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Gadget for communicating with mentees

Okay! That javascript idea was a lot easier than I expected. It's ready to try out. Just go to Special:MyPage/vector.js and add this line: 

importScript('User:Sross_(Public_Policy)/ambassadorwikilove.js');

It will add a little tab with an ambassador icon, which has options for leaving a message, or leaving the ambassador welcome template, or leaving an award like a barnstar or the WikiPen. And you can check a box to have it automatically email the user, too. Please test it, and let me know what you think.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Testing --Guerillero | My Talk 23:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm unfamiliar with javascript stuff. Can this script work with Monobook? Bejinhan talks 03:21, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
No, it will only work with Vector. I basically just replaced the simple parts of Kaldari's script, and don't know much about javascript myself. But the Monobook incompatibility is mentioned at User talk:Kaldari/wikilove.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 04:03, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
It shows up as a tab, as stated, but I notice that the default for a plain message is to leave the signature off. As I didn't want to send an e-mail, I skipped the script when replying to a mentee last night. -- Donald Albury 11:01, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
It adds the signature automatically, and you can check the box for whether you want to send email or not. If you don't, though, it's not really any easier than just leaving a normal message.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
So I've made some double signed posts. I also notice that it creates a standard header of 'Message', which is OK if not used too often on a user's talk page. The e-mail option is nice for making sure that students who haven't edited for two weeks get the message. -- Donald Albury 11:56, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I'll try to figure out how to make a field to input the the header manually, if/when I have time. I'm not really a programmer, but I can probably get some help.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Does it require the new skin? I do like the old one better... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:42, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes it does. I tried each of the functions out and it seems to be working fine. I am going to put this on the resources page --Guerillero | My Talk 23:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't we encourage Campus ambassadors and students to keep EmailUser enabled? One of the reasons I had communication issues was just that: the campus ambassador didn't have an email set. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 13:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The Campus Ambassadors should at least all have email enabled; if you notice ones that don't, please let me know and I'll try to get in touch with them. We've tried to pass along to students to enable email, but there's a lot of stuff info they get in a short time, and it's easy for details like that to get lost. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
User:Erhall doesn't have it enabled. Please ask her to enable it... Thanks, ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 01:19, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Survey idea

I'd suggest we develop and implement an informal survey, asking students about their interaction with the mentors. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

We have surveys planned along those lines. Ask Amy if you'd like more details.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:12, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Mentors for WInona project

Anyone willing to pick mentees from The Winona project? I asked at the mailing list already, but none of the students have gotten mentors. I'd rather not mass-message the ambassadors (last-ditch), so I'm asking here first. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 12:20, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Would be happy to. Yes Michael? •Talk 13:06, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Google Group messages

See above for the guidelines for the Google Group. A discussion has been raised of whether it's a bad thing to attempt to have all discussions on-wiki instead of on a mailing list with high volume. If you have a comment to contribute, please do so here. --Ldavis (Public Policy) (talk) 20:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

We rarely have discussions that affect all of us, so essentially you're relegating 95% of communication to on-wiki? I fear we'll lose a lot of discussion participants this way... not as many will check this page every day for updates like email. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:10, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
All I can say is that reading my e-mail requires a lot less time than working my watchlist. I have a large watchlist, and I tend to skip pages if I recognize the last poster (i.e., I'm working the watchlist to spot problems), so I might not notice a discussion occurring on this page. I check my e-mail as soon as I get on-line, but it may be a while (maybe the next day) before I notice something on a WP talk page. -- Donald Albury 21:14, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm happy with emails being filtered and threads culled if they are or become off-topic or too broad in scope, but with Gmail and threaded conversations I honestly find it a lot easier to read the list than I would to follow conversations on-wiki. I suspect there'll be a much decreased level of participation (well, worse, less people actually knowing what is going on) if everything is moved on-wiki. I can access my email easily from my cellphone, for example, but not edit half as easily. While I support the principle of having everything on-wiki, I am happy with the way the list has worked thus far. With 1k pages on my watchlist (and this having trimmed it recently), even as someone who relies heavily on my watchlist I can't help but have discussions on this page drowned out by other activity. For those of us who are less reliant on watchlists or unaccustomed to using them, I think this would more or less cut them out of the loop. sonia♫ 00:57, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I filter and archive the Google group messages, so I get them in a dedicated subfolder of my Wikipedia email folder. They don't bother me... I think that others do the same thing. On wiki communication has the publicity problem (not everyone sees the important stuff), and also the mobile editing problem. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 01:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I echo all comments above. As my watchlist is relatively large, I can't reasonably take note of every page update. I filter all my emails, also, so the volume of them isn't much of a bother, either. To be frank, had these discussions been on-wiki, I would not have paid as close attention to them or even read some threads at all.
Nevertheless, I do understand that some more minor discussions are better moved on-wiki, to be considerate to those who do not sort their emails. For the most part, however, I think sticking to email threads works well for most. — La Pianista ♫ ♪ 03:05, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
To echo what I said on the list, I find listerv useful and managable, and I will likely be less active here, because my watchlist is swampled, and while I will try to check this page every x days, it will be less efficient, less often and more cumbersome to me than doing so on the listerv was. For people who were swamped by emails, using free software that handles message filtering is a simple, common and popular solution. Or, as another person has suggested, unsubscribe. Listerv is not obligatory, but taking it away from those of us who do find it helpful and efficient does not seem to be the fairest solution. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 04:07, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Echoing the above comments, gmail especially makes this easy to group conversations into very manageable levels of reading and e-mails, and other services and software are available. I currently run about 5 e-mail addresses on as many as 8 listserves and several groups of informational e-mails through gmail, and have no trouble managing them, even though I probably get 40+ emails a day during the week. Learning how to manage e-mail traffic is absolutely critical, especially in an office setting, and the usefulness of the listserve is in the ability to make quick responses to the whole group, unlike the watchlisted talk pages which are slow and not garunteed to reach everyone, Sadads (talk) 10:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
While I appreciate LiAnna's distinction between the Google Group being a requirement for participants, and a typical list serv being voluntary and unsubscribe-able, I nonetheless agree with all of the above comments. I understand that it's important to keep traffic low on the Google Group so that the majority of users don't ignore it when important information comes through. What I think the majority of us are saying is that, a)the beginnings of discussions that occur there are also important and b)if people are having issues with their volume of emails, then this is a great time to learn how to use the tools available to you to organize your inbox. I'll repeat that this is an important professional skill, and for those who may not be in the midst of careers yet, now is as good a time as any to try it out. As it is now, I am extremely hesitant to participate in any emailing on the group, and instead of moving on-wiki, I quickly assess the priorities of my very busy day and move on without commenting anywhere at all. If I'm doing this, I'm sure others are scared off as well. Open discourse is important. I find it completely reasonable that discussions should start on email and then move on-wiki, as they have in the past. HstryQT (talk) 12:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I’m an Ambassador at MSU-Bozeman. I find this google email group helpful, albeit, sometimes a topic takes a turn into a long discussion, but that’s okay with me. I receive this group’s posts in Outlook and have built a rule for it, thus I peruse and sort at my discretion, not on the fly, so maybe that’s why all the posts don’t bother me. Also, when something seems to get hung into a long online two- or three-way, it alerts me that I might run into this same topic in the Wikipedia Ambassador real-world, and knowing where the potential hot-topics are is enormously helpful. I do greatly appreciate when a Wikipedian moves a long, often very involved topic into it’s own wiki-space. Consequently, I want the Ambassadors to continue doing their own monitoring of the newsgroup instead of having an overseer. I’d prefer to do my own decision-making on what content in the group discussions is pertinent to my Ambassadorship. Yeah, sometimes there seems to be a lot of background noise, but that is inherent to working within Wikipedia English edition and I personally like it that way.McMormor (talk) 20:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that this conflict is the result of the recipients of the messages not being a self-selected group. People who watch a Wikipedia talk page do so because they want to see what's happening there; they care about it. If people are required to subscribe to the listserv of course the volume is going to be uninteresting to them. This happens on-wiki too; on the very rare occasions I post to somewhere like WP:ANI I always unwatch it pretty quickly; I don't need that much frenetic activity on my watchlist.

