I'm writing to share an update on the way forward as far as making sure that we adequately capture all the learnings possible from the India Education Program. We also want to make sure that these learnings are robust and are incorporated into the core program design going forward. We also would like these learnings to also be of an adequately granular level so that we can identify trends of what doesn't work and what might work better - such as year of students, nature of faculty involvement, subject area, etc.
We are planning multiple channels to capture, analyse and incorporate these learnings.
WMF has commissioned a researcher, Tory Read, to conduct an evaluative study of the IEP and provide recommendations for improvement. Over the course of next few days, she will be interviewing several teachers, students, CAs, Directors, admins and other wikipedia editors from the global community to take their input and views about IEP. She has already spoken to staff in SF, spent the day with us in Delhi and will be in Pune over the next 4 days conducting face-to-face interviews. She will also be reaching out to community members outside of Pune. She will then write an evaluative story about what worked, what did not and learnings from the the pilot.
A series of video interviews were done by a Campus Ambassador in Pune - Abhishek Suryawanshi who conducted interviews with students, professors and Campus Ambassadors in Pune. We promised all interviewees that any personal identifying information would be removed from this analysis to encourage them to speak freely.
In addition, India Programs consultants (Hisham & I) and Wikimedia Foundation staff (Frank Schulenburg and LiAnna Davis) are interviewing experienced Wikipedia editors from India and across the world. Please do reply offlist if any one of us can contact you to ask your views (if we already have not.)
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends. Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is just a sub-set of a preliminary list) What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's the amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information that the students have added on Wikipedia? How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments? How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than once?
At the WikiConference India we also had a IEP round table where we invited a couple of students, professors and campus ambassadors to share their personal views and experience working with IEP pilot. I'm going to upload the video if it's possible and share this with you. It was a very useful session where we discussed many of the points that will inform our future work - such as determining whether it should be voluntary or not, what student's were thinking while they engaged in copy-pasting into their articles, improvements to Campus Ambassador training, ideas on what kind of professors can work best on a project of this nature, etc.
The Learnings Page is my *very* preliminary draft at collating learnings from the pilot and exploring how how we can incorporate these in our way forward.
We will shortly summaries of all these findings as and when they are ready - and welcome an open discussion on them.
Do please share your thoughts and suggestions on the above. Please also do let me know if I've missed out anything.
Thanks
Nitika
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends. Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is just a sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's the amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information that the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
Assuming this question is not restricted for WMF outreachers only:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
It is quite possible that many students get conditioned to look at school
assignments as 'work', and either try and avoid doing any work outside of the amount specifically committed, or avoid doing anything considered as work outside of the time allotted for 'work'.
As a corollary, although I do not fancy that Wikimedia is attempting to directly change the way that our education system works in practice, students who treat contributing to Wikipedia/Wikimedia as 'fun' may be better tuned to handling life tasks better/more responsibly in the future.
Lots of imponderables, I know, but there must be something measurable between students who emerge from school having learned something (and continue to learn happily) and those who only get through examinations.
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Vickram Crishna vvcrishna@radiophony.com wrote:
Assuming this question is not restricted for WMF outreachers only:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
It is quite possible that many students get conditioned to look at school assignments as 'work', and either try and avoid doing any work outside of the amount specifically committed, or avoid doing anything considered as work outside of the time allotted for 'work'.
The part that prompted me to ask the question was whether this data point is contrary/orthogonal to the "contribute to Wikipedia" effort undertaken via Campus Ambassadors in conjunction with CoEP etc. I recall reading articles where it was emphasized that editing of Wikipedia will be part of credits earned in class.
Somethings vital that are missing:
1) How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends. Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's
the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information
that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Dear Bala, I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal.
Thanks, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How
many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out
trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's
the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information
that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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Ram,
Whatever the tone of the email, the questions Bala has raised are very pertinent IMHO and should be made part of the research.
We have a common goal of seeing the IEP fly high and benefit the movement. It is a pitiful sight to see bright talented campus ambassadors and seasoned well-respected editors go back and forth like this. Lets not engage in personalities and focus on the end result.
Kind Regards,
From: ramshankaryadav@gmail.com Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:07:36 +0530 To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] IEP Pilot - Preliminary Analysis
Dear Bala,I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal. Thanks,Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.com wrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
1) How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students.
2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs
3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP
6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have.
