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

Tue Nov 15 18:06:05 UTC 2011

+1 Debanjan!

On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay <
debastein at 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 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 13:08, Ram Shankar Yadav <
>> ramshankaryadav at 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&lang=en&wiki=wikipedia
>>>
>>
>> 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/Education_Program#Online_Ambassadors_to_be_checked
>>
>> --
>> Regards
>> Srikanth.L
>>
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>>
>
>
>
>
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