Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of them editing the articles on the same topic.
The reason I am telling this is, In India (in general) it is not the students who are deciding the course (and career) that they want to study/pursue. Parents, relatives, and community around them decide that. So even though the student's interest may lie in a specific area, he might be studying a different course.
Allowing students to edit in a topic that they like will bring in more original content. But the issue with this methodology is, the role of Professors might be reduced, and the role of CA and OA might be increased. And I am not sure how the
But this methodology is adopted very successfully in Kerala using School wiki http://schoolwiki.in. But we may say, that is school children and they are not mature enough for wikipedia editing. Again that is our misconception. In general, personally I am more interested to target school students (high school and Plus 2) than college students. School children are fantastic. It is true that most of us under estimate them. But to see the successful result from India, see the young and wonderful wikipedians we have in Malayalam wikipedia and wikisource.
*Note: *Please note that I am replying to this thread as a Malayalam wiki community memeber.
Shiju
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 12:07 AM, Swaroop Rao raul.swaroop@gmail.comwrote:
That's true Arjun, there is a lot of interest in this program in many colleges, and this is going untapped. No, its not dead for sure. It was a pilot, and it didn't come out pretty; no issues, that's how we learn. I think that one thing we learnt is that the US model may not work out well for India, so we need to develop an India specific model for this (That's what we've been trying to do in these previous mails actually I guess).
Swaroop Rao (MikeLynch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch)
Steering Committee member, United States Education Program
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 23:36, Arjun mangol arjun.mangol@gmail.comwrote:
Hey all,
I refuse to believe it dead as of yet. There's yet a lot of avenues that haven't been explored. My personal suggestion was that let IEP establish a Wikipedia Club in every college in Pune to begin with, that would inculcate new, interested members who have a genuine passion for the project. Such clubs could meet every second Sunday, hold guest lecs, set a quota for a certain no. of articles to be created by the Pune chapter and so on by the members, teach its members better editing skills, and spread the knowledge. The CA training prog that I attended was a hell lotta fun and I wish many of my friends get the feel of it too.
These clubs would be managed by all the 'veteran' CAs and newer ones if needed as and when. IEP would be the umbrella organisation to it all, and we can focus a lot more on quality of articles rather than the sheer no. of editors and rampant copyvio-ing done as a consequence by the newbies. Give it thought. My friends in many colleges throughout India were literally jealous that I was a part of it. Let's not let it go unnoticed that there is genuine interest spread in pockets throughout the country.
- Arjun
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Arnav Sonara sonara.arnav@gmail.comwrote:
hi,
It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.
First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also speak to the Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India Programs team that initiated this project.
Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it dying. Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the findings and ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll try to gain new heights again.
-- Thanks Arnav (ricku). (User:Rangilo_Gujarati)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rangilo_Gujarati
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--
- Arjun
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Thanks Shiju. I raised same points yesterday , in Malayalam wikimedia list , in a related thread. Thanks for bringing this discussion here
Anivar
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.comwrote:
Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of them editing the articles on the same topic.
The reason I am telling this is, In India (in general) it is not the students who are deciding the course (and career) that they want to study/pursue. Parents, relatives, and community around them decide that. So even though the student's interest may lie in a specific area, he might be studying a different course.
Allowing students to edit in a topic that they like will bring in more original content. But the issue with this methodology is, the role of Professors might be reduced, and the role of CA and OA might be increased. And I am not sure how the
But this methodology is adopted very successfully in Kerala using School wiki http://schoolwiki.in. But we may say, that is school children and they are not mature enough for wikipedia editing. Again that is our misconception. In general, personally I am more interested to target school students (high school and Plus 2) than college students. School children are fantastic. It is true that most of us under estimate them. But to see the successful result from India, see the young and wonderful wikipedians we have in Malayalam wikipedia and wikisource.
*Note: *Please note that I am replying to this thread as a Malayalam wiki community memeber.
Shiju
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 12:07 AM, Swaroop Rao raul.swaroop@gmail.comwrote:
That's true Arjun, there is a lot of interest in this program in many colleges, and this is going untapped. No, its not dead for sure. It was a pilot, and it didn't come out pretty; no issues, that's how we learn. I think that one thing we learnt is that the US model may not work out well for India, so we need to develop an India specific model for this (That's what we've been trying to do in these previous mails actually I guess).
Swaroop Rao (MikeLynch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch)
Steering Committee member, United States Education Program
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 23:36, Arjun mangol arjun.mangol@gmail.comwrote:
Hey all,
I refuse to believe it dead as of yet. There's yet a lot of avenues that haven't been explored. My personal suggestion was that let IEP establish a Wikipedia Club in every college in Pune to begin with, that would inculcate new, interested members who have a genuine passion for the project. Such clubs could meet every second Sunday, hold guest lecs, set a quota for a certain no. of articles to be created by the Pune chapter and so on by the members, teach its members better editing skills, and spread the knowledge. The CA training prog that I attended was a hell lotta fun and I wish many of my friends get the feel of it too.
These clubs would be managed by all the 'veteran' CAs and newer ones if needed as and when. IEP would be the umbrella organisation to it all, and we can focus a lot more on quality of articles rather than the sheer no. of editors and rampant copyvio-ing done as a consequence by the newbies. Give it thought. My friends in many colleges throughout India were literally jealous that I was a part of it. Let's not let it go unnoticed that there is genuine interest spread in pockets throughout the country.
- Arjun
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Arnav Sonara sonara.arnav@gmail.comwrote:
hi,
It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.
First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also speak to the Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India Programs team that initiated this project.
Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it dying. Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the findings and ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll try to gain new heights again.
-- Thanks Arnav (ricku). (User:Rangilo_Gujarati)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rangilo_Gujarati
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--
- Arjun
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On Nov 13, 2011, at 5:58 AM, Shiju Alex wrote:
Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of them editing the articles on the same topic.
The reason I am telling this is, In India (in general) it is not the students who are deciding the course (and career) that they want to study/pursue. Parents, relatives, and community around them decide that. So even though the student's interest may lie in a specific area, he might be studying a different course.
Allowing students to edit in a topic that they like will bring in more original content. But the issue with this methodology is, the role of Professors might be reduced, and the role of CA and OA might be increased. And I am not sure how the
But this methodology is adopted very successfully in Kerala using School wiki. But we may say, that is school children and they are not mature enough for wikipedia editing. Again that is our misconception. In general, personally I am more interested to target school students (high school and Plus 2) than college students. School children are fantastic. It is true that most of us under estimate them. But to see the successful result from India, see the young and wonderful wikipedians we have in Malayalam wikipedia and wikisource.
Note: Please note that I am replying to this thread as a Malayalam wiki community memeber.
Shiju
Those are very valid points, Shiju. ...and we should and will take lessons from the malayalam wikipedia and wikisource initiatives, and other similar ones. is what you are suggesting something similar to a student's club
hisham
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.comwrote:
Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of them editing the articles on the same topic.
This is related to something I've been thinking about.
As conceived, the IEP and its parent the PPP (pardon the acronyms), were about contributing to wikipedia, about learning how to contribute, and about having fun while learning.
In practice, did it remain like that? Going by what I read, it sounded like many of the students were under high stress to turn in these wikipedia assignments to their teachers - and used every possible shortcut in the book. (Exactly what I would have done in my student days).
I may be totally off-base on this, but am curious, so would appreciate some info.
My question is: if this becomes a high stress exam type situ, is the student likely to a)either see it as fun b)go back to it later for fun? In which case, is this student likely to become a prospective wikipedia editor, or is this student going to treat this as a one-time thing and never want to do this ever again? (Given relationship with stress, exams, teachers, marks)?
Also - larger related qs: is the aim of the India Ed program to increase article content on wp (which can be done short-term) or to increase the number of editors? Or both?
Cheers, Bishakha
I second you bisakha.. I don't know what went wrong, whether extreme pressure caused the students to take those shortcuts & just copy paste or there was some kind of misscommunication. We OAs tried our best to edit the copyvios as far as possible. But things were even worse & the CAs who had higher experience of handling them had to interven.
Regards, Deepon
On 11/13/11, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.comwrote:
Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of them editing the articles on the same topic.
This is related to something I've been thinking about.
As conceived, the IEP and its parent the PPP (pardon the acronyms), were about contributing to wikipedia, about learning how to contribute, and about having fun while learning.
In practice, did it remain like that? Going by what I read, it sounded like many of the students were under high stress to turn in these wikipedia assignments to their teachers - and used every possible shortcut in the book. (Exactly what I would have done in my student days).
I may be totally off-base on this, but am curious, so would appreciate some info.
My question is: if this becomes a high stress exam type situ, is the student likely to a)either see it as fun b)go back to it later for fun? In which case, is this student likely to become a prospective wikipedia editor, or is this student going to treat this as a one-time thing and never want to do this ever again? (Given relationship with stress, exams, teachers, marks)?
Also - larger related qs: is the aim of the India Ed program to increase article content on wp (which can be done short-term) or to increase the number of editors? Or both?
Cheers, Bishakha
Did you guys try subject/stream specific article adoption? I was just thinking about how an average student who finishes bachelors and masters writes at least 20 essays and research papers that don't get published. They are just graded and forgotten. This means that all students are forced to go through a range of material. Wouldn't it be nice if you asked them to retrieve those and adopt stubs? Just a thought. Also, I'd love to have a copy of a draft/report that lists the entire chronology and conclusion of the program. Warmly Regards Noopur
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.comwrote:
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.comwrote:
Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of them editing the articles on the same topic.
This is related to something I've been thinking about.
As conceived, the IEP and its parent the PPP (pardon the acronyms), were about contributing to wikipedia, about learning how to contribute, and about having fun while learning.
In practice, did it remain like that? Going by what I read, it sounded like many of the students were under high stress to turn in these wikipedia assignments to their teachers - and used every possible shortcut in the book. (Exactly what I would have done in my student days).
I may be totally off-base on this, but am curious, so would appreciate some info.
My question is: if this becomes a high stress exam type situ, is the student likely to a)either see it as fun b)go back to it later for fun? In which case, is this student likely to become a prospective wikipedia editor, or is this student going to treat this as a one-time thing and never want to do this ever again? (Given relationship with stress, exams, teachers, marks)?
Also - larger related qs: is the aim of the India Ed program to increase article content on wp (which can be done short-term) or to increase the number of editors? Or both?
Cheers, Bishakha
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On 13 November 2011 08:46, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.com wrote:
Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of them editing the articles on the same topic.
This is related to something I've been thinking about.
As conceived, the IEP and its parent the PPP (pardon the acronyms), were about contributing to wikipedia, about learning how to contribute, and about having fun while learning.
Hi Bishakha,
This is a bit of a derail from your e-mail, but I wanted to clarify your use of the past tense (they *were* about contributing). I think the thread title here may be creating some confusion about what has actually happened. That, or else I may be confused myself :-)
The PPI (or PPP, LOL) is indeed over. It concluded with the completion of the Stanton grant requirements, and has now evolved into the GEP, the Global Education Program. The IEP as I understand it is not over: contrary to the subjectline of this thread, it hasn't "died." A number of schools have participated in the pilot phase of the IEP. My understanding is that the project has been mostly successful, except for one school, or set of schools, at which there were serious problems with plagiarism that, despite repeated efforts, the team couldn't get resolved.
The plagiarism problems were serious, and after their efforts to fix them didn't work, Hisham and Barry shut down that stream of the project. It was a hard decision to make, but I expect there's general agreement that it was the right decision. But the project itself is not over. Although, the pilot phase might be over: I'm not sure about that.
I'm just clarifying this point because I think it would be good for everybody here to have the same basic understanding of what happened. And if I'm wrong, somebody might please just correct me :-)
Thanks, Sue
-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 13 November 2011 08:46, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
As conceived, the IEP and its parent the PPP (pardon the acronyms), were about contributing to wikipedia, about learning how to contribute, and
about
having fun while learning.
Hi Bishakha,
This is a bit of a derail from your e-mail, but I wanted to clarify your use of the past tense (they *were* about contributing). I think the thread title here may be creating some confusion about what has actually happened. That, or else I may be confused myself :-)
Hey Sue,
I used 'were' not because I think IEP and yes, thanks, GEP :) are dead - but to point out how they 'were' conceived.
Anyway, it's great that you clarified this, given the thread's title.
