Wikipedia talk:United States Education Program/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Template for student pages

For convienence, here's the link to the Campus Ambassador article template: Template:WAP assignment that produces this template. {{WAP assignment}} McMormor (talk) 20:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

More points to ponder

Jbmurray's 2008 essay is long, but contains a lot of critical thinking and demonstrates arguments that are still cogent nearly four years down the line. It should be compulsory reading for professors, campus ambassadors, and above all, the EP organisers and the trainers who train the trainers who train the trainers...
I wonder how many involved parties here have taken the time to read it? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:55, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I read that a long time ago... --Guerillero | My Talk 13:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting you hadn't ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:37, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to reassure you, the entire Ed Program team has read the Madness essay. We've also met with Jon and other professors who were incorporating Wikipedia in their classroom long before the Public Policy Initiative pilot started. Our findings inform the Education Portal we direct participating professors to, especially the sections on assignment design and case studies. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I know this is wacky, but sometimes I get the impression the WMF people themselves have not had the learnings you get from building articles on the Wiki. Crazy talk probably. But just hear some tone deaf comments at times.  ;) 96.238.184.111 (talk) 15:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Learning points from the PPI education program

The learning points document for the PPI has just been released. I've skimmed it and agree with most of what's said there. Those interested in the USEP might find it interesting to review this; the PPI was the precursor program to the USEP. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:59, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

NPP and new articles

I haven't had time to go through everything that's been written here and elsewhere about this and other (e.g. the Indian) education projects. It would be good if someone succinctly stated the problems that have been encountered.

But it seems that at least one of the problems has been the (mass?) creation of new articles, which has put stress on the NPP system. Is that so?

One piece of advice could then be that students should not, on the whole, be starting new articles. Wikipedia already has lots and lots of articles, and encouraging students to come up with new one often means that they will come up with deeply unsuitable topics.

Students should, for the most part, be editing and expanding upon articles that already exist.

This does go rather against the grain of most assignments in schools and universities, where one starts with a blank piece of paper and where everything that you turn in at the end of the assignment is your original work (or, at least, produced in collaboration with other members of the same class).

But my first question to anyone who comes to me asking about an educational assignment is always: "What articles will you be wanting your students to write?" If, as most often, they haven't thought about this question, then they are heading for problems. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:37, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

that expansion is the better goal is my experience also, though it can be different from a suitably advanced class. DGG ( talk ) 17:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyright (again)

My heart sank to find in this program a student sandbox copied from a textbook. Please, please, please can we get the message across to everyone: Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, not even in user sandboxes, not even temporarily? JohnCD (talk) 22:32, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you alerted the professor as well as the student. I hope she will be able to reiterate in class that copyright violations are unacceptable, even in sandboxes. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the reaction of another Campus Ambassador was to ask me to restore the copyright material as the student "thought that because the material was in the sandbox, it could sit there as she continued to work on the article." It does not seem that the CAs have been properly briefed about copyright: is there some circulation list by which every CA could be pointed to Wikipedia:Copy-paste and asked to read it and get all their students to read it? and can it in future be built into their initial briefing? JohnCD (talk) 11:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it might help if you point out to the ambassadors and professors that part of the reason we can't have copyrighted material in the sandbox is because the edits persist unless specifically deleted, even if no longer visible on the page. I assume you know this, but similarly, when you run across such violations, you should use WP:RevDel to eliminate the copyright violations if it can be done without removing the history of valid contributions (redaction criteria 1). --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:18, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion re. growth of U.S. program

This is a continuation of the discussion started on a different page about a slightly different topic. I'm moving the discussion here mainly because (1) the topic affects not just Online Ambassadors but the entire U.S. Education Program, so it should be discussed in a forum that is not OA-specific; and (2) this particular discussion about the future growth of the U.S. program has hitherto been embedded in a discusion about nominating student articles for Did You Know, but this particular topic really deserves its own section. The purpose of moving this discussion is to encourage more people - Online Ambassadors, Campus Ambassadors, Regional Ambassadors, professors, other participants of the U.S. Education Program, and the existing editor community - to participate in the conversation. The topic at hand is how to best balance numeric growth, good quality, and good interactions with the existing editor community in the U.S. Education Program going forward.

I want to take a first stab here and respond to some of the points already mentioned in this discussion:
Mike said, "I suggest that we drop growth as a high priority goal, and instead focus on having enough resources to make every class successful." I agree with this point! Starting with the highly successful Public Policy Initiative pilot last year, the U.S. program has numerically grown at a very fast pace every academic term, expanding from slightly more than 10 classes in Fall 2010 to more than 30 classes in Spring 2011 to more than 60 classes in Fall 2011. This is great in the sense that it's a true testament to the rapidly growing level of interest and excitement among academic circles in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool, which has led to the improvement of many Wikipedia articles (students in the U.S. program over the past semesters have, as a whole, done some seriously impressive work on the English Wikipedia) and also increasing the credibility of Wikipedia in academia. The downside of this rapid growth, as Mike and others pointed out, is that our support infrastructure also needs to expand rapidly, and this hasn't always happened to the degree that we want. The Campus Ambassador program has grown at a good pace - some classes this semester unfortunately do not have any Campus Ambassadors, but the majority do. The Online Ambassador program has had a more difficult time keeping pace with the growth of classes, largely because of what Mike pointed out - "we are limited by the size of the community" (there is a ceiling to the total number of English Wikipedians, and not every English Wikipedian would want to be an Online Ambassador). This is a restriction that the Campus Ambassador program does not face because Campus Ambassadors do not have to be experienced Wikipedia editors when they apply for the role; the Campus Ambassador program is open to everyone who is passionate about Wikipedia and who is good at teaching on a face-to-face level; what we found from the Public Policy Initiative is that because Campus Ambassadors' role is to introduce students to the basics of Wikipedia (like creating user accounts and creating sandboxes and bolding text), they do not necessarily have to be super experienced Wikipedia editors to be able to perform their duties well. In fact, one big learning point from the U.S. pilot last year was that Campus Ambassadors who are relatively new to Wikipedia-editing usually do just as well as experienced Wikipedians in terms of their performance as a Campus Ambassador (actually sometimes they do better than experienced Wikipedians because often they can relate better to the experiences and challenges of newbies). Regardless, I think Mike is right that as a whole our support infrastructure has lagged behind the numeric growth of participating classes, and that has resulted in some cases in lower-quality support for professors and students. And that is a problem.

So I would like to be bold and propose a three-part solution, and I'd really appreciate your input on them:

1. I'd like to propose that we keep the number of classes next semester (Spring 2012) at the same level as this semester, so that would be around 60-70 classes. I think to reduce the number of classes would be to go backward a bit - I do agree that we should slow the pace of growth, but I don't think we should go backward in terms of the numbers we've already accomplished. One drawback of not increasing this number is that I'm almost completely sure that there'll be more than 60-70 professors who want to participate next semester - so an open question I'd like all your input on is, what do we tell these professors? Personally I think there's nothing wrong with asking them to wait until the semester after (we have to learn to say "no" sometimes, after all), but there might be better solutions.
2. Geographically, let's focus next semester on classes that are located in places where we already have Campus Ambassadors and other existing resources, so that we have existent and seasoned resources already ready-to-go, thus reducing the need to start from scratch in finding and training and on-boarding new Campus Ambassadors and other resources. So for example, a professor from Washington DC who wants to participate next semester will be much easier to support than a professor from Ackley, Iowa who wants to participate, because we already have a solid group of trained Campus Ambassadors - as well as professors who have done successful Wikipedia-editing assignments - in Washington DC, whereas in Iowa we currently have zero Campus Ambassadors (this example is not to pick on Iowa - it's just an example). This doesn't mean that we'll work with no class from new territories next semester - if a professor from Iowa is super interested in doing this and already has some great people in mind who would make very good Campus Ambassadors, it very well might be worth working with them next semester (we've found over the past semesters that how interested a professor really is in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool makes a huge difference on the quality of their students' contributions to Wikipedia). But we'll focus most of our efforts on getting professors on board next semester in places where we already have existing resources.
3. Let's put a lot of effort into growing the number of Online Ambassadors in preparation for next semester. For Fall 2011 (this semester), we did not actively go out and find new Online Ambassadors, which is also part of the reason why the OA-to-student ratio dropped for this semester. I propose that for Spring 2012, we work with existing OAs and other community members to actively recruit, on-board, and mentor new Online Ambassadors, to build up our overall support infrastructure. In addition, I'd like to propose that we open up the Online Ambassador program to new editors. As I mentioned above, the reason we've been able to grow the Campus Ambassador program much more quickly is that the CA program is not restricted by the (limited) size of the English Wikipedia community - the CA program is open to newbies who then become trained on Wikipedia-editing skills. I understand that the OA role requires a lot more Wikipedia-editing knowledge that the CA role does (CAs are responsible for introducing the very basics of Wikipedia to students on a face-to-face level, whereas OAs are expected to guide students through intricate Wikipedia-editing skills and policies). However, I also think that there are some parts of the OA role that can be taught fairly quickly to newbies. For example, part of what some OAs do is spending time in the wikipedia-en-classroom IRC channel (chatroom) answering students' questions about how to add links and images to Wikipedia articles. Some of these topics can certainly be taught to newbies - in a pretty short amount of time too - via a well-designed training, and then those newbies should then be able to help students with these basic questions. So, what if we had a two-tiered Online Ambassador system, where the "bottom" tier would be responsible only for answering very simple questions and would be open to newbies, and the "top" tier would help students with more advanced questions and would be made up only of experienced Wikipedians? ("tier" probably isn't the best word here - how about "levels"?) I believe this would help us juggle two needs that we absolutely need to find a way to juggle: (1) having enough Online Ambassadors to provide high-quality on-wiki support to all professors and students in the program, and (2) making sure the Online Ambassadors have enough knowledge to help students. Successfully juggling these two needs would address what Fetchcomms mentioned as well, I believe - "We need to worry more about developing the relationships between students and ambassadors and profs... We should be more personal to good-content-builders as well as bad-content creators, too... [A] small part of the issue is that students simply don't know who they are talking to online--so online ambassadors are going to seem like these anonymous random individuals--and that can be a big obstacle to overcome for students who aren't very active on the Internet." Personalizing the Online Ambassadors is very important (as Fetchcomms pointed out), and that won't be possible if we have so few OAs that they can't have any more personal communication with students.
   
