User talk:Mike Christie

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Featured Article promotion

	Congratulations!
	Thanks for all the work you did in making Super Science Stories a Featured Article! Please accept this sci-fi barnstar. Your work is much appreciated. – Quadell (talk)

-- Signing so this will archive. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:55, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey

New page patrol – Survey Invitation Hello Mike Christie! The WMF is currently developing new tools to make new page patrolling much easier. Whether you have patrolled many pages or only a few, we now need to know about your experience. The survey takes only 6 minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist us in analyzing the results of the survey; the WMF will not use the information to identify you. If this invitation also appears on other accounts you may have, please complete the survey once only. If this has been sent to you in error and you have never patrolled new pages, please ignore it. Please click HERE to take part. Many thanks in advance for providing this essential feedback. You are receiving this invitation because you have patrolled new pages. For more information, please see NPP Survey

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:25, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

TinTin redux

I had not seen the FAC - thanks. I have not got time to read the whole article now, but I am surpised to see there still is no critical reception section, which was one of my concerns before. I will try to read it tomorrow and comment on the FAC. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:17, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Peter Percival

Hey Mike, do you have access to the DNB? We need some basic biographical information on Peter Percival (a 19th c. missionary in Tamil India) and whatever else we can find. Your help would be greatly appreciated. PS Did I tell you I'm getting to teach an OE poetry class next semester? Have you signed up yet? ;) Drmies (talk) 02:05, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't, but Ealdgyth does; I'll leave her a note. I'd love to sign up but I think I'm missing a couple of prereqs .... Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

No Peter Percival in the ODNB. Sorry! Ealdgyth - Talk 14:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Mike Christie. You have new messages at Kudpung's talk page.
Message added 22:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

NPP Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

YGM

Hello, Mike Christie. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:27, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

link=User talk:<Tatompki>

Hello, Mike Christie. You have new messages at [[User talk:<Tatompki>|User talk:<Tatompki>]].
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Tatompki (talk) 03:00, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Mike Christie. You have new messages at Kudpung's talk page.
Message added 02:39, 7 November 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

If there are any gaps in my answer, or any of your questions that I have not adequately addressed, don't hesitate to let me know. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:39, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

India

OMG. I just took a quick look at stuff about the India project and... Again, OMG. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 04:17, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes indeed. What a mess. I've been reading the thread on Sandy's talk page and will try to comment there again soon but have been quite busy in real life. I think there needs to be some kind of centrally located on-wiki thread that will provide a forum for discussing the negative impacts of school projects but also allow communication about the positive effects. Those who, like Sandy, only run into a couple of poorly written efforts that don't benefit the encyclopedia are unlikely to see much value in the overall USEP effort. I found myself somewhat discouraged a while back when working with students who were far less fun to work with than your exemplary first class; I felt better after I was reminded that I was only seeing a few data points, and that the overall impact of the project has been fairly clearly positive. I almost think a subpage of the village pump might be a good idea, particularly if there are going to be hundreds of these classes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Are the people who run the Outreach projects amenable? It seems that one of the problems is that they have only been getting involved at the very beginning (promotion) and the very end (either when things have degenerated or to evaluate once its all over). Look at the on-Wiki contributions of some of these people, for instance: though there are exception, they tend to be very light. --jbmurray (talk • contribs)

Hello

Hi there. Seen your work around the FAC page. I was wondering if you could please take a quick look at an article I've been working on. It failed FAC months ago, based on poor prose, and I've been working on it since. If you're too busy, then that's fine. There's absolutely no rush. The article is pretty long, so I'd be satisfied if you're able to review only one section (even a paragraph). Thanks in advance.

PS: I know beggars aren't choosers, but "writing and recording" has been the most problematic section (intro, plus the couple sections before that have been reviewed to death). Orane (talk) 23:51, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take a look, but I'm busier than usual at the moment and am unlikely to get to it at least until this weekend, and possibly not for a week or two after that. If that's OK, let me know and I'll put it on my list. I recall seeing it at FAC. Incidentally, another editor asked me to take a look at an album article recently; the article was Dreaming of You (album), and it needed prose improvements too. They are now getting a pretty thorough copyedit from Baffle gab1978. You might take a look at the work being done there, and see if you like it; if so you might request help from that editor -- they might be faster than I am. Let me know -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:53, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