The IEP as I understand it is not over: contrary to the subjectline of this thread, it hasn't "died." A number of schools have participated in the pilot phase of the IEP. My understanding is that the project has been mostly successful, except for one school, or set of schools, at which there were serious problems with plagiarism that, despite repeated efforts, the team couldn't get resolved.
I'm hoping we'll hear more about the successes of the project, and
eventually come to a balanced understanding of what worked and what didn't.
At this stage, we're hearing much more about what didn't work, so it's hard to assess the pilot meaningfully.
Cheers Bishakha
On 13-Nov-2011, at 4:07 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote:
I'm hoping we'll hear more about the successes of the project, and eventually come to a balanced understanding of what worked and what didn't.
At this stage, we're hearing much more about what didn't work, so it's hard to assess the pilot meaningfully.
Thanks for bringing this up Bishakha. I do agree with you - like any other thing IEP has had its own set of highs and lows, ups and downs, failures and successes. I wanted to provide a more holistic view and share some analysis that I have done about IEP to see what worked during the pilot and what did not.
Successes Our brilliant army of Campus Ambassadors who have voluntarily put in extra hours of work than they'd been asked to when they'd applied for Campus Ambassador Program. Several in-class sessions, copyvio sessions, co-ordinating with faculty, actively going from student to student and solving their queries, organizing regular CA meet ups/faculty meet ups, going through articles students have written, helping students understand how to do praphrasing and the list goes on and on. No matter what the circumstances were and no matter how busy they were there were always couple of CAs who would actively volunteer for the work that was required to be done. They have put their heart and soul in the program and would like to thank each one of them for all their efforts and dedication towards the program!
A lot of students who have been actively editing additional articles 'besides the ones on which they'll be graded'. These students are genuinely interested in Wiki editing and have written some very good articles. Just to add, these students understand the consequences of plagiarism and who knows, these newbies might turn into long term wikipedians.
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles that students have written. I feel in the midst of all the copyvio chaos we have not congratulated students who have done brilliant work on wikipedia:
Challenges of Inflationary Policy In India Private_sector_banks_in_India Innovations_in_the_Indian_banking_system Credit_Control Commercial_paper_in_India Indian_money_market Risk_management_in_Indian_banks Monetary_policy_of_India Loan waiver All_India_Financial_Institutions Non-banking_Financial_Company economic_survey Public_Private_Partnership_in_India Public_float Finance_in_India Foreign_Exchange_Management_Act Public_sector_banks_in_India Robinson Crusoe Economy Human Capital Land acquisition in India Partial equilibrium Labour Discrimination Testing high-performance computing applications Test Data Generation Testing in data mining applications Applications of Stack Double-ended priority queue Constructor(Object-oriented programming)
These are just few of the articles. And as you'll notice not only have these students written good articles they have also contributed in great way by adding Indian content on wiki.
Failures (and while pointing out the failures, I'd also like to address some concerns raised by specific people in this mail trail) There is no denying that our lack of communication with the global wikipedia community would be the biggest failure. Initially when we had approached the OAs we'd thought that their role will be similar (if not the same) to the OAs involved in PPI. But because of several other issues (students adding plagiarized material, low quality content etc) we had to start with the clean up project and hence the role of OAs also changed. I think this change of role caused some confusion for the OAs. So Bala/ Surya, I note your point here going forward we have to have more effective communication with the OAs and the entire OA Program should be designed and monitored in a better fashion. Accepting some of the inexperienced Wikipedians to become OAs. However we recognized our mistake well in time and got more experienced wikipedians as OAs ( OAs who were actively involved in PPI). As Swaroop/Arnav rightly said, we'll have to branch out to other subject streams. It was really difficult for first year engineering students (who were still studying the basics of engineering) to pick up topics on which they could write wikipedia articles because most of those articles were very well covered. Not briefing students about plagiarism and copyvios during the initial in-class sessions. Going forward, we have to make sure that students are taught about this topic in detail.
Arnav, Arjun, Swaroop et all - I agree with you! IEP is not dead. The program faced its own set of challenges and we've learnt a lot out of this pilot. We're still studying the trends, our mistakes, our successes and we'll share our evaluation with you all sometime soon.
Thanks Nitika
Hi Nitika
All the consideration aside for the "Brilliant army". I clicked on a couple of articles on your list, and then found an interesting pattern. Did you check any of these yourself? In case you didn't, I updated the list for you.
Most of the articles that don't have a comment in the list below are not sufficiently reviewed by other editors, very few received extensive copy editing for style and cohesiveness by regular editors, most still didn't. Most of them seem to be poorly written or formatted, a lot of these will be tagged several times for a multitude of issues, this is far from efficient, but I suppose their effort counts, only if these were created without a requirement to fill some course criteria. To which my question, what was the intent of the program again? This would have been the eventual outcome if 10 students voluntarily participated in a workshop and did those in their free time.
As for "the highs and lows, ups and downs, failures and successes", allow us to decide on the holistic view. I don't think someone involved in a project can have a holistic view, things like observer bias and subject-expectancy effect might interfere.
As for starting "Wiki editing" you might want to start yourself. I suggest your userpage on Meta, which if I recall I told you to create a month ago.
Regards Theo
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Challenges of Inflationary Policy In Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenges_of_Inflationary_Policy_In_India - Wrong article - Redirects to [[Inflation in India]] Private_sector_banks_in_Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector_banks_in_India
Innovations_in_the_Indian_banking_systemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovations_in_the_Indian_banking_system
- Entire article was merged to [[Banking in India]] as a section.
Credit_Control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Control Commercial_paper_in_Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_paper_in_India
Indian_money_market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_money_market - Redirects to [[Money market in India]] Risk_management_in_Indian_bankshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management_in_Indian_banks
Monetary_policy_of_Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy_of_India
Loan waiver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loan_waiver All_India_Financial_Institutionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Financial_Institutions
Non-banking_Financial_Companyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mallika.sharma/Non-banking_Financial_Company -Article rejected in AFC for being not-reliable. economic_surveyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raj2026/economic_survey -Article still in AFC- needs a re-write. Public_Private_Partnership_in_Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Private_Partnership_in_India -Tagged as orphan, and needing copy edit. Public_float http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_float -This one is from 2008 Finance_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_in_India -Article from 2009 Foreign_Exchange_Management_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Exchange_Management_Act -Article from 2006 Public_sector_banks_in_Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sector_banks_in_India
http://goog_1646918697/ Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case. Human Capital http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Capital -Article from 2002 Land acquisition in Indiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_acquisition_in_India -Currently tagged for neutrality, tone, cleanup, citation, copy editing and disputed accuracy. Partial equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_equilibrium -Reverted thrice for copyvio, not sure if the current version is sufficiently verified. Labour Discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Discrimination
Testing high-performance computing applicationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_high-performance_computing_applications Test Data Generation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Data_Generation Testing in data mining applicationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_in_data_mining_applications Applications of Stackhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_%28data_structure%29#Applications -Redirect, Moved to a section Stack (abstract data type) Double-ended priority queuehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-ended_priority_queue
Constructor(Object-oriented programming)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructor_%28object-oriented_programming%29
While the program must certainly be evaluated, both internally and externally, I find some of this gleeful schadenfreude most disturbing.
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam ________ http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:15 PM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
As for "the highs and lows, ups and downs, failures and successes", allow us to decide on the holistic view. I don't think someone involved in a project can have a holistic view, things like observer bias and subject-expectancy effect might interfere.
Who's us, Theo? And surely those involved in the project are allowed to
have - and share - their own views, regardless of whether or not others agree with them?
As for starting "Wiki editing" you might want to start yourself. I suggest your userpage on Meta, which if I recall I told you to create a month ago.
Ooooh! Can we please cut out these sort of unconstructive, personal comments. They don't help anyone or anything.
Bishakha
With all due respect Bishakha, I beg to differ.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:15 PM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
As for "the highs and lows, ups and downs, failures and successes", allow us to decide on the holistic view. I don't think someone involved in a project can have a holistic view, things like observer bias and subject-expectancy effect might interfere.
Who's us, Theo? And surely those involved in the project are allowed to
have - and share - their own views, regardless of whether or not others agree with them?
They are, my comment was only to her point about a "holistic view". 'Us' apparently means the community, the rest of the people viewing and commenting here. I didn't object to her sharing her view, it was calling it holistic that I was commenting on.
As for starting "Wiki editing" you might want to start yourself. I suggest your userpage on Meta, which if I recall I told you to create a month ago.
Ooooh! Can we please cut out these sort of unconstructive, personal comments. They don't help anyone or anything.
I assure you this was not a personal comment. You might want to look at the Meta talk page for IEP here [1] where admins who first dealt with the issue played a game charades to find out who was actually in-charge of IEP. It has editors from enwp, trying to deduce who Nitika.t is
Here's a couple of quotes- "from User:Nitika.thttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nitika.t's October 6th comment at en:Wikipedia talk:India Education Programhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program we assume that she holds some position in the project, but she never states what it is" and And "er... that's it. From what I've been able to gather on my own:"
She eventually identified herself but only on that page. Her userpage on Meta, is a single dot added by me[2] so it wouldn't be a red-link to new editors from enwp, and she can confirm that I did indeed tell her to create a userpage on Meta in person a month ago in the office.
Regards Theo
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Ed... [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Nitika.t&oldid=2960704
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
As for starting "Wiki editing" you might want to start yourself. I
suggest your userpage on Meta, which if I recall I told you to create a month ago.
Ooooh! Can we please cut out these sort of unconstructive, personal comments. They don't help anyone or anything.
I assure you this was not a personal comment. You might want to look at the Meta talk page for IEP here [1] where admins who first dealt with the issue played a game charades to find out who was actually in-charge of IEP. It has editors from enwp, trying to deduce who Nitika.t is
And with all due respect back, Theo, this thread is about the IEP - not
about Nitika's editing prowess. So your comment strikes me as irrelevant - and I'm sorry, but even if I'm in a minority of one, it did come across as personal to me.
I also feel that comments like these have a strong effect on those whom they name thus - they silence them. Specially when they are relatively new to this culture, and even more so, when they are participating in a very difficult and somewhat hostile thread. And they silence others who may have spoken out.
So while applauding Nitika for sharing her views in this space, I also want to urge that you and I not get into a slanging match on this point. Let's agree to disagree, since I doubt we will agree on this.
At the same time, I very much appreciate your efforts to help and nurture Nitika, which did come through in the earlier email too.
Best Bishakha
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Ed... [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Nitika.t&oldid=2960704
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
As for starting "Wiki editing" you might want to start yourself. I
suggest your userpage on Meta, which if I recall I told you to create a month ago.
Ooooh! Can we please cut out these sort of unconstructive, personal comments. They don't help anyone or anything.
I assure you this was not a personal comment. You might want to look at the Meta talk page for IEP here [1] where admins who first dealt with the issue played a game charades to find out who was actually in-charge of IEP. It has editors from enwp, trying to deduce who Nitika.t is
And with all due respect back, Theo, this thread is about the IEP - not
about Nitika's editing prowess. So your comment strikes me as irrelevant - and I'm sorry, but even if I'm in a minority of one, it did come across as personal to me.
I also feel that comments like these have a strong effect on those whom they name thus - they silence them. Specially when they are relatively new to this culture, and even more so, when they are participating in a very difficult and somewhat hostile thread. And they silence others who may have spoken out.
So while applauding Nitika for sharing her views in this space, I also want to urge that you and I not get into a slanging match on this point. Let's agree to disagree, since I doubt we will agree on this.
At the same time, I very much appreciate your efforts to help and nurture Nitika, which did come through in the earlier email too.
Best Bishakha
Yes, I agree to disagree on this, but I still fail to see how I made it personal. I try my best to avoid *ad hominem* attacks, it breaches the line of good debate with an argument, but I agree my tone can seem harsh at times, and in hindsight I could have stated my point a bit better. But what you seem to misunderstand as personal is actually her professional work. Please correct me, she is indeed a paid employee/contractor, and part of that job involves editing a wiki, a big part. I fail to see how any criticism or comments about it can be deemed personal.
Second, it wasn't her editing prowess, it was something that I already informed her about, twice. Creating a userpage is the first form of identification on a wiki, without it, people have no idea if that user is actually an editor, an employee, or a vandal. As an admin, I thought it was my job to inform her, especially when others were confused about her identity.
