User talk:Sage Ross (WMF)

Ohai!

Working Wikipedian Barnstar

	The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
	Wow! Someone has been busy working on Wikipedia:Training. Have a barnstar! Pine✉ 23:40, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Are there plans to bring this training over to Outreach to make it available for other projects and languages? --Pine^✉ 22:48, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure. The first version was put together on Outreach, but it's important for it to live and evolve on the individual wikis that are actually using it, so that the community on that wiki can keep it up to date and adapt it to their own needs. We're looking into translating it into Portuguese and possibly a few other languages, but I don't know whether maintaining a version of it on Outreach will be worthwhile (instead of simply using the version on en-wiki as the starting point for translations). It takes a lot of time to copy it all over, so I don't plan to do so unless there's an acute need.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

They are all subpages of WP:Training, so if you need, I could copy all the subpages over with a bot.Smallman12q (talk) 22:24, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. If they need to be moved over, I'll ping you about doing it by bot. At this point, there wouldn't be a purpose for it, though. These ones are still being tweaked, and we're making plans to have them translated based on the en.wiki copies for use on pt.wiki (as a start).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: Kitten

Thanks Sage! That's the first kitten I've received - I'm not a cat person but it's lovely! Thehelpfulone 00:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Permissions

I need eponline permissions. Also who gives the token for enrollment? Is there a guide to the new system somewhere? Also, great job on Wikipedia:Training=D.Smallman12q (talk) 22:22, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

You're all set with permissions now. The basic getting started guide is at Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Setting up your course. We've got significant improvements coming soon, I hope, so upon the documentation. An outline of the basic features is at Wikipedia:Course pages, and Help:Education Program extension has some basic instructions for specific tasks.

The instructor set the enrollment token. Now that you have the online volunteer right, you should be able to see the token, as well as edit the course page (and change the token, if necessary).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks.Smallman12q (talk) 20:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Regards

Hello Sage Ross (WMF). I noticed some images that you uploaded indicate you are personally acquainted with User talk:AaronSw#RIP. Very sad news. --My76Strat (talk) 22:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. I met him a few times. His death is a huge loss.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Problem with education extension

Hi, Sage, on the courses page, the default selection for "Status" should be blank. It took me a while to figure out that this was why my course page (planned) wasn't showing up.

The caching mechanism behind the education course page is messed up. I'm getting weird, flaky behavior, that's a little bit difficult to characterize, but here's one way to get a failure that seems pretty consistent. On Chrome:

• Clear all wikipedia cookies
• Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/, and log back in.
• Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Courses
• At this point I get a page with the Institition form filled out with "Johns Hopkins University", and only my Molecular Biology course listed.
• Click "view latest" at the top -- I go to the page with the form cleared and all the (current) courses listed
• Select, in the filter form, "Johns Hopkins University", and blank for the Status, and click "Go". I correctly get the page with just the MolBio course.
• Click "view latest" -- now I'm taken back to the page with the form cleared.

Basically, it looks like the caching mechanism is not taking the form POST data into account.

Klortho (talk) 03:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks much. I think the default status should actually be "Current and Planned", as once there are a lot of Passed courses, we don't want them shown by default. (Some other fixes for showing both current and planned courses are in the works, and I'll add this to the list.) We've got some caching fixes in the works as well, although the behavior you describe is one I think I haven't encountered or reported as a bug yet. I'll look into it.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 04:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Online Ambassador

Request It appears that my request to be an online ambassador is non-controversial, so if you get the opportunity, please add the relevant userflags/rights ASAP--semester is a go. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:07, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure. I've been trying not to actively manage that process myself, since it will need to be done on an ongoing basis and it's not something WMF involvement is necessary for. But it is indeed non-controversial, so I'll give you the flag now (and wait for someone else to formally close your application when they get around to it).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:30, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks I appreciate your help. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Comment on current needs for Spring 2013 at WT:MED?

Could you comment here? Thanks again for your help. Biosthmors (talk) 14:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia Ambassadors update

Thanks for the message. I have posted there --Tito Dutta (talk) 20:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Thematic organization list

I added the education program to the list of meta:Wikimedia Thematic Organizations since you announced it today. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm not sure why the working group hadn't added it earlier, as the plan to try to create a thematic organization has been public for quite a while now.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Doubled course

Hey Sage, there appear to be two copies of the same course at Red Deer College - this one has the OA, this one has the prof. Can we merge the two somehow? Nikkimaria (talk) 22:48, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Eep! There's no way to merge them, but we can pick one and delete the other. Probably we should keep the one that the professor is signed up for, and I'll reassigned My76Strat to it.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 02:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, done that, but now we've got one OA here and here but a different one here. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I think they are both going to support that course. Jonathan Obar has been setting up manual course pages because he thinks the new ones aren't good enough for the professors, so the nominal plan for the Canada classes (I guess) would be to just use the new ones to list the students and their articles. But we have some improvements of the course page features coming soon, so I think we'll be able to merge the new-style and old-style ones for that soon.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Rights templates

Hey, Sage! Would it be a good idea to create three templates for the respective levels of course rights? I realized it might be a good idea to have one similar to the ones for the other rights templates, since we really have no way to tell the new editors that they have been given rights during times of mass-rights times. If you think it's a good idea, I'll be more than willing to help work on it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:48, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean by rights templates? Like userboxes for "this user is a course instructor"? If so, sounds good to me; go for it.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I meant notification templates, in that we let them know that they have the right in the first place, since it is fairly easy to give someone the rights and forget to tell them. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:59, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, good idea.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, here we go: Courseonlinevolunteergiven, Coursecampusvolunteergiven, Courseinstructorrgiven, and Coursecoordinatorrgiven. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:46, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the links on my course page!