That's absolutely fine. Take your time. The album is still charting in the top 5 in many countries, so I'm not rushing at all to bring it to FAC until maybe the end of the year, if not later. Plus, I want to make sure that it is absolutely ready before I re-nominate it. You can add it to your list if you want, and I'll poke the editor you suggested. Thanks. Orane (talk) 06:26, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your message. I am glad to see the students being involved. I think that a lot of the state party articles are pretty thin on material (compared, e.g., to articles about Canadian provincial political parties), so I am glad that there is an organized effort to improve them. I am trying to keep in mind that these students are probably new to Wikipedia, so I am trying to be extra patient. So far, I think they are responding well. The one exception is the person editing Kentucky Democratic Party, who does not seem to be getting into the spirit of things here in Wikipedia. You can take a look at the hisory of edits to see what I mean. Some additional guidance (from an ambassador) might be useful here. And, of course, monitoring other articles. Having corrections being done by more than just one editor would help convey the idea of group norms being enforced, rather than those of just one persnickety editor. Thanks. Ground Zero | t 22:47, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

USEP

Hi Mike,

Well, on your suggestion I took a look at the USEP page, and I decided to chime in. It's quite obvious, just like it was on the IEP, that the paid organisers are not in the slightest concerned about the impact the expansions programmes are having and will increasingly have on NPP, our first and major firewall against all unwatented, or poorly created pages. I thought I had delivered a clear message there, but it was given less than a cursory glance, and I get patronised (as one of the first OAs ever) as if I don't know what the project is all about. 19,195 bytes wasted. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

PS: I notice also to my chagrin, that Piotrus "...unlike in traditional common sense collaborative projects, in their basic form the wikis provide no gate-keeping function to control what is being published. Wikipedias allow all of their editors to vote and voice their opinions, and empower them to change the content of articles and organizational policies to an extent unthinkable in traditional organizations." (Konieczny 2009, 212), doesn't mention New Page Patrol at all in his long list of Wikipedia maintenenace and control groups, although it's the major firewall against unwanted content. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:36, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The point about CAs not requiring that much prior experience is probably at least half true. What the students need mostly at the initial stages is handholding and demonstrations. They don't edit under the eyes of the CAs, so a CA with vast knowledge of Wikipedia policy is unlikely to be able to help much more than an inexperienced CA. As I understand it the sequence is something like this: CA goes in for one or more classes and does an onscreen demo of some Wikipedia editing. They put up a few slides about policy (copyvio, notability, verification, etc.) and answer questions. They are available for workshops showing students how to set up sandboxes. They may come back and talk to the class multiple times, and the students are free to contact them for help. Then the students go off and work on their articles without notifying the CAs or anyone else. That's when the new material is created, and there's really not much more the CAs can do without forcing the students to edit in front of them.

However, to me that just means that more attention needs to be paid to the students' first edits by the next line of defense, the OAs and NPP. I don't think it's fair to NPP or the community in general to institute a process that will lead to significant extra work for areas of the community that did not sign up for this. On the other hand, a professor can run their class on Wikipedia without any reference to USEP or any need for permission, so the community has to be prepared for that. To date, I'd guess most classes have been outside the USEP, not inside.