Besides this, I also don't understand the point about, comments like mine silencing editors. Are you arguing, I should hold her to lesser standards than another editor even when she is a paid staff member in a position of authority? There are new volunteers who join everyday who are new to the culture, I'm all for being nice to them, but she has been in a position of authority, leading the program. Instead of leading by example, people have a hard time identifying her.
I didn't think bringing up the issue in context of the same authority and program was personal. I'm sorry if it seemed personal to you, it was not my intent. Again, I do agree that the tone in my original email might have been needlessly harsh, for that, I apologize, but my points still stand.
Regards Theo
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles that
students have written.
Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam ________ http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
Thanks, Gautam!
After all this was just a pilot. Lets learn and move on - the whole country beckons!
From: gautam@prathambooks.org Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:02:46 +0530 To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot
For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam ________ http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
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
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
1. *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole idea of this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million unique visitors - It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking and Collaborative skills - It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better placements - Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
2. *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though they knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
3. *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very late engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
4. *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program, I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
5. *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
6. *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP is I found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
7. *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles that
students have written.
Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came
forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
*Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
- *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole idea of
this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million
unique visitors
- It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking and Collaborative
skills
- It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better placements
- Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
- *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though they
knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
- *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very late
engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
- *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program, I
can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
- *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for
teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
- *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP is I
found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
- *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has
written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles that
students have written.
Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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
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
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
There it is, even CA's are not expected to keep a check on each and every article, that is not even possible. Instead we were expecting them to come forward and ask us or anyone their questions and queries and doubts.
Few did come and few didn't. Now the number of students who didn't come ahead and ask questions was quite high. So Hisham did tell us that you all go and ask students what is the problem they are facing.
And then being a CA we tried our best to get in touch with every student to start editing, and later to stop copy pasting. If the students are not coming forward, we were asked to go to them, but the number was quite big.
Now "if there is a crazy guy, there is a crazy guy" we or in fact no one can do anything about it. There were number of instances where few students were repeatedly copy pasting stuff or creating havoc on Wiki. It is not that we didn't warn them or let them do, we wrote on talk pages, mailed them, contacted on facebook, and also got in touch with them physically on ground and explained them and also raised this issue with relevant professors. Some of them understood, and some of them continued disruptions. So there was no way we could control them.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors
were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
Yes, we didn't want any specific nationality editor. That is what even we are saying, if a student doesn't listen to A administrator, he won't even listen to B admin.
But personally even I felt bad when certain Users from abroad questioned the education system and quality of Indian standards, and there was an instance where a User crossed the line and created this Sub Pagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:DexDor/IEP_status&diff=454936076&oldid=454917314 , thus we tried to tackle it also by posting a Messagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DexDor#User:DexDor.2FIEP_status_2 on his talk page too. This is where I think the lack of communication with Indian Community lead us to. And we do accept that there was some serious lack in communication with community, and by community I mean both local and global.
One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are
active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
Here. I would like to differ with numbers, still we need involvement of as many CAs as we can. I think the number of CAs doing actual work is still less. We need to improve on this too.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 23:27, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.com wrote:
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
I explicitly mentioned in office hours that it should be students who ought to be reaching out, not the other way. Please tell me does any of your college profs come to your desks/home and see if you write your assignment? It was clearly the students responsibility to reach out for help, and they failed in it. Period.
Oct 12 15:34:32 <srikanthlogic> but i was on IRC, got only one help req in
a whole week, my talk page was untouched. I am ready to help if people reach out :) Oct 12 15:35:33 <Hmundol> srikanthlogic & soda bottle : yes, i know that more students ought to be reaching out but sometimes they don't even know the mistake they are committing so don't reach out. …what the Campus Ambassadors have been doing i s proactively going to contrib histories and checking in. …unfortunately, that seems to the only way that it's worked.
,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came
forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
Poor editing, I raised the flag earlier once in the detailed FAQ page prepared by Spiff[2] which is mentioned above and then first office hours. But then copyvios was the bigger focus, MoS had no time. When students could not get "do not copy", I would wonder they would get detailed MoS (which I agree takes little time / proficiency in English, which I doubt I would have had it during my college days) I stopped writing on talk pages of students voluntarily after I got very little response. Unfortunately I had too many other things to do than to write on non-responsive students' talk pages for which I repented at the start of my post in the original thread.
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2011-10-12 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SpacemanSpiff/S3/IEP/FAQ
Hi Bala,
*"Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up."*
- We are not putting blame on anyone. If Hisham and Nitika were clueless why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).* - First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
*Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.*
- Accept my apologies for not able to recall few Indian Admins who tired to help us, but if you see the big picture, the whole scene was dominated by editors from abroad. We needed your help and support when these folks were pointing fingers on Indian Education System. One more thing, after the first few instances of copyvios we reached out in person and took 35+ sessions in various classes but even after putting that effort few of them kept doing the copy-paste for last minute submissions.
*And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community.* *- *By "Indian" community I mean people like you and me and others you are either reading or replying this thread, guys we surely needed your support at the forefront.
We never denied the fact that we have failed in certain areas but that doesn't mean that overall program is a failure or dead.
We believe in learning from our mistakes and happy to do new ones to learn better.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came
forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
- *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole idea of
this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million
unique visitors
- It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking and Collaborative
skills
- It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better
placements
- Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given
deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
- *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though
they knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
- *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very late
engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
- *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program, I
can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
- *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for
teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
- *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP is
I found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
- *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has
written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles that
students have written.
Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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We have had a lot of responses and recriminations on this issue. In the light of all that has happened, please let us stop our grousing. Hisham has opened a new thread, and accepted full responsibility. That is the end of the blame-game as far as anybody is concerned. All of us are inviolved and all of us are both innocent and blameworthy, including and especially me. I know I should have done more.
Let us bring this thread to a close. Let all posts now be in response to his new thread only and couched in positive terms and offering useful suggestions or fresh input.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Bala,
*"Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up."*
- We are not putting blame on anyone. If Hisham and Nitika were clueless
why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs
- MikeLynch).*
- First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping
someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
*Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.*
- Accept my apologies for not able to recall few Indian Admins who tired
to help us, but if you see the big picture, the whole scene was dominated by editors from abroad. We needed your help and support when these folks were pointing fingers on Indian Education System. One more thing, after the first few instances of copyvios we reached out in person and took 35+ sessions in various classes but even after putting that effort few of them kept doing the copy-paste for last minute submissions.
*And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community.* *- *By "Indian" community I mean people like you and me and others you are either reading or replying this thread, guys we surely needed your support at the forefront.
We never denied the fact that we have failed in certain areas but that doesn't mean that overall program is a failure or dead.
We believe in learning from our mistakes and happy to do new ones to learn better.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came
forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
- *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole idea
of this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million
unique visitors
- It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking and Collaborative
skills
- It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better
placements
- Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given
deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
- *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though
they knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
- *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very late
engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
- *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program, I
can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
- *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for
teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
- *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP is
I found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
- *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has
written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.org wrote:
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles
that students have written.
Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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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-* If Hisham and Nitika were clueless why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*I remember doing this exactly on Oct 12 office hours. Here is the transcript snippet which srikanth has provided in the earlier mail. Again you are demonstrating your ignorance about what an OA role is.
Oct 12 15:34:32 <srikanthlogic> but i was on IRC, got only one help req in
a whole week, my talk page was untouched. I am ready to help if people reach out :) Oct 12 15:35:33 <Hmundol> srikanthlogic & soda bottle : yes, i know that more students ought to be reaching out but sometimes they don't even know the mistake they are committing so don't reach out. …what the Campus Ambassadors have been doing i s proactively going to contrib histories and checking in. …unfortunately, that seems to the only way that it's worked.
*.* - *First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
*This is exactly the kind of cluelessness i am referring to. The [[WP:COMPETENCE]] exists exactly for this purpose - we dont want "kids", who will "mess up" by "drawing mangoes and bananas" here. We want atleast semi competent, interested people who can act responsibly.
But then, i should expect this general cluelessness and ignorance from a "campus ambassador" with a grand total of 41 mainspace edits?.
This sums up the problem of the IEP - designed by people clueless about how en wiki works and run by "campus ambassadors" who view wikipedia as a giant sandbox to play with students.
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
We have had a lot of responses and recriminations on this issue. In the light of all that has happened, please let us stop our grousing. Hisham has opened a new thread, and accepted full responsibility. That is the end of the blame-game as far as anybody is concerned. All of us are inviolved and all of us are both innocent and blameworthy, including and especially me. I know I should have done more.
Let us bring this thread to a close. Let all posts now be in response to his new thread only and couched in positive terms and offering useful suggestions or fresh input.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Bala,
*"Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up."*
- We are not putting blame on anyone. If Hisham and Nitika were clueless
why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs
- MikeLynch).*
- First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping
someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
*Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.*
- Accept my apologies for not able to recall few Indian Admins who tired
to help us, but if you see the big picture, the whole scene was dominated by editors from abroad. We needed your help and support when these folks were pointing fingers on Indian Education System. One more thing, after the first few instances of copyvios we reached out in person and took 35+ sessions in various classes but even after putting that effort few of them kept doing the copy-paste for last minute submissions.
*And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community.* *- *By "Indian" community I mean people like you and me and others you are either reading or replying this thread, guys we surely needed your support at the forefront.
We never denied the fact that we have failed in certain areas but that doesn't mean that overall program is a failure or dead.
We believe in learning from our mistakes and happy to do new ones to learn better.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came
forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
- *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole idea
of this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million
unique visitors
- It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking and Collaborative
skills
- It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better
placements
- Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given
deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
- *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though
they knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
- *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very late
engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
- *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program, I
can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
- *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for
teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
- *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP
is I found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
- *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has
written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan < srik.lak@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.orgwrote:
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles
> that students have written. >
Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.com wrote:
This sums up the problem of the IEP - designed by people clueless about how en wiki works and run by "campus ambassadors" who view wikipedia as a giant sandbox to play with students.
Speaking of playing in sandboxes, just for you, a nice shallow blog post that applies:
http://www.smallact.com/blog/3-keys-to-playing-nicely-in-the-social-media-sa...
Enjoy the sand, Erik
*This is exactly the kind of cluelessness i am referring to. The [[WP:COMPETENCE]] exists exactly for this purpose - we dont want "kids", who will "mess up" by "drawing mangoes and bananas" here. We want atleast semi competent, interested people who can act responsibly.* * * *- *First of all stop playing those policy games, before looking at [[WP:COMPETENCE]] I would rather say to have a look at [[WP:DONTBITE]].
*But then, i should expect this general cluelessness and ignorance from a "campus ambassador" with a grand total of 41 mainspace edits?. * * * - Dude you are getting personal here, I respect you obsession with numbers but the whole idea of a "campus ambassador" is to help others to edit, instead of writing articles for edit count. You just took one number and creating all the fuss but you ignored others like ...
Total Edits :705 (in last 5 months) Article 49 7.09% Talk 6 0.87% *User 185 26.77%* *User talk 238 34.44%* *Wikipedia 144 20.84%* Wikipedia talk 26 3.76% Template 37 5.35% Help 6 0.87%
For more stats : http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ramshankaryadav&la...
Apart from the numbers we got the experience of personally touching 1000+ students and interacting with Faculty and Directors, which you can not do by siting and editing Wikipedia in your living room. I'm not a 14000+ editor like you but I share the same philosophy of free knowledge, but instead of respecting us you are doing all the mud throwing, it's not acceptable at all!!
*This sums up the problem of the IEP - designed by people clueless about how en wiki works and run by "campus ambassadors" who view wikipedia as a giant sandbox to play with students.* - You are crossing your limits here, we have repeatedly accepted our faults but this is too much, we tried something new things, and few worked few didn't by it doesn't gives you the authority to say whatever you like to! Instead of coming up with "How we can make it better" you are more into the mode of "You did it wrong"!.
~Ram
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
-* If Hisham and Nitika were clueless why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*I remember doing this exactly on Oct 12 office hours. Here is the transcript snippet which srikanth has provided in the earlier mail. Again you are demonstrating your ignorance about what an OA role is.
Oct 12 15:34:32 <srikanthlogic> but i was on IRC, got only one help req
in a whole week, my talk page was untouched. I am ready to help if people reach out :) Oct 12 15:35:33 <Hmundol> srikanthlogic & soda bottle : yes, i know that more students ought to be reaching out but sometimes they don't even know the mistake they are committing so don't reach out. …what the Campus Ambassadors have been doing i s proactively going to contrib histories and checking in. …unfortunately, that seems to the only way that it's worked.