It's a great addition, especially the watch list button. Biolprof (talk) 00:56, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Difficulties with content areas on Course Page

Thanks for the wizard for adding timelines & grading rubrics to course page. I can't seem to figure out how to get the "Article banner" part to show up as its own content area in the "Contents" box up at the top. Right now it appears as a subsection under "Grading" ScottPKingPhD (talk) 19:30, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Scott. The way the wizard was set up, in automatically included that article banners part as a subsection of the previous section. But you're right that it doesn't make sense like that. I've adjusted the course page template; take a look at your page now. Is that what you were wanting it to look like?--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Sage, yes, it looks better now. Much appreciated.ScottPKingPhD (talk) 01:36, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sage Ross (WMF). You have new messages at Kevin Gorman's talk page.
Message added 21:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Admin rights and Education

If I go to Special:OnlineAmbassadorProfile or Special:CampusAmbassadorProfile, I can just create a profile for myself. This raises a few questions, since I don't have any of the education permissions set.

a) Is this because I have an admin bit? (or is it open for everyone?)

b) Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Become an ambassador has an application process for becoming an ambassador. Is that still in place?

c) If the answer to a) and b) is "Yes", can we please do one of the following?

i) Put a notice of the requirement on the Special: pages for admins by modifying MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js or MediaWiki:Group-sysop.css.

ii) Require admins to assign themselves the relevant userright before letting them see the page - this would allow continued access while providing a "warning, make extra sure you know what you're doing here" to the admin.

I haven't been following the education developments closely for a few months, so I could be completely off base here, but ... here're my 2¢ anyway. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:28, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's because you have the admin bit, and yes, the application process is still in place. I'll file a bug to make it so that admins still need the explicit ambassador bit before they have access to the profile pages. In the meantime, feel free to set up a mediawiki message if you'd like to. Thanks for bringing this up; I hadn't thought about this problem before.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll just leave it at that, then. I suspect that by the time I figured out how to make a notice appear on just those two pages, your bug request' have already gone through. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 06:57, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For diligent and imaginative improvement of the Education Project. I hope the WMF are planning to give you a bonus this year! Yunshui 雲‍水 14:55, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll pass the message about the bonus to HR. ;) --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Special:RecentChangesLinked for Education Program

Is there a way to get a single list for student contributions for a particular course? Also another list for changes to articles assigned in the course? Essentially a watchlist for student contributions, and for their articles.Smallman12q (talk) 22:28, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

There is not, except if you are associated with a course (as an ambassador, for example) you get a feed of student contributions to relevant namespaces in the Special:MyCourses feed. At present, that feed also includes edits by ambassadors and instructors, but that will soon be fixed. It would be good, though, to have feeds available for individual courses for both of those things you mentions. I'll ask Jeroen to implement those. At the least, it should be very easy implement an independent feed for the equivalent of Special:MyCourses for any given class that is viewable by anyone.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 01:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for contacting me!

Hi Sage! Thanks for getting in contact with me.

I am trying to get a Coursepage set up for a course I am TA-ing in the Cognitive Science department at RPI. I've been granted Instructor Rights and will be setting up the Coursepage this afternoon. I'll need to add my adviser (the course's instructor) as well. Will he be able to have Instructor Rights for the coursepage, in addition to myself?

Can I list you as my Online Ambassador? I am not sure just yet how much assistance we'll need through the process. Within the next couple weeks, we'll be adding students and Article Pages to our Coursepage. Eventually, the students will be creating or substantially editing Wikipedia articles related to our course's subject matter.

Again, thanks for reaching out to me! --Melissa Parade (talk) 16:53, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Request for guidance: new coursepage

Dear Sage, Thank you for all your work helping so many. I saw your name at the education noticeboard site and wondered if you could advise me regarding the timeline for hearing back on my course page request? Thanks for your help! Darcie Prof.Vandegrift (talk) 17:50, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for feedback

Dear Sage, Thank you for your feedback. Yes, essay is the wrong term, as students are working towards a Wikipedia style article. My campus ambassador is Carrie Dunham-LaGree. Thank you again! Darcie Prof.Vandegrift (talk) 19:53, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sage Ross (WMF). You have new messages at WP:EDUN.
Message added 07:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Is there any way that you could please evaluate my request? I'm not sure if it was overlooked due to the additional additions or if it's still being processes, but I did notice that you've helped other instructors and thought that I would send you a message! Jackson Peebles (talk) 07:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

Thank you for responding to my request for assistance; I truly appreciate it! Jackson Peebles (talk) 06:37, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Assignment templates

How is {{Course assignment}} different from {{Educational assignment}} ? It appears to be less functional than the existing template, and not currently used on any articles. Is this new template suggested by the templated course page? --Geniac (talk) 15:41, 2 February 2013 (UTC)