My main disagreement with LiAnna is with this comment: "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. I am concerned not enough of the community is weighing in -- this is going to have a big impact on editors and I would like more awareness of that and engagement by the community with the WMF to shape the programme. I'll post something over there today, but I was hoping others would chip in so that I don't appear to be the only person making these points. If you follow the links in my reply to Annie, you'll see that SandyGeorgia and Ground Zero have been been dealing with the impact of these classes, and they are surely not the only ones. The programme needs to optimize multiple things at the same time, and I would like the WMF to get input from some of these sources. Any ideas you have on how to expand awareness of this discussion would be great -- I've posted to the Village Pump for example. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:24, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not involved in the planning of WMF project, I'm but a simple foreman (and that's really no big deal) on the volunteer factory floor. As in any corporate situation, the bosses don't listen to the workers and they never got their hands dirty on on a lathe or a turret drill. They only cursorily scan our posts before they launch once more into their TLDR speeches on talk pages about how good they are doing their job, and in the security of the knowledge that they have thousands of minions to clear up the mess when they screw up. The community weighed in en masse when the IEP went disastrously wrong, and what did we get? Lots of long self-congratulatory speeches from the organisers again with empty effusive remerciements. No wonder that the community is now playing hard-to-get. FWIW, I have spent hours on Skype with the top of the staff, and if they are not aware of the implications of their education programmes by now, they never will be. They are all enjoying flying around the country and hobnobbing with profs and deans, while we sit at home and burn the midnight oil over a computer, an overflowing ashtray, a cup of cold coffee and a delete button. They are looking right down the wrong end of the telescope - give us the tools we've been begging for and a decent landing page for new editors, and we'll be as happy as kids at Christmas. Take a very good look at this graph, you 'll see how sleeves were rolled up during the IEP crisis, and now that it's (more or less) over, the backlog is creeping up again - BTW, the vertical column is 1,000s. try to get the WMF to understand those kind of stats rather than allow them boast about the numbers of professors they have recruited for their programmes. Then ask the organisers what they think of their balancing act when they weigh the average of seven patrollers on line at any one time to cope with ana average of one new article being dumped on the doorstep every fifteen seconds round the clock ,against the number of CAs and OAs. What needs to be said has been said here, and here, and here; they've seen it all, but they've buried their heads in the sand, and swept the warnings under the carpet. The two people you really need to talk to now are Mdennis aka Moonriddengirl, staff/commnity liaison gofer and Wikipedia copyvio guru, and Voceditenore our opera specialst, who like me, has worked her knuckles to the bone and shouted herself hoarse. They are people you can talk to, but even they are not guaranteed more success at getting their message across than I did. The highfalutin mantras about 'We must get more editors' has more collateral damage than it's probably worth - here we are with the 4th biggest web site in the world, with initiatives like these swallowing up the donator's dough, while the bosses at Google are billionaires and won't allow our CorenBot to sneak around their corridors unless we cross thier palms with silver! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Main page appearance: Astonishing Stories

This is a note to let the main editors of Astonishing Stories know that the article will be appearing as today's featured article on November 13, 2011. You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 13, 2011. If you prefer that the article appear as TFA on a different date, or not at all, please ask featured article director Raul654 (talk · contribs) or his delegate Dabomb87 (talk · contribs), or start a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests. If the previous blurb needs tweaking, you might change it—following the instructions at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/instructions. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. The blurb as it stands now is below:

Astonishing Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Popular Publications between 1940 and 1943. The magazine's first editor was Frederik Pohl, who also edited a companion publication, Super Science Stories. The budget for Astonishing was very low, which made it difficult to acquire good fiction, but through his membership of the Futurians, a group of young science fiction fans and aspiring writers, Pohl was able to find material to fill the early issues. The magazine was successful, and Pohl was able to increase his pay rates slightly within a year. He managed to obtain stories by writers who subsequently became very well known, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. After Pohl entered the army in early 1943, wartime paper shortages led Popular to cease publication of Astonishing. The final issue was dated April of that year. The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre, but despite the low budget it published some well-received material. Science fiction critic Peter Nicholls comments that "its stories were surprisingly good considering how little was paid for them", and this view has been echoed by other historians of the field. (more...)

UcuchaBot (talk) 00:02, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Prod

Hey Mike, I've name-dropped you at WT:MILHIST#Anglo-Saxon warfare. Hope you don't mind. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 22:29, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Not at all; thanks for thinking of me. I'm not a real expert but I'll see what I can dig up. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Division of roles