*.*
- *First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping
someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
This is exactly the kind of cluelessness i am referring to. The [[WP:COMPETENCE]] exists exactly for this purpose - we dont want "kids", who will "mess up" by "drawing mangoes and bananas" here. We want atleast semi competent, interested people who can act responsibly.
But then, i should expect this general cluelessness and ignorance from a "campus ambassador" with a grand total of 41 mainspace edits?.
This sums up the problem of the IEP - designed by people clueless about how en wiki works and run by "campus ambassadors" who view wikipedia as a giant sandbox to play with students.
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur@gmail.com
wrote:
We have had a lot of responses and recriminations on this issue. In the light of all that has happened, please let us stop our grousing. Hisham has opened a new thread, and accepted full responsibility. That is the end of the blame-game as far as anybody is concerned. All of us are inviolved and all of us are both innocent and blameworthy, including and especially me. I know I should have done more.
Let us bring this thread to a close. Let all posts now be in response to his new thread only and couched in positive terms and offering useful suggestions or fresh input.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Bala,
*"Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up."*
- We are not putting blame on anyone. If Hisham and Nitika were clueless
why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs
- MikeLynch).*
- First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping
someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
*Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.*
- Accept my apologies for not able to recall few Indian Admins who tired
to help us, but if you see the big picture, the whole scene was dominated by editors from abroad. We needed your help and support when these folks were pointing fingers on Indian Education System. One more thing, after the first few instances of copyvios we reached out in person and took 35+ sessions in various classes but even after putting that effort few of them kept doing the copy-paste for last minute submissions.
*And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community.* *- *By "Indian" community I mean people like you and me and others you are either reading or replying this thread, guys we surely needed your support at the forefront.
We never denied the fact that we have failed in certain areas but that doesn't mean that overall program is a failure or dead.
We believe in learning from our mistakes and happy to do new ones to learn better.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator
came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
- *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole idea
of this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million
unique visitors
- It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking
and Collaborative skills
- It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better
placements
- Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given
deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
- *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though
they knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
- *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very
late engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
- *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program,
I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
- *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for
teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
- *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP
is I found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
- *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has
written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan < srik.lak@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.orgwrote: > I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles >> that students have written. >> > Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
> Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy > -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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Since you people are playing with numbers:
In Brazil program - page: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikimedia_Brasil_Educa%C3%A7%C3%... the CA is http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio:OTAVIO1981 and his edits are:
Total editcount: 14346
Main 5455 38.02% Talk 1544 10.76% User 299 2.08% User talk 1004 7% Project 2305 16.07% Project talk 586 4.08% Image 20 0.14% Template 655 4.57% Template talk 24 0.17% Help 8 0.06% Category 711 4.96% Category talk 1 0.01%Source: http://toolserver.org/~vvv/yaec.php?user=OTAVIO1981&wiki=ptwiki_p
The OA - yours truly - have this edit count:
Total editcount: 44979
Main 18984 42.21% Talk 1605 3.57% User 1557 3.46% User talk 7365 16.37% Project 7440 16.54% Project talk 706 1.57% Image 43 0.1% MediaWiki 122 0.27% MediaWiki talk 11 0.02% Template 1243 2.76% Template talk 30 0.07% Help 21 0.05% Help talk 3 0.01% Category 597 1.33% Category talk 1 0%source: http://toolserver.org/~vvv/yaec.php?user=Beria&wiki=ptwiki_p
We have more 2 OA, and both have similar numbers of edits. So I can understand what Bala says when he complain the program is being conduct by people who doesn't edit WP (In pt,wiki, Ran, you wouldn't even have right to vote) _____ *Béria Lima* http://wikimedia.pt/(351) 925 171 484
*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho. http://wikimedia.pt/Donativos*
On 15 November 2011 07:38, Ram Shankar Yadav ramshankaryadav@gmail.comwrote:
*This is exactly the kind of cluelessness i am referring to. The [[WP:COMPETENCE]] exists exactly for this purpose - we dont want "kids", who will "mess up" by "drawing mangoes and bananas" here. We want atleast semi competent, interested people who can act responsibly.*
*- *First of all stop playing those policy games, before looking at [[WP:COMPETENCE]] I would rather say to have a look at [[WP:DONTBITE]].
*But then, i should expect this general cluelessness and ignorance from a "campus ambassador" with a grand total of 41 mainspace edits?. *
- Dude you are getting personal here, I respect you obsession with numbers
but the whole idea of a "campus ambassador" is to help others to edit, instead of writing articles for edit count. You just took one number and creating all the fuss but you ignored others like ...
Total Edits :705 (in last 5 months) Article 49 7.09% Talk 6 0.87% *User 185 26.77%* *User talk 238 34.44%* *Wikipedia 144 20.84%* Wikipedia talk 26 3.76% Template 37 5.35% Help 6 0.87%
For more stats : http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ramshankaryadav&la...
Apart from the numbers we got the experience of personally touching 1000+ students and interacting with Faculty and Directors, which you can not do by siting and editing Wikipedia in your living room. I'm not a 14000+ editor like you but I share the same philosophy of free knowledge, but instead of respecting us you are doing all the mud throwing, it's not acceptable at all!!
*This sums up the problem of the IEP - designed by people clueless about how en wiki works and run by "campus ambassadors" who view wikipedia as a giant sandbox to play with students.*
- You are crossing your limits here, we have repeatedly accepted our
faults but this is too much, we tried something new things, and few worked few didn't by it doesn't gives you the authority to say whatever you like to! Instead of coming up with "How we can make it better" you are more into the mode of "You did it wrong"!.
~Ram
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
-* If Hisham and Nitika were clueless why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*I remember doing this exactly on Oct 12 office hours. Here is the transcript snippet which srikanth has provided in the earlier mail. Again you are demonstrating your ignorance about what an OA role is.
Oct 12 15:34:32 <srikanthlogic> but i was on IRC, got only one help req
in a whole week, my talk page was untouched. I am ready to help if people reach out :) Oct 12 15:35:33 <Hmundol> srikanthlogic & soda bottle : yes, i know that more students ought to be reaching out but sometimes they don't even know the mistake they are committing so don't reach out. …what the Campus Ambassadors have been doing i s proactively going to contrib histories and checking in. …unfortunately, that seems to the only way that it's worked.
*.*
- *First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping
someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
This is exactly the kind of cluelessness i am referring to. The [[WP:COMPETENCE]] exists exactly for this purpose - we dont want "kids", who will "mess up" by "drawing mangoes and bananas" here. We want atleast semi competent, interested people who can act responsibly.
But then, i should expect this general cluelessness and ignorance from a "campus ambassador" with a grand total of 41 mainspace edits?.
This sums up the problem of the IEP - designed by people clueless about how en wiki works and run by "campus ambassadors" who view wikipedia as a giant sandbox to play with students.
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Ashwin Baindur < ashwin.baindur@gmail.com> wrote:
We have had a lot of responses and recriminations on this issue. In the light of all that has happened, please let us stop our grousing. Hisham has opened a new thread, and accepted full responsibility. That is the end of the blame-game as far as anybody is concerned. All of us are inviolved and all of us are both innocent and blameworthy, including and especially me. I know I should have done more.
Let us bring this thread to a close. Let all posts now be in response to his new thread only and couched in positive terms and offering useful suggestions or fresh input.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Bala,
*"Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up."*
- We are not putting blame on anyone. If Hisham and Nitika were
clueless why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).*
- First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping
someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
*Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.*
- Accept my apologies for not able to recall few Indian Admins who
tired to help us, but if you see the big picture, the whole scene was dominated by editors from abroad. We needed your help and support when these folks were pointing fingers on Indian Education System. One more thing, after the first few instances of copyvios we reached out in person and took 35+ sessions in various classes but even after putting that effort few of them kept doing the copy-paste for last minute submissions.
*And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community.* *- *By "Indian" community I mean people like you and me and others you are either reading or replying this thread, guys we surely needed your support at the forefront.
We never denied the fact that we have failed in certain areas but that doesn't mean that overall program is a failure or dead.
We believe in learning from our mistakes and happy to do new ones to learn better.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
>*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
>,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator
came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
- *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole
idea of this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million
unique visitors
- It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking
and Collaborative skills
- It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better
placements
- Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given
deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
- *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though
they knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
- *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very
late engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
- *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program,
I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
- *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for
teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
- *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP
is I found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
- *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has
written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan < srik.lak@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote: > >> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.orgwrote: >> > I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles >>> that students have written. >>> >> > Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean > entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA > > >> Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy >> -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case. > > > Theo, > You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you > did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the > program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. > Wish that editor continues wiki editing. > > -- > Regards > Srikanth.L > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 13:08, Ram Shankar Yadav ramshankaryadav@gmail.comwrote:
*This is exactly the kind of cluelessness i am referring to. The [[WP:COMPETENCE]] exists exactly for this purpose - we dont want "kids", who will "mess up" by "drawing mangoes and bananas" here. We want atleast semi competent, interested people who can act responsibly.*
*- *First of all stop playing those policy games, before looking at [[WP:COMPETENCE]] I would rather say to have a look at [[WP:DONTBITE]].
BITE is suppressing one on the wiki when someone is trying to contribute. Here he is citing the policy for an analysis of a project not mentioning any one in particular, certainly this is NOT BITING.
*But then, i should expect this general cluelessness and ignorance from a "campus ambassador" with a grand total of 41 mainspace edits?. *
- Dude you are getting personal here, I respect you obsession with numbers
but the whole idea of a "campus ambassador" is to help others to edit, instead of writing articles for edit count. You just took one number and creating all the fuss but you ignored others like ...
Total Edits :705 (in last 5 months) Article 49 7.09% Talk 6 0.87% *User 185 26.77%* *User talk 238 34.44%* *Wikipedia 144 20.84%* Wikipedia talk 26 3.76% Template 37 5.35% Help 6 0.87%
For more stats : http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ramshankaryadav&la...
He brought up numbers since you called him "misfit" (trolls happen only when people feed from both sides). One must consider the fact that he was a OA in PPP (Remember OA for PPP was selected after following careful process) and unlike IEP (where people are blaming the selection of OA as well [1]). While I greatly appreciate what you and other CA's did doing physical outreach and reaching out to students, but you could have 1000x better if you had better edit count. They are not mere stats which people boast, they are "experience". Being an ambassador is about helping out yes, but not just motivating, helping on wiki syntax. The experience allows to share better insight on policies, rules of the game. I am not particularly blaming you, probably design of IEP (or even PPP if PPP also followed the same model of immature CA). I , along with several editors(Even Ashwin raised the same point on the thread) had a problem with this too and is still not being acknowledged even after the results. All we are asking CA's is to "Practice before you preach". Is that wrong?
In my view scale and quality of students were a bigger problems and got multiplied, but that doesn't mean everything else was right in place. We will learn only if we acknowledge all the proper reasons. There is no need of finger pointing, we need to learn the lessons and the first step would be to acknowledge.
Apart from the numbers we got the experience of personally touching 1000+ students and interacting with Faculty and Directors, which you can not do by siting and editing Wikipedia in your living room. I'm not a 14000+ editor like you but I share the same philosophy of free knowledge, but instead of respecting us you are doing all the mud throwing, it's not acceptable at all!!
I had already given the credit you guys deserved above, You dont know what he has done beyond the 14000+ edits, so please refrain from commenting on others ability to do things without knowing what they have done.
I particularly find it sad when people run over and mail when there are "percieved personal attacks on newbies" but many keep quiet when senior members are told "misfit", 'questioning "siting and editing Wikipedia in your living room" '
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Ed...
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.
+1 Debanjan!
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay < debastein@gmail.com> wrote:
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.
-- Regards, Debanjan* user:debastein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Debastein
- Lets make this world a better and more informative place*
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 9:59 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 13:08, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
*This is exactly the kind of cluelessness i am referring to. The [[WP:COMPETENCE]] exists exactly for this purpose - we dont want "kids", who will "mess up" by "drawing mangoes and bananas" here. We want atleast semi competent, interested people who can act responsibly.*
*- *First of all stop playing those policy games, before looking at [[WP:COMPETENCE]] I would rather say to have a look at [[WP:DONTBITE]].