If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be
somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to
ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students
corrected their errors after these warnings?
How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than
once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial
nature of the questions look that way.
--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
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Ram,
The points i raised need to be asked and they are missing and i am raising them. This isnt about negative/positive tone. Any project that causes a three month long clean up effort involving hundreds of regular editors needs to document how much time and effort it is costing and what is its impact on the regular functioning of the project. Without that there is no real learning, especially when the program execs are seeking to repeat it.
- Bala
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Bala, I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal.
Thanks, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How
many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out
trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia?
What's the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information
that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class
assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more
than
once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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Friends, I'm not saying that points raised by Bala are not valid, but I would still like you guys to come up with questions/comments/suggestion to make it one of the best program. All of us are truly committed to do that and I would love to see few points like - "How we can better engage the community?" - "How many students are still editing Wikipeida, out of their course requirement?" - "How we can encourage newbies instead of blocking and scolding them, how to make it a fun place?"
- All in all the whole point here is to not just focus on good or bad, but learnings, and I'm very much open to any of these suggestions.
Accept my apologies if my tone was negative.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Ram,
The points i raised need to be asked and they are missing and i am raising them. This isnt about negative/positive tone. Any project that causes a three month long clean up effort involving hundreds of regular editors needs to document how much time and effort it is costing and what is its impact on the regular functioning of the project. Without that there is no real learning, especially when the program execs are seeking to repeat it.
Bala
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Bala, I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal.
Thanks, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How
many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan <foss.mailinglists@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out
trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia?
What's the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of
information that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class
assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more
than
once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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On 28-Nov-2011, at 6:22 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav wrote:
All of us are truly committed to do that and I would love to see few points like
- "How we can better engage the community?"
- "How many students are still editing Wikipeida, out of their course requirement?"
- "How we can encourage newbies instead of blocking and scolding them, how to make it a fun place?"
Great points Ram. We should definitely look at these.
Nitika
It is a pitiful sight to see bright talented campus ambassadors and
seasoned well-respected editors go back and forth like this
Pranav,
:-). I am not taking this personally. Hard questions need to be asked and i will ask them whatever the CAs feel about the tone. These need to be asked. I find it extremely troubling, after all the harsh words and heat the previous mailing thread generated and what the regular editors cleaning up in IEP have been saying onwiki, the lessons learnt initiative ignores such vital issues.
There is no disputing the fact that the IEP caused tremendous amount of cleanup work - to the point of overwhelming NPP and CCI projects. Backlogs increased greatly in both projects. Emergency requests had to be sent out for editors to come and help witht he cleanup. If a lessons learnt document doesnt talk abou its impact on the regular functioning of the wikipedia, i will point that out.
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav <
ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Bala, I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal.
Thanks, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How
many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan <foss.mailinglists@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out
trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia?
What's the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of
information that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class
assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more
than
once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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Hi,
Apart from studying ourselves, It would also be interesting to do a case study of similar student participatory programs and take best practices and incorporate them. Google Summer of Code would be a classic example, though its a summer contract, but some of the aspects are worth comparing.
1. GSoC has a steep(okay relatively much higher) barrier to entry to attract the cream of students inturn the number of students would be significantly less. 2. Many students continue to contribute to the organization / open source in general beyond the contract 3. Strong staging process to cross the gates(merging the codeline happens mostly post final evaluation) ensures impact of the student does not affect the community. 4. Many communities are largely happy to participate in GSoC since they usually get contributors to the community. 5. Communication models that exist in the program, typically there would be hardly anyone from the city / country for that matter to mentor. The communication happens online inspite of timezone differences. 6. GSoC gives a huge money as motivation, but most students join the program for reasons beyond money though they swipe the cards :D
There are few students on this list who took the same program with WMF, they could share some insights too!
Regards, Srikanth L
Great suggestion Srikanth!
I totally agree with you on quality, staging and motivation aspects.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
Hi,
Apart from studying ourselves, It would also be interesting to do a case study of similar student participatory programs and take best practices and incorporate them. Google Summer of Code would be a classic example, though its a summer contract, but some of the aspects are worth comparing.