   

I'd really appreciate everyone's feedback on this. If you think something is a bad idea, please suggest good alternatives! Thank you very much, everyone. Annie Lin (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 20:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Annie, I strongly oppose lowering the bar any in terms of OAs. New editors come and go. We need people that will be on wikipedia several times a week for a whole semester. I am very worried that the core of new users you recruit will burn out in the first few weeks. A very small percentage of users hang around enough to effectively mentor students. In addition, the point of an OA is someone who already knows the path and is showing the way to new users. The blind leading the even more blind is a dangerous place to be. --Guerillero | My Talk 22:29, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Guerillero, thanks for the comment. I am equally concerned about burning out the Online Ambassadors. I actually think that opening up the simpler Online Ambassador tasks to newbies will help reduce burnout though, because the newer folks can take charge of answering the basic questions, thus freeing up the more experienced Wikipedians to mentoring students through more complicated Wikipedia-editing skills and policies. I think having more people on board the Online Ambassador program would mean less work for each individual Online Ambassador. Annie Lin (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 22:52, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Annie, the main points you make seem right to me: don't increase the number of classes next semester; focus on existing campuses; try to recruit more OAs. However, I have concerns about the subsidiary comments you make.

• I think the target should not be a given number of classes, it should be a given student to OA ratio. If we decide that a fifteen student to one OA ratio is acceptable (I just plucked that number from the air to use as an example) then if we have sixty OAs we should close up shop with 900 students. Going beyond what we can support risks failing.
• In order to avoid this becoming a long term limitation I would suggest some training or qualification system for the instructors. For example, any class User:Jbmurray runs is unlikely to need much support as he is an experienced editor. I don't want to identify the bar here, but I suggest instructors who are clearly experienced should not require as much, or perhaps any, OA support.
• If we need to limit official participation in the USEP, as you say, we have to decide what to tell the other classes. I think the USEP should give them all the same handouts and materials that we provide to in-programme classes, and ask them to consider either deferring to another semester if they feel they need support, or give them guidance on the pitfalls if they decide to go it alone, which we really can't stop them from doing (it happens quite a bit now, after all).
• In the meantime I would like to see WMF staff and Ambassador steering committee effort devoted to reviewing the classes that take place and identifying what works and what does not, rather than on recruitment efforts. The programme is big enough now that we have plenty of data to examine -- let's work on improvement before expansion. That means, perhaps, picking a few classes, examining the outcomes, interviewing students, instructors, CAs and OAs, looking at the resulting articles, finding out what the student grades were and if Wikipedia helped the students educationally, and also checking to see how much of an inconvenience the class was to the rest of the community. That data should go into the planning process for course development and outreach.
• I agree with Guerillero that it would be a mistake to get new users as OAs. I think anyone recruited as an OA should have at least six months of regular editing on Wikipedia, with at least 500 edits, and preferably 1,000 edits. These are quite low numbers. Anyone who is barred from becoming an OA one semester is likely to qualify the very next semester -- and if they don't they are not editing regularly enough to be helpful to the students. My concern is not so much burnout as it is inexperience -- two or three hundred edits is unlikely to teach an editor the answer to many questions students will ask. I don't like the two-tiered approach either: the right OAs are motivated and knowledgeable, and recruiting low-experience OAs is likely to lead to much lower quality interaction with the students.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, either this is not the right forum or it is not being sufficiently widely read. There are a great many comments happening in many talk pages at the moment about the IEP and USEP, and I feel confident that those commenters would like to provide input to the WMF. See this, for example, which I'm aware of because it arose from an article I'm an OA for, but would not have seen otherwise. I suggest that the existence of this discussion should be crossposted to the Village Pump, to the IEP talk page, and to the Ambassador page. I even wonder if a link within the course page templates pointing to this discussion would be helpful -- I don't know how those templates are constructed, but if it's possible to set things up so that they have an optional "for discussions about this program see this page" link then that would let completely uninvolved editors find their way here. See this note I left for an editor I saw responding to students, and his response; he has done far more work in responding to the students' edits than I have, and I feel editors like him should be pointed at discussions like this that could have a huge impact on the articles they work on.

I'm going to leave one or two talk page links to this discussion to bring in a couple of the above mentioned editors, but I really think this discussion has to be advertised widely. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:41, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I certainly concur with Mike and Guerillero on the bar for ambassadors - whether CA or OA, and I'm going to illustrate with an analogy: NPP can be a challenging activity even to some of our most experienced editors, but ironically, because it needs no user right, it's a magnet for the least mature and least experienced of users. NPP is in a terrible mess and it's only since around October last year that we've been doing serious research into the problem. When we came up with a solution, it was accepted on a highly subscribed RfC of around 500 editors with a healthy consensus only to be rejected by personal opinion of one or two staff of the WMF based on a premise. Because the solution needed a couple of minor tweaks to the software that can only be done by the paid staff, appeals to at least allow the trial to prove the point were also refused. Hence NPP is still a mess and although we are now developing new tools to streamline the patrolling of new pages, the process is still likely to be staffed by extremely inexperienced users. There is no training whatsoever for NPP, but even if there were, the knowledge of policy and the tricks of the trade for correct working of NPP can only be satisfied by experience. In an ideal situation, I cannot envisage NPP being done by anyone with less than a near-admin knowledge of page creation and deletion policy, 3 months, at least 2,000 edits, and a couple of near perfect creations of their own. How can we possibly consider hiring CAs and OAs with much less?

To quote this Wikimedia CA page, Prior Wikipedia-editing experience is not required for the Campus Ambassador role - the training for this role will include Wikipedia-editing lessons. Prior experience in this regard, however, would enhance the applicant's chance of getting accepted into the Campus Ambassador program (a page written by Annie), whereas this OA page requires ...experience with the basics of Wikipedia—particularly creating quality content and giving detailed feedback on others' work—a record of being friendly and helpful with newcomers, and to ...explain Wikipedia policies, guidelines, and norms, and guide new users to the appropriate resources, (a page written by Ldavis). While it would be inaccurate to draw too many parallels with the cataclysmic IEP pilot, any and all Global Education Programmes are are going to impact severely on our resources at NPP, and serious considerations should be made about rolling out USEP again any time soon unless either much higher standards for CAs and OAs are agreed upon, or the new tools and adequate training for the patrollers are available. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Kudpung on his observations about new page patrol as a former NPPer. --Guerillero | My Talk 21:09, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, let me describe the roles again, perhaps a bit clearer. For the U.S. program, the Campus Ambassadors' role is to guide students through the very basics of Wikipedia. They do things like show them how to create user accounts, show them how to cite a reference, explain what a reliable source is, go over the Five Pillars, and things like that. They were erroneously asked to do much more in the Pune Pilot, but what you're objecting to here is the U.S. program's implementation, correct? In the U.S. program, the Online Ambassadors take all the on-wiki work: they watch out for students on-wiki, help them understand how to create an encyclopedic entry rather than an essay, teach them how to wikify their entries, etc. Some Online Ambassadors also help students in IRC with very basic questions like "how do I add an image to the article?"

We learned from our U.S. pilot (WP:USPP) that Campus Ambassadors did not need to be Wikipedians to succeed in this role. They're not being asked to do any mentoring of students on-wiki, and I really pretty firmly believe it doesn't take 500 edits to be able to teach someone how to add a reference on WIkipedia or what the Five Pillars are. We all have skills in different areas, and some people care as deeply about Wikipedia as you do or as I do, but they just aren't the type to edit an encyclopedia. They want to volunteer their time for Wikipedia, but what they want to do is an outreach/teaching role where they talk to others about Wikipedia. The Campus Ambassador role gives these people an opportunity to volunteer for the resource they love. To be honest, I was completely in your boat a year ago and argued that CAs should only be experienced Wikipedians, but I watched our first batch of new CAs do exceptionally great work, and my opinion completely changed. Let me give you an example: check out the work of the students in this class. Neither Campus Ambassador had significant Wikipedia editing experience prior to joining our program, but the class contributed some exceptionally good content to Wikipedia.