Having asked the organisers of education programmes several times why do not appear to address comments regarding the availabilty of community members to do any eventual cleaning up, I've been informed by the WMF that issues concerning clean-up support are not within the mandate of the organisers. In the meantime I'm scaling down my support for GEP and comments on it, and will be concentrating my efforts on endeavours to accelerate the development of the necessary tools and reform of New Page Patrol. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:05, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments you've been making there. I'll keep trying to nudge the conversation along, and will eventually get back to trying NPP but I am still ploughing through the IEP cleanup and I have some OA work to do to, so I'm fairly backed up. I think the net comments are in the direction of sensible changes so we might see some progress. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:24, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. However, as the organisers have expressed that it is not within their remit to take into consideration the availablity of a clean up force, it is doubtful therefore that even gentle prodding there will be effective, and the WMF is polar on these issues. A posting on another IEP page today by one of the organisers informs that future programs will involve more communication with community, but again in which manner the community will be involved was not mentioned. There has been no movement on the development (at least not on discussions) on the suggested reforms of the NPP system for nearly two months. As I am involved in those discussions, there is little benefit in me repeating there that these solutions should be developed in parallel with the move forward in the expansion of these education programmes, but I do feel that if others could chime in, a greater voice may have more impact. I am relieved to see however, that a possiblity to put back the extension of the IEP until the spring is under discussion. With more concentration on the tools and improved performance of the patrollers, we might be ready for it by then. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Given that the WMF's policy appears to be to chase away established editors, especially male editors, so as to achieve that magical 50% gender balance, nothing will be different next time around. Malleus Fatuorum 03:09, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I've never really had any exposure to WMF staff before this summer, and I'm still thinking about the relationship between their role and the editing community. I think that's a difficult balancing act. I do think that the IEP was a disaster, and the USEP is not being run as well as it could be run. My main goal at WT:USEP has not been to push my own opinions, though I've certainly done that; it's been to try to get a community discussion going which would generate useful and credible input to the WMF planning process. I think that includes Kudpung's concerns about NPP (though I'm not knowledgeable about the tools he mentions, I understand the need for them). I think Sandy's recent post at that page is exactly what the USEP organizers need to hear -- I don't entirely agree with Sandy, as it happens, but an initiative that has the sort of effect on content editors that the USEP has had on Sandy clearly needs to have a planning process with a visible presence on-wiki. I'm hopeful that we're moving in that direction. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:23, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully we are. I've been involved in a much smaller scale project, and it's very evident that new editors need a lot of help. So I find Kudpung's exhorations to be little more than empty rhetoric. Wikipedia is bleeding contributors and reviewers. Malleus Fatuorum 06:07, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

The IEP is slated to return in June after a detailed analysis of what went wrong. (That what we were told tonight at the steering committee meeting.) --Guerillero | My Talk 06:32, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:United States Education Program

Hi Mike, I wonder if it would be worth mentioning the discussion to each of the OA's via their talk pages (apart from the three or four who have already commented). As you probably saw there, I have a feeling that the current number of actively engaged OAs has been over-estimated. It might bring some of them out of the woodwork one way or another. Voceditenore (talk) 16:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I might be able to do a bit of this tonight but if you'd like to get started, please go ahead. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:46, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I managed to do some, starting at the top of the list, and did all through User:Sonia. I probably won't be able to much more today. Note that User:Nvvchar has retired from WP. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 18:28, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

There is of course no mention of any support that may/will be needed from the regular clean-up corps. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:27, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, good point. I think WT:USEP is tending in a good direction now, though. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:00, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

• There are a few Education Program-related articles listed at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Educational assignments needing timely reviews. If you have the time, would you be able to take one? maclean (talk) 05:56, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

• Update I finished the list, even did the "Ambassadors-in-training" ;-) I've found quite a few OAs who appear to be retired or semi-retired from WP, but notified the semi-retired ones anyway. I'll leave a few more comments/suggestions at the discussion today, but then I'll be travelling over the next week or so and pretty much offline. Good luck with the discussion. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 08:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Request to Post

Greetings. I would like to share some thoughts (solutions) regarding my experience with Wikipedia Education Projects. I did not want to intrude with such a large post, if you feel this is not the place, nor are you the person. It will not be banter and posturing, just a summation of challenges and solutions specific to my AP Biology class.--JimmyButler (talk) 17:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely; I'm very interested. I try not to post at all during 9-5 eastern time, but am usually fairly responsive outside those hours. Please go ahead. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:40, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

My limited perspective as a teacher.

Greetings. I was reading the concerns posted on the Wikipedia talk:United States Education Program; if I might share my attempt at solutions to these challenges used at Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology 2011.

My first year, the grades and thus the goal of the students were to push articles to GA or FA status. Although we meet with moderate success, I can see why such a strategy would overwhelm the system; especially if students feel compelled to attempt GA, even if the product clearly falls short. They hope that an editor (mentor) could push /pull them (or without them) to a successful outcome.

The students were adopted by a specific mentor. A pointless act, in the end students and mentors naturally gravitated toward each other, dependent upon the topic and who was actively monitoring that page. That was the only year the relationship between mentor and mentee was officially recognized.