- GSoC has a steep(okay relatively much higher) barrier to entry to
attract the cream of students inturn the number of students would be significantly less. 2. Many students continue to contribute to the organization / open source in general beyond the contract 3. Strong staging process to cross the gates(merging the codeline happens mostly post final evaluation) ensures impact of the student does not affect the community. 4. Many communities are largely happy to participate in GSoC since they usually get contributors to the community. 5. Communication models that exist in the program, typically there would be hardly anyone from the city / country for that matter to mentor. The communication happens online inspite of timezone differences. 6. GSoC gives a huge money as motivation, but most students join the program for reasons beyond money though they swipe the cards :D
There are few students on this list who took the same program with WMF, they could share some insights too!
Regards, Srikanth L
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I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?
As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?
It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.
Either way, Good Luck.
Regards Theo
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Great suggestion Srikanth!
I totally agree with you on quality, staging and motivation aspects.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
Hi,
Apart from studying ourselves, It would also be interesting to do a case study of similar student participatory programs and take best practices and incorporate them. Google Summer of Code would be a classic example, though its a summer contract, but some of the aspects are worth comparing.
- GSoC has a steep(okay relatively much higher) barrier to entry to
attract the cream of students inturn the number of students would be significantly less. 2. Many students continue to contribute to the organization / open source in general beyond the contract 3. Strong staging process to cross the gates(merging the codeline happens mostly post final evaluation) ensures impact of the student does not affect the community. 4. Many communities are largely happy to participate in GSoC since they usually get contributors to the community. 5. Communication models that exist in the program, typically there would be hardly anyone from the city / country for that matter to mentor. The communication happens online inspite of timezone differences. 6. GSoC gives a huge money as motivation, but most students join the program for reasons beyond money though they swipe the cards :D
There are few students on this list who took the same program with WMF, they could share some insights too!
Regards, Srikanth L
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Hi all,
Thanks for the engagement on the questions that should be tacked in this evaluation. See inline for a brief response to Theo's question about Tory Read.
Best, Barry
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?
As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?
It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.
Tory is indeed a competent researcher who built a solid understanding of the community and how things work in Wikimedia during her engagement with us in the India Chronicles. I selected her for this assignment because she has a good working knowledge of our general situation from her work on the India Chronicles, she has the skills to interview a good cross-section of those involved (WP editors, students, profs, Campus Ambassadors, online ambassadors, staff, others), she can look at the issue with fresh eyes and help synthesize learning and recommendations for changes, she will get this done in a timely fashion while memories are still fresh (which is really important).
She is doing a combination of Skype, email and in-person interviews...and is in Pune this week actually. I'm confident that her work will be valuable to all of us and it will be shared in its entirety with the community. It won't be the only work on this. Both the India team and the Global Education Program team are committed to doing more joint problem-solving on future changes to the program with those interested in engaging with us.
Either way, Good Luck.
Regards Theo
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Great suggestion Srikanth!
I totally agree with you on quality, staging and motivation aspects.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
Hi,
Apart from studying ourselves, It would also be interesting to do a case study of similar student participatory programs and take best practices and incorporate them. Google Summer of Code would be a classic example, though its a summer contract, but some of the aspects are worth comparing.
- GSoC has a steep(okay relatively much higher) barrier to entry to
attract the cream of students inturn the number of students would be significantly less. 2. Many students continue to contribute to the organization / open source in general beyond the contract 3. Strong staging process to cross the gates(merging the codeline happens mostly post final evaluation) ensures impact of the student does not affect the community. 4. Many communities are largely happy to participate in GSoC since they usually get contributors to the community. 5. Communication models that exist in the program, typically there would be hardly anyone from the city / country for that matter to mentor. The communication happens online inspite of timezone differences. 6. GSoC gives a huge money as motivation, but most students join the program for reasons beyond money though they swipe the cards :D
There are few students on this list who took the same program with WMF, they could share some insights too!
Regards, Srikanth L
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On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:10 PM, Barry Newstead bnewstead@wikimedia.orgwrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?
As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?
It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.
Tory is indeed a competent researcher who built a solid understanding of the community and how things work in Wikimedia during her engagement with us in the India Chronicles. I selected her for this assignment because she has a good working knowledge of our general situation from her work on the India Chronicles, she has the skills to interview a good cross-section of those involved (WP editors, students, profs, Campus Ambassadors, online ambassadors, staff, others), she can look at the issue with fresh eyes and help synthesize learning and recommendations for changes, she will get this done in a timely fashion while memories are still fresh (which is really important).