Tying this back to Annie's, Mike's, and Guerillo's comments as well… This leads us back to Annie's original question: how do we continue to support the professors who *want* to incorporate Wikipedia into their classrooms with the limited number of Online Ambassadors available? There are a finite number of experienced editors on Wikipedia, and only a small percentage of them are interested in helping students on-wiki. So we have two possibilities: either we can turn away people who want to contribute to Wikipedia or we can figure out a way to support more classes on-wiki. What Annie's proposing is one way of doing the latter: training new people to answer the basic questions on IRC (the "how do I add an image?" question). The idea is that they are really answering the same questions that we train Campus Ambassadors to be able to answer, but the idea is that they're more available than the student's Campus Ambassador, and there's not a one-to-one relation between the student and Ambassador; any of these "lower level" Ambassadors can answer any student's question. But if they don't know the answer, they'd be able to direct students to an experienced Wikipedian.

It's not ideal, certainly. But we don't want to turn too many interested people away. So our question is: what other ideas do you have? How else can we support the growing interest in professors using Wikipedia as a teaching tool? We're really interested in hearing constructive ideas of how we can fix this problem. And just FYI, I personally am heading up to the mountains for a few days, so I will be offline, but I look forward to reading and participating in more discussion around this point when I return! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 01:53, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

LiAnna, you say "we have two possibilities: either we can turn away people who want to contribute to Wikipedia or we can figure out a way to support more classes on-wiki". I think this is a false dichotomy; I would say we can only provide good support for a limited number of classes, and we should figure out how to maximize that number and then work out what to do with the remaining classes we can't support well. We should not provide bad support for a hundred classes just because there are a hundred classes to support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

A solution to most of our problems is in getting more academics (professors, instructors, teachers, whatsnot) to become editors. Speaking as an experience Wikipedian who have taught with Wikipedia for a few years, this can work. My classes have a much lower need for community assistance, and due to my expertise, produce what I think is a rather above-average amount of useful content for the project (as in, dozens of GAs so far). Yet since the early days of the project, WMF has adopted a different approach, along the lines "we don't want to discourage academics by telling them THEY have to edit; it's enough if they give us the students whom our ambassadors can train to be editors". That has worked so-so, but as we can see, the growth in ambassadors is not allowing us to expand, and we are down from talking about the resumed exponential growth in editor to worrying if we can handle the current number of classes. I'd highly suggest that our new approach should focus on encouraging, or even requiring, the academics to become editors themselves, and teach themselves how to fish (edit Wikipedia). This is the responsible thing to do for them, and of course very beneficial for us. A related approach, with regards to campus ambassadors, is to encourage them (or require them) to be more active. In the Indian fiasco we had at least one "campus ambassador" who made one edit to Wikipedia before being appointed as such. Bottom line is that a class which relies on instructors and ambassadors who know less then the students is not going to be very successful. If a class requires students to write DYKs, the instructor and the ambassador(s) should've written at least one. Ditto for GAs. Perhaps writing a DYK should be a requirement of entry into this program ("you like Wikipedia and want to work with us? Show us that you understand how we work and contribute something first."). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 02:12, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

There are two reasons a class might not get support: we don't have enough support to offer it, and the professor doesn't think they need it. Getting as many professors into the latter group as possible is clearly a good thing (if the professor is right that they don't need support); this is what Piotr is aiming for. I agree, but I don't think there should be any compulsion -- but incentives would be a good idea. If CAs and OAs are actually valuable to classes, then perhaps giving preference to classes with professors willing to try for GA themselves would be a good way to select motivated teachers who might then reach the point where they need much less support. This way of using our resources would leave us with professors who can successfully run Wikipedia classes by themselves. We'd like to increase our base of quality editors with the USEP, but what if the right goal is trained professors, not trained students? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

And let's not forget about the rather abysmal student-to-editor retention ratio. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 03:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

In reading the above, I agree that the core problem is not enough online ambassadors to meet the demand. I think I agree that part of the solution is to increase the number of OAs, but having more OAs with less experience seems problematic. Perhaps what would be better is what a few others have suggested: reduce the load on the existing OAs by channelling some demand off using other means. I can see three means to do this:

• Per Piotr Konieczny, have the academics running the course gain more experience on wiki, so that they don't need to rely on OAs so heavily. (Damn good idea, btw).
• Provide means for more mundane tasks to be handled elsewhere than through OAs.
• Look to providing resources to students so that they don't require the OAs so much.

In regard to that last point, which is my focus, the assumption is that the CAs don't need much in the way of skills, as they're just there to serve to introduce WP. But this means that all the complex stuff - policies, what constitutes a reliable source, GNG, etc - are the OA's problem. Having more skilled CAs just moves the problem to them, so it doesn't help in the short term. But I'd be inclined to try and throw resources into alternative methods of providing the content. In particular, I'd aim at developing a directed online course covering the more complex, "second tier" issues with editing. Have the CAs teach how to create an account and how to use wiki markup, have the OAs guide and help once they're here, and in between have the students do a induction course on policies and guidelines which they're required to complete before they start editing. It adds another barrier to entry, but might make it more pleasant once they arrive. (We have a similar problem at the uni where I teach - hire more tutors, hire more lecturers, or improve alternative delivery methods. The third isn't cheaper if done right, but can provide a long term benefit). - Bilby (talk) 04:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Piotr's point that they need to have more hands on experience before getting entry to this program; but that should not develop into a deterrent. But I generally agree; we should not have academics who sign up and later lose interest in the program because they cannot connect with the Ambassadors online. Lynch7 10:53, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we have to provide resources to the students. However, I believe our experience so far in the USEP demonstrates that the value of those resources is very limited. Some fraction of the students will misunderstand or ignore the material provided and will copy material from websites or books and dump it into their articles; or will create half a dozen section headings and only fill in three of them, or will upload copyrighted images or images with no sourcing. Since the student population changes completely every semester, there's just no way to use training as a method of generating good edits. It has to be monitoring and mentoring instead, and that's the OAs' job. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't disagree that mentoring and monitoring remain essential. The issue is about reducing load. Plagiarism/copyright violation is a good example: at various stages the universities I've been at have tried to tackle this, and the most effective methods weren't the usual "tell people that plagiarism is bad", but doing that coupled with requiring the students to complete a short anti-plagarism course designed around practical examples during the first 2-3 weeks of their study. When that was incorporated into the course design we saw a solid drop on accidental plagiarism, as the students were more aware of the problem. It doesn't stop it - but if students were required to do an induction course covering core policies (including copyvio), with tests, rather than wiki markup, it might give students an improved understanding of what they need to know beyond what a CA (using the almost untrained model) will provide. I seem to recall that a colleague wrote a fair bit on teaching anti-plagiarism to NESB students, and I'll see if I can dig up some of her papers. - Bilby (talk) 21:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

That would be very helpful; thanks. It sounds like we're in agreement on goals and largely on methods -- as you say, the main issue is reducing load. My concern, expressed above, is that if we don't manage the course volume relative to the available OA labour pool, many problems will get through the OAs and impact the rest of the community -- NPP in particular, as Kudpung points out above, but also other editors -- regular editors of the relevant articles, for example. Against this we have to balance the good content added by the students. I'm coming at this from the OA side of the fence: I'd like to hear from the rest of the editing community on the question of the extra work these students cause versus the additional valuable content they add. They do add good material, and I think we can leverage these courses to make them highly productive of good content, but there is a cost in support, from NPP, OAs, and others. That cost doesn't just come from those who, like me, signed up as USEP volunteers. I'd like to hear more about where the cost-benefit breakeven lies. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm also interested in benefits - I'm assuming that the goal isn't going to be a one-off improvement of a few articles, but the retention of some good editors. The retention rate from these courses is something worth looking into - if it hasn't been done yet, I might try and do some work on this myself, but I assume the figures will already exist. Naturally, the problem is that I'm not sure what the base line would be: my best thought would be retention rate from wiki academies, which is the only comparable program I can think of.