BITE is suppressing one on the wiki when someone is trying to contribute. Here he is citing the policy for an analysis of a project not mentioning any one in particular, certainly this is NOT BITING.
*But then, i should expect this general cluelessness and ignorance from a "campus ambassador" with a grand total of 41 mainspace edits?. *
- Dude you are getting personal here, I respect you obsession with
numbers but the whole idea of a "campus ambassador" is to help others to edit, instead of writing articles for edit count. You just took one number and creating all the fuss but you ignored others like ...
Total Edits :705 (in last 5 months) Article 49 7.09% Talk 6 0.87% *User 185 26.77%* *User talk 238 34.44%* *Wikipedia 144 20.84%* Wikipedia talk 26 3.76% Template 37 5.35% Help 6 0.87%
For more stats : http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ramshankaryadav&la...
He brought up numbers since you called him "misfit" (trolls happen only when people feed from both sides). One must consider the fact that he was a OA in PPP (Remember OA for PPP was selected after following careful process) and unlike IEP (where people are blaming the selection of OA as well [1]). While I greatly appreciate what you and other CA's did doing physical outreach and reaching out to students, but you could have 1000x better if you had better edit count. They are not mere stats which people boast, they are "experience". Being an ambassador is about helping out yes, but not just motivating, helping on wiki syntax. The experience allows to share better insight on policies, rules of the game. I am not particularly blaming you, probably design of IEP (or even PPP if PPP also followed the same model of immature CA). I , along with several editors(Even Ashwin raised the same point on the thread) had a problem with this too and is still not being acknowledged even after the results. All we are asking CA's is to "Practice before you preach". Is that wrong?
In my view scale and quality of students were a bigger problems and got multiplied, but that doesn't mean everything else was right in place. We will learn only if we acknowledge all the proper reasons. There is no need of finger pointing, we need to learn the lessons and the first step would be to acknowledge.
Apart from the numbers we got the experience of personally touching 1000+ students and interacting with Faculty and Directors, which you can not do by siting and editing Wikipedia in your living room. I'm not a 14000+ editor like you but I share the same philosophy of free knowledge, but instead of respecting us you are doing all the mud throwing, it's not acceptable at all!!
I had already given the credit you guys deserved above, You dont know what he has done beyond the 14000+ edits, so please refrain from commenting on others ability to do things without knowing what they have done.
I particularly find it sad when people run over and mail when there are "percieved personal attacks on newbies" but many keep quiet when senior members are told "misfit", 'questioning "siting and editing Wikipedia in your living room" '
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Ed...
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 23:11, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay debastein@gmail.comwrote:
The Indian community however, still expects that students will come to them for help and they shall help.
I never got an answer for the question "Does your college profs come to your home and help you in doing the assignments?". I wont blame any single person, to stereotype this is exactly "Indian students' mentality" and this is a very big problem. It is very difficult to do anything at all even if we have 1000 global admins willing to sign up as ambassadors.
Hey Srikanth,
This is exactly what I meant about constructive approach. No my profs don't come to me house. They fail me. I understand that this is a problem in the mentality of Indian students. But you either have two options, decide to help anyway or crib about how the mentality of students need to change.
Now let me ask you a question. When someone falls in a river, do you wait for that person to ask you for your help or do you try to save him anyway. I might be immature in my views, but when you have a whole bunch of new Wikipedian's who would prefer to contact their CA's on facebook and not on Wikipedia talk page, do you refuse to give them help or go to their talk pages and help them out.
I say, everyone has their choices, I'd jump in the river to save the person, you may want to sit and wait till he calls for your help. There are no good or bad choices, its just a choice and its up to you as to what you believe in.
May I also point the rhetoric of your statement, my prof doesn't come to my house, I go to him, because I am afraid of him failing me? So do you want the students to reach the OA's out of fear? In my experience, when I went and helped out a person, even when they didn't want my help, it turned out that I became more easily approachable and they came to me later with more issues.
I'd say, this is India, our problems are unique and hence so should be our solutions. Cribbing will get us nowhere. I can say for sure, if you go to 100 students and check out their contribs, at least 20 will reply back and thank you and ask for your help the next time. But if you sit and wait for them to come to you, I don't imagine even 5 will come to you.
My views, not necessary that you may agree. Do assume good faith while reading my email, I meant it in no other way.
Srikanth
With all respect, let me ask, what are we trying to do here. To change the so called "Indian Students mentality" or trying to spur the growth of Wikipedia in India?
This is getting too personal and creating a wedge between one of the most well known knowledge communities in the world. Please please please, let us put a stop to this.
This conversation/thread has to STOP at any cost. This is not doing any good than getting things personal. I hope better sense prevail.
Abhi
On 16-Nov-2011 12:15 AM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 23:11, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay <debastein@gmail.com mailto:debastein@gmail.com> wrote:
The Indian community however, still expects that students will come to them for help and they shall help.
I never got an answer for the question "Does your college profs come to your home and help you in doing the assignments?". I wont blame any single person, to stereotype this is exactly "Indian students' mentality" and this is a very big problem. It is very difficult to do anything at all even if we have 1000 global admins willing to sign up as ambassadors.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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+1 Abhilash
On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Abhilash abhilashunni@gmail.com wrote:
Srikanth
With all respect, let me ask, what are we trying to do here. To change the so called "Indian Students mentality" or trying to spur the growth of Wikipedia in India?
This is getting too personal and creating a wedge between one of the most well known knowledge communities in the world. Please please please, let us put a stop to this.
This conversation/thread has to STOP at any cost. This is not doing any good than getting things personal. I hope better sense prevail.
Abhi
On 16-Nov-2011 12:15 AM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 23:11, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay <debastein@gmail.com
wrote:
The Indian community however, still expects that students will come to them for help and they shall help.
I never got an answer for the question "Does your college profs come to your home and help you in doing the assignments?". I wont blame any single person, to stereotype this is exactly "Indian students' mentality" and this is a very big problem. It is very difficult to do anything at all even if we have 1000 global admins willing to sign up as ambassadors.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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sorry to disagree Ashwin,
This has to be dragged out. These guys are just not getting it. They just dont have the knowledge nor they willingnes to listen to criticism. They are just deflecting criticism by calling [[WP:CIVIL]] and crying "personal attack". I am not going to spend time posting in the other thread, when the opening mail preempts any attempt at criticism by citing NPOV and CIVIL.
If they are going to run yet another similar program without getting what went wrong in the first place - they are bound to make the same mistakes again. The cost will be borne by the wiki community - us. The paid consultants will move on to other jobs, the campus ambassadors will have another role to put in their resumes- but it is wikipedia and us wikipedians who will pay the price.
A pilot program that leaves a gigantic mess requiring three months of clean up effort from hundreds of regular editors needs some honest and harsh criticism.
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
We have had a lot of responses and recriminations on this issue. In the light of all that has happened, please let us stop our grousing. Hisham has opened a new thread, and accepted full responsibility. That is the end of the blame-game as far as anybody is concerned. All of us are inviolved and all of us are both innocent and blameworthy, including and especially me. I know I should have done more.
Let us bring this thread to a close. Let all posts now be in response to his new thread only and couched in positive terms and offering useful suggestions or fresh input.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Bala,
*"Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up."*
- We are not putting blame on anyone. If Hisham and Nitika were clueless
why didn't to step-up and asked them about the expectations. One more thing when you are starting something new don't expect people will start reaching you from the Day1, we need to build a relationship and get their faith that "we are here to help you, and it's going to be great learning experience". Tell me how many times did you reached out to students, even if you did and they didn't responded don't loose the faith, they are new to this environment just help them to take baby steps.
*It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs
- MikeLynch).*
- First of all I didn't like the way you put this statement, if helping
someone by teaching them the right way is some kind of low grade job for you, then I can surely say you are a misfit here! Just imagine you are trying teach a kid to write, they will definitely mess it up by drawing mangoes and bananas, and when you clear the slate you don't call it janatorship, coz you know what you are doing, and having faith that the kid will learn by doing mistakes eventually.
*Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.*
- Accept my apologies for not able to recall few Indian Admins who tired
to help us, but if you see the big picture, the whole scene was dominated by editors from abroad. We needed your help and support when these folks were pointing fingers on Indian Education System. One more thing, after the first few instances of copyvios we reached out in person and took 35+ sessions in various classes but even after putting that effort few of them kept doing the copy-paste for last minute submissions.
*And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community.* *- *By "Indian" community I mean people like you and me and others you are either reading or replying this thread, guys we surely needed your support at the forefront.
We never denied the fact that we have failed in certain areas but that doesn't mean that overall program is a failure or dead.
We believe in learning from our mistakes and happy to do new ones to learn better.
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabottle@gmail.comwrote:
*we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly
speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. * *My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.*
Oh yeah. Do everything wrong and then blame the OA. Hisham, Nitika and apparently you are clueless what an OAs role is. I had no clue the OA role involved going through every edit and do the student's work. IEPs mails did not specify that the expectation about OA role was doing the student's homework. If you had made this clear, i would have never signed up.
So get this straight - IEP had no clue what Online Ambassador's did in the PPP. They just used the term in IEP and recruited a bunch of volunteer editors expecting them to cleanup after the students. This is not an issue of miscommunication, this is an issue of ignorance. The IEP didnt know what OAs do. It imagined them to be janitors who would cleanup after the students. (Dont believe me?, ask the other Indian guy who was an OA in both programs - MikeLynch).
,* I can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came
forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc
Another wrong fact. An Indian admin called spacemanspiff who tried to point Hisham and group in the right direction in early september when things started to go wrong (it was in the talk page of Moonriddengirl, where fluffernutter went to help with copyvios). He even designed a helpful Q&A page which Hisham did not use. Disgusted with the IEP attitude, Spiff quit trying to help. The whole issue could have been stopped right then and there if the warnings of multiple editors and admins had been heeded.
And why exactly do you need "Indian" community to help?. The newbie editors were getting plenty of help from the global community. You dont need a specific nationality editor to come and tell the students what to do and what not to do. A student who doesnt listen to "Do not copy paste" instruction coming from a American editor is not going to care if the instruction came from an Indian editor.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav < ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:
+1 Srikanth!
Hey Folks!
I'm Ram and I'm one of the CA's worked closely with CoEP and SSE. I would like to share my views on this most discussed topic, coz the term "FAIL" is quite thought provoking, and now everyone has an opinion and I respect that.
As a Campus Ambassador(CA) we faced the heat on ground and nobody can feel the pain like us when we heard the discontinuation of IEP in CoEP coz we gave our personal time physically and virtually in every possible way to make this program a success, and I promise we'll keep doing that.
My views on IEP:
- *Wikipedia India Education Program(IEP) for a CA* : The whole idea
of this program like everyone knows is to get more editors, but we have our own set of challenges in the age of Facebook. What a bunch of CAs have done in as short span of 5 months can't be done in a couple of months by existing Community(local or global), coz we touched the students(1000+) personally, we had the experience of interactions with Faculty and Directors.
Our only aim was to tell them(students) that Wikipedia is "cool", and indeed we did that! in the way we taught wikipedia to them. Few things which we tell our students in our Wiki Sessions:
- Writing on Wikipedia will give you global audience, 400 million
unique visitors
- It will improve your Writing, Critical Thinking and Collaborative
skills
- It will add a bullet point to your resume and hence better
placements
- Lastly it will also give you marks if you follow the given
deadlines
Yes, I agree that we have seen setback coz of the copyvios, but I totally agree with Srikanth coz this was due to the scale and numbers.
- *Faculty Involvement* : It is one of the weak link in IEP, though
they knew the importance of this program, but they have their own set of obligations/mindset, and we always felt that not all the faculty members are tracking the students and their articles. We have some exemplary Profs who are so much involved that they reached every student's talk page and wrote message on it, and on the other side few never opened the course page itself!
Lesson for us is to enroll only those who are really interested and track them as well, drop the course if they are not putting effort as required, but this scenario was different 6 months back, coz no one knew about this program, and yes we did enrolled a few inactive faculty coz they showed interest but never lived up to the expectation.
- *Online Ambassadors* : As Hisham already told that we got very late
engagement of our OAs in this program as well as the OA expectation issue, we never got the support which was required from an OA. Honestly speaking there was no interaction between OAs and CAs and without that coordination chances of success are quite low. My only point here is to all the OAs in this discussion is that if Hisham/Nitika has not set the expectations right, why didn't you approached them, then and there! Anybody can come and comment on this failure story but even you were a part of this sinking ship.