If the goal of the listserv is to ensure communication, and if we need the listserv, but also need to not drive away participants, then the approach of using moderator tools to force conversations on-wiki after a comment or two seems a good compromise. Those who are truly interested will go there to join the conversation. I don't see a problem with the slightly higher bar to participation -- those unwilling to jump that bar are probably neither interested in the outcome, nor likely to have much to contribute to that conversation. If the result is less conversation, that doesn't have to be a bad thing -- lots of things get talked about on and off wiki, and it doesn't automatically correlate to results.

I don't mean to sound cynical -- I'm a fan of the ambassadors program. But there's an optimum level of communication that will help this program succeed, and it lies somewhere between the extremes of highly-restricted communication and a high volume Google Group. Folder tools don't cut volume, and don't read email for you; they organize communication, but organized over-communication is still over-communication. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:56, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

  • my $0.02 is that I support this change. It allows for our emails mot to be clogged by things that are not sensitive information and that half of the subscribers don't care about. --Guerillero | My Talk 01:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
    • The point about some people being forced to join and not caring is an interesting one, can it be elaborated who are those people? Maybe we can find a better solution for them (you?). However, Mike, just like you note the inefficiency of watchlisting AN(I) for specific discussions, I think this is true for most wiki pages, including this one. Guerillero, there is no such thing as "clogged email" if one learns how to use message folders and filters. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I support this change, basically for the same reasons that I gave in the Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors#Improving communication with students discussion above. Just scroll up. ;) Banaticus (talk) 22:16, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's my objection to a high volume list in a nutshell--I don't want a high volume mailing list for the same reason that ambassadors and folk don't want to watchlist this page or the USPP talk page. They would lose control over the flow of information in a particular channel (in their case a watchlist, in mine an email account). If I'm not intimately involved in the mechanics of the USPP talk page I don't want to watchlist that page because ruitine messages or questions there aren't going to interest me. Likewise I would prefer that messages in the ambassador's mailing list be kept to those which are germane and require some action. Otherwise I have no means of separating the "important" group messages from the group messages about Civility at RfA or some such nonsense. If I cannot separate important messages from unimportant messages *and* I face a high volume of messages then I'm stuck reading each message (or skimming) to see which may be important. That, frankly, is not a very good use of my time. Just as for a lot of us watchlisting individual pages in the USPP project space isn't a good use of time. We aren't interested enough in the specific information to merit the additional noise. On the mailing list some suggestions have been made that I rework my email workflow or change how I go about my business with all emails because the emails from the campus ambassador program have a low signal to noise ratio. That's unlikely to happen. As I said on the list it is more likely that I'll simply unsubscribe from the list or automatically bin messages from the list admin. That's an extreme response but I don't see any reason why it needs to come to that. All that has to happen in order to avoid a reaction like that is to raise the signal to noise ratio in the email list. I don't see how this is too difficult. Protonk (talk) 19:45, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

steering committee election: open for voting

Hey folks! The voting phase for the Wikipedia Ambassador Steering Committee election has now started. There are just six candidates for seven slots, so the voting process will mainly be to make sure there isn't major opposition to any of the candidates. Barring that, these six candidates would constitute the new steering committee, and the seventh slot would probably be left open for someone else who steps forward later on (who could be put before the ambassadors similarly to make sure there isn't strong opposition).

So ambassadors, please vote!--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:16, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The election has ended; congrats to the new committee!

Thanks, everyone who voted and everyone who ran. The election has now ended, so we can get started setting up a meeting or two for the outgoing and incoming members to talk together and transition to the new group. There's still one open spot on the committee; we've talked informally about filling it with anyone who volunteers, pending a chance for the community to discuss (and possibly object to) that person's addition to the committee. So if you're interested, say so.

Thanks soooo much to the initial volunteer members of the steering committee!

And a very warm welcome to the new committee members!

Annie and I will also continue to participate in the steering committee in an advisory role.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador article

Please be advised of a discussion at Talk:SAFE Port Act#Merger with Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006?, which affects the article Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. That article is part of an educational assignment at Michigan State University supported by WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the Spring 2011 term. Further details are available on the course page. OCNative (talk) 03:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Professor Obar will be encouraging the students to participate in that discussion. Thanks for leaving this note, OCNative.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Apply now! Regional Ambassadors deadline extended

Hi Ambassadors!

First of all, thanks to those of you who have already applied to be a Wikipedia Regional Ambassador - you'll hear from us shortly, if you haven't already.

We would like to encourage the rest of you to apply for the volunteer role of Regional Ambassadors as well. We really see this role as a great new opportunity with many benefits for those who take it on. We realized, however, that perhaps we did not communicate these benefits clearly enough, so we would like to more explicitly spell out what Regional Ambassadors will get out of this role. Here are what we see as the three biggest benefits:

  • Customized leadership and management coaching - We will provide close, personal guidance and mentorship throughout the entire Regional Ambassador term to help develop and practice your leadership and community-organizing skills.
  • Significant resume boost - you will be the very first generation of Regional Ambassadors, an important leadership role that is likely to translate very well into leadership roles in other organizations you may apply to in the future. In addition, we'd be more than happy to provide letters of recommendation to good Regional Ambassadors down the line.
  • Invitation (and free travel) to some key Wikimedia events - we will be announcing our "Wikipedia in Education Summit" soon. This event will bring together some key professors, Campus Ambassadors, Online Ambassadors, and students who have been involved in this program, along with various Wikimedia staff (including our Executive Director and our Chief Global Development Officer). Due to limited capacity this event will be by invitation only, and Regional Ambassadors will certainly be on the invitee list and will be specially recognized at this event, and we will pay for most of your travel and lodging costs.

