[Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot

Tue Nov 15 06:55:10 UTC 2011

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 at 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 at 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 at 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 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 at 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:
>>>>
>>>> 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 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 20:15, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Nitika <ntandon at 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 Economy<http://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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>>>>>
>>>>
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