Just on the workload issue: the current model relies on OAs to respond after the students start editing. This is difficult to maintain, and means that the students are typically not informed of how they are breaking policies until after they do so. From my perspective it is a bit like informing students of plagiarism after you have failed their assignments - justifiable, but not a good methodology. The better model would be to have the CAs and academics teach policy, but the academics can't be assumed to know this (Piotr Konieczny's point aside, which would be good), and the CAs are only being used to teach basic wiki issues, and seem to be relying more on people with very limited to no editing experience. Thus it seems that the only choice is to add a new stage between the CA and the OA. The best example I can think of is Worm's mentorship program at User:Worm_That_Turned/Adopt - I'd like something more developed than that, from a teaching perspective, and relying only on that sort of course would be a horrible mistake, but it seems worth a shot. - Bilby (talk) 22:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the comments, everyone - all really great insights! I have some follow-up points and questions based on the discussion that has already taken place. What I'm seeing on this discussion page (and correct me if I'm wrong) is the following: Campus Ambassadors serve the (very important) role of introducing the basics of Wikipedia-editing to students on a face-to-face level (and give outreach-oriented people who are passionate about Wikipedia an opportunity to give back to Wikipedia in a way other than writing), but in addition to this basic introduction, students in the program are also in need of more advanced Wikipedia-editing mentorship and support as well as close monitoring. A few different options for providing this more advanced Wikipedia support have been proposed above, including the following (and these options are not mutually exclusive - in fact I'd highly recommend a mix of them):

1. Bringing on board more Online Ambassadors, so that we can adequately support all the students in the program. Creating two "tiers" of support (like I proposed above) would allow us to overcome the numeric restriction imposed by the English Wikipedia community's limited size. A potential downside of this is that the Online Ambassadors who are newer to Wikipedia might not be knowledgeable enough to help students. But what if we asked the "lower tier" Online Ambassadors to help students only on a few, more basic things, and we train them really well on how to do those things?
2. Making the professors themselves more Wikipedia-knowledgeable, so that they can provide more Wikipedia support and therefore reduce the need for additional Ambassador support (there seems to be some disagreement about how much to require professors to learn about Wikipedia before they can join the program). One potential downside of this plan is that it could impose an overly high barrier to entry to professors who are genuinely passionate about assigning students to edit Wikipedia but who don't have the time or technical savviness to meet Wikipedia-knowledge requirements. Also, in the Public Policy Initiative and the U.S. Education Program, we've seen that many of the best-performing classes (in terms of the quality and quantity of student contributions on Wikipedia) have been led by professors who very rarely edited Wikipedia themselves, but who are great teachers and who genuinely believe in the value of a Wikipedia assignment. One potential way I can think of to get around this dilemma is to ask professors to go through a "faculty orientation" in which we'll teach them about core Wikipedia policies, basic editing skills, DYK and GA, community norms, and other things that'd be good for them to know before they ask their students to edit Wikipedia. I am unsure whether or not to make this kind of faculty orientation mandatory for all participating professors, because that would be a high barrier to entry for many genuinely interested professors too, but maybe we should at least strongly recommend it especially for the less tech-savvy professors.
3. Develop a support infrastructure between the CAs and OAs, so that the OAs don't have to handle all of the non-basic Wikipedia questions that the CAs do not cover. I am unclear what this middle-ground support would be - would this be more resources like handouts, instructional videos, tutorials, etc.? Or is this something similar to the "lower tier OAs" I mentioned above? And how would this middle structure work with the CAs and OAs, exactly? And very importantly, will having so many layers of support confuse students? (We know that if students aren't sure who to go to for help or how to get help, many of them will abandon even trying to get help, which would render any support structures we set up useless.) I'd like more clarification and brainstorming on this proposal, because it could be promising.

Personally I think we need a balance of all three - we need to bring on board more (high-quality) Online Ambassadors, maybe do an "orientation" with professors to make sure they're more knowledgeable about Wikipedia, and develop more resources beyond CAs and OAs. I'd love everyone's thoughts on each of these points. Annie Lin (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I hope it's OK to jump in here as the professor of one of the courses that's needed a fair bit of sudden cleanup work in the last week. My sense is that only so much can realistically be done in the space of a semester to ease students' assimilation into a writing community that expects them to behave in ways that don't sit easily with many of the habits they have developed (for better or for worse) over the course of their academic careers. While a few take to it very naturally, the vast majority face a very steep learning curve despite making sincerely good-faith efforts to do what they're supposed to. And then of course there are a few others who are going to persist in problematic behavior regardless of how well-trained their professors are, how Wikipedia-experienced their CAs are, how much mentorship OAs provide, or how many class hours are spent teaching them good writing skills and anti-plagiarism. I think it's important to recognize that students will be students and that they're not going to treat Wikipedia assignments very differently from their other coursework, at least until they learn the hard way (as many of my students did this past week) that this isn't the sort of work they can leave until the night before a deadline or complete half-heartedly according to their own whims.

I do think an orientation/training for professors would be a good idea. I was a bit surprised at how the program was being pitched to faculty (at both the conference where I learned of it and the summit last July) as something they could do in their classes without knowing much about Wikipedia due to the support system that would be in place to train and help students and even evaluate the quality their work. That said, implementing this would probably require a much longer time horizon for faculty recruitment than seems to be the practice now. Sgelbman (talk) 14:34, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Jumping on-board rather late in the discussion here... I do agree that we need to go at a slower pace the number of classes we take in next year. However, I strongly disagree that bringing in newbies to be OAs is the solution. Generally, when most first create an account and edit Wikipedia, they are most probably enthusiastic about contributing to the project. If we ask them whether they want to join as an OA, they will most likely respond "yes". We then train them and bring them into the program. Question is, will they stick around long enough for one semester? Or will the "zeal" for editing Wikipedia burn out and they leave the project midway? If they do that, we'll have a problem in our hands. What do we do with those classes after their OAs disappear? Right now, the bar for becoming an OA isn't high, but it is high enough to gauge the level of responsibility and commitment of a potential OA. How are we going to gauge the level of responsibility and commitment of the newbies? Bejinhan talks 10:16, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

We definitely need to slow down on the growth (of the number of classes handled), but like Benjihan, I disagree that bringing a "two tier" system of OAs will be a solution; it may well develop into a new problem later on because of the apparent hierarchy. The current OA system is fine IMO, we just need to find a way to reduce the load somehow. Educating (or "orienting") Professors will serve two purposes, among others: It will certainly ensure that they are serious about the program, and it may reduce the load on OAs, because the people On site (Professors and CAs) will be able to handle basic queries better. This is more effective, as there is a limit upto which an OA can explain Wikipedia concepts to a student; after that, they might need some literal hand-holding by a guy onsite. (I'm assuming that the average student is not very open to learning about editing Wikipedia). Lynch7 15:21, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Just chiming in here (a little late, though). I think that a "two tier" system would be disastrous, as it would be hard for the OAs to distinguish who has what responsibility. Instead, why don't we integrate the project more with the community? I've always viewed the USEP (and the rest of the GEP) as a sort of 'walled' area, where students are protected from the might of Wikipedia by the OAs (So they never have the full WP editing experience). While I support the protection, I never liked the fact that they don't have to interact much with the rest of community. Different IRC channels, etc make it much more 'walled'. Why not use resources like WP:HD (and the associated IRC channel) in conjunction with the OAs? If you want more OAs, ask around at WP:ADOPT. The community is a great resource. Use it. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 15:58, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Again, just to see that I personally have no interest in "walled" areas for my students. Or to put this another way: Online Ambassadors should be guides, not guards. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with what I understand to be the general thrust of the comments in this section: The target is not growth, but doing it better. Though some classes will inevitably fail, this is a very unfortunate occurrence because it will leave everyone involved a less-than-positive impression of Wikipedia. That some articles in a class will fail is inevitable, and we should not fell any special compunction about removing or rewriting them--they cannot be allowed to form an exception to our ordinary article criteria. I also agree that a strong emphasis should be placed around the availability of trained online ambassadors in choosing where to actively develop programs--though if a faculty member anywhere wants to do a project, we should try to support them as best we can. I share Kudpung's doubts about untrained Campus ambassadors; I have known a few successful exceptions, but the successful ones I know about have been with support from experienced Wikipedians available.What is needed to communicate is the ethos of the project, and nobody who has not worked here substantially can know it--though some people learn it very quickly. In my experience, the critical support needed is the choice of topics, and what makes a good topic for a Wikipedia article, or what makes a Wikipedia article suitable for improvement in a class project, requires a fairly wide understanding of Wikipedia. (I would however mnot encourage the development of any more of a formal system than we have--it is probably too complicated already), I think some of the support for untrained or minimally trained CAs may be from those who have less experience here themselves, who may be more familiar with the Foundation than Wikipedia. Experience has shown that though Foundation support is very helpful, and Annie in particular has done a remarkably good job keeping this moving, the success of a WMF initiative depends on the degree to which Wikipedians actively participate in it. (Fortunately some of the people in the pilot project were very experienced and capable Wikipedians, Without them, it would have failed, regardless of the Foundation.) The growth of interest in faculty is obviously a critical point, and more efforts should be made to persuade those active Wikipedians who are faculty (like Piotrus) to take part--but the effort is not trivial and we need to be realistic about this when advising them. It's essentially the difference between teaching a familiar course the familiar way, and developing a new course, which can be a very exciting but always very effort-laden endeavor. I have one particular point: I do not think writing new articles from scratch a suitable project for Freshman courses. They have too many other things to learn about writing in general, that are needed as the preliminary to learning about writing for Wikipedia. In the other direction, I think many advanced course have suffered from the desire of the students to work on very narrow topics. DGG ( talk ) 17:16, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for not reading all the responses before mine. I would like to suggest a return to dedicated ambassador-student relationships. I don't like handling an entire class of students. I feel less connected.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:20, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Precisely. This is one of the reasons why WP:IEP failed. Lynch7 14:32, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

IEP Summary – problems and consequences

I'll start by saying that jbmurray's comments above re instructors and topic choices are spot on. In response to his request for a summary, below are what I see as the three key problems arising from the India Education Project and their consequences in terms of workload on the rest of Wikipedia. Although some of the circumstances were unique to the IEP, they may be helpful in deciding what to prioritise if you are seeking to expand the USEP in the face of limited resources. My own view is that cutting corners and unrealistic, rushed plans are going to result in a less sucessful outcome in terms of obtaining quality content, bewildered and embarassed students, and potential loss of goodwill towards these programs from the very editors you need to make them work (not just the OAs).