My second attempt, I opted to combine the students into groups, thus reducing the number of articles to monitor. I did this for my own sanity, at this point being unaware that we were taxing the Wikipedia system. This was an epic fail – conflict between groups make this a non-viable option from a grading standpoint. Note, with the new strategy, mentors were not monitoring students, they were monitoring the article. Thus, large classes may not be as traumatic as advertised, if the instructor limits the number of articles the class edits. I suspect few are doing a 1:1, one student to one article. The challenge for grouping is at the teacher end – grading.

On the third attempt, I shifted from making GA / FA the goal to grading the student‘s effort.; this allowed for multiple students focusing on a single article. I developed a rubric that measures contributions. The class selected only two articles, the students were graded on their portfolio documenting their contributions. (If you are interested, the rubric is currently being revised in my sandbox. Neither article was nominated for GA/FA; it was a challenge keeping students productive, with no specific goal. The interaction with the community was limited to a few editors. I suspect the mentors prefer not to crowd around a single article. In the absence of the social interactions, the students lost interest. Because the students felt no since of “ownership”, none felt compelled to push for GA/FA.

This year, I’ve created a hybrid of sorts; keeping the rubric, and forming groups of four that actively edit any of four different articles. At some point we will shift our focus to one of these four articles and that group will attempt to push it to FA status. In my case that translates to four groups composed of four students; thus we may be submitting four articles to FAC. Once I sensed the concerns over shirking grading responsibilities raised on the Project’s talk page and the resentment such an approach might generate among mentors; I added one additional component, a Teacher Review. I am thinking this might accomplish several things. First, it would serve to undo any gross damage that students may have introduced to the article. Second, it would reduce the number of extremely bad articles that may be taxing the GA/FA process. Third, it provides evidence of commitment by the instructor to the project, which at the least should reduce resentment among mentors who are feeling exploited. I would think, this step would force instructors to limit the number of articles being actively edited – thus the specter of 100’s of students from a single class rampaging through Wikipedia unattended would never materialize.

My challenge has been getting the students to engage in the process. In a class of 20, typically 4 or five actively edit. The mentors lose interest and fade away. The student fails. However, there is no impact to the articles on Wikipedia good or bad. My point here, even in large classes, a significant number will be non-factors, a problem for the teacher, but not for the Wikipedia Project.

There is so much more to add; four years of effort have been fraught with successes and frustrations. Make use of what is of value and discard the rest as ramblings of a mad-man. Cheers.--JimmyButler (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this; I have heard good things of your classes over the years, and am very interested to learn more. I don't have any answers for you; in fact I think it's much more likely that you have answers for me, since you're a teacher who's been working with Wikipedia in the classroom for years, and I have much more limited experience. I do have a couple of observations and questions, though.

• I agree with you that requiring FA or GA is a mistake; it sounds as though you found that mentors and helpful editors generally felt obliged to help the students out, and even though the resulting articles are a real benefit to Wikipedia that's not a scalable process. Have you considered doing what jbmurray did, and making FA optional but letting the class know that it would guarantee an A+ on the final paper, no questions asked? I believe he set things up so that you could get an A+ without an FA, so it was up to the students if they wanted to do the work. Several did.
  • At the high school level; parents are heavily involved in grades. Parents were screaming over the inequities of having either strongly supportive or completely absent mentors and its effects on student performance and reaching a set goal. Shifting to the portfolio completely eliminated that concern. I wonder if jbmurray encountered problems with the mentors being overwhelmingly responsible for the FA, resulting in an A for students who did little? Also, mentors are not the only ones that contribute when the article reaches that stage of development. It was not uncommon for several editors to become involve, making improvements and addressing concerns before the student had the opportunity. A complaint or excuse; "My article got taken over". If an article makes GA, the rubric I use virtually guarantees an 'A' if the students are reasonably responsible for the success. The push to FA is a matter of personal success and pride - in my class FA is equivalent to the Nobel Prize and we celebrate appropriately.--JimmyButler (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

    I hadn't thought about the parent factor; that's a good point. I can see that the portfolio solves the problem. It sounds like you make the students assemble the portfolio and then you just validate it -- is that right? So the students have to know how to use diffs and so forth? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

• How much is your increasing knowledge of Wikipedia (both the markup language and the policies) helping you? Does it mean you need less from the mentors?
  • I try to push the students in seeking assistance from each other and any resource on Wikipedia - other than me. Not to drain the system, rather to help them develop the art of collaboration. The less involved I am, the greater the sense of accomplishment and the more they become adept at handling obstacles. I provide them with the links to the multitude of services on Wikipedia that answer the questions that typically arise. I do not teach the technical aspects of Wikipedia. When such issues come up we seek to resolve them as a class. I do convey to them the standards for any research paper; something that should be know by anyone requiring their class to do "research". This is not a Wikipedia skill; rather something that every teacher should be competent.

