feedback and responsiveness on the part of the India Education Program team
The statistical discussion on this talk page [2] was very useful to get a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
It looks like many of the suggestions made on these pages have directly been incorporated into the learnings page at [3] - this is an excellent step.
There are so many good points on all these pages, such a willingness to help strengthen the program, and so much openness to doing so, that I now feel more hopeful for the future.
Best Bishakha
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Ed... [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Educati...