1. Instructors with poor or zero understanding of Wikipedia's current content and its policies on appropriate article subjects

Led to: Mass creation of inappropriate new articles in a relatively short space of time, many of which were duplicates of existing articles, "how to" manuals, or dictionary definitions. In some cases unintegrated, redundant, poorly written (and often copyvio) content dumps into Featured and other well developed articles.

Workload consequences: Increased the work load of New Page Patrollers considerably (and they are already very overstretched). Led other editors to cut back on their normal work for a month to help out the NPPs. Increased the workload of editors in the subject-specialised WikiProjects dealing with the influx (in the case of the IEP, this was particularly marked for the engineering and computing-related WikiProjects who collectively put in many, many of hours of extra work). Increased workload on admins and other uninvolved editors dealing with resulting speedy deletions, AfDs, etc.

2. Students writing in their second language, under time pressure and forced to participate, from universites which may not have a long tradition of heavily penalising plagiarism

Led to: Mass addition of plagiarised copyright material to Wikipedia over above the "normal" amount we get and in a very short space of time. The cleanup has just started but at a conservative estimate I'd say that approximately 2/3 of the IEP articles (and student user pages) contained copyvio, ranging from totally to partially. Multple uploads of copyright images to Commons described as "own work".

Workload consequences: This is taking and will take literally hundreds of volunteer editors' hours to clean up. It also increased the workload of the NPPs who are the first line of defense in keeping new copyvio out. You can't simply speedy delete a new article for copyvio because it "looks like it". You have to prove it by tracing the source. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. Meanwhile, new articles are being created at a rate of 1 every 15 seconds. Thus a huge backlog built up and many new articles went unpatrolled (after 4 weeks they drop off the NPP list). It also increased the workload of the admins who have to verify the speedy delete requests and who in some cases had to do time-consuming revision deletions on established articles.

3. Lack of adequate support structure for students and instructors with a grossly insufficient number of experienced Online Ambassadors (many of the IEP ones were appointed out process and were completely unsuitable to serve as guides), thus leaving enthusiastic, bright, but extremely inexperienced Campus Ambassadors to do a job they were never intended to do while at the same time trying to complete their own assignments (Most of them were students in the courses they were supposed to be helping). In many cases the ratio of students to CAs was 70+ to 1.

Led to: Students and instructors with both inability and unwillingness to communicate adequately on Wikipedia in even the most basic ways. Many of them couldn't even register their accounts or link to them properly. Chaotic and poorly maintained course lists. In combination with 2 (above), students being blocked and some resorting to sockpuppetry.

Workload consequences: Increased workload on editors who tried to reach out to students and explain, often a great length, about what was going wrong and offering to help, but receiving no response. Consequently, increased admin workload in warning, blocking, unblocking, tracing students. Many, many hours of editor's time trying to make sense out of the chaotic class lists for the copyvio cleanup.

– Voceditenore (talk) 11:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this, and also to others (below) for the clarifications about the differences between USEP and IEP in terms o the challenges they have (and haven't) faced. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:09, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a good list, but it strikes me as oriented to the problems with the IEP, and some of these issues are much less of a concern with the USEP. For example, the second language issues are unlikely to be a concern in the US, and if poor instructor understanding in the US program led to inappropriate article creation I suspect that was much rarer than in the IEP.

I think there's not a great deal wrong with the USEP. The campus ambassador program seems, anecdotally, to be about as successful as one could expect given the resource limitations. I don't see a lot of evidence of instructors failing to understand Wikipedia rules and giving inappropriate direction, though my knowledge is limited to a few classes. There have been some copyvio and paraphrasing issues, but far less than with the IEP.

If we continue to expand the number of classes, as Annie and LiAnna suggest above, by continuing to thin out the resources we have, I don't think the USEP would be a disaster; instead it would just be very thinly supported. This would have the same impact on the community as a regular influx of new editors who don't last long -- in other words, NPP and regular editors of the impacted articles would bear much of the burden, along with various subsequent processes such as AfD and copyvio cleanup. In an ideal world the classes would not have any negative impact on the existing editing community, but I think we all accept that new editors who add value also bring support costs along with the mistakes they make, so there's nothing inherently bad about these additional costs. The question is what's best for the encyclopedia. Should the WMF encourage rapid growth of the classes, with the associated large influx of new content from untrained editors and minimal specialized support to filter the impact on the rest of the community? Or should it aim for a support structure that provides detailed and effective support for a limited number of classes, and allow any other classes that occur to run without explicit ambassador support?

Both options have positives. For example, one could argue that the USEP has been sufficiently successful that rapid expansion is low risk even with very thin ambassador coverage; that the impact on the cleanup processes such as NPP is acceptable because of the benefit in additional content. (I've argued above that I think that kind of trade off is a decision that should be made by the community in discussion with the WMF, and I'm glad to see that discussion occurring here.) I take the opposite view; we should make instructors in the program sufficiently pleased by the help provided by the ambassadors that they want to come back and run the classes multiple times; and we should put effort into training those instructors so that they become experienced Wikipedia editors. That will reduce the amount of support they need and free up those ambassadors to work with other classes.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:12, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I want to echo Mike's point that many of the problems we faced in the Pune pilot in India have been quite unique to India. In Pune this semester, we ran into a lot of challenges around copyright and plagiarism - many students blatantly violated copyright policies on the English Wikipedia (and contributed other poor-quality content) despite multiple attempts by multiple people at warning them, educating them, and stopping them. However, this issue is not something we faced to nearly the same extent in the U.S. Starting from the Public Policy Initiative and continuing now into the U.S. Education Program, copyright violations have never been a big problem in the U.S. program - it has happened before, but only in very rare occasions and to a much less serious degree. This is possibly due to differences between the education system in the U.S. versus in India; I am not sure about the exact reasons behind this difference in results from the two programs (we'll be doing a very in-depth analysis on this and other questions), but there 'is in fact a huge difference between these two programs on copyright-related issues as well as quality issues in general and some other issues. And while I believe wholeheartedly there are many, many things the U.S. Education Program can learn from the Pune pilot, I think it would be very tragic if we let the results of the Pune pilot significantly alter the U.S. Education Program (and vice versa), if the results from the U.S. are quite different (which they certainly are). Because India and the U.S. are different countries with different socioeconomic, cultural, and education conditions, the design of the education program for the two places is and should be different. This is just a side note - there are certainly issues in the USEP that need to be further discussed (as we're all doing on this page). Annie Lin (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 22:24, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect Annie, I have to ask you this question: Why do you and your colleagues appear to be deftly side-stepping the issues concerning the workload of the volunteer maintenance force that have been so poignantly evoked? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Kudpung, I'm sorry if you feel as if we're side-stepping concerns about NPP workload. We're not saying anything about NPP because there's nothing we can say. We do encourage professors to have students expand stub/start class articles rather than create new articles, and for those who want to have their students create new articles, we stress notability as a key concept. Obviously that (like several other messages) didn't get through in India, but this talk page is about the U.S. program, so let's keep it about that. In terms of your concerns about tools for NPP, we're not side-stepping, we just honestly have no say in that. The tech team develops tools. The Global Ed team certainly has things we'd like them to develop, too, but we don't have any more sway in their roadmap than you do (and honestly, probably less!). I'm sure you know Oliver Keyes -- he's the Product Development team's community liaison, and you'd be better off talking with him than with us about your concerns. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:01, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry to disagree Anna, but I feel there should be some coordination within the WMF (which Oliver is now part of) between staff of different areas of responisibility on what human and technical resources are available to support your programmes. The volunteers' part in building this encyclopedia is just as important as that of the paid staff - if not more so, and by making the organisers aware of what goes on on 'the other' side they are contributing towards a smoother running of your initiatives, and that includes requesting tools and experienced people to do the patrolling. The community does not have those resources however, and also has no lobby whatsoever other than to reach out to people like yourselves. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:27, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Voceditenore, it It will be interesting to see if your summary will be taken on board. If you look further up, you'll see that Annie Lin answered my message with a very long post but did not address at all its main issue which was the one concerning NPP. The USEP has/will have the same problems as the IEP: 1) the organisers are working to a schedule they have set themselves that is far too tight and does not allow time for adequate preparation of CAs/OAs; 2) the organisers have never (or rarely) been editors or maintenance workers, and do not appreciate the impact these programmes have on an extremely poorly staffed and ill equipped system for the control of new pages; 3) although the US pages will be of a far greater standard than those of the IEP, they still all have to pass through these controls; and 4) whereas the design, decision-making, and implementation of outreach initiatives is achieved by a relatively small group of employees in a short time, new policies and proposals that have to be made at community level are subject to an extremely long and complex process of consensus gathering by hundreds of volunteers, followed by the development by the professionals of any software applications that may be needed.