- *India Community* : We really missed you throughout this program, I
can't recall a single instance when an Indian Administrator came forward and found a copyvio/poor editing, etc. We don't bifurcate among community and we never taught our students that only Indian community will help, our aim was to make their "collaborative" skill better instead of creating a division among the community. For my fellow Indian Wiki Community, folks we would love to hear from you and surely need your help and support in future.
- *Global Community* : Firstly I would say "Thank you" to them for
teaching the harsh lessons but we really liked the way you guys supported us. Yes, I know few folks who always crib and do the mud throwing on this program and it's implementation, but I know folks who have helped writing great articles, reviewing them and event doing copy-editing and cleaning. We need to surely communicate better with them in future.
- *Campus Ambassadors*: The best thing that happen to me coz of IEP
is I found great friends who share the same philosophy of free knowledge. We gave our personal time not only in taking session but also training new bunch of CAs and helping students in every possible way.
We were the face of Wikipedia on campus and we love it! Like Srikanth said yes we were overloaded coz of the number of students per CA was very large still we did our bit to help every students by either reaching out personally and virtually. One point to note here that out of 40 selected CAs(Gen 1 & 2) only 30 are active and out of those 30 only 20 track/follow and reach out students, so in short we need more involvements for the dormant CAs.
- *Students* : We found good and bad students, student I know has
written a GA and I also know a student who in-spite of several warnings by phone/mail and personal visits they kept copy-paste! Between the two extremes there are folks who failed few times but did learned from it and had become great editors.
All in all the learning here is to, assess the level of students based on their skill(writing especially) and their educational background(rural or urban). Also we need to teach them the most important thing, NOT TO COPY PASTE!!!, from the very first day of the wiki sessions.
*Summary*: We are challenging the status quo by bringing a new way of learning and teaching things and have learned some essential lessons for making this program a success in future. I would personally request my fellow Wikipedians to keep a faith on us and support us in every possible way coz *"helping hands are better than praying lips"*.
Let's make this world a better place!
Cheers, Ram
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan < srik.lak@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika ntandon@wikimedia.orgwrote:
I would also like to share with you all some of the good articles
> that students have written. >
Nitika, please use right terms from next time, "Good articles" mean entirely different thing in Wikipedia. http://enwp.org/WP:GA
Robinson Crusoe Economyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_Economy -Another redirect, 'economy' is in lower-case.
Theo, You got it wrong on that alone to best of my knowledge, probably you did it too fast. Its probably the lone GA which got churned out of the program and we could call it a lone success among several other things. Wish that editor continues wiki editing.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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Sue,
*A number
of schools have participated in the pilot phase of the IEP. My understanding is that the project has been mostly successful, except for one school, or set of schools, at which there were serious problems with plagiarism that, despite repeated efforts, the team couldn't get resolved.*
The project has not been "mostly successful" by any measure. There were only three schools in the program - of them one (SNDT) has only one class of 10. The rest came from the College of enginering Pune (COEP) and the symbiosis school of economics (SSE) . Both produced huge amounts of copyvio. On Nov 2, Hisham went to COEP to shut down (or postpone it for a month, whatever happened). But SSE students continue to edit (and produce more copy vios) till now.
A program, that has wasted tens of thousands of manhours of hundreds of regular wiki editors cant be called "successful" by any stretch of imagination. It is a an abject and complete failure.
Please do not call this a "success" and ignore the havoc it has wrought on en wiki. As long as the foundation and program refuses to acknowledge the truth, there is little chance of any lessons being learnt.
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 3:26 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 13 November 2011 08:46, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Shiju Alex shijualexonline@gmail.com wrote:
Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is, about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all
of
them editing the articles on the same topic.
This is related to something I've been thinking about.
As conceived, the IEP and its parent the PPP (pardon the acronyms), were about contributing to wikipedia, about learning how to contribute, and
about
having fun while learning.
Hi Bishakha,
This is a bit of a derail from your e-mail, but I wanted to clarify your use of the past tense (they *were* about contributing). I think the thread title here may be creating some confusion about what has actually happened. That, or else I may be confused myself :-)
The PPI (or PPP, LOL) is indeed over. It concluded with the completion of the Stanton grant requirements, and has now evolved into the GEP, the Global Education Program. The IEP as I understand it is not over: contrary to the subjectline of this thread, it hasn't "died." A number of schools have participated in the pilot phase of the IEP. My understanding is that the project has been mostly successful, except for one school, or set of schools, at which there were serious problems with plagiarism that, despite repeated efforts, the team couldn't get resolved.
The plagiarism problems were serious, and after their efforts to fix them didn't work, Hisham and Barry shut down that stream of the project. It was a hard decision to make, but I expect there's general agreement that it was the right decision. But the project itself is not over. Although, the pilot phase might be over: I'm not sure about that.
I'm just clarifying this point because I think it would be good for everybody here to have the same basic understanding of what happened. And if I'm wrong, somebody might please just correct me :-)
Thanks, Sue
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The PPI (or PPP, LOL) is indeed over. It concluded with the completion of the Stanton grant requirements, and has now evolved into the GEP, the Global Education Program. The IEP as I understand it is not over: contrary to the subjectline of this thread, it hasn't "died."
Thanks Sue, IEP surely is not Dead yet.
Also +1 to Shiju's idea regarding Article selection, this problem was faced by my class too. I was managing Data Structures class, and the problem was that plenty of Data Structures related articles are in good shape and we didn't want to touch those. So it was getting difficult for professor and students too for selecting their article, thus some of the topics were later moved on too Wikibooks which was accepted by the professor in good faith.
*Thus what I would like to suggest is that, if for example we sign one class of Computer engineering department then the students of that class should be free to select any article regarding Computer Engineering, and the best place to start would be Wikiprojects like WikiProject_Computer_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science , WikiProject_Computinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computing etc etc, thus students will also get a chance to write about articles they like and are interested in and Wikiprojects will also gain some momentum and who knows we might get relatively better articles in there. Article selection should not necessarily be from that subject only, students should have freedom of selection of articles and professors must understand this mutually. *
Please do think about it and share your views regarding it.
Thanks Arnav (ricku). (User:Rangilo_Gujarati) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rangilo_Gujarati
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 16:17, Arnav Sonara sonara.arnav@gmail.com wrote:
The PPI (or PPP, LOL) is indeed over. It concluded with the completion
of the Stanton grant requirements, and has now evolved into the GEP, the Global Education Program. The IEP as I understand it is not over: contrary to the subjectline of this thread, it hasn't "died."
Thanks Sue, IEP surely is not Dead yet.
All,
Please read the subject line carefully, " Death and Postmortem of IEP *PILOT* ". Also to clarify, I didnt call it death, someone else at Signpost already posted a post-mortem after the close down which happened a week before it. The subject of the original mail was to inform about both to this list.
I would also request people not to fork any more new threads on this with same thoughts, We already have 3 threads now. Mailing list 101 anyone?
*On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.com wrote:* *I would also request people not to fork any more new threads on this with same thoughts, *
CAMPUS AMBASSADOR SETBACK - The Local Community Viewpoint
The recent hiatus in the Campus Education program proved what the Pune Community knew. That the statue had feet of clay. For a long time we have kept quiet, not wanting to disturb the boat but the time has come to tell the tale. So it helps all concerned to revisit the previous decisions, actions and provides for better opportunities for improvements in future.
Hisham first came to Pune in February to our meetup on his trip around the country to meet communities. He is smart, very likeable, intelligent, focussed and erudite. We were impressed and happy that a suitable person would support communities through the India program.
In his subsequent visits over the next two months, whenever we met, there was no mention of the campus ambassador scheme or of a pilot project. The ambassador project was launched without any intimation and/or consultation with the community. The launch of the pilot project in Pune came as a complete surprise to the Community who read it from news reports.
Ignoring the slight, on the basis of an email received rather late in the day, we looked forward to participating and hoped to make a meaningful contribution. We felt that with our contacts, experience, knowledge of local language, customs, etc. It would be a mutually beneficial partnership with campus ambassadors, which would result in adding to the strength of the very small community in Pune. We had no illusions that we could add great editting power to the venture because of the size of our community. Instead, we hoped to play the role of friend, philosopher and guide. We hoped to bring the following to the venture:
* Wiki editting experience - we had a small handful of veteran editors including an admin (Srikeit). Whereas Hisham had none and little knowledge of the environment or knowledge of the way Wikipedians think.
* Huge experience in event management, FOSS, crisis-management in wide fields of experience etc.
* Intimate life-long knowledge of the educational system in Pune. One of our communities member Harshad is a notable cog in the academy machinery. Sudhanwa has been instructor in half a dozen colleges and has a valuable network of contacts in Pune as well as insight into attitudes, local politics, expectations etc. The Community also has well-wishers such as Mr Lalit Kathpalia, Director SICSR besides others.
* A permanent long-term continuing presence in Pune (which Hisham or his staff do not have even today).
* Capacity to act as mentors to campus ambassadors and provide moral and other kinds of support to CAs.
* Capacity to act as “train the trainers”.
* A limited capacity to edit the offerings of the students (which we considered, the least of the value that we could bring to the table).
* Expertise for the Indic wikipedia aspects of the initiative, especially Marathi Wikipedia.
Somehow, I do not know why, involvement of the community itself was bypassed, not wanted or not required by the program team. We were always asking for information, it was not directed purposefully towards us. The time came for the first Campus Ambassador. When we suggested that it was time to develop the syllabus, we were sent the American syllabus used to train the CAs which had a different setting to ours. We were wondering how such a thing was to be implemented. We prepared our draft points for how the training should be organised and waited to discuss the issue but by the time we could meet again, it was just a few days away from the training.
To our surprise, we came to know of an airlift of PPI bigwigs from America - Frank Schulenberg, Annie Lin and PJ Tabit (an American CA on sabbatical to Pune). When we met just two days before the training became, we were told that Annie was driving the show. When Annie was asked what role she expected us to play, she asked Ashwin to give an opening address and we played some part in some discussions and case studies. Sudhanwa and Ashwin were there on Day One and Madar Kulkarni on Day two. Srikeit was there on both days (we came to know he is being co-opted into the CA program on a fellowship).
Mr Lalit Kathpalia, a well-wisher of the Wikipedia Pune Community and Director, Symbiosis Institue of Computer Science and Research and Mr Harshad Gune, Deputy Director and member of Pune Wikipedian community provided the facilities for conduct of the CA program.
During the training, the CAs were eager, excited and charged up. Frank, Annie, PJ did a great job in the training, even though it was clear to us that what was the need of the moment was not being taught. Without even the know how of how to do a single meaningful edit, CAs were being motivated to be effective campus ambassadors - the horse was put before the cart.
During the training, we felt there was a disjunct between what the Pune community was propagating as the points for immediate action and the message being given in the training. For example, the need for being a competent editor was being glossed over, in fact we felt that the message was that editting and Wiki experience is over-rated, that newcomers do a better job than Wikipedians.
After the training, Ashwin wrote a note of dissent on the talk page of the CAs at the time:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/In...
In the light of how the community perceived itself, we gave address on a number of issues, which were voiced to Hisham over a period of time. At that point of time, the involvement of the Pune community in the WikiConference work had not yet started. A large number of issues were raised. These included:
* Need for a project management approach, with deliverables, stages, identification of scaling resources, check-backs, etc was emphasised.
* Attitudes of local college managements and how to function in Pune academic environment were given.
* Intricacies of academic systems in the colleges, universities in Pune were explained.
* Cultural differences between colleges, their goals and priorities, as well as their mutual relations were told.
* It was indicated that this was the wrong timing to start the program from point of view of forthcoming exams and vacations.
* We asked an important question - what is the take home for the stake holders? There were adequate take-homes for the CA (a certificate, a T shirt, learning experiences. opportunities in Wikiworld, recognition and some marks for the exam). The participating students were only getting wiki-knowledge and assignment marks. Was that enough to motivate them? There was no formal training for the actual editors.
* Most important of all, what is there in return to the stake holders like colleges? This question is still unanswered. There has to be something for all the stakeholders (CAs, students, college teachers, college management, community, IEP program team) in the program. Right now, only Wikipedia is the ultimate beneficiary. and partly CAs and some students. For a win-win situation, everybody must have something reasonable for take-home.