So, In summary, her only exposure to India and the community *was* the Research project that was undertaken for WMF earlier this year. I haven't had the chance to see the India Chronicles, but I can take your word for it. My point was, "fresh eyes" were what brought us here, but that notion doesn't seem to be registering with anyone yet. You are trying to justify that a single visit for a research project on behalf of WMF qualifies someone about a culture, community and a country. I thought you needed more local Indian perspective on this, how is this a start?
She is doing a combination of Skype, email and in-person interviews...and is in Pune this week actually. I'm confident that her work will be valuable to all of us and it will be shared in its entirety with the community. It won't be the only work on this. Both the India team and the Global Education Program team are committed to doing more joint problem-solving on future changes to the program with those interested in engaging with us.
Again, as I said, mostly remote work, and a couple of days in Pune and Delhi. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone currently on the WMF India staff has a good view of this, even after engaging directly for several months. I can't seem to understand what a researcher/consultant who wasn't as engaged as the staff can come up with.
Anyway, It was just my opinion. I made my concerns known before the IEP was undertaken, I guess you guys have this.
Regards Theo
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Barry Newstead bnewstead@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Hi all,
Thanks for the engagement on the questions that should be tacked in this evaluation. See inline for a brief response to Theo's question about Tory Read.
Best, Barry
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?
As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?
It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.
Tory is indeed a competent researcher who built a solid understanding of the community and how things work in Wikimedia during her engagement with us in the India Chronicles. I selected her for this assignment because she has a good working knowledge of our general situation from her work on the India Chronicles, she has the skills to interview a good cross-section of those involved (WP editors, students, profs, Campus Ambassadors, online ambassadors, staff, others), she can look at the issue with fresh eyes and help synthesize learning and recommendations for changes, she will get this done in a timely fashion while memories are still fresh (which is really important).
She is doing a combination of Skype, email and in-person interviews...and is in Pune this week actually. I'm confident that her work will be valuable to all of us and it will be shared in its entirety with the community. It won't be the only work on this. Both the India team and the Global Education Program team are committed to doing more joint problem-solving on future changes to the program with those interested in engaging with us.
Hi Barry,
My understanding is that conducting an evaluative study requires a deep comprehension of our projects and the volunteers. At the same time, an exercise like this demands objectivity while analyzing empirical evidence.
By building a repertoire of anecdotal evidence through a series of interviews mostly conducted over phone/VoIP, I do not see how this report will inform us beyond what discussions on this mailing list already have.
Tory Read is an accomplished story-teller, but she is not a Wikipedian. Can we simply not have WMF staff in New Delhi handle the interviews and requests for comment? (They should also seek help from some of the established Wikipedia editors.)
The reason why I am stressing on this is because I think that an established Wikipedia editor would be better-placed to objectively analyze what worked and what did not work, and how this program may be improved. Such editors need not be Indian, they can be a group of Wikipedians who were directly or peripherally involved on Wikipedia when the IEP program was being executed.
Best, anirudh
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Often, it helps to have an outsider perspective. We in the Pune community met Torey to day and are of the opinion that the Foundation wants someone from their side to provide an impartial outsider's view and also to explore ways ahead in addition to finding out whats going on and what had happened.
Obviously, her assignment is just one of a number of initiatives that are underway to improve/get feedback regarding the IEP fiasco.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.comwrote:
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Barry Newstead bnewstead@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Hi all,
Thanks for the engagement on the questions that should be tacked in this evaluation. See inline for a brief response to Theo's question about Tory Read.
Best, Barry
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?
As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?
It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.
Tory is indeed a competent researcher who built a solid understanding of the community and how things work in Wikimedia during her engagement with us in the India Chronicles. I selected her for this assignment because she has a good working knowledge of our general situation from her work on the India Chronicles, she has the skills to interview a good cross-section of those involved (WP editors, students, profs, Campus Ambassadors, online ambassadors, staff, others), she can look at the issue with fresh eyes and help synthesize learning and recommendations for changes, she will get this done in a timely fashion while memories are still fresh (which is really important).
She is doing a combination of Skype, email and in-person interviews...and is in Pune this week actually. I'm confident that her work will be valuable to all of us and it will be shared in its entirety with the community. It won't be the only work on this. Both the India team and the Global Education Program team are committed to doing more joint problem-solving on future changes to the program with those interested in engaging with us.