New outreach projects must be paced alongside the development of internal resources, and en.Wikipedia is also faced with a growing risk of a shortage of admins. We are no closer to solving the NPP problems than we were 14 months ago because the solutions that were agreed in March by the community were rejected by the WMF and ironically, sufficient funds/time are not available to step up development of the alternatives begun by the WMF. The recruitment of admins has now reached stagnation and there is resistance to reform of the RfA process that has caused it.

The question the organisers of the education schemes should be asking themselves is not so much 'Do we have enough CAs/OAs?' as 'Do we have tools and enough experienced manpower to cater for a sudden influx of new pages?' To which the simple answer is 'No'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:48, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: I have now read Mike's post that caused the ec. Although we express our concerns differently, we appear to concur on many, if not most points - and coincidentally, also using the same vocabulary. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:54, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

@Mike. I agree that the USEP program is not comparable to the IEP program primarily because of the language issue and the huge size. My main reason for the summary was because jbmurray asked for a succinct description of the problems encountered there and their impact. The discusssions were and are all over the place (and very lengthy): Wikipedia talk:India Education Program, Talk:Wikimedia Foundation - India Programs, Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors, Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia:Village pump, and numerous editors' talk pages. However, it does serve as a worse case scenario for expansion without adequate support in place first and cutting corners with the training and recruitment of that support.

I strongly agree with your view that the USEP should make instructors in the program sufficiently pleased by the help provided by the ambassadors that they want to come back and run the classes multiple times. Ditto investing in the training of the instructors which would free up the Online Ambassadors. Shamira Gelbman's view above is also very salient:

"I was a bit surprised at how the program was being pitched to faculty (at both the conference where I learned of it and the summit last July) as something they could do in their classes without knowing much about Wikipedia due to the support system that would be in place to train and help students and even evaluate the quality their work.".

I can't realistically see how that sort of pitch can continue indefinitely. Nor am I sure it was a wise one in the first place.

David Maister had some wise words about building up a company's customer base, which apply here too. "The secret of successful marketing lies less in pursuing new customers, but in delighting the ones you currently have." They'll come back for more, stay loyal, and spread the word to others. Voceditenore (talk) 17:54, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

And the moral of that is that a successful company has well-performing technical support. The problem with EP is that the salespeople are promoting a product that the factory is not geared up to service. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:12, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Here're my two cents: As someone who has been involved only in the most tangential of senses (I only became aware because Iowa Democratic Party and Republican Party of Iowa, which are part of Sgelbman's course, are on my watchlist), I like the idea. But we need to be clear about the relationship between Wikipedia and the classes. Not to pick on User:Cindamuse, who has been extremely courteous and who seems to be a dedicated contributor to the project, but she is the ambassador I've interacted with the most, so I'll use her edits as an example. I am concerned by edits like this, which implied that the program WP:OWNs its articles, and these edits, which imply that intentionally misleading students about Wikipedia policy is a good idea if done to keep from "undermining the professor." These are issues which could be easily pre-emptively addressed in discussions with professors and ambassadors about the nature of the course. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 11:41, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

That really is a depressing series of exchanges, Philosopher.  :( --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:00, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm slowly catching up on some other threads here-- that first diff from Cindamuse is most disturbing, and highlights another problem of this Online Ambassador concept. We shouldn't be recruiting for editors who have little interest in Wikipedia, who are students of professors who have limited knowledge of Wikipedia and are using experienced Wikipedians to conduct their courses, and then having inexperienced Wikipedians "supervise" their work. Based on that post, Cindamuse should not be an OA; the risk of alienating experienced editors and undermining the integrity and quality of Wikipedia articles is not worth the benefit here. I'm not going to let a bad article hang around just because some students are playing with it for a grade. Please cut back this program, disclaim it publicly so other bad courses don't follow suit, discourage ill-prepared OAs from engaging, and show the door to professors who haven't engaged properly. It may be the "encyclopedia anyone can edit", but replacing experienced editors with uncommitted inexperienced editors looks to be the most likely outcome of this misguided venture. OAs encouraging ownership? Ugh ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:12, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to add that I at least don't see that OA role the way Cindamuse apparently does -- I think that when an OA (or any editor) fixes a student's mistakes, or deletes substandard content, or works on material with a student, the encyclopedia benefits and the student learns too. A professor that doesn't understand that students are being asked to work in a collaborative environment, with everything that implies, should not be running a class on Wikipedia. I'd like to hear from other OAs on this point. I spoke to some professors in Boston about article selection and pointed out that they should be prepared for situations in which all of a student's work was reverted; they would need to use the article history to see what a student had done. I wouldn't regard it as a success for Wikipedia if all a student's work is deleted, but their work could still be graded if necessary, so I see no reason for Wikipedians to lower their standards when interacting with students. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:29, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

All denigration aside, Philosopher has a valid concern with the disconnect between editors that desire immediacy and editors that work with students in a learning environment. The USEP, Steering Committee, and Online Ambassadors are not interested in ownership of articles. However, when wholesale edits are made to student articles which usurp or neglect the learning process and established curriculum benchmarks,[1] that is a concern that should be addressed. In my communication with Philosopher, he has stated that he was unaware that the article was an assignment. The assignment template on the talk page of student articles is placed there specifically to alert the community that the article is part of the curriculum assigned to a student and university working with the ambassador program. The template is designed to give students a chance to figure things out before other editors swoop in to either bite them or make sweeping edits to the article. Philosopher has offered a suggestion that we develop a new student template for the top of the article itself to alert editors. This would be similar to the {{underconstruction}} or {{newarticle}} templates that are widely in use. I assure you that this is something that we will be taking a look at. Please note that the placement of the template is not an issue of ownership, it's an issue of respect for the universities that have chosen to participate in the Education Program, along with the students, professors, and Ambassadors that are working to ensure success of the program for all parties. This can only happen with the community's support. If you have suggestions or concerns, I assure you that the Steering Committee is interested in your ideas and solutions to improve the program. Know that there is additionally no interest or intent by the USEP or myself to mislead students, professors, or community-wide editors. There isn't much incentive for professors to participate in the program if their curriculum, instructions, or communication with their students is held up to a looking glass. Especially if it is communicated through a message of correction on their course page, where the professor communicates with students. It is not misleading to suggest that it is best to offer a professor "correction" through email rather than the talk page. It is an issue of respect. If the professor gives an assignment to complete a particular editing task, only to have another editor fly by with sweeping edits to the article without collaboration or a comment to offer assistance or feedback to the student, there's a disconnect there. We need to find balance. Collaboration is a vital aspect of this program, as noted above, but if community-wide editors not participating in the USEP refuse to work with students and Ambassadors, the disconnect remains. We need to address the disconnect and find a balance that works for all parties. Reassessment, reevaluating, and reorganizing the program is currently taking place. We're all here (hopefully) to work toward improving the Education Program, rather than tearing it apart. The goal of the USEP is to work with the students, not to "play with [the article] for a grade", but to improve and enhance the article to the benefit of the Wikipedia community overall. Outside of copyright violations, it won't break the bank or the encyclopedia to have a bad article hang around while a student is actively participating in a process to improve and enhance that bad article. Rather than destroy or dismantle the program, our goal is to work with the community to determine solutions, leading to improvement and success. We welcome your participation and ideas. Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 09:04, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Different instructors will have different approaches, of course, but personally I am not at all interested in a template that warns off other editors. While I do hope that other editors are prepared to exercise patience where necessary, for me the interaction between my students and the community is a key component of the exercise. Students need to learn to listen to what the community has to say, and also they need to learn to argue their case where appropriate. It is this interaction with a "real world" public that is among the greatest benefits of using Wikipedia in class. Otherwise, I might as well ask them to write on an in-house Wiki hosted on a local server. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 12:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, different instructors with different approaches. The suggested template is in alignment with the templates already in existence. Outside of your preference to forgo an article template that identifies student articles, I agree with the thoughts you've shared. In expressing your hope that other editors exercise patience with student articles, do you have any suggestions that would assist in making this happen? Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 17:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not against an article template identifying student articles! I even made my own! I'm just against one that warns off other editors. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:51, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Great! I don't think anyone suggested a template that "warns off other editors". Others have suggested that an identifying template be used on the article itself, in addition to the article discussion page, because not all editors check the discussion page. Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 18:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"The USEP, Steering Committee, and Online Ambassadors are not interested in ownership of articles". No. Students and OAs are guests members of the community, they must abide by community policies like the rest of us. MER-C 11:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, students and OAs must abide by community policies, but I don't think it helpful to think of them as "guests of the community." They become part of the community, however temporarily. That's how Wikipedia works: there are not two classes of editor, "community" and "guests." --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 12:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, that was poor word choice on my part. MER-C 12:49, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Nope. I edit medical articles, and I'm not leaving incorrect medical information in an article any amount of time while students (maybe) learn to edit and (most likely) never return. In one case-- because one student has actually engaged to read talk-- I will hold off and work with that student towards further improvements on the article, but that's only because I have already cleaned up the earlier damage to the article so that it's at least not in an incorrect state. And one of the most irritating factors in that article is that we now have ELEVEN student peer reviews on the talk page-- all saying mostly the same thing, and not a single one of them appear to have read the talk page or engaged sources or to understand that we can't add images that don't exist or text that isn't covered in sources. Talk pages are not forums for cheerleading and speculation. But that's a separate issue taking my time-- in other words, I'm teaching the professor's class for him, and I doubt any of the students are even reading, so he's wasting my time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:13, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"Students need to learn to listen to what the community has to say, and also they need to learn to argue their case where appropriate." Great. Two constructive ideas so far. Students need to learn to listen and argue. I agree, but where's the solution? How can we make this happen? Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 17:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) To clarify and respond, I didn't suggest a template on the article itself, but an editnotice - quite different ideas. As I suggested, such an editnotice, if used, would have to be carefully worded to avoid implying WP:OWN. As for Cindamuse's suggestion that issues with professors should occur off-wiki or that communications with students should be filtered through the professors, which is what I'm getting from the comment, I have to disagree. When the professor joins the project, he should be made aware that user talk pages are the primary medium of communication about Wikipedia and since his students are also members of the community, there's no reason to have to go through the professor to talk to them, though a courtesy notification of the professor would, of course, be courteous.

