[Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program

[Hisham Mundol]

Hi Folks

(Some) students in the Pune pilot have copy-pasted copyright material onto their articles.  We are taking these copyvios extremely seriously and here's a summary of the action that we have taken.

a) Conducted classroom sessions in all 3 colleges where the program is running and conveying the importance of not making this mistake - and the fact that they will be caught - and that too quickly.  Between Nitika and I, we've conducted sessions in at least 10 separate classes last week (along with Campus Ambassadors.)
b) Conducted meetings with the directors and faculty members to convey the gravity of the issue and asking them to pass on the message to their students in the strongest possible terms.
c) Almost doubling the number of Campus Ambassadors to provide more on-ground support for students.  We will be sending out an update on this soon.  The issue of copyvios was taken up specifically during the training for these Campus Ambassadors.
d) Started work on establishing an Online Ambassador program (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004299.html) to provide additional support 
e) Disabled the leaderboard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Leaderboard) so that we make sure that recognition is given only to deserving students.

Controlling the copyvio issue is the single biggest issue for the program and we will continue to do everything it takes to minimize it.  Of course, some students who will still try and cut corners and the actions listed above should hopefully reduce the problem.

Having said all this, we must not cloud the fantastic work of many students by the errors committed by (some) newbies who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia.  Do continue to support and celebrate the work of the good guys!

Thank you for you continued support on this.

Best

hisham

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