* We repeatedly emphasised the need for the staff person to be recruited from Pune and function from Pune 24x7, who should preferably be Maharashtrian, and having local contacts, rather than be from Delhi, stationed there and fly in here for a few days a week (as we were told it would be).
* The need for rigorous training of campus ambassadors and formal training for student editors.
The community felt that it was not quite being listened to. Slowly contact with Hisham dwindled. We never came to know except through grape-vine when Hisham was in town. It appeared to us that the community mattered no more and the IEP (India Education Project) was the whole-soul focus. Our contact with local CAs was not encouraged. When a request was made for at least one Pune community member to be on the CA mailing list so that we could be in the loop and available for ready support and advice, it was not agreed.
This led to the community being effectively excluded from CA. Hisham had never seriously advocated interaction of CAs with us and only a few Wikipedian CAs and some other interested CAs interacted with us sporadically. Some of CAs turned up at our last monthly meetup only after they got a bashing about the copy-vios asking for some help. And then vanished again when some suggestions and action plan was given.
There was one exception. One of the Pune community members, Prof Radha Misra is running a quiet, efficient IEP in her department and college. The community was invited by her to conduct two wiki-academies in different workshops in her College which were successfully conducted. We thank her for the support to the community.
Reluctantly we came to the conclusion that the local Pune community had no role to play in IEP. We decided to support the initiative passively. Soon the WikiConference planning started and our attention and energies were drawn away.
From time to time some news leaked through and we got the idea the CA
program was being grilled by the world community. Out of sheer lack of interest, we had stopped inquiring into CA affairs, we no longer watched IEP pages though we came across some activity going on from time to time. Because of this, the true state of affairs and scope of the setback came to us only with the latest Signpost.
Now a lot of blame has been put on the educational system, students attitudes etc. That is true that they are a contributory cause but the blame must also lie with those responsible for planning. If the priorities in training CAs were got wrong, it takes no leap of imagination to imagine other decisions may not have been optimal either. The Campus Ambassadors, God bless them, are mostly blameless.
The Pune Community had a clearer idea of what was involved right in the beginning than the India Programs office. Its decades of experience in academicia (Harshad & Sudhanwa), FOSS (Sudhanwa), industry (Mandar), teaching (Sudhanwa & Ashwin), marketing (Mahitgar), retired marathi expert (J), business (Suhel), armed forces (Ashwin), Wikipedia experience (in en:WP, mr:WP, Commons) and the general management experience and detailed on-site knowledge etc were a very valuable human resource, and these were made available to Hisham. He chose to sip sparingly. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he had drunk deeply - recognised that the miniscule Pune community was a true well-wisher, and had made us a true partner, the outcome may have been different.
The purpose of this feedback is to educate people about the need to engage local communities. Communities are not easily engaged. Each has its own complexities. Their capacities to help you forward your plans may be limited and nuanced. They cannot be taken for granted either. Often you have to prove your worth to them. Some communities may even be of nuisance value unless engaged. But if properly engaged, they can bring you unique viewpoints, opportunities; they will stand by you in difficult times, sometimes a critical breakthrough may come from them. They are an important stakeholder, no matter what your opinion of them is and they will play a role in your activities. It is up to you to help make them an asset or a liability and that, in our opinion, is a vital lesson to learn in addition to all the others.
We are really unhappy that the Pune pilot should falter and that all this has to come out. But the lesson needs to be learned, so the story needs to be told.
Warm regards,
Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Mandar Kulkarni, Ashwin Baindur and other members of Pune Community
Very Valid Points Aswin & pune community. This is extremely useful. Putting blame on students and educational system does not help us to study from this experience . In addition , i was always wondering how we omitted addressing copy-vios from the programme plan, since it is always expected in "assignment" based IEP model .
Anivar
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
*On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.com wrote:* *I would also request people not to fork any more new threads on this with same thoughts, *
CAMPUS AMBASSADOR SETBACK - The Local Community Viewpoint
The recent hiatus in the Campus Education program proved what the Pune Community knew. That the statue had feet of clay. For a long time we have kept quiet, not wanting to disturb the boat but the time has come to tell the tale. So it helps all concerned to revisit the previous decisions, actions and provides for better opportunities for improvements in future.
Hisham first came to Pune in February to our meetup on his trip around the country to meet communities. He is smart, very likeable, intelligent, focussed and erudite. We were impressed and happy that a suitable person would support communities through the India program.
In his subsequent visits over the next two months, whenever we met, there was no mention of the campus ambassador scheme or of a pilot project. The ambassador project was launched without any intimation and/or consultation with the community. The launch of the pilot project in Pune came as a complete surprise to the Community who read it from news reports.
Ignoring the slight, on the basis of an email received rather late in the day, we looked forward to participating and hoped to make a meaningful contribution. We felt that with our contacts, experience, knowledge of local language, customs, etc. It would be a mutually beneficial partnership with campus ambassadors, which would result in adding to the strength of the very small community in Pune. We had no illusions that we could add great editting power to the venture because of the size of our community. Instead, we hoped to play the role of friend, philosopher and guide. We hoped to bring the following to the venture:
- Wiki editting experience - we had a small handful of veteran editors
including an admin (Srikeit). Whereas Hisham had none and little knowledge of the environment or knowledge of the way Wikipedians think.
- Huge experience in event management, FOSS, crisis-management in wide
fields of experience etc.
- Intimate life-long knowledge of the educational system in Pune. One of
our communities member Harshad is a notable cog in the academy machinery. Sudhanwa has been instructor in half a dozen colleges and has a valuable network of contacts in Pune as well as insight into attitudes, local politics, expectations etc. The Community also has well-wishers such as Mr Lalit Kathpalia, Director SICSR besides others.
- A permanent long-term continuing presence in Pune (which Hisham or his
staff do not have even today).
- Capacity to act as mentors to campus ambassadors and provide moral and
other kinds of support to CAs.
Capacity to act as “train the trainers”.
A limited capacity to edit the offerings of the students (which we
considered, the least of the value that we could bring to the table).
- Expertise for the Indic wikipedia aspects of the initiative, especially
Marathi Wikipedia.
Somehow, I do not know why, involvement of the community itself was bypassed, not wanted or not required by the program team. We were always asking for information, it was not directed purposefully towards us. The time came for the first Campus Ambassador. When we suggested that it was time to develop the syllabus, we were sent the American syllabus used to train the CAs which had a different setting to ours. We were wondering how such a thing was to be implemented. We prepared our draft points for how the training should be organised and waited to discuss the issue but by the time we could meet again, it was just a few days away from the training.
To our surprise, we came to know of an airlift of PPI bigwigs from America
- Frank Schulenberg, Annie Lin and PJ Tabit (an American CA on sabbatical
to Pune). When we met just two days before the training became, we were told that Annie was driving the show. When Annie was asked what role she expected us to play, she asked Ashwin to give an opening address and we played some part in some discussions and case studies. Sudhanwa and Ashwin were there on Day One and Madar Kulkarni on Day two. Srikeit was there on both days (we came to know he is being co-opted into the CA program on a fellowship).
Mr Lalit Kathpalia, a well-wisher of the Wikipedia Pune Community and Director, Symbiosis Institue of Computer Science and Research and Mr Harshad Gune, Deputy Director and member of Pune Wikipedian community provided the facilities for conduct of the CA program.
During the training, the CAs were eager, excited and charged up. Frank, Annie, PJ did a great job in the training, even though it was clear to us that what was the need of the moment was not being taught. Without even the know how of how to do a single meaningful edit, CAs were being motivated to be effective campus ambassadors - the horse was put before the cart.
During the training, we felt there was a disjunct between what the Pune community was propagating as the points for immediate action and the message being given in the training. For example, the need for being a competent editor was being glossed over, in fact we felt that the message was that editting and Wiki experience is over-rated, that newcomers do a better job than Wikipedians.
After the training, Ashwin wrote a note of dissent on the talk page of the CAs at the time:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/In...
In the light of how the community perceived itself, we gave address on a number of issues, which were voiced to Hisham over a period of time. At that point of time, the involvement of the Pune community in the WikiConference work had not yet started. A large number of issues were raised. These included:
- Need for a project management approach, with deliverables, stages,
identification of scaling resources, check-backs, etc was emphasised.
- Attitudes of local college managements and how to function in Pune
academic environment were given.
- Intricacies of academic systems in the colleges, universities in Pune
were explained.
- Cultural differences between colleges, their goals and priorities, as
well as their mutual relations were told.
- It was indicated that this was the wrong timing to start the program
from point of view of forthcoming exams and vacations.
- We asked an important question - what is the take home for the stake
holders? There were adequate take-homes for the CA (a certificate, a T shirt, learning experiences. opportunities in Wikiworld, recognition and some marks for the exam). The participating students were only getting wiki-knowledge and assignment marks. Was that enough to motivate them? There was no formal training for the actual editors.
- Most important of all, what is there in return to the stake holders like
colleges? This question is still unanswered. There has to be something for all the stakeholders (CAs, students, college teachers, college management, community, IEP program team) in the program. Right now, only Wikipedia is the ultimate beneficiary. and partly CAs and some students. For a win-win situation, everybody must have something reasonable for take-home.
- We repeatedly emphasised the need for the staff person to be recruited
from Pune and function from Pune 24x7, who should preferably be Maharashtrian, and having local contacts, rather than be from Delhi, stationed there and fly in here for a few days a week (as we were told it would be).
- The need for rigorous training of campus ambassadors and formal training
for student editors.
The community felt that it was not quite being listened to. Slowly contact with Hisham dwindled. We never came to know except through grape-vine when Hisham was in town. It appeared to us that the community mattered no more and the IEP (India Education Project) was the whole-soul focus. Our contact with local CAs was not encouraged. When a request was made for at least one Pune community member to be on the CA mailing list so that we could be in the loop and available for ready support and advice, it was not agreed.
This led to the community being effectively excluded from CA. Hisham had never seriously advocated interaction of CAs with us and only a few Wikipedian CAs and some other interested CAs interacted with us sporadically. Some of CAs turned up at our last monthly meetup only after they got a bashing about the copy-vios asking for some help. And then vanished again when some suggestions and action plan was given.
There was one exception. One of the Pune community members, Prof Radha Misra is running a quiet, efficient IEP in her department and college. The community was invited by her to conduct two wiki-academies in different workshops in her College which were successfully conducted. We thank her for the support to the community.
Reluctantly we came to the conclusion that the local Pune community had no role to play in IEP. We decided to support the initiative passively. Soon the WikiConference planning started and our attention and energies were drawn away.
From time to time some news leaked through and we got the idea the CA program was being grilled by the world community. Out of sheer lack of interest, we had stopped inquiring into CA affairs, we no longer watched IEP pages though we came across some activity going on from time to time. Because of this, the true state of affairs and scope of the setback came to us only with the latest Signpost.
Now a lot of blame has been put on the educational system, students attitudes etc. That is true that they are a contributory cause but the blame must also lie with those responsible for planning. If the priorities in training CAs were got wrong, it takes no leap of imagination to imagine other decisions may not have been optimal either. The Campus Ambassadors, God bless them, are mostly blameless.
The Pune Community had a clearer idea of what was involved right in the beginning than the India Programs office. Its decades of experience in academicia (Harshad & Sudhanwa), FOSS (Sudhanwa), industry (Mandar), teaching (Sudhanwa & Ashwin), marketing (Mahitgar), retired marathi expert (J), business (Suhel), armed forces (Ashwin), Wikipedia experience (in en:WP, mr:WP, Commons) and the general management experience and detailed on-site knowledge etc were a very valuable human resource, and these were made available to Hisham. He chose to sip sparingly. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he had drunk deeply - recognised that the miniscule Pune community was a true well-wisher, and had made us a true partner, the outcome may have been different.
The purpose of this feedback is to educate people about the need to engage local communities. Communities are not easily engaged. Each has its own complexities. Their capacities to help you forward your plans may be limited and nuanced. They cannot be taken for granted either. Often you have to prove your worth to them. Some communities may even be of nuisance value unless engaged. But if properly engaged, they can bring you unique viewpoints, opportunities; they will stand by you in difficult times, sometimes a critical breakthrough may come from them. They are an important stakeholder, no matter what your opinion of them is and they will play a role in your activities. It is up to you to help make them an asset or a liability and that, in our opinion, is a vital lesson to learn in addition to all the others.
