Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Update/12 October 2010

Wikimedia Foundation presents at Princeton

On Thursday, Oct. 7, Wikimedia Foundation Public Outreach Officer Pete Forsyth and Campus Team Coordinator Annie Lin presented at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. In their presentation, titled "Edit: How Wikipedia Changes the Way We Debate, Govern and Teach," they provided some history of how collaboration and decision-making happen on Wikipedia, described how the Public Policy Initiative is working, and explained how to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool. The Princeton site has a video of the presentation, and there is an accompanying wiki page with relevant links. The Princeton students explored wiki use during the talk, and had a small (and good-natured) "edit war" on the wiki page! After the talk, a faculty panel consisting of three Princeton sociology professors (Paul DiMaggio, Matt Salganik, and Paul Starr) shared their thoughts about Wikipedia. Watch the video of the entire presentation at Princeton's site.

Syracuse student's article featured on main page

Graham Rogers, a student in Syracuse University's "Wikipedia and Public Policy" course that is participating in the Public Policy Initiative this fall, had his article on the Fair Sentencing Act featured on Wikipedia's "Did You Know?" section this weekend. "Did You Know?" is a box on the main page of the English Wikipedia that highlights a fact from new or greatly expanded stub articles, designed to bring attention to recently added articles on Wikipedia -- and it worked. Graham's article went from around 25 hits a day to more than 900 on the day it was featured. "Did you know... that the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduces, but does not eliminate, the disparity in criminal penalties for crack versus powder cocaine in the United States?" To learn more, check out Graham's article.

Politics of Piracy students collecting articles

Students in UC Berkeley's "Politics of Piracy" course, part of the Public Policy Initiative, are collecting articles they could work on that address digital piracy, privacy, and U.S. public policy. You're encouraged to join the discussion of what articles need work in the arrears of closely related court cases, precursor cases, laws, concepts, organizations, and current events. Contribute article ideas on the talk page of the "Politics of Piracy" course page.

Sac State MPPA alumni join assessment team

A large group of alumni from the California State University at Sacramento's master's in public policy and administration program have volunteered to provide expert analysis of public policy articles. As part of the research component of the Public Policy Initiative, our analysis will compare the results of the article assessment done by Wikipedians and public policy experts to determine how accurate the article quality metric is. For more information on testing article quality, see the research plan on the Outreach wiki.