Hi Barry,
My understanding is that conducting an evaluative study requires a deep comprehension of our projects and the volunteers. At the same time, an exercise like this demands objectivity while analyzing empirical evidence.
By building a repertoire of anecdotal evidence through a series of interviews mostly conducted over phone/VoIP, I do not see how this report will inform us beyond what discussions on this mailing list already have.
Tory Read is an accomplished story-teller, but she is not a Wikipedian. Can we simply not have WMF staff in New Delhi handle the interviews and requests for comment? (They should also seek help from some of the established Wikipedia editors.)
The reason why I am stressing on this is because I think that an established Wikipedia editor would be better-placed to objectively analyze what worked and what did not work, and how this program may be improved. Such editors need not be Indian, they can be a group of Wikipedians who were directly or peripherally involved on Wikipedia when the IEP program was being executed.
Best, anirudh
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Hi Ashwin!
Please don't use the word "fiasco", yes we had seen some setbacks but it's not a complete failure. It's really demotivating for the people who were a part of IEP (me included).
Thanks, Ram
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
Often, it helps to have an outsider perspective. We in the Pune community met Torey to day and are of the opinion that the Foundation wants someone from their side to provide an impartial outsider's view and also to explore ways ahead in addition to finding out whats going on and what had happened.
Obviously, her assignment is just one of a number of initiatives that are underway to improve/get feedback regarding the IEP fiasco.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.comwrote:
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Barry Newstead bnewstead@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Hi all,
Thanks for the engagement on the questions that should be tacked in this evaluation. See inline for a brief response to Theo's question about Tory Read.
Best, Barry
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?
As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?
It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.
Tory is indeed a competent researcher who built a solid understanding of the community and how things work in Wikimedia during her engagement with us in the India Chronicles. I selected her for this assignment because she has a good working knowledge of our general situation from her work on the India Chronicles, she has the skills to interview a good cross-section of those involved (WP editors, students, profs, Campus Ambassadors, online ambassadors, staff, others), she can look at the issue with fresh eyes and help synthesize learning and recommendations for changes, she will get this done in a timely fashion while memories are still fresh (which is really important).
She is doing a combination of Skype, email and in-person interviews...and is in Pune this week actually. I'm confident that her work will be valuable to all of us and it will be shared in its entirety with the community. It won't be the only work on this. Both the India team and the Global Education Program team are committed to doing more joint problem-solving on future changes to the program with those interested in engaging with us.
Hi Barry,
My understanding is that conducting an evaluative study requires a deep comprehension of our projects and the volunteers. At the same time, an exercise like this demands objectivity while analyzing empirical evidence.
By building a repertoire of anecdotal evidence through a series of interviews mostly conducted over phone/VoIP, I do not see how this report will inform us beyond what discussions on this mailing list already have.
Tory Read is an accomplished story-teller, but she is not a Wikipedian. Can we simply not have WMF staff in New Delhi handle the interviews and requests for comment? (They should also seek help from some of the established Wikipedia editors.)
The reason why I am stressing on this is because I think that an established Wikipedia editor would be better-placed to objectively analyze what worked and what did not work, and how this program may be improved. Such editors need not be Indian, they can be a group of Wikipedians who were directly or peripherally involved on Wikipedia when the IEP program was being executed.
Best, anirudh
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Point well taken. Of course, you realise that I am a well wisher of the Programs and its participants. Sorry to inadvertantly hurt your feelings. "Challenge" or "setback" would have been more appropriate.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Ashwin!
Please don't use the word "fiasco", yes we had seen some setbacks but it's not a complete failure. It's really demotivating for the people who were a part of IEP (me included).
Thanks, Ram
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur@gmail.com
wrote:
Often, it helps to have an outsider perspective. We in the Pune community met Torey to day and are of the opinion that the Foundation wants someone from their side to provide an impartial outsider's view and also to explore ways ahead in addition to finding out whats going on and what had happened.
Obviously, her assignment is just one of a number of initiatives that are underway to improve/get feedback regarding the IEP fiasco.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.comwrote:
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Barry Newstead <bnewstead@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hi all,
Thanks for the engagement on the questions that should be tacked in this evaluation. See inline for a brief response to Theo's question about Tory Read.
Best, Barry
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?
As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?
It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.
I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.