With regard to editing articles that are part of class projects, I think I agree with Jbmurray and SandyGeorgia - the article being part of a project should not be a reason to discourage other users from editing them, though it may be helpful for experienced editors to hold off on major renovations of the articles (I, at least, have no problem re-arranging my to do list), so long as the articles are still Wiki-acceptable. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:45, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the feedback and clarification. Yes, an edit notice is what you mentioned (a great idea), while others have suggested a template similar to {{underconstruction}} and {{newarticle}}, neither one of which or that to be developed would imply or support ownership in any manner. I stand by and maintain the suggestion to offer professors correction through email, rather than on the course page. However, I wouldn't support and haven't suggested filtering communication with students through professors. I agree fully with the rest of your comment made. I sincerely appreciate the feedback and the solutions you've offered to issues identified. Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 18:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that "correction" should be offered through email. Wikipedia's strongest trait is that it is an open colllaborative editing environment. The professors/instructors simply have to be invested or it won't work. One suggestion I would make is to allow instructors/professors to have professional teaching accounts and a personal editing account and perhaps not require them to be linked. A professor might want to edit and learn policy but perhaps not have his/her students follow the edits, if that makes any sense. Truthkeeper (talk) 18:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense. Great idea! Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 18:35, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"Students need to learn to listen to what the community has to say." My guess is that many of them don't realise that there is a community - they see Wikipedia as a website to edit. It could be explained to them in terms they will understand, because all of them will recently have had the experience of joining a community - their college - and finding that it has its own traditions and ways of working. They may not agree with them or understand the reasons, but they need to accept them if they are to fit in and contribute to the community.

Explain to them that en:wp is not just a website, it is also a community, quite a large and complex one, with ten years of history, tens of thousands of active members, and its own ways of doing things, and that if they want to contribute they will need to fit in. That would give context to advice like:

• Check your talk page regularly and respond to messages: if you don't understand them, ask the person who signed them,
• Find out how articles should be structured and laid out,
• If your edits are reverted, don't just repeat them, discuss on the talk page and seek consensus.

JohnCD (talk) 16:56, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Ideas and solutions

I think an assessment and critique of the program is helpful. With that in mind, short of throwing the baby out with the bath water, what are some ideas that could possibly bring resolve to the issues identified on this page? Does anybody have some constructive ideas that could help steer the ship in the right direction? Someone made mention of the frustration experienced when students fail to communicate and engage with others or respond to comments on their talk page or the article's discussion page. The feedback I have received is that students are intimidated by aggressive community editors. How can we resolve this? I have had students contact me in frustration, after others made major edits to an article with nothing more than an edit summary that states "We don't need that here" to "Deleting stupid section" to "Obviously you don't know what you're doing". How can we resolve this? What about other identified issues? Are there any solutions that would serve to benefit both the WP community and the USEP? Can we work together to find a balance? I think for the most part, we are all able to identify problems with the program. Is there really any point in complaining over and over again? Seriously, the horse is long dead now. Really. Let's brainstorm some solutions. No wrong answers. Any thoughts? Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 17:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Fewer students for the OAs to monitor. I feel I can take very good care of four or five very active students. Given the proportion of students who are likely to be very active, I'd say one OA to about ten to fifteen students is about right. If we had that proportion, and the OAs are active, they can get involved in every student article and help make sure that the students don't feel marginalized, insulted, or ignored. See Talk:Kansas Republican Party for an interaction I just had with a student; that's the level of involvement I'd like to be able to give to every student. The student involved responded very positively on her talk page and has already deleted all the copyvio. This sort of guidance to the students is impossible at high student-to-OA ratios. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:19, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I've been following this slowly since offshoots of it are showing up all over my watchlist, and to be honest I know something about it. The best way to make any program like this work is for the instructor/professor to learn how to edit, to learn our policies, and to insist the students follow policy. It's that simple; I suggested this to Sross over a year ago - another editor to consult with would be Awadewit who is a very experienced editor and so can steer her students in the right direction. This is the encyclopedia anyone can edit and will continue to be so despite a class assignment and class expectations. In my view wiki policy trumps course policy. If the instructor wants the students to learn how to write on a wiki without following Wikipedia policy that can be achieved on a Blackboard wiki. Here students write for a global audience, learn to write in a collaborative atmosphere, and that's best done if the instructor/ professor has a very good grasp of policy. That's the direction I suggest working toward. Thanks. Truthkeeper (talk) 18:12, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I missed Truthkeeper's edit, relocating comments. I hope this isn't redundant to the sections further down the page, but since I do have a few thoughts... I'm signing them separately, btw, so editors can reply to each point individually if they want to. Feel free to add to the list. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

1. When a user makes an edit, even a correct one, with an unhelpful edit summary like that, you can remind them to please be courteous and ask them to please explain their edit on the talk page and/or help the student figure out why the edit was a) inappropriate and b) if/how to make it appropriate. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:20, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
2. Students should be asked to turn on the warning to use edit notices (in Special:Preferences) - I've seen several students not using one, which can be off-putting for experienced users when showing up in bulk, just as unhelpful edit summaries from experienced editors can be off-putting for students. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:20, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
3. An editnotice could be a good idea, though I've been thinking about it and have yet to come up with an acceptable wording. It would need to reflect the need to be aware of inexperienced users/students editing the page, a reminder to be extra courteous (perhaps), but not warn them off from editing. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
4. Inform OAs that the USEP does not have priority over the rest of the community and brief them on relevant copyright/OWN/etc. policies, even if they are established users. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
   1. For that matter, only have experienced users as OAs or Campus Ambassadors. No need for them to be admins, but they should have a basic understanding of how Wikipedia works. 500 mainspace edits are required for AWB access generally, perhaps a similar requirement for Ambassadors? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
5. Ditto for the profs (except, perhaps, for the edit requirement). Encourage them to check their talk pages regularly, since they are the primary method of communication on Wikipedia. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
6. Similarly inform the students - particularly have them be familiar with the main MoS, Copyright, and (possibly, depending on the type of editing they'll be doing) Fair use pages, as well as the five pillars. I see a link to the simplified ruleset is already on their pages, but I think these four pages should be emphasized nonetheless, since even the "simplified" ruleset is quite a lot of information - and it's easy to imagine a student/new user not taking the time to really look closely at it. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
7. I've seen concerns about copyright infringement/plagarism, so perhaps remind them that those are just as big an issue on Wikipedia as they are in their classes - many universities have policies that plagarized papers will receive an F on the assignment or course (and possibly an XF on the transcript), let them know that while Wikipedia can't give grades, we do have similar concerns. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
   1. The main policy pages like WP:Copyrights are necessarily long and complex, but WP:Copy-paste is an excellent, simple statement of the issues. It should be part of the training of every OA and CA, and required reading for every student. JohnCD (talk) 21:57, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
      1. I'd forgotten about that one - paired with WP:5 it could be the "at-a-glance" "must read" rules, with the others as "reference if you have a question" pages, perhaps. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 06:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Feedback from an affected editor

Disclaimer: I haven't had time to read through this entire page-- I've only skimmed the first couple of sections, but if I wait to find time to read it all, I'll never get to weigh in. What I noticed immediately in the first few sentences on this page is the failure of the original poster (I believe from the Foundation) to acknowledge how dramatically this program has affected other regular editors (not just ambassadors, USEP, India, etc.) and resulted in damaged articles in an environment where there aren't enough editors to clean up.