We are really unhappy that the Pune pilot should falter and that all this has to come out. But the lesson needs to be learned, so the story needs to be told.
Warm regards,
Sudhanwa Jogalekar, Mandar Kulkarni, Ashwin Baindur and other members of Pune Community
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
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 09:13, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
*On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.com wrote:* *I would also request people not to fork any more new threads on this with same thoughts, *
CAMPUS AMBASSADOR SETBACK - The Local Community Viewpoint
Ashwin, I respect you views, know the amount of interest and time you had put on the program, but have wide differences. The common thing between your viewpoint and Hisham's is both of you take out bulk of the blame from students, shield them. The difference being Hisham cites culture,host of other things, you point towards management. I will cite only 2 reasons, Scale & Quality of students. IMO, nothing else could have helped significantly get a different outcome than this.
After the training, Ashwin wrote a note of dissent on the talk page of the CAs at the time:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/In...
Agree with you on this, Infact i raised on the other thread, Hisham still maintains CA's doesnt need to know enough of Wikipedia to teach others. If it happened in PPP too, its still a wrong way I would say. May be the US students were more mature that even with peer level (in terms of wiki exp) ambassadors, they did a decent job. Indian students are not that mature probably.
- Need for a project management approach, with deliverables, stages,
identification of scaling resources, check-backs, etc was emphasised.
- Attitudes of local college managements and how to function in Pune
academic environment were given.
- Intricacies of academic systems in the colleges, universities in Pune
were explained.
- Cultural differences between colleges, their goals and priorities, as
well as their mutual relations were told.
All the above are overrated and irrespective of either way, the outcome would not have been much different. Tell me do WikiProjects use project management etc ? Project management is waste of time in these type of projects where there are a lot of other main things to worry.
* We asked an important question - what is the take home for the stake
holders? There were adequate take-homes for the CA (a certificate, a T shirt, learning experiences. opportunities in Wikiworld, recognition and some marks for the exam). The participating students were only getting wiki-knowledge and assignment marks. Was that enough to motivate them? There was no formal training for the actual editors.
Huh, Do you think CA did "better job" FOR the extra T-shirt and for other students, T-Shirts would have made a difference. Come on, please dont go to down to this level, AGF that like you and me, they too wanted to volunteer(at least many of them, some might have been forced in the 800 number). Scale was the problem for lack of "enough" training & the quality of students you get at that scale and it was acknowledged.
- Most important of all, what is there in return to the stake holders like
colleges? This question is still unanswered. There has to be something for all the stakeholders (CAs, students, college teachers, college management, community, IEP program team) in the program. Right now, only Wikipedia is the ultimate beneficiary. and partly CAs and some students. For a win-win situation, everybody must have something reasonable for take-home.
Well, infact colleges got very nice publicity. Its ideally the colleges that won without doing much(may be just entertained Hisham and Co and gave them few hours). Even CA's / students' tried contributing and failed for some reason. So colleges won, Wikipedia lost. Reality IMO.
- We repeatedly emphasised the need for the staff person to be recruited
from Pune and function from Pune 24x7, who should preferably be Maharashtrian, and having local contacts, rather than be from Delhi, stationed there and fly in here for a few days a week (as we were told it would be).
Would have made no big difference,seriously. If in one class visit they dont get the message "Do not copy" after numerous warnings online, how would they get it had one person physically being present. "Maharashtrian and Local contacts" Ah? are we doing some cinema shooting / driving around the city? I thought it was about Wikipedia editing.
- The need for rigorous training of campus ambassadors and formal training
for student editors.
The community felt that it was not quite being listened to. Slowly contact with Hisham dwindled. We never came to know except through grape-vine when Hisham was in town. It appeared to us that the community mattered no more and the IEP (India Education Project) was the whole-soul focus. Our contact with local CAs was not encouraged. When a request was made for at least one Pune community member to be on the CA mailing list so that we could be in the loop and available for ready support and advice, it was not agreed.
I suppose most of the students got online with a User account, nothing stopped anyone from communicating to students. I did try and wrote on few pages, few responded few did not.
There was one exception. One of the Pune community members, Prof Radha Misra is running a quiet, efficient IEP in her department and college. The community was invited by her to conduct two wiki-academies in different workshops in her College which were successfully conducted. We thank her for the support to the community.
Great, 2 Wiki-acadamies, unofficial IEP. Cool. Please give us more links, at least usernames of Students.
Reluctantly we came to the conclusion that the local Pune community had no role to play in IEP. We decided to support the initiative passively. Soon the WikiConference planning started and our attention and energies were drawn away.
The Pune Community had a clearer idea of what was involved right in the beginning than the India Programs office. Its decades of experience in academicia (Harshad & Sudhanwa), FOSS (Sudhanwa), industry (Mandar), teaching (Sudhanwa & Ashwin), marketing (Mahitgar), retired marathi expert (J), business (Suhel), armed forces (Ashwin), Wikipedia experience (in en:WP, mr:WP, Commons) and the general management experience and detailed on-site knowledge etc were a very valuable human resource, and these were made available to Hisham. He chose to sip sparingly. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he had drunk deeply - recognised that the miniscule Pune community was a true well-wisher, and had made us a true partner, the outcome may have been different.
None of the other skills you had mentioned would have had impact on the program apart from en:WP editing skills, mr:WP skills to an extent, considering policies are mostly same but yet enwp is a vastly different community(I don't think I need to tell that to you, you know better). I have no idea of how strong "Pune community" is with that experience, can you please enlighten me with some details?.
In summary I would still put the blame where it belongs, students and some extent to faculty. In fact, a greater audit needs to be done on the role of faculty on IEP and PPP to see the differences, I think Nitika had done some work on it, might be doing more.
I respect Srikanth's thinking but agree to disagree. In times of crisis, when things are pulling every which way, formal planning methodologies can get you going. I actually sat on a hillside at 13,500 feet in Kargil in 1999 with paper and pencil to make sense of construction schedules when the fury was on all around (I used CPM). Our years of experience have taught us that informal methods are great to get the ball rolling but crumble in the long run. Using methodologies is one effective way to reduce risk of failure. You will have to take that as a given, I will not argue about that belief with you.
Anyway, like I said, it "may" have changed the outcome. But our lesson was different - communities must be engaged, because the community possessed the wherewithal to give advice which could have averted/reduced/resolved this issue. We are/were reasonably clued up about referencing, POV, citation, paraphrasing.
Srikanth, all the skills we mentioned figured in one way or the other in the overall project planning/activities. We were not specifically cribbing about the copyvio thing. Please understand the story in its context. Everywhere, it is being said, that the global community needed to be engaged, surprise, surprise, the local community needed to be engaged too.
I take the point about CAs finding volunteering as a worthy activity very well. Thanks for reminding us.
The two wiki-academies were for teachers of the institution besides some others. Prof Radha Mishra can give those details.
I beg to differ with you. The blame cant be A or B. It must be A and B, each for different things.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 09:13, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
*On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak@gmail.com
wrote:*
*I would also request people not to fork any more new threads on this with same thoughts, *
CAMPUS AMBASSADOR SETBACK - The Local Community Viewpoint
Ashwin, I respect you views, know the amount of interest and time you had put on the program, but have wide differences. The common thing between your viewpoint and Hisham's is both of you take out bulk of the blame from students, shield them. The difference being Hisham cites culture,host of other things, you point towards management. I will cite only 2 reasons, Scale & Quality of students. IMO, nothing else could have helped significantly get a different outcome than this.
After the training, Ashwin wrote a note of dissent on the talk page of the CAs at the time:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/In...
Agree with you on this, Infact i raised on the other thread, Hisham still maintains CA's doesnt need to know enough of Wikipedia to teach others. If it happened in PPP too, its still a wrong way I would say. May be the US students were more mature that even with peer level (in terms of wiki exp) ambassadors, they did a decent job. Indian students are not that mature probably.
- Need for a project management approach, with deliverables, stages,
identification of scaling resources, check-backs, etc was emphasised.
- Attitudes of local college managements and how to function in Pune
academic environment were given.
- Intricacies of academic systems in the colleges, universities in Pune
were explained.
- Cultural differences between colleges, their goals and priorities, as
well as their mutual relations were told.
All the above are overrated and irrespective of either way, the outcome would not have been much different. Tell me do WikiProjects use project management etc ? Project management is waste of time in these type of projects where there are a lot of other main things to worry.
- We asked an important question - what is the take home for the stake
holders? There were adequate take-homes for the CA (a certificate, a T shirt, learning experiences. opportunities in Wikiworld, recognition and some marks for the exam). The participating students were only getting wiki-knowledge and assignment marks. Was that enough to motivate them? There was no formal training for the actual editors.
Huh, Do you think CA did "better job" FOR the extra T-shirt and for other students, T-Shirts would have made a difference. Come on, please dont go to down to this level, AGF that like you and me, they too wanted to volunteer(at least many of them, some might have been forced in the 800 number). Scale was the problem for lack of "enough" training & the quality of students you get at that scale and it was acknowledged.
- Most important of all, what is there in return to the stake holders
like colleges? This question is still unanswered. There has to be something for all the stakeholders (CAs, students, college teachers, college management, community, IEP program team) in the program. Right now, only Wikipedia is the ultimate beneficiary. and partly CAs and some students. For a win-win situation, everybody must have something reasonable for take-home.
Well, infact colleges got very nice publicity. Its ideally the colleges that won without doing much(may be just entertained Hisham and Co and gave them few hours). Even CA's / students' tried contributing and failed for some reason. So colleges won, Wikipedia lost. Reality IMO.
- We repeatedly emphasised the need for the staff person to be recruited
from Pune and function from Pune 24x7, who should preferably be Maharashtrian, and having local contacts, rather than be from Delhi, stationed there and fly in here for a few days a week (as we were told it would be).
Would have made no big difference,seriously. If in one class visit they dont get the message "Do not copy" after numerous warnings online, how would they get it had one person physically being present. "Maharashtrian and Local contacts" Ah? are we doing some cinema shooting / driving around the city? I thought it was about Wikipedia editing.
- The need for rigorous training of campus ambassadors and formal
training for student editors.
The community felt that it was not quite being listened to. Slowly contact with Hisham dwindled. We never came to know except through grape-vine when Hisham was in town. It appeared to us that the community mattered no more and the IEP (India Education Project) was the whole-soul focus. Our contact with local CAs was not encouraged. When a request was made for at least one Pune community member to be on the CA mailing list so that we could be in the loop and available for ready support and advice, it was not agreed.
I suppose most of the students got online with a User account, nothing stopped anyone from communicating to students. I did try and wrote on few pages, few responded few did not.
There was one exception. One of the Pune community members, Prof Radha Misra is running a quiet, efficient IEP in her department and college. The community was invited by her to conduct two wiki-academies in different workshops in her College which were successfully conducted. We thank her for the support to the community.
Great, 2 Wiki-acadamies, unofficial IEP. Cool. Please give us more links, at least usernames of Students.
Reluctantly we came to the conclusion that the local Pune community had no role to play in IEP. We decided to support the initiative passively. Soon the WikiConference planning started and our attention and energies were drawn away.
The Pune Community had a clearer idea of what was involved right in the beginning than the India Programs office. Its decades of experience in academicia (Harshad & Sudhanwa), FOSS (Sudhanwa), industry (Mandar), teaching (Sudhanwa & Ashwin), marketing (Mahitgar), retired marathi expert (J), business (Suhel), armed forces (Ashwin), Wikipedia experience (in en:WP, mr:WP, Commons) and the general management experience and detailed on-site knowledge etc were a very valuable human resource, and these were made available to Hisham. He chose to sip sparingly. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he had drunk deeply - recognised that the miniscule Pune community was a true well-wisher, and had made us a true partner, the outcome may have been different.
None of the other skills you had mentioned would have had impact on the program apart from en:WP editing skills, mr:WP skills to an extent, considering policies are mostly same but yet enwp is a vastly different community(I don't think I need to tell that to you, you know better). I have no idea of how strong "Pune community" is with that experience, can you please enlighten me with some details?.
In summary I would still put the blame where it belongs, students and some extent to faculty. In fact, a greater audit needs to be done on the role of faculty on IEP and PPP to see the differences, I think Nitika had done some work on it, might be doing more.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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