    I suspect, no one begins their Wikipedia experience with a "training session". There is a period in which we bumble about. However, I have found the learning curve to be exponential, very little time between complete incompetence to competent contributors. This year, we began with a series of small challenges (mini-assignments) beginning with something as simple as correcting one spelling error. We eventually moved to adding one reference. Much was learned about formatting and code, by expanding their user page. Baby-steps reduce the need for major mentor intervention. That said; someone in the room has to grasp the big picture and be prepared to intervene if problems escalate.--JimmyButler (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

    I like the idea of not going on about technical details; I suspect they are deeply offputting to new editors. What about basic information on approach, though -- I'm thinking mainly of the need to cite sources, and the difference between a reliable and unreliable source. I would assume you give them some initial information on that? I would think neutrality is much less relevant in the topics I gather your classes work on, though for some topics it would be important to stress that too. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

• I was interested to read that assigning specific mentors to students failed. The OA system in the USEP is the parallel to the mentors in your project. The OA role has been evolving as we've tried different approaches. Assigning one OA to three or four students didn't work at all well; the students were often barely active, so motivated helpers were left with nothing to do. Assigning one OA to a class of 50 students also doesn't work well -- there are far too many edits to monitor and you don't get to know any of the students. I like your idea of just letting the students interact with the existing editors at the articles that are out there, since that's how any other editor has to do it. Still, it sounds like you hope for a little more than simple editing interaction between students and mentors, judging by your notes above and the project page. If you had fifty willing OAs to assign to some college classes, how would you do it?
  • the students were often barely active, so motivated helpers were left with nothing to do. I am relieved to here this; I thought it was just a problem at the high school level. The watchdogs of the pages, often adapted quite nicely to the role of mentor; I found editors to be generally accommodating. Of course we stay away from certain topics. Creationism, Evolution, Abortion are not an option for us. We seek out the stubs, thus editors within field are delighted to see effort on these unnoticed gems. As such people are more patient and pleasant. There are likely many reasons people fall into the role and are willing to guide the students with any problem. In fact, the majority of those that assist me, simply follow us out of interest, not because they are part of a program. To answer the question, I think you would need flexibility. Perhaps even forgetting mentoring students, rather monitoring articles. As the students engage, shift your resources to the articles that are active and lack sufficient interaction between the students and the "ordinary" editors that typically monitor such pages. Perhaps one or two OA's could coordinate such movements as activity increases or wanes on the various articles. Pairing with individuals or even groups guarantees the problem that I quoted you on in the opening. Think number of articles / not number of students. You also want to "train" an OA on the art of diffusing conflict; not all editors are accommodating, occasionally they resent intrusion into their subject as a teaching tool. So much to say here... sorry I wasn't brief.--JimmyButler (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

    No worries about briefness; this is interesting and very helpful -- thanks for taking the time to put down the details. Let me give you a current example: I'm an OA for this class, which has about 70 students. Each is (supposed to be) editing a different article, mostly articles about state political parties, such as Colorado Republican Party. Since in this case it's a one-to-one relationship between students and articles, there's really no difference between assigning mentors to students or to articles. What's happened so far is that there is one editor (Ground Zero -- poor bastard) who had all these already watchlisted, and who has been engaging with the students to the extent he can. I've chipped in a little, but frankly he's faster than me. I don't think this is ideal, because it's not fair to Ground Zero, but I'm not sure what to do about it. He's been mostly good natured about it, and I'm glad that that echoes your experience with not having assigned mentors, but there have been a couple of cases where the students needed help, and I suspect there are more cases where I could intervene if I had the time and energy to review fifty sets of contrib histories every day. I'm also somewhat hampered by not being very familiar with the course. Anyway, I don't have a specific question for you, but this is, I think, a fairly typical current situation in the USEP, and I feel that the result is the students are simply not getting as much support from the OAs as I would like to see. I've been arguing that that's a bad thing, but you have me wondering if in fact that's just the way the classes need to run. However, I also wonder if the difference is that you have a lot of Wikipedia experience by now -- these instructors are generally much less knowledgeable, and can't fill the role you mentioned above, of having "someone in the room who grasps the big picture". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