Tory is indeed a competent researcher who built a solid understanding of the community and how things work in Wikimedia during her engagement with us in the India Chronicles. I selected her for this assignment because she has a good working knowledge of our general situation from her work on the India Chronicles, she has the skills to interview a good cross-section of those involved (WP editors, students, profs, Campus Ambassadors, online ambassadors, staff, others), she can look at the issue with fresh eyes and help synthesize learning and recommendations for changes, she will get this done in a timely fashion while memories are still fresh (which is really important).
She is doing a combination of Skype, email and in-person interviews...and is in Pune this week actually. I'm confident that her work will be valuable to all of us and it will be shared in its entirety with the community. It won't be the only work on this. Both the India team and the Global Education Program team are committed to doing more joint problem-solving on future changes to the program with those interested in engaging with us.
Hi Barry,
My understanding is that conducting an evaluative study requires a deep comprehension of our projects and the volunteers. At the same time, an exercise like this demands objectivity while analyzing empirical evidence.
By building a repertoire of anecdotal evidence through a series of interviews mostly conducted over phone/VoIP, I do not see how this report will inform us beyond what discussions on this mailing list already have.
Tory Read is an accomplished story-teller, but she is not a Wikipedian. Can we simply not have WMF staff in New Delhi handle the interviews and requests for comment? (They should also seek help from some of the established Wikipedia editors.)
The reason why I am stressing on this is because I think that an established Wikipedia editor would be better-placed to objectively analyze what worked and what did not work, and how this program may be improved. Such editors need not be Indian, they can be a group of Wikipedians who were directly or peripherally involved on Wikipedia when the IEP program was being executed.
Best, anirudh
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On 28-Nov-2011, at 7:12 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:
Hi,
Apart from studying ourselves, It would also be interesting to do a case study of similar student participatory programs and take best practices and incorporate them. Google Summer of Code would be a classic example, though its a summer contract, but some of the aspects are worth comparing.
Absolutely! It will be great to know more about Google Summer Code. Thanks for sharing this.
There are few students on this list who took the same program with WMF, they could share some insights too!
+1
Thanks Nitika
Thank you, Bala. I concur with your thoughts. The questions that you have raised must be addressed, if the IEP program wishes to retain any objectivity in the learning process.
anirudh
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Ram,
The points i raised need to be asked and they are missing and i am raising them. This isnt about negative/positive tone. Any project that causes a three month long clean up effort involving hundreds of regular editors needs to document how much time and effort it is costing and what is its impact on the regular functioning of the project. Without that there is no real learning, especially when the program execs are seeking to repeat it.
Bala
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Bala, I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal.
Thanks, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How
many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan <foss.mailinglists@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out
trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia?
What's the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of
information that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class
assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more
than
once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
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*offlist*
I know Bala could have used a better tone, however he has raised some very good points. Lets stay focused on this and not convert it into another flame war like the previous IEP thread.
I know you guys have been working hard and that this hurts. However, on the other side of the river, people like Bala are having to face a lot of shit online, hence he is loosing his patience. Lets hope that this research takes your points and his points into consideration and there is a way worked out.
From: ramshankaryadav@gmail.com Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:07:36 +0530 To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] IEP Pilot - Preliminary Analysis
Dear Bala,I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal. Thanks,Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.com wrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
1) How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students.
2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs
3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP
6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have.
If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be
somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to
ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students
corrected their errors after these warnings?
How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than
once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial
nature of the questions look that way.
--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
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WhereDevilsDare, Yes, Bala has VERY valid points. While I was [sadly] inactive at the time of all this [and therefore lose my right to say anything], on going thru the edits, it has struck me that a lot of this is Warn-worthy. A dozen policies violated, another dozen good faith edits disrupted. I think these policies must be given in theory before the practical session starts. And yes, while some users are only beginning to lose their patience, many have already lost it ... Regards,
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:17 PM, wheredevelsdare@hotmail.com wrote:
*offlist*
I know Bala could have used a better tone, however he has raised some very good points. Lets stay focused on this and not convert it into another flame war like the previous IEP thread.
I know you guys have been working hard and that this hurts. However, on the other side of the river, people like Bala are having to face a lot of shit online, hence he is loosing his patience. Lets hope that this research takes your points and his points into consideration and there is a way worked out.
From: ramshankaryadav@gmail.com Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:07:36 +0530 To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] IEP Pilot - Preliminary Analysis
Dear Bala, I'm glad that you came up with few more questions but most of them are in negative tone. We would love to have few questions from you pointing on few of the good things as well.