From the conversations that I've had with various people, it also seems that some of you are interested in being a Regional Ambassador but feel that you are not qualified enough. I would like to point out that the description for the Regional Ambassador role is aspirational - in other words, it describes an ideal, and we know that most people we select for this role will not possess all of the listed qualifications. So try not to be intimidated by the role description; we highly encourage you to apply even if you feel that you have just some of the qualifications! You may learn something about yourself!

Since we didn't communicate the information in this email to you sooner, we are extending the Regional Ambassador application deadline by two weeks - to Friday, April 29th - although we still encourage you to apply as soon as possible. I attached the .doc version of the application to the email I sent out about this to the Ambassadors Google Group. (If you already applied, don't feel cheated - your punctuality and enthusiasm will reflect well on you in the selection process!)

Thank you very much. Please let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to receiving your applications. Annie Lin (Campus Team Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 17:54, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Requesting feedback

I suggested posting at Wikipedia:Requests for feedback to my mentees. Two of them did, and each got a response. This looks like a useful resource. However, if we start using it a lot, we should help the volunteers at that page, by providing feedback, and by recruiting more volunteers for it. -- Donald Albury 01:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

+1. As much as we can, I'd say ambassadors should a) take advantage of existing processes or venues where students might get useful help and feedback appropriate to where they are in the learning process, and b) try to offset any extra burden we put on those processes.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 15:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Agree per Sross. However, would that wind up swamping the RfF page? My 2p worth is to set up a separate RfF area as a subpage from WP:Ambassadors.--Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 16:28, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Agree with Alan. We've got a diversity of ambassadors which would help in feedback. We can set up the subpage (with less evil technicalities) and let the RfF regulars know about it so they can help out. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 08:27, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Good Article nominee needs feedback

Hey Ambassadors! I just noticed this article, which was nominated a while ago for GA and hasn't been picked up for review yet: Minimum Foundation Program. Anyone up for it?--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:28, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Will take it up in a hour or two. Yes Michael? •Talk 02:33, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Regrets. Quite busy now! Yes Michael? •Talk 04:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's another one as well: Graduation completion rates and college drop-out rates in the United States. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Any Online Ambassadors interested in becoming Campus Ambassadors

Several people have talked to me before, but if you're an Online Ambassador who is interested in becoming a Campus Ambassador (no matter where you live), please let me know within the next few weeks. Thanks --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:05, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you're aware that I am keen, but probably not this year. sonia♫ 06:42, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
Same here. In fact, I might want to start off the program in Mumbai next year. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 07:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
I would be a Campus Ambassador but am limited to colleges in the Augusta, Georgia area. Particularly I would like to see Paine College participate at some level. My76Strat (talk) 07:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
Any Bangaloreans here? Anyone? Of course, I'd be more than happy to coordinate (by becoming a CA) between Profs and students etc anywhere in the world really. Yes Michael? •Talk 07:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
I, personally would prefer to be around to bug the professor/students. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 06:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

New Assessment for article improvements with PPI

hi Ambassadors,
If any of you want a firsthand look at the impact you are making, I welcome you to assess article quality. Check out the Assessment tab of WP:USPP and use the metric there. Another assessment round is posted. This round should reflect some big improvements to the articles. WP:USPP Post Assessment 2.1
There is a group of about 25 subject matter experts who are assessing, and last week I sent them a tutorial video on how to leave comments on talk pages. So if you see any newcomers on the discussion pages, please help me welcome them.
The assessment team is doing a really amazing job, in fact, here at WMF, we are using their ratings as the “gold standard” to test the Article Feedback Tool and see how well it works. I will be presenting lots of research in the coming months. Contact me if you have any questions or comments about the research or want to join the assessment team. Thanks!ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 21:32, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Singapore?

Hey everyone, has anyone linked up with these guys out in Singapore? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:58, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I have while NPPing --Guerillero | My Talk 03:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Your Impact

Amount of content added by Public Policy Initiative students.
Amount of content added by Public Policy Initiative students.

Ambassadors,

We've heard from a few of you that it's hard to see the effect your work is having, especially when individual students are unresponsive. So I wanted to show you the attached chart. The chart tracks the contributions, by month, of all students in the Public Policy Initiative classes -- the students you are helping in class or mentoring online. The chart measures bytes our students have contributed to the article namespace alone (so it doesn't count talkpage content).

In short: last month, our students contributed 2.9 million bytes of content to the English Wikipedia article namespace. That's the equivalent of about 1,944 printed pages of work.

This incredible amount of high-quality contributions is due in large part to your volunteer efforts -- the presentations you make in class, the messages you exchange on-wiki with your mentees, the help you provide in IRC. Our program is having a quite noteworthy impact on the rate at which content on the English Wikipedia grows, and you are front and center in that effort.

On behalf of the entire Public Policy team: THANK YOU! It would be impossible to achieve this without you. --Ldavis (Public Policy) (talk) 18:26, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Working on a proposal to a school

I have the opportunity to propose the Ambassador program to a local college. I have drafted an Executive Summary (based on some talking points sent to me by Sage) for the proposal at Wikipedia:Ambassadors/School Recruitment. I would appreciate any help on this. I'm hoping we can develop materials to recruit schools. -- Donald Albury 21:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Mentors needed for Public Policy Making class

Hi ambassadors,

Mentors are needed for the Public Policy Making class from Troy University. The class have created 3 articles and article feedback is needed. There are currently 2 mentor spots open. Let me know on my talk page or by replying to this email here if you wish to help mentor one of the two groups. For those of you who cannot mentor the groups, you can still leave feedback on the talk pages of the articles. The more feedback, the better! Thanks, Bejinhan talks 04:16, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors/Resources

There are some questions I there that could use input from others... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 15:58, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Public Policy Initiative spring learning points

Hi folks! We wanted to share some reflections on the second term of the ambassador program.

The following learning points from the spring term are taken from discussion the Public Policy Initiative team has had with Ambassadors, professors, and students, but especially from Annie's recent trip to visit several classes around the country.

Please note that these are the major themes that came from our discussions, and that some professors/students/Ambassadors may have different preferences and opinions than what is mentioned below.

Students

Student motivations

In interviews, students repeatedly mention that they are motivated to do a better job on the Wikipedia assignment vs. a traditional assignment because their work is reaching a large global audience (rather than just reaching one person - their professor). Being published is also a highlight for students.

Undergrads vs. graduate students

Both groups of students have participated, and both groups have gotten a lot out of the Wikipedia assignment, but undergraduates tend to be less likely to see the value of the assignment. In general, professors report that undergraduate students complain more about the Wikipedia assignment, although professors note that undergrads in general complain more about any assignment than graduate students do. Undergraduates tend to be less motivated by the topic area, perhaps because it's a class not in their major. This does not by any means imply that it is not worth it to work with undergraduate classes; what this teaches us is that making the assignment more creative and letting topic selection match student interest is key to getting undergraduates excited about the assignment.

Ideas for improvement

Several students mentioned they'd like to collaborate more closely with other schools. Students were intrigued by the idea of working on the same article with students from other classes at other universities. Expanding "Editing Fridays," an Ambassador-led initiative to collaborate on editing one article each Friday afternoon, to include students as well as Ambassadors might also be an easy and fun way to improve collaboration across schools.

