Comments on: Wikipedia Education Program by the numbers

By: Ben R. Rodriguez

Ben R. Rodriguez — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:37:27 +0000

Thanks for the article depicting the students phase of used of Wikipedia’s help. We are certain that “Spreading Knowledge every where in the world, with the expanding utilities of knowledge, as your Wikipedia does, is the best approach to one day, attain peace in this small planet called Earth. My work in geology – exploration – HC and minerals, including underground water, down in Africa had used most of my life work. Im addition with what I have learned, if I could have a second chance, I would have taken time to expand teaching of the “water needs, eliminate waste of this so small valuable resource”, that very soon will be critical for all humans, wildlife needs. Just one observation “we have several thousands humans in Somalia, with dired needs to survived, water is one critical need, all human life terminate fast without water, almost like air to life ratio’s. Right undet their feet’s of these humans in dired needs, Somalia has a huge aquipher, that if properly managed, Somalia will de a great producer of fundamental food needs to humans and wild life, to sustain life as should be, in Afica, India, South America – Autralia and other places on this Erath our only home in this huge Universe. The best Rx, will be “Stop Wars, used these resources to prevent a crisis of such nature, that may increase wars, or expand peace, whish will be the best road to follow ?”
Thanks for allowed me to expressed what I have seen and witness in the most important Continent, since our human life begun in Africa, not far from the Great African Rift site, closed to Somalia.

By: JohnCD

JohnCD — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:03:17 +0000

I find the emphasis on growing “by leaps and bounds” worrying. Doing an Indian “pilot” with 800 students has turned out to be a disaster, for them as well as for us. Please, WMF, don’t be too ambitious, don’t set yourselves targets for exponential growth, don’t overload the volunteer community with more support and cleanup tasks than they are able and willing to accept. Take it slow until you find out what works, what sort of support is needed and can be provided, and what rate of growth can be achieved without damaging the encyclopedia – and there is damage, not just from the IEP, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:USEP#Feedback_from_an_affected_editor.

By: Tilman

Tilman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:32:04 +0000

TCO, this posting is about current metrics of the Wikipedia Education Program, it wasn’t meant to be a write-up about the past Public Policy Initiative. For that, you may instead want to turn to the long report that was published earlier today at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative_Learning_Points

By: TCO (Teh IP)

TCO (Teh IP) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:13:10 +0000

Have the US programs been such big contributors? I haven’t been encountering editors from those sources or seeing articles by the people. I know Sue did a presentation with big stacks of paper next to her showing how much had been done…but I really never “felt” anything from the program in terms of my reading or interacting experience on Wiki. Would have thought there was something more, somehow, if it was such a big success. (And it cost a lot and used a lot of volunteer time.)

I think Wikians are very positive to students and like to coach and help and love the idea of them growing in learning and of them getting interested in Wiki. So I’m not surprised that you were able to get a lot of volunteer engagement. I just…I donno…worry that the thing may not be working right, yet. And that there may be some urge to declare victory and such. We have people drawing salaries for one thing and Sue probably wants to keep things upbeat, not down.

I guess the other thing is that the PPP was concentrated in kind of a strange academic subject (when I went to school, we didn’t have public policy as a major. I never heard of it actually…is it a new name for political science?) Maybe if we are doing more in traditional topics (biology, history, literature) than we will see the impact of the work done on more often viewed articles.

Also Frank has made several comments about how it does not matter if students are retained…that this is an educational experience for them. Well…I don’t think the community will buy that. We are kinda stretched thin building the encyclopedia and we still think that is the mission. People will have fun and be supportive of working with the kids, but we need to be getting returning editors out of it. Or we need to be getting some WORTHWHILE content (high hit count, high quality). Not Start class articles on town fire departments or such.

Oh…and the write-up above lacks enough meat on the bone to answer my concerns.

By: John Broughton

John Broughton — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:36:54 +0000

The program in India certainly has had a lot of negative impacts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-11-07/Special_report ), but that shouldn’t be used as an argument that there should not be expansions in countries like the U.S. and Canada. And it’s important to distinguish between inherent problems (can’t be fixed) and learning problems (mistakes were made, but can be avoided or minimized in the future by doing things differently). I don’t think anyone has argued that the U.S. and Canadian programs are inherently flawed, or that they haven’t been net contributors to Wikipedia.

By: Richard Morris

Richard Morris — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:20:53 +0000

The project does not need to grow anymore, it is already at an unmanageable level considering its impact on the existing online wikipedia community who have to do all the work clearing up all the copyvios and low quality articles left by the program.