Please don't mind, it's not personal.
Thanks, Ram
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How
many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends. Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's
the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information
that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
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Appreciate your comments Bala, and I agree with the spirit of your questions. We do need to find out the effect that IEP had on the existing community. More importantly, though, I feel, is that we should concentrate on where we lacked. We had great Campus Ambassadors working out there, and we did have some good students. Next time around, we would probably do good to follow a good structure, something well defined prior to the start of the program. And that's where Tory Read's analysis could help.
Swaroop Rao (MikeLynch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch)
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 17:23, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.com wrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How
many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students. 2) How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs 3) How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project. 4) How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP 5) How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP 6) How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload. 7) What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM, sankarshan foss.mailinglists@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out
trends.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is
just a
sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's
the
amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information
that
the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students corrected their errors after these warnings? How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than once?
Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial nature of the questions look that way.
-- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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On 28-Nov-2011, at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:
A supplimentary question: Are kudpung, moonriddengirl, fluffernutter, Voceditenore, spacemanspiff et al being interviewed?
4 out these 5 have been/will be interviewed.
Nitika
On 28-Nov-2011, at 5:23 PM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:
Somethings vital that are missing:
- How many regular editors were required to clean up the articles. How many reverts/cleanup edits were required to clean up after the IEP students.
- How many admin actions/interventions were required - warnings, blocks, mergers, deletions, AFDs
- How many regular volunteer hours were spent on this project.
- How much did the new page patrollers (NPP) backlog increase because of IEP
- How much did the copyright cleanup investigations (CCI) backlog increase because of IEP
- How long is it going to take to clean everything up. What do the NPP/CCI project members feel about the extra workload.
- What was the impact on the existing en wiki community. How their attitude towards such a program has been damaged.
Agreed Bala - it is important to analyse the effort that has been put in reviewing all the articles that the students have written. I'll forward this list to Tory and request her to address these questions during her interviews with admins, editors et all.
Thanks Nitika
Nitika, I saw your draft edits about IEP campus ambassador syllabus on meta at the link below
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Educati...
but I felt that your syllabus seemed to repeat in essence whatever had happened earlier. Perhaps before redesigning your syllabus, you may like to decide en bloc, ie at a higher level, what changes you want in the overall scheme.
For example, should the campus ambassadors have four days training instead of two? How much editting should be taught? What skills do they need to know? ( Needs to be mapped out). After getting all input, we should have developed something broad which says something like (for example) -
*Campus ambassadors will need to undergo six days of training - in three sessions. In session 1 (two days) they learn about Wikipedia, becoming an editor and intro to CA program. In session 2 (two days), some weeks later they hone their editing skills, knowledge & competence and learn all things necessary to help editors. In the interim, they do some assignments, like bringing articles to GA, citation,etc which are of direct relevance to students and their assignments. In the last two day session,they get involved hands-on in the full gamut of activities that CA involves with role-playing skill development etc.*
After that and only after making something like that at its broadest level, should you flesh out the details.
I would strongly recommend getting community involvement in developing this broad plan of action.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------
Hi Ashwin
This is very very very much a draft document. I have now mentioned that on the page. This was just my initial draft thoughts. (For instance, I've hardly covered a quarter of the learnings that I myself have put together- which again are very preliminary.)
The various elements of the learnings gathering exercise that I had mentioned in an earlier mail will all feed into this - and we will also be reaching out to the community for their inputs.
The purpose of this page was just for me to put some structure to my work.
I take on board your points about high level strategic direction that we need to finalise before we start building the nuts and bolts. Improved Campus Ambassador training is certianly on that list but a whole host of others would also feature such as college selection, faculty selection & involvement, subject selection, class selection, student selection, numbers, etc. etc. etc .
However, what will determine and inform these will be the learnings that we are in the process of collating.
My request is therefore to treat this page as a little workplace for me right now.
Thanks Nitika
On 29-Nov-2011, at 1:39 PM, Ashwin Baindur wrote:
Nitika, I saw your draft edits about IEP campus ambassador syllabus on meta at the link below
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Educati...
but I felt that your syllabus seemed to repeat in essence whatever had happened earlier. Perhaps before redesigning your syllabus, you may like to decide en bloc, ie at a higher level, what changes you want in the overall scheme.