Recognition for student work

Students seemed excited about how much attention their articles got; highlighting the existing tools that show how many people view each student's article could be another good motivator. Students like the Leaderboard and other competitive elements; they'd like to see it expanded to include awards, such as swag, certificates, invitations to events, titles, blog posts, and other public recognition.

The Assignment

Syllabus design

Professors who followed our suggestion to establish benchmark deadlines were very glad they did. They noticed students seemed to procrastinate, and assuring that students made incremental progress made the experience better for everyone. Assignments worked best, professors reported, when they asked students to start editing earlier in the semester.

Community involvement

Professors who encouraged community interactions through Online Ambassador interaction or reaching out to topic-appropriate WikiProjects also found it to be a good learning experience for their students.

Teaching Wikipedia

Ambassadors suggested that what is needed is teaching the technical and cultural aspects of Wikipedia differently. The technical aspects, they found, could be taught in optional, outside-of-class labs, whereas cultural aspects were best learned through in-depth, in-class presentations. Some students needed more help than others with the technical aspects, so moving that to out-of-class time reduced frustration.

Grading

Grading is still difficult. We need to find a technical solution to this problem, so professors can easily track exactly what each student added to the Wikipedia article they worked on for class.

Relationships

Clarify expectations

We did a much better job clarifying our expectations to each party (professors, Online Ambassadors, and Campus Ambassadors) this term, but we can do better to communicate the expectations among the groups. From the outset we need to be clearer about what each group can expect from the other groups, so everyone understands exactly the role that each party will play.

More communication

Campus Ambassadors often said they wanted more direct interactions with students – they wanted to have better access to communicating with students. They also wanted to communicate more with Online Ambassadors and professors, so everyone was on the same page at all times, and they could work through each other's working styles to make the best team possible. By talking through the assignment ahead of time, professors and Ambassadors could reach a realistic expectation of what the student output would be, given the Wikipedia assignment's place in the course syllabus.

Intra-pod and inter-pod

The "pod" model worked with two Campus Ambassadors and a professor, but we want to integrate Online Ambassadors more closely into the pods as well. Instead of having each Online Ambassador mentor individual students, we want to have an Online Ambassador assigned to a class and mentor the students in the class when questions arise. Facilitating more intra-pod communication will help address the expectations and communications issues mentioned above. We want to continue emphasizing inter-pod relationships, but we want to ensure we're focusing on intra-pod relationships as well.

Overall

Some key points
  • Students and professors want more guidance on topic selection and what a good article is.
  • As we expand beyond a U.S. public policy focus, we should try to make use of course-related WikiProjects more for community interaction and content feedback.
  • Professors are central to success of class. Professors who are excited by new methods of teaching and who care deeply about their students' success are best for this type of project.
Everyone is different

There's not one right way of doing it. Some professors are more open to feedback than others. Some structure their class differently from others. The Ambassadors' role is different in each class. The frequency of communication is different in each group. So it's incredibly important that we create a diverse set of resources that can be adapted to meet everyone's needs. And because everyone is different, it is critical that pods meet early – ideally before the term begins – to clarify roles and expectations.

On behalf of the PPI team, --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:06, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Regarding grading, I never had much trouble with it. Half the grade is from meeting deadlines, with most deadlines requiring various, easily-identifiable wiki edits. As long as the instructor knows how to use user contribution and article history tools, this is a brief to grade. The other half of the grade comes from the group project (how well the article is written), weighted for each student by their individual activity. This is no different from regular paper grading. See my wiki syllabi for details. Regarding how to find a topic, see "Selecting an article" section in my wiki syllabi. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 02:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Very interesting Information. I hope that we keep this in mind while we plan for the fall term --Guerillero | My Talk 03:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

All the above is consistent with my experience. I would much prefer a model in which there is one Online Ambassador per class rather than per student - it might seem like more work, but because individual students have other responsibilities they tend to vanish for long periods of time, leading to limited engagement and a feeling of not contributing by Online Ambassadors. In larger classes there might be an OA for every 10-20 students. I also definitely wanted more communication with students - I felt like they were really hesitant to contact us until they really needed to, partly because there wasn't a rapport. Re: community interaction, I think it's inevitable that for some specialized topics, no community members will feel qualified to give feedback - which is why I think peer feedback from other students (in the same and similar classes) is so important. Dcoetzee 19:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Dcoetzee. I had only one mentee that I felt I interacted with. Others edited in bursts (maybe once a week) and otherwise seemed to be off-line, and didn't seek my help or respond to my comments. I would be interested in learning how I could change my approach to generate more interaction with the mentees. I can also see an advantage to working with multiple students in one class rather than with individual students in multiple classes. At least, I think it's worth a try. -- Donald Albury 11:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Improving student experience - ensuring interaction

Reposted from listserv

I have a theory that one's experience on Wikipedia is positively reinforced if one has some friendly and FREQUENT interactions; in turn it is negatively reinforced if they are unfriendly and RARE.

Students interactions are usually friendly (safe for some bot warnings) but infrequent. I speak from experience of supervising dozens of student group projects, only a few of which have attracted outside comments - but when they did, students were (for the most part) positively surprised. How can we improve the frequency?

Here's an idea: for group projects, we should have a list of articles being edited by students. This list should be updated with "last talk page" comment date, and we should try to keep them alive, to show the students that there is a larger community out there which cares.

