Hey all,
Let me introduce myself first. I too am a CA in fact a second gen one. I initially decided not to reply to this mail stream at all as there is nothing but a blame game going on.
But after all the personal attacks, I've decided to be on the front-line along with my CA family. Ok, firstly, I don't really get this issue of the Indian Community not being aware. I mean, yes, you can blame Hisham for not enrolling the community but as the copyvios started flooding and the students started editing, we hardly saw anyone from the Indian Community. Even the Global community was unaware, but they sought out the information and made their presence felt such that they demanded information.
The Indian community however, still expects that students will come to them for help and they shall help. I remember attending the meeting last month. I was very excited as I was new to Wikipedia India community, Pune chapter. But am sorry to say, saying that the meeting was fruitful would be nothing but a vast exaggeration. I mean, we explained to the community as to how we and our Indian culture and education system were suffering personal attacks and we really needed assistance in replying back to them, but all the community was interested in was going to the students why they should not do copyvio which, we had already given tons of sessions for.
In fact, the mere suggestion of Ram to create custom welcome templates for the students was only agreed upon in theory and never came to life. Unfortunately, attacking the CA's on their edit count is a way, in which you can belittle their efforts, blame it on everyone else and just show how right you are.
The very aspect as to how this whole discussion is turning into only a blame game shows the fragmentation of the Indian community to which I feel to be a part of also.
As for OA's, I'm sorry but I can speak for myself to state I received zero help from my assigned OA's. I tried a lot on my part to reach out and get help but I had to man 100+ students * 2 subjects all on my own as my fellow CA also left my side. The active CA's were a big support, like Ram and a few others.
What is not visible in Wikipedia is the amount of hard work we CA's put in physically. I spent time every day teaching 100 students individually how to create a sandbox, my edit count does not show that contribution, I am sorry to say. I spent day and night searching for copyvios. Its only because of us CA's that the extent of copyvios was scaled to a lesser extent before the emergency OA's came in.
As for that Brazilian CA, he has been there since 2007, so I don't really get how you can compare him to Ram. The funniest thing however that I find is the name of the email chain, death and post mortem?? I mean, firstly, the IEP is not dead. Being the CA of SSE, I can say for certain, it was successfully implemented in SSE. I'd say at least 20 students are now permanent Wikipedians who might have done copyvio, but rectified and came back strong.
I hate this blame game of Nitika and Hisham as well as the other CA's. I am sorry to say, I had no help from the Indian community. All that I know about detecting copyvio was taught to me by Kudpung and Moonriddengirl, the rest I learnt along the way. Kudpung too was not expected to teach me, but he still did, and that is what I call as the true spirit of a Wikipedian, imparting knowledge.
Having a huge number of edits may make you well known to the community at large but for a bunch of students who have just started and don't even know how to check an edit count, its useless knowledge to them. They will hardly reach out to OA's. Most of the queries I got were not on my talk page but via phone calls and in person chat. I carried my laptop around showing anyone and everyone who wanted to know what to do.
We accept the mistakes we made but this blame game has to stop. What is the point of it all?? Form a constructive platform in moving forward not step back and say, "I told you so". That's just childish and immature.
As for the rampant voices who judge our experience, I welcome you to come to the colleges, deal with over 1000+ students and see how your words can totally inspire them to create non-copyright articles. Please, it will be a learning experience for me. Ask Srikeit, I invited him once, only about 16 people attended. The rest 80+ in SSE, asked me face to face at a later time. Would any of you be willing to spend so much time answering their queries from 9am to 2am?? I'd love to get that kind of support and give the students a few of your numbers.
Calculate that into my edit count please and am sure, I won't fair that badly.