For example, should the campus ambassadors have four days training instead of two? How much editting should be taught? What skills do they need to know? ( Needs to be mapped out). After getting all input, we should have developed something broad which says something like (for example) -
Campus ambassadors will need to undergo six days of training - in three sessions. In session 1 (two days) they learn about Wikipedia, becoming an editor and intro to CA program. In session 2 (two days), some weeks later they hone their editing skills, knowledge & competence and learn all things necessary to help editors. In the interim, they do some assignments, like bringing articles to GA, citation,etc which are of direct relevance to students and their assignments. In the last two day session,they get involved hands-on in the full gamut of activities that CA involves with role-playing skill development etc.
After that and only after making something like that at its broadest level, should you flesh out the details.
I would strongly recommend getting community involvement in developing this broad plan of action.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
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On 28-Nov-2011, at 5:01 PM, sankarshan wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends. Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is just a sub-set of a preliminary list)
Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have. If it is possible.
As mentioned before, this is just an example of data point set that we'd like to analyze. This is just a rough draft and not by any means the final list of data points that will be under study. Indeed, it will be great to conduct a community IRC chat where we all can brainstorm what data points should be analyzed. We can then follow up with a talk page discussion for other people to chine in with questions and their suggestions.
What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's the amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information that the students have added on Wikipedia?
The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be somewhat trivially available.
Actually not. And that's the main reason why we had to pull down the Leaderboard (tool that shows bytes of data that has been added by a student on Wikipedia) as well. The Leaderboard accounted for all the edits that a student would make either on the talk page or on the article space. Also, if a students work has been reverted on the article, the leaderborad did not account that. Ideally the total amount of data that a student has added should exclude amount of data added on talk pages, should exclude data that is no more existing on wikipedia and has been reverted. All this data is not easily accessible.
How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?
This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to ask - why would you want to track this ?
This data point will be very useful to access the prospects of these students (newbies) becoming long term Wikipedians. If they have edited articles outside of their in-class assignments that simply shows that editing Wikipedia is something that they enjoy doing since they are not doing this under pressure or because they want to get more marks.
Thanks Nitika
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Actually not. And that's the main reason why we had to pull down the Leaderboard (tool that shows bytes of data that has been added by a student on Wikipedia) as well. The Leaderboard accounted for all the edits that a student would make either on the talk page or on the article space. Also, if a students work has been reverted on the article, the leaderborad did not account that. Ideally the total amount of data that a student has added should exclude amount of data added on talk pages, should exclude data that is no more existing on wikipedia and has been reverted. All this data is not easily accessible.
Very interesting. I based my opinion on the reading of http://jace.zaiki.in/category/research and a bit of playing around at that point of time.
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 17:33, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Actually not. And that's the main reason why we had to pull down the Leaderboard (tool that shows bytes of data that has been added by a student on Wikipedia) as well. The Leaderboard accounted for all the edits that a student would make either on the talk page or on the article space. Also, if a students work has been reverted on the article, the leaderborad did not account that. Ideally the total amount of data that a student has added should exclude amount of data added on talk pages, should exclude data that is no more existing on wikipedia and has been reverted. All this data is not easily accessible.
For me the above data can be classified as "Number of bytes added" and the sole purpose of it can be to have projections to increase storage if the program is to expand, am sure wmf ops is otherwise too good at improving infra and this would serve no purpose. I would call these as "fake numbers" because a rollbacker's number would be huge negative number, but I would assume everyone here agrees rollbacker does positive edits. There is no point in having this numeric data since one cannot infer anything irrespective of the number.
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
As mentioned before, this is just an example of data point set that we'd like to analyze. This is just a rough draft and not by any means the final list of data points that will be under study. Indeed, it will be great to conduct a community IRC chat where we all can brainstorm what data points should be analyzed. We can then follow up with a talk page discussion for other people to chine in with questions and their suggestions.
Ah oh ! Since I was impolite enough to forget doing this in the first mail itself, thank you for taking the time to write out the specifics of the query and thereafter, responding to the question. Much appreciated.
Dear Nitika:
I'm most glad this is being done and being shared.
Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is just a sub-set of a preliminary list)
A lot of this should be possible via the API - maybe Jace can show us how we can do it programatically.
Do please share your thoughts and suggestions on the above. Please also do let me know if I've missed out anything.
I'd be curious in looking at the copyvio stuff in greater detail but I do not know if that adds any value to your research.
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam ________ http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
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