What do you think? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 23:49, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Can we comment on students' work more than they edit? Do you mean to say we should just be casually chatting with them, or contact them about topics other than their own contributions? I think otherwise the most you can comfortably interact with a student is 1-to-1 in commenting on their edits. Of course the frequency of their editing may be a function, in some part, of how often they are interacting with an ambassador. Maximilianklein (talk) 00:23, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but I rarely got any response from comments I left on mentees' talk pages. I don't engage in much chit-chat on Wikipedia, and my comments were about the articles, but I wasn't able to engage some of the mentees in any communication. How do other ambassadors approach this? -- Donald Albury 11:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
The same thing happened to me. I think that part of the issue is that the students and us have diffrent ideas on how quickly things work on wikipedia --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 13:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
It really isn't our fault if there's insufficient communication between the students and us. From what I've seen, it is the students who are making communication difficult. Many of us left messages on the talk pages on students and many times, the students did not reply. I have come to a place where I've learned that I should not expect a response from students. It is that bad. Bejinhan talks 02:19, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Most students will edit in bursts. To ensure that this will be spread over many smaller ones, I stress the importance of multiple smaller deadlines and assignments that make them go and edit talk pages and such throughout the course in my wikisyllabus. And it will take a while for them to realize that we can react near-instantaneously to their edits and inquires. At the same point, there are many places in Wikipedia that are not that active, and hence, students editing there - or asking questions - will not get much responses. While students as a group are not the most motivated and talkative editors, there are exceptions - and it is a shame to see them demotivated when their first experiences are being ignored. Not ignored by us, but by the wider community.
Here's a live case of what I mean. I am teaching a course right now); it is outside the Public Policy scope so I am handling it myself (just like I always did in the years past). I try to actively comment on all that students are doing on their talk pages and article pages (they just started work on their group project). But the articles they edit are low-key, and I don't expect that many editors will bother commenting on Talk:Economic globalization, Talk:Archaic globalization or Talk:Social web (the three articles that my groups have chosen to edit). Now, I did tell the students they can seek editors to comment and assist them by posting elsewhere, but it is a hit or miss on at least two levels: first, despite "use the talk page" assignments and class demos, students may still be weary/unsure about where to ask; second, when they do - like one of my students did at Talk:Globalization#all_help_is_welcome - it is still possible they will be ignored (like it seems is going to happen in that instance).
What I am driving is that in addition to student's own lack of activity in interaction, we also face a second problem - community is not active enough to answer all queries (and students don't have the experience to know where to post to get them). Which means that the (few) students who may be motivated enough by the class/instructor/assignment to post and seek interaction beyond the instructor/mentor/ambassador may find themselves being ignored and thus, loosing the motivation/will to interact again.
To counteract this, I'd suggest that we ensure the students get their responses - or at least increase the likelihood of doing so. To ensure activity on student's articles and talkpages, RecentChanges tool could work (see this for my class). This still does not ensure students will get responses to questions they ask outside their articles/talkpages, though, but may be a good start. Once we spot a student activity, we can comment on it ourselves or ask others to do so (when a student of mine is reverted, I'll usually ask the reverting editor to go and explain their reasons to the students, in addition to do so myself). This helps to show the student that they can interact with more than just the instructor. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:21, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

APS Wikipedia Initiative

Is the APS's Partnership a potential part of the ambassador program? cheers --Guerillero | My Talk 17:23, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

It's an independent thing that the APS is doing (Piotr and I have been advising them a bit), but I was at the APS convention last week telling psychologists about the ambassador program. So yeah, both through the ambassador program and independently, I expect we'll see a wave of psychology classes editing next year.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Sounds like fun. That is an area that needed some help --Guerillero | My Talk 18:04, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Good article reviewers needed

In the past, I never had a problem getting Good Article reviewers for my student articles, even when I had 8-10 articles. Perhaps GA is in crisis, but this time, I needed 3 reviewers, and so far, got only 1 (Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations#Request_for_reviewers_for_educational_assignments_GANs).

This creates a bit of the problem, as the GA type of an assignment, for me, was always one of the best assignment types of Wikipedia - but it relied (relies...) on being able to get reviewers during the course term (regular articles often wait over a month to get assigned a reviewer).

While my course is not part of the Ambassador program (since it was not open to non-PP courses yet), I'd certainly appreciate if one or two kind souls would be interested in helping out with the reviews in question over the next few days. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:05, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

My Wiki experience is to go direct. Find people you edit with and just use them and let them use you. That's how I get reviewers and copyedits for my FAs and such.TCO (talk) 16:24, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Assessment drive for student articles

As you know, Amy Roth has been working on a project to get some rigorous data on how much students were able to improve the quality of the articles they worked on. That involves taking a limited sample of the articles and having both Wikipedians and non-Wikipedian public policy experts rate the articles on the numerical scale we created for the project (WP:USPP/ASSESS).

But for a more general measure of how successful each of the classes was in producing quality articles, it'd be excellent if we had standard WikiProject ratings for all the articles students worked on. Please help! Just pick a course or two, and start going through and rating and rate any unassessed articles (and re-rate out-of-date ratings from before the students did their work). If you want to use the numerical USPP system, that's fine, but if you just want to stick to the standard Stub/Start/C/B system, that's fine too. Anyone who rates 10 or more student articles is entitled to a barnstar from me (just let me know).

I'm trying to put together a table of as many different factors affecting how the course went as possible (such as how long they spent working live in mainspace, what size of groups they used, whether they were grad students or undergrads, etc.). And having a complete set of article ratings would be a huge benefit for that.

Thanks!--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Can you give us a list of the articles we should look at? I was trying to get CatScan to give me a list of articles from the intersect of Category:Unassessed-Class articles and Template:Educational assignment, but it refuses to bow to my commands, and as far as I can tell, there is no good (interactive) help page for it, sigh... :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:26, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Here's a partial list, the intersection of Category:Wikipedia Ambassador Program student projects, Spring 2011 and Category:Unassessed United States Public Policy articles :

Campus and Online

I just realized that I am listed as online ambassador only, instead of online and campus. Since I often help around Pittsburgh area, if there are no weird rules preventing that, I'd like to add myself to the list of Campus ambassadors as the campus ambassador for Pittsburgh region (University of Pittsburgh). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:36, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Campus Ambassadors have to go through the official CA training, which I expect you'll have the chance to do at the next round of training in August.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:49, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Eh, seems like pointless bureaucracy to me... I've been doing this (helping teachers with wikis) before WP:AMBASSADOR was created. All this does is that it create a fake impression help is not available in Pittsburgh. I am not sure I want to spend time listening to training which I could be giving myself... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:18, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
I do think pragmatically it might make sense if we could fast track ambassador-deputizing in the special case of Piotr, at least on a provisional basis.--Pharos (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
And to generalize, for editors who prove they have experience with those issues, we could make the bureaucratic hassle optional, or say that it is "on hold" pending a trial period, where we see if they indeed can handle the ambassadorial duties without the official training. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:42, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Its a little hard to say if someone actually is experienced in doing what we are asking of them. They may have experience running their own Wikipedia related assignments, but can we really say that they are prepared to run/facilitate assignments in a model familiar to all of the other Ambassadors or to use all of the communication channels and materials we have created for the program effectively? The idea of the training is to get everyone together to make sure that everyone is up to speed on what has been happening and is available in way of support. Remember, there is a big difference between being the official "go to" person for a campus on Wikipedia teaching issues and just being an advocate in your local community. If we fastlane everyone with experience like Piotr, who clearly will be the most qualified someone could be without a training, then you cheapen the label "Campus Ambassador" because they miss the vital part of the training: getting familiar with the program ( which isn't the case with Piotr persay, but could set bad precedent), Sadads (talk) 17:08, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, we could solve this with clear (and high) requirements. Such as, fastlane only people who 1) have taught their own wiki classes and 2) have already instructed others in how to do so. I doubt there will be many who fit those criteria; it is less about setting a precedent rather than making an exception, frankly (and I am asking for an exception, because I don't feel like attending a training session which I'd rather be giving) :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 19:25, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't think there'll be many like Piotr around, so an exception in his case would be good I guess. Lynch7 19:30, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Help with contacting an apparent school-project

Per User talk:DMacks#User talk:202.249.50.60 (Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Science) edits made between 16 and 24 june, looking for help from someone who knows Japanese. DMacks (talk) 18:35, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried WP:JAPAN? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:33, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
It's unrelated to Japan as a topic, but rather it's an outreach to a Japanese school project. I was hoping for someone with experience talking to faculty in this situation. Heck, even someone without the language skills would be useful here (obviously there is a reasonable amount of English literacy in the school). DMacks (talk) 05:29, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

What is an online ambassador?

