On Nov 12, 2011, at 6:55 PM, Swaroop Rao wrote:

We used to have this mainspace-sandbox debate in the US Public Policy program last semester, and we decided that the aim of the program was students getting hands on community experience, and editing first in sandbox will not give that kind of experience to students. However, considering the massive problems we have had to face with India Education Program this year, I think sandbox editing before going to mainspace would work out well here.

Maybe if we had limited the numbers to much lower than we had in Pune, and with a larger number of Campus Ambassadors from the very beginning, and with the full compliment of Online Ambassadors from the very beginning, and with select faculty, (and with a whole host of other learnings), the sandbox route could also have been made to work in Pune. ...but I'm going ahead of myself because we are still analysing the results.

But a sandbox in a Chapter hosted wiki doesn't seem right to me, because it is almost totally disconnected from the ground realities at English Wikipedia. Also, editing on an enwiki sandbox will enable better feedback from various sources (perhaps from more experienced editors on enwiki), as opposed to a local sandbox, where feedback is only from the selected pool of Online Ambassadors.