• Why was the second year an epic fail? Because you couldn't grade the individual coursework accurately? Or did the articles not get improved? What was the nature of the conflict between the groups?
  • This is problem was strictly on my side. It goes back to parents. Accusations of sandbagging, excuses of no help from others, parent's blaming the kids short-comings on the actions of others in the group, etc. Students getting good grades by riding the coat-tails of others. Basically the same concerns regarding responsibility and credit, except not over mentor - student, rather the inter-action of class-mates. They hated each other by the end of the term. There were no successes, procrastination was epidemic... the sense that it's ok - no one else did anything either. The portfolio has worked out brilliantly in that regard. I can have group effort; and still assign an individual grade. You should be the fly on the wall, when I interview each student separately and analyze their portfolio. "How many points for one spelling correction and one reference"... 2 perhaps. They cry; yet, no one (not even parents) have challenged the grade.--JimmyButler (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

    I think this is a brilliant solution, but as I said above I am curious about the detailed mechanics of how they present their portfolios. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

• I think your comments on the third year are very interesting: "it was a challenge keeping students productive, with no specific goal". You might consider using the quantitative metric that the PPI used; you can see the report here; you may also be interested in the definition of the metric and here is an example assessment -- we did these before and after on a large sample of the edited articles. If you were to use a metric like this, could you base the grade on it? Do you think that could be an approach we recommend at the university level?

I will try to keep an eye on the articles that your group is working on. I see Malleus in the watchlist there; as I'm sure you know by now he's a very good editor; he has a good eye for unclear prose and is a fine copyeditor. If you are attracting editors of that quality you're doing fine. That "linked watchlist" gadget is neat, by the way; I didn't know about that, and will probably use it myself.

• I will review your resources and respond as time permits. I agree, if we were doing a horrid job, Malleus would have eaten us up and spit us out. I've mentioned "global communication" as a 21st century skill. His interaction with my students is an exceptional example. Especially since he is British. They have such an ego-centric view and barely conceive of a world beyond our little back-water community. At Croatan, a guy across the Atlantic is a common topic at the student lunch table. If the mentor's could see the excitment they bring to the project, recruitment and retention would not be a problem.

  That is extremely cool. Does Malleus know he's a hot topic in a North Carolina lunchroom? Not sure if he has my talk page on his watchlist, but if he does: Malleus, I'm impressed. Jimmy, I think you're right: it should be very motivating for most editors. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

  I didn't know that, no, but I do now, as your page is on my watchlist. JimmyButler is of course quite right. If I'd thought he was doing a horrid job I would indeed have chewed them all up and spat them out, but I think he's doing a great job, and so are those of his students I've come across. I've had no problems with any of them, which is a damn sight more than I can say about the mass of Wikipedia editors. It's my view that any reasonably committed group of high-school students could achieve GA without breaking sweat, and learn much about research and presentation of results in the process. FA is a much bigger fish though, and I kind of wonder whether it's worth it for the students, especially if they get a proper GA review. I've written many articles myself that I doubt I will ever advance to FA. But I guess the best students might want to challenge themselves though. Malleus Fatuorum 04:02, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

  At one point I would have agreed that GA should be in reach for a reasonably committed group of students, though it would depend on the topic, of course (e.g. getting mammal to GA); however, I've run into such a wide range of competence from the students I've interacted with that I'm not sure it's true. Perhaps it's true when there's an knowledgeable and experienced instructor like Jimmy running the class. Incidentally, do you have anything to add to Jimmy's comments? You've quite a bit of experience with his class too. I'm trying to use this as input to WT:USEP; I know you've already commented there, so you are aware that the design of the program is far from ideal, and the more we can understand why Jimmy's program works well the better the input to the USEP can be. Actually, you haven't said much over there, but one thing you did say that I noticed was that the WMF should be approaching people like Jimmy. I agree. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:19, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