One of the suggestions at the recent WPHIED summit was that we create a page which would explain what an online ambassador is, geared towards future new ambassadors, as a help/intro page. To start, suggestions where such a page should be created would be appreciated. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:35, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors would seem the obvious page to improve for this purpose.--Pharos (talk) 16:03, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, with Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors/Guidelines. However, Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors/Interactive lessons seems like a misreading redirect, and I'd suggest its removal. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 04:53, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps a separate short description for potential candidates, with the Guidelines documenting best practices. -- Donald Albury 15:05, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Er, this page already exists, as noted above (of course, improvements are always welcome). The only question is how to make it more accessible to a casual searcher. I just added a couple of redirects from the main space, OK? -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:05, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Swiss university contributions

English: [1]. Might be worth figuring out how to contact this prof and offering our assistance, if he isn't already aware of the ambassador program? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:22, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Userbox

Is there a userbox that we are using for students now that there is no more PPI? Awadewit (talk) 18:26, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

  • It seems that some already exist. Search Template space for the word Ambassador. Cheers.  – Ling.Nut (talk) 13:07, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Synching templates, unified look for teaching pages

Please see my comment at Template talk:Wikipedia Ambassadors navbox. If there are no objections, I will see about proceeding with the proposed changes, although I may not be able to do all the code changes (Sage, it was you who created those templates in the first place, right?). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Yep, it was me. And I'll try to deal with any code problems that come up with this. Thanks, Piotrus!--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Since classes are canceled for the next 5 days or so I will see what I can do --Guerillero | My Talk 18:52, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Will you have time to work it in the near future? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for Comments: Ambassador Recall Process

Hello Everyone,

As some of you may know, last semester there was an issue that led to conclusion that a formal recall process for Ambassadors was required.

After debate by the steering committee, we would like to bring to your attention the following proposal:
Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/Ambassador Recall Process
If you would like to make any comments on the proposal, as with any request for comments, please use the proposal's talk page not this talk page :o)

Epistemophiliac (talk) 20:17, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Chair of the Ambassadors Steering Committee
Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee

Changes to the Ambassadors pages

Hi all! I'm making some reorganizational changes and some information updates to a lot of the pages about the Ambassador program, so we don't have duplication across wikis (which we have a lot of right now!). It's an ongoing process this week, but If you see anything amiss, let me know. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I presume you've seen my comments at #Synching templates, unified look for teaching pages? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 00:27, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Piotr, I did; I'm actually removing that navbox anywhere I see it. Since the Campus and Online programs are different in India than they are in the U.S., that information is no longer current for *all* Online Ambassadors. As such, I'm trying to keep everything in this portal be something that is applicable to all Ambassadors. Things specific to the U.S. Campus Ambassador program, for example, should now be on Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Campus Ambassadors rather than Wikipedia:Campus Ambassadors, and general information about the Campus Ambassador program that applies across all regions should be at outreachwiki:Wikipedia Campus Ambassador. The fact that we have different programs running on the same language Wikipedia has been a huge challenge; I admit that I didn't realize the extent of our over-duplication issue until I got myself down this rabbit hole, but I'm doing my best to make sure everything comes out easier to understand for everyone! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good. -- My76Strat (talk) 10:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Can we help with less form-filling?

I just signed as an Online Ambassador for another course. I might have done it earlier, but frankly, I was not looking forward to editing at least three wiki sections: [2], [3], [4]. I wonder how many others are putting this off? Have they missed one of those pages, creating an inconsistency in the records? Have I missed a 4th, or 5th place? I strongly suggest as part of the current redesign we introduce some (templated/substituted) page that would result in only one place ambassadors have to sign to declare their support for a course. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:02, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Good point. We're looking at restructuring all this through a new portal that's about to be developed, and I think the way we have designed it will fix the problem, but I'll look into it to be sure. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Piotr; per this it's actually four pages. I have signed up for four classes which means sixteen pages, and I'm going to have to go hunt them all down now to see which ones I missed. You might also consider having online ambassadors indicate if they are willing to have someone else (steering committee, e.g.) assign them to a course, to avoid having five on a class while some other classes have no OAs. I might even suggest making that the default, and ask OAs to indicate if they don't wish to have someone else make the assignment. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Houston, we have a (copyvio) problem

Please see User talk:Moonriddengirl#Wide-reaching copyright problems coming out of the India Education Program. MRG is already completely inundated with copyvios; it's good that the post says that the campus ambassadors are working on the problem, but I'm assuming this won't limited to one class, and regular WP editors don't have the manpower to deal with widespread copyvios. Is there anything we can do here? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 14:16, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh pleeeeease let there be something we can do here. I've reached saturation and can't keep up with the load by myself! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:20, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
I think this is a good place to start; since ambassadors will usually be engaging with new editors who are trying to add substantial content on encyclopædic subjects (a valuable subset of new editors). Also, ambassadors are potentially looking quite closely at edits and giving quite specific feedback - compared to wikipedia's other "lines of defence" (recent changes, NPP &c) which are sometimes overstretched and might not always spot a subtle problem such as copyvio. bobrayner (talk) 14:25, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Unsurprising. First, this problem is unlikely to be limited to India. Many students, in US, will plagiarize, often, without knowing what they are doing is wrong. For many, copy and paste with attribution "is ok", and don't get me started on problems with close paraphrasing. In my first class that I taught, close to half the students have various copyvio issues. There is an easy solution: tell the students, during the class, about plagiarism, and scare them by showing them our copyvio detection pages, as well as a simple google and google book sentence search. I've had no plagiarism detected since I started doing this. See also my plagiarism info and warning segment in my wiki syllabi: one of the bolded sections here. All that said, we should probably work more closely with the copyvio people; in the end, as students have less motivation than regular editors to contribute from the goodness of their hearts, their work is more prone to be affected by such "cutting corners" problems. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:43, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