My watchlist has been dramatically hit over and over, for about six months, and I've found that

1) templates indicating a class project is involved aren't always used;

2) professors rarely supervise or engage (in fact, some don't even seem to ever log on);

3) online ambassadors are mostly absent (I only crossed paths with Mike Christie on this, most likely because we interact elsewhere and he watchlists my talk page);

4) copyvio is common;

5) failure to understand Wikipedia's sourcing policies is common;

6) there is a specific lack of awareness of WP:MEDRS hits the articles I edit;

7) classes are editing Wikipedia that aren't even aware of or part of any "education program";

8) multiple classes are editing the same article; and

9) students and professors alike make or instigate ill-conceived article edits and then never engage on talk (and sometimes edit war to re-instate copyvios),

so I have had to spend inordinate amounts of time just tying to keep articles I watchlist clean.

In many months of encountering misguided student editing, I have had the fortune to cross paths with exactly one student who engaged on talk and attempted to clean up an article after his fellow students (and in spite of the talk page being gummed up with no less than nine peer reviews that say the same unactionable thing); in that case, there is essentially little that can be said on the topic-- it was a most unfortunate article choice, made apparently by the professor (who doesn't respond on talk), so the students' time has been misspent.

Other than that one student, my typical experience with recruited editors involves copyvio, plagiarism, non-reliable sources, edit warring, less than high school level grammar, unhelpful article additions, and failure to understand anything about Wikipedia or to engage on talk.

An additional summary of my frustration with this misguided attempt to offset declining editorship by recruiting editors whose only motivation is a grade (sometimes with professors who are glad to have someone else supervising their students) starts here and continue for three sections. Mike Christie has pointed out to me that not all of the situations I have encountered are part of USEP-- my complaint is the same: recruiting for article editing doesn't work, wastes experienced editors' time, and-- on my watchlist-- hasn't resulted in a single article expansion or improvement that was worth the effort (klazomania has been expanded by the one good student I encountered, but there is essentially nothing written on the obscure topic, nothing else to be said, and I doubt anyone will ever read that article).

So ... to the questions posed originally at the top of this page:

1. I'd like to propose that we keep the number of classes next semester (Spring 2012) at the same level as this semester, so that would be around 60-70 classes. I think to reduce the number of classes would be to go backward a bit ...
2. Geographically, let's focus next semester on classes that are located in places where we already have Campus Ambassadors and other existing resources, so that we have existent and seasoned resources already ready-to-go, thus reducing the need to start from scratch in finding and training and on-boarding new Campus Ambassadors and other resources. So for example, a professor from Washington DC who wants to participate next semester ...
3. Let's put a lot of effort into growing the number of Online Ambassadors in preparation for next semester.

1) No. We should reduce the program. There aren't enough experienced editors supervising this work, and it's not fair to regular editors to have to take time away from their regular duties and worthy articles to clean up obscure topics that no one will ever read. 2) Further, the way to reduce the project is not geographically-- it's by professor. Those professors who haven't supervised their students, haven't engaged talk, don't understand MEDRS, etc.; and have turned editors like me into babysitters, should be disinvited. 3) No again-- even the online ambassadors we do have are not all fully engaged or knowledgeable-- my watchlist has been hit for months, often articles weren't even templated as part of a program so I could know why they were being hit with inferior edits, and what encounters I have had (Mike Christie, Jbmurray) are because I interact with those editors in other places.

The work and vision of Jbmurray doesn't scale -- particularly when many professors aren't as diligent, committed, involved or knowledgeable as he is. Please show the door to those professors who can't be bothered to supervise their students, or to instruct them in correct medical sourcing, and yet encourage these students to fill article talk pages with peer reviews that amount to "rah, rah", "I like it", even though they've never read a source in the topic areas.

Wikipedia can choose to offend and alienate experienced editors by wasting their time with this misguided recruiting for the benefit of little worthy content, or respect existing editors by scaling back this program to a size that is manageable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:46, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Hear, hear. I am afraid what we are seeing is a disconnect between the objectives of the Foundation and of en:wp. Objective-setting is a difficult task ("Be careful what you ask for, your wish might be granted"), and one has constantly to keep in mind the higher-level objective, and the danger that if a lower-level objective is too simplistic, enthusiastic pursuit of it may not actually help.

I take it that the top-level objective here is "Make the sum of human knowledge freely available". The en:wp volunteer community have chosen to further that by pursuing the lower-level objective "Build an encyclopedia." The Foundation seem to have chosen "Increase the number of editors". That could be a useful objective to pursue, but not at any cost, and not with "as fast as possible" tacked on the end, as I suspect is the case, in some people's minds at least. That is why the IEP has in practice been a substantial setback to the top objective.

A better-specified objective would be "Increase the number of editors willing and able to help build an encyclopedia". An IEP planned with that in mind would look quite different, and so, probably, would a USEP. They would involve far fewer students, but (speaking from en:wp) we are not here to help the Indian or the US education systems, we are here to build an encyclopedia.

The element of compulsion needs discussion. Though a lot of the work of educating and helping new users is repetitive and frustrating, there is always the knowledge that they are editing because they want to, because they have something they want to share. New users who are editing because they have to, against a deadline, or fail their course, are much less likely to want to learn or to become long-term contributors. I think it essential that assignments should be planned in such a way that editing Wikipedia is an optional element, which the students choose only if they want to, after a realistic explanation of what will be involved. JohnCD (talk) 21:56, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

From a practical standpoint, I think you are wrong on the compulsion issue. Both JbMurray and Jimmy Butler's classes have done OK with compulsion. I think the bigger issues are (1) size/scale and (2) an understanding of how much work/brains is needed to write accepible content. Targeting higher end schools, older kids, subjects that fit (i.e. probably not engineering undergrad, but descriptive ones like bio, history, literature), and most importantly professors that edit on Wikipedia would be higher bang for the buck.

Also if any (not accusing per se) of the WMF employees themselves lack practical Wiki experience, they should get in the trenches and pump out a DYK at least. It will endear them to the community and smooth over what is growing into a bit of a clash....and really just make them smarter about how things work here.71.246.144.154 (talk) 22:38, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I would agree with the "targeting higher end schools, older kids, subjects that fit" ... community college Psych 101 is part of what is killing my watchlist, and a professor who has several hundred students editing more than 50 articles simply can't be watching their work and is using us to babysit. However, even "higher end schools" aren't necessarily a good fit either, if the professor doesn't even log on. Jbmurray and Jimmy Butler worked because they were knowledgeable and involved professors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

And it's worth remembering that Jbmurray's WP:MMM was an undergraduate class. I don't think there's been much of a correlation between student age and contribution quality, though the PPI metrics might contain that information. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

To respond specifically to Sandy's post above, I think the most important point is "3) online ambassadors are mostly absent". Most of the other problems would be either reduced in severity or eliminated if the OAs were on hand with every student edit to help. This is why I believe we need to shrink the number of supported classes, not expand them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:07, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem from what I saw when online ambassadors were initially being recruited is that more experienced editors rejected the invitations while other less experienced jumped at it. Two things need to happen: 1., the online ambassadors need to be vetted for contributions to know that they understand policy very well; 2., somehow more experienced editors need to incentive to be involved. Unfortunately I can't think of what the incentive would be. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:31, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right. I watched a video of Sue Gardner speaking at the recent WikiMediaUK board meeting, at which she appeared to say that it didn't matter whether or not the online ambassadors were experienced editors. She also said a lot of other things I found completely bizarre, but that's another story. Malleus Fatuorum 22:40, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Can you post a link to that video? I'm curious; I've found this but that's about five hours of video, and I was hoping for a more precise pointer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:26, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I am an online ambassador, and I can't imagine what such an incentive might be -- I do it because I like it. I'm not sure you're right about this -- don't we want people who don't need incentives? Or do you mean we need a counterweight to whatever it is that is attracting inexperienced OAs? That would imply a filter as opposed to an incentive. I haven't looked at other OAs' history to see what the profile is, but there was an application process that was intended to eliminate editors who were too inexperienced. I think this is the relevant page. (My application predated this and was done via email with Sage Ross, who was involved with the PPI but is not part of the USEP.) Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:20, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Ideally we need people like yourself who like doing it, who are experienced, and who don't need incentives. And generally I agree, we shouldn't have to give incentives for everything, but in practicality that's the culture around here. Sign up for this and that to add another badge or userbox. I think it has to be something beyond a userbox to draw in the non-userbox crowd, if that makes any sense. There are many good editors who fly under the radar and haven't for whatever reason become online ambassadors. I myself haven't though I suspect like you I'd like it. But I do have a good reason. Truthkeeper (talk) 23:35, 21 November 2011 (UTC)