  I haven't really taken much notice of the USEP programme, but my view is that floppy topics such as positive psychology, for instance, need a lot more hand holding than those on the more conventional sciences like biology. And I say that as someone with a psychology degree myself. In my own limited experience of these wikiprojects I do somewhat take SandyG's point about scalability; I know that if I were a student working on an article I'd want feedback pretty quickly; I'm pumped up so why aren't you kind of thing. So my only suggestion is that I send you some of my DNA for the WMF to clone, during which process you may feel it prudent to remove my incivility gene. Malleus Fatuorum 04:39, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

  I like the idea of an army of your clones helping out on Wikipedia. Perhaps they could all support you at your next RfA? Or would they not all agree with you? And what would we call them? Gladius Fatuorum, Hasta Fatuorum, and so on? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:36, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for asking more questions instead of giving answers, but I will try to be more helpful if you do have specific questions. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:05, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I've added my responses. I tried (and failed) to brief. I'll stop here before I start filling the page with all the positives to be gained from this type of Project. As we say Down East, "No need to preach to the choir". I will investigate the supplied links. Thank you for this opportunity to reflect. --JimmyButler (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

And thank you for the input. There are very few people on Wikipedia with enough experience to do more than theorize over how to improve the USEP, and your experience should be very helpful to us. And incidentally, the USEP is supposed to be a resource for teachers -- is there anything that you would want such a project to provide as a resource to you, that you don't have now? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

By "linked watchlist" do you mean this? And even if you don't, how did you do that? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:14, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant; I haven't seen it before, but it looks like you can put any Wikipedia page in as the last part of the page name, and it will give you a recent changes list for every page linked from that page. For example, this will give you every change to a page for which there is a link here on this page. Any teacher with a course page that contains all the article links (and perhaps all the student talk links to, though that could be a separate page perhaps) can get access to this by putting the course page in as a link. I tried it here for a real current course page and it looks useful; I'll mention it to that instructor. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:49, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow. That's kinda cool. Thanks! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Final thoughts and I'll move on.

In response to the query, How much preparation are students given regarding research paper fundamentals? I think it would be catastrophic not to have covered issues such as credible references, when and where to cite, and concepts such as paraphrasing and plagiarism at the very least. This is true, at the high school level; although, I suspect college professors assume students already know these things. The common thread on which all seem to agree, the teacher has an important role to play if such projects are to be successful. A great amount of class time which goes undocumented on talk pages, is dedicated to this project. Each season seems to require more time, as each season seems to generate new concerns to which I hope to avoid. I over-looked the support page outlining the teacher's responsibilities for such projects with suggestions that might help them establish a functional relationship with those mentoring the students. I instead monitored and emulated jbmurray's efforts, which seems to suffer many of the same concerns (student apathy, less than stellar contributions, and frustrated mentors) that are being addressed here. No insult intended. Faced with concrete guidelines, the professors/teachers may be better equipped to decide whether they have the time to monitors large classes effectively. After four seasons, I'm still uncertain as to what is an equitable balance between my role and that of the mentor in guiding student progress. I have instituted two policies, "Teacher Review" and "Mistakes I have Made (Where students keep a running list of errors brought to their attention via c/e). With these steps, anything over 4 articles (not students), that are being aggressively edited, seems to be the tipping point. Unfortunately, I work two jobs, I suspect others would have more time to spare. I've exceeded a manageable number this semester; thus, I'll depart to focus on student efforts. Thank you for allowing my the opportunity to reflect on our current progress and will continue to contemplate the over arching theme; Can Wikipedia serve as both a Teaching Tool and a credible Encyclopedia? --JimmyButler (talk) 16:29, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Georgia republican party

Hi. My name is Mitchell Larkins and I've been assigned the Georgia Republican Party Wikipedia page as my class assignment. I appreciate your editing, but I put a lot of time and work into paraphrasing and adding to the article. I'd appreciate improvements, not removal of information like massive paragraphs. It's my responsibility to fill the page, and I believe the information was accurate and well paraphrased. If it needs to be sourced better, by all means, please help me. I just ask that you help me work on this page, not cause destruction to everything I've done.

Collaboration

Hi Mike, I'd be happy to help you with finding sources for the New Worlds (magazine). I have access to JSTOR (in addition to many other academic databases), and a university library. Perhaps post a list of what you need on the talk page and I'll start searching? Sasata (talk) 17:35, 28 November 2011 (UTC)