So because you assume, with no evidence what-so-ever, that US students plagiarize, that it's OK to do it here? The goals of this program are secondary to the goals of WP. Copyright violations are in no way acceptable.
In the US and here, students who plagiarize material, are expelled from their institution. Is that not how education programs work in India? OlYellerTalktome 18:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
You misread my post. Of course it is NOT ok, but it is COMMON. Btw, I also assume you have little experience with academia? "Students are expelled for plagiarism", that's the theory, but in practice - way too much hassle bureaucratic for the instructor to go through. In fact, if anybody can point me to a news story that actually discusses this happening, I'd love to see it. Now, what can happen in practice is that the student fails the assignment, and perhaps the class (since failing the student does not involve the aforementioned bureaucratic hell). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Your assumption is wildly incorrect but do you always make assumptions about a person's academic background based on one sentence? If I did the same, I'd guess that someone who uses phrases like "btw" and fragment sentences has little experience in academia but let's face it, it's not really indicative of anything.
So back to your point; what does plagarism being common have to do with anything? Do you really think that a student who plagiarizes is notable enough to warrant a news story? Here's an entire Wikipedia article about the concept: Honor Code. If you're really bent on a new story, here's a news article summarizing a Higher Education Academy and Joint Information Systems Committee study that states shows that, "institutions with less selective entry have higher offending rates."
I don't really care about your program's academic integrity. You're doing a fine job of representing its integrity yourself. All I care about is that this Wikipedia project is sending hundreds of students out to create Wikipedia articles before informing their students of Wikipedia's goal, policies, and guidelines.
So I won't beat around the bush. Are you and your project going to do something more substantial to make sure that project's students comply with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or do other projects have to do it for you? OlYellerTalktome 19:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
First. "I don't really care about your program's academic integrity. You're doing a fine job of representing its integrity yourself." Right back at you comes to mind, but let me point you to the WP:NPA page. I'd ask you to refactor your comment. This is a page for constructive discussions, not flaming.
Second. "Are you and your project going to do something more substantial to make sure that project's students comply with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or do other projects have to do it for you?" Instructors should tell students about what plagiarism is and that it is to be avoided, under various sanctions. It is not the role of ambassadors to teach students about plagiarism, but we should certainly tell the instructors that it is a major issue for us. We can, however, do little but to tell them, or occasionally tell it to the students if we are invited to class. If it is done well, as I pointed out in my posts, this can significantly reduce to the plagiarism ratio. If it is not done, well, you see the results. The fact is that many students, all across the world, ignore such warnings. This is a fact we have to be aware when working with this group of editors, and it is not something that can be changed. We should ensure that the students understand what plagiarism is, and are scared of committing it, but the ambassadors can only suggest and advice. The principal responsibility for ensuring students are aware of that and the penalties associated with it rests with the course instructor, not the ambassador. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 23:24, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
It wasn't a personal attack so I'll do no refactoring.
As I'm new to this project, I'm not familiar with the difference between an ambassador and an instructor. From the 12-15 ambassador accounts I've checked, they have around 150 edits on English Wikipedia so it's very understandable that they might not understand WP:COPYVIO or any other WP goal, policy, or guideline. If it's the ambassador's job to help students learn how to be a contributor to WP, several are understandably failing to do so.
I've been doing a fair amount of thinking about this whole concept. I think that the project obviously has a high amount of potential and it's not WP's job to ensure any sort of academic integrity so I really shouldn't continue to discuss it. I'm going to be opening conversations at a few different associated projects to address the issues I see here. I'll be sure to invite the members of this project to participate as I'm sure they want what's best for WP. OlYellerTalktome 02:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Since you say you are new to Wikipedia, I'll point out that your comment I cite above is, very much, a personal attack (a disparaging comment about an editor), and I'll ask you once again to refactor it (when you've done so, I'll of course remove my own references to it).
To answer your query, there are online ambassadors and campus ambassadors. Online ambassadors are experienced Wikipedia who should be at least somewhat familiar with our copyvio policies and procedures. Campus ambassadors are editors whose primary qualification is their proximity to campuses and their willingness to work face to face with course instructors (who are rarely ambassadors or even editors themselves). Now, I think that stressing the importance of copyvio avoidance to ambassadors and instructors is a good idea, and I'd be curious how others are/have handled this in their ambassador experiences? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 03:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I never said I was a new user. Reading back, it's easy to misunderstand as I used "project" to refer to WP and Ambassadors. I'm far from new. Feel free to keep whatever references you feel necessary
A few other editors who have noticed the same problem have helped to setup watchlists for each course. Apparently, one editor worked with a few ambassadors to make it clear to students that copyright violations aren't tolerated. Before I suggest any type of action to any other projects or noticeboards, I'd like to document the issue and find, with a high level of statistical significance, the degree of a copyright violation "wave" (if there actually is one). They seemed split on whether or not the situation is improving but when I came here to investigate the three copyvios I found today, I found a comment from you that looked as if you were shrugging off copyvios as a non-issue. OlYellerTalktome 04:54, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
What I am shrugging off is the notion that students committing plagiarism is surprising. Students will plagiarise, and we have to deal with it as best as we can. To what degree we can reach the instructors, however, is a big issue. Few instructors, and I am afraid, few campus ambassadors are skilled enough to show the students how good Wikipedia is in catching plagiarism (and thus, scare them into not plagiarizing). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 06:09, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Courses that still need Online Ambassadors

The good news is, at this point all, all of the active classes so far this term either have experienced Wikipedians serving as Campus Ambassadors, or have at least one Online Ambassador already. There are nine U.S. classes that haven't gotten started with their Wikipedia assignments yet, but that still need Online Ambassadors.

There also four classes (some of which are well underway) that have experienced Wikipedians as Campus Ambassadors, but don't have any Online Ambassadors.

If you'd like to support one or more of these classes, please sign the MOU and join the pod. Also, if you know of specific editors who aren't ambassadors yet who would be a good fit to support a specific class, please invite them to join the program.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've updated the list. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:22, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
I'll go through and welcome the students and add a template on their userpage and article, but I'm not able to sign on as OA for the class due to the current pods with whom I'm working. Candle. both ends. burning. They'll still come to me for help, but hopefully we can recruit another ambassador for the class. Cind.amuse (Cindy) 19:36, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Really need experienced Wikipedians to support them as Ambassadors, but not yet active

Have at least one experienced Wikipedian as a Campus Ambassador, but need Online Ambassadors

  • Housing and Social Policy Needs an online ambassador
  • The Green Museum active and waiting! (no indication that this class is active; course page incomplete; no students listed)
  • Architectural Design V active and waiting! (no indication that this class is active; course page incomplete; no students listed)
  • Theories of the State active and waiting! (no indication that this class is active; course page incomplete; no students listed)

Serial usernames

I'm not sure what your guidelines are, but over at Wikipedia:WikiProject_China/NNU Class Project, all the students registered with a common prefix. This has turned out to be useful in generating contrib lists, etc. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Ugh. Prefix is a minor issue, but dozens of numerical variations... nightmare. We have a policy against that, and it is mentioned in some materials for instructors, but I guess nobody told the instructor about it... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 04:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
No this was not coordinated. In so much as it might confuse, they could all have created names like 贾慧敏, and I would be at no less of a disadvantage. I would copy-paste the names, just as I must now. My76Strat (talk) 04:43, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I feel for you. In my course, I require students to add themselves to the course page as part of the grade. And they CAN do it, given some guidance. I find it a much more efficient approach; I'd prefer my ambassadors (this is the first time I have one, apparently :>) to spend time interacting with students, not doing "menial", technical tasks like that. Grading that course, and assessing the student's progress, with those usernames, is going to be five-letter word, I am afraid. I hope you'll not be required to do that. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 06:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't like the idea of a common prefix either. This plan fails to account for students who started editing Wikipedia before they joined a class with a Wikipedia assignment (why wouldn't you want to? ;)) and acts in opposition to the aim of editor retention. Deryck C. 15:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Article action notifications

There has been some concern expressed about how some Ambassadors reacted to an AfD. It doesn't matter if everyone acted individually and appropriately. The sudden attention paid to the AfD by a number of Ambassadors created the appearance of possible canvassing and ownership. Things that I could do without causing too much controversy as an individual editor would likely escalate if I did them as an Ambassador. In the same way that administrators are often held to a higher standard than most editors, even when not acting as an administrator, Ambassadors may be subject to more scrutiny than other editors. I suggest that we create a place for article alerts, where notices of AfDs, move proposals, etc. involving articles being worked on in this program can be posted (as is done by many projects), and avoid using any mailing list for such notifications or discussion. -- Donald Albury 13:59, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I fully agree. My76Strat (talk) 14:03, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Support. Wikipedia:Article alerts framework, tied into the Template:Educational assignment, would be best. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:50, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. However rather than use Template:Educational assignment I suggest we use the Template:WAP assignment banners that are generated by the course page wizard. There's no need to add another template into the mix when we already have one as part of the standard package. MyNameWasTaken (talk) 17:03, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Not all courses use the WAP template (I use my pre-WAP wiki syllabus design, for example). I think we should implement the AA functionality for both templates. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:48, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Mailing list

How do I get off of the Ambassadors mailing list? Qwyrxian (talk) 21:33, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Qwyrxian, just email me: ldavis@wikimedia.org. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Images of copyvio concern?

Do need a per-project list of potential copyvio images? These could be processed and cleaned up rather more quickly than our usual heavyweight methods. I'm seeing an awful lot of images like this File:Yogesh_uml2.png or File:AJINKYA..jpg, where I can't prove that it's a copyvio, but it looks too much like a book scan for me to take the claims made on trust. There are an awful lot of these, and it ought to be the college course organisers' responsibility to perform at least some first-level checking of them (probably every image on every article). Andy Dingley (talk) 15:35, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

The description states that was File:AJINKYA..jpg "created from the reference of book MACJHINE DRAWING". It seems that you are correct. I guess we need to tag the photos and send them though the normal deletion program--Guerillero | My Talk 20:11, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Glad you mentioned copyright; I'll mass email the campus ambassadors in this region requesting they spend some time on copyright if they haven't already. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 21:53, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Student activity notifications

The discussion above, and comments from other ambassadors, got me thinking that what we could really use is a a version of Wikipedia:Article alerts for the students themselves, so that instead of having to check if the students are doing anything (by looking at the contributions of many dozens students), we could see at a glance if they have done anything. In other words, it would be like a watchlist - but not for articles, but for users. Did anybody see a tool like this on Wikipedia? Should we ask the Foundation to put it on the developers agenda? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:12, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Genius programmer Martin was able to program something that automatically populated Taxobot's watchlist with all pages on Wikipedia that had the prefix "Template:Taxonomy/" as they were edited. Using an RSS feed that pointed to Taxobot's public watchlist, the WP:TAXFORCE has been able to monitor every single edit to a taxonomy template. I'm not sure how he programmed the watchlist populator, but it would be interesting to see a watchlist could be autopopulated by contributor instead of by title prefix. If this sounds appealing, you might hit Martin up on his talk page. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 17:54, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
I left him a note about our discussion. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
It sounds like you're basically looking to combine the 'Special:Contributions' feeds for more than one user — have I understood you correctly? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:09, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
That sounds right, getting the list of a specified page on Wikipedia. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:02, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
I would suggest that the best solution would be to subscribe to the specified users' contributions pages using a feed reader such as Google Reader. The 'Atom' link in the toolbox of a users' contributions log can be added to the reader, which will then let you observe all your watched users' contributions in one place. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:34, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
For Firefox users, I highly recommend checking out the addon called "Brief" which notifies you as your feeds update. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 01:36, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Those are good features for instructors and the some ambassadors, but what about those of us who would like to track thousands of students, from all courses, and be able to offer assistance/commentary when needed, but don't want to have our feeds spammed by those changes - rather, we would like to be able to select when we visit a page with a list of changes (like a watchlist)? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:46, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
  • In Google Reader, you could put all the feeds in a folder that you could minimize when you weren't interested in it. Or you could set up a separate account for this purpose. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Featured article Welding now receiving content dumps.

I've reverted one, I'm not going to revert any more or I'll be accused again of elitism, but these edits are not a good thing. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted again and will warn the editors involved. Can we please see a Campus Ambassador visible here. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:29, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm inclined to protect the article if this happens again. —Ruud 16:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
I agree. There is a reason students should start from low quality articles - their additions are usually going to be an improvement. Even good faithed noobies are going to have trouble significantly improving a FA content. I'd suggest telling the students involved to leave suggestions on article's talk instead, and make sure they know how to wikify and reliable reference relevant material to an article before editing the main body. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:57, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
What's worse is that this issue, on this article, was already identified some days ago and a prediction of where it was going to go wrong was raised with the course ambassadors. There's even supposed to be a block in place to prevent this happening today. Yet even with prior warning of the issue, the course admins still went ahead and let the students make these changes. There still seems to be a serious lack of engagement from the course to WP's own standards and requirements. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:11, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
I had considered page protection as a solution. However, semi-p would not work because many of them have given each other so many kittens and cookies that they are autoconfirmed. Full-p would be too drastic. We must maintain super vigilance for edits, and rely (sigh...) on the work of the New Page Patrollers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:43, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
I've been watching this from the NPP perspective, and these are not the worst articles I've ever seen from Indian editors (that's another rant of mine), but it's not too pretty either. Of the ones that aren't copyvios, most of them need copyediting with a sledgehammer; I've fixed up worse articles before, but I wasn't sure if I was supposed to leave them to their own devices (I kinda assumed not, but I have to patrol everything else too). Most of the NPPers coming across these (seemingly everyone but Kudpung, Snottywong, Blanchardb, MikeWazowski and I) aren't checking them for copyvios, which is particularly bad in this instance (in fairness, part of the problem is that they're frequently copied and pasted from several different places, but still it's not that hard to find). If there's a way the (very few) NPPers who know what they're doing can get involved, do let us know. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:32, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure that most NPPers even know how to check for copyvio. I added some instructions to WP:NPP a few days ago, but not everyone reads that page until they're directed to it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:09, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
That's a shame; they're very good instructions. I picked up on it when I started working at AfC, because I knew we were doubly screwed if they got through us there ("Wikipedia editors accept copyvios into articles!!!!"-type comments); CorenSearchBot is tremendously helpful, but it's only now I've seen just how big a crutch it is. But to the topic at hand, I suspect this isn't the end of the problem here, and I wonder if preemptively (to the extent that's possible) pointing them to WP:Copyright would help. I've got the list of students and accounts, and on NPP I'll keep an eye out for them. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:20, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

IRC office hours about India Education Program issues

Hi all, please join us at an IRC office hour to discuss India Education Program issues on Wednesday at 15:00 UTC at #wikimedia-office. See meta:IRC office hours for details on how to connect, time conversion, etc. Hope to talk with you then. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 01:15, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

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