Talk:PhET Interactive Simulations

Note on Who Began This Article

We created this article on PhET Interactive Simulations through Peer to Peer University's School of Open, "Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond." In keeping with Wikipedia's guidelines around conflicts of interest and full disclosure, I am with PhET Interactive Simulations at the University of Colorado Boulder. I joined the class to help add PhET into Wikipedia. But I am interested in keeping to the policies and neutrality of Wikipedia, and not to use Wikipedia as a promotional vehicle. Thanks! Klidessau (talk) 18:54, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

You did a pretty good job keeping it neutral. And as I'm looking at the website, I'm pretty sure I used some of these in high school. Howicus (talk) 19:01, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

PhET - what does it stand for?

It is obviously (I think) an acronym for something. Can you put that in the thesis sentence/statement (opening sentence that sets up the theme of the article). thanks, Lorrie Lorrie (talk) 14:55, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Lorrie, Thanks for reading the article and the feedback. We actually don't use our acronym anymore because it initially stood for Physics Education Technology and we do simulations in so many more areas than physics. The article does say that in the "History" section though. Klidessau (talk) 23:42, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

there were 2 places where this was mentioned. On 8/9/13, I removed it from the History section since someone had added it to the leac section. Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 14:32, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Trish, Do you mean that you do not use the acronym anymore, or just that the meaning is "empty" as far as describing what you do? When I edited the paragraph that mentioned the acronym, the text said that it was "irrelevant" now. That was a bit confusing to me, since it seems still relevant as the name of the organization--just not descriptive of all the project covers. I'm assuming that's what you meant.Socimag (talk) 19:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)socimag

Thanks for the question, The meaning is "empty" as you put it - the acronymn doesn't describe the project anymore because we no longer focus on just physics. The name of the project is "PhET Interactive Simulations". We were well known in the physics community and didn't want to lose the brand that "PhET" had. Trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 20:05, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

So, is my edit of the history of the title adequate, or should it say the organization just retained PhEt in transition to "PhEt Interactive Simulations" to honor its origins in the teaching of physics?Socimag (talk) 14:05, 18 August 20 13 (UTC)socimag

I think you did a good improvement. Thanks, Trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 20:45, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

OER Teaching Community

In keeping with Wikipedia's guidelines around conflicts of interest and full disclosure, I am with PhET Interactive Simulations at the University of Colorado Boulder. I joined the Education Program:Peer to Peer University/Writing Wikipedia Articles (2013 Q2) class to help add a PhET article into Wikipedia as part of an Open educational resources initiative to have more articles about OER organizations. I am interested in keeping to the policies and neutrality of Wikipedia, and not to use Wikipedia as a promotional vehicle. I am a PhET team member and have contributed many activities to the PhET For Teachers database. At this time, June 2013, there about 1000 activities. I wrote about 130 of those and other PhET team members have contributed some as well. PhET written activities comprise about 15% of the total number of activities. I am also including references in this section that include some papers that I wrote or co-authored; all have been through a submission process that includes peer review. I foresee many contributors using this section to describe Open Educational Practices for using PhET. Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 18:47, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I added a link to the For Teachers on the PhET page. I feel that since over 85% of the resources are written by non-PhET members and that all activities that are submitted are accepted, this is not self-promoting. Anyone can comment on the activities, so it is truly "open". Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 21:03, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Problems due to conflict of interest editing

It is rather unfortunate that in order to "get PhET into Wikipedia, this organization chose to blatantly disregard the advice given by e.g. Wikipedia:plain and simple conflict of interest guide ("Do not directly edit articles about yourself, your organization, your clients, or your competitors") and many others, including Jimmy Wales and some ethical PR agencies. The transparency is appreciated and as remarked above, some effort may have been made to use neutral language. But this still has many of the hallmarks of an article created with the primary motivation to promote its subject, rather than improve Wikipedia:

• Despite its already respectable length, the article lacks some of the most basic encyclopedic information, like the project's legal form (is it a registered charity? a project that forms part of the university, or an independent organization?), its governance, the size of its budget, or the approximate number of employees (does the "team" include volunteers or one-off contractors too? no way to tell from the article). On the other hand, a whole section is devoted to highlighting the funding organizations. I work for a non-profit myself and understand the authors' desire to acknowledge their benefactors by naming them and linking their websites - we do that too, but on our homepage, not by using the Wikipedia article about ourselves an an outlet.
• Starting from the lede, the whole article devotes more space and emphasis on extolling the project's mission and benefits to the "customers" (students and teachers) than on detailing what it actually does. This slant towards promotional over factual information is the norm in corporate self-descriptions (and there is nothing wrong with that), but it is not appropriate for Wikipedia (see e.g. WP:MISSION).
• While an effort seems to have been made to find and cite enough independent sources in order to establish notability, the vast majority of the information is still sourced from publications by or associated with the project itself.
• The main text of the article is interspersed with many links to the organization's web pages. This may be seen as advantageous for the goal of driving traffic to that website, but violates Wikipedia's external link guidelines.
• The text is full of "weasel words" which are fine in promotional texts, but are discouraged on Wikipedia ("performs extensive education research", "incorporates research-based practices on effective teaching to enhance the learning of science and mathematics concepts" etc.)
• In its present version, the entire article consists of either neutral or positive information about its subject - exactly as one would expect when it has been written by two authors with a strong conflict of interest. Now, it may be the case that during more than a decade, PhET only saw successes and praise, while never encountering any significant problems and never drawing relevant criticism, in which case it would be possible that this is indeed a NPOV summary. However, previously uninvolved Wikipedians would probably need to spend considerable time if they wanted to verify that, and it seems that the only two editors of this article who are likely to be in a position to be already familiar with such negative material (if it exists) happen to be those who would have a strong personal incentive not to include it.

I have nothing against the project itself, which seems to be a laudable effort driven by charitable motives, but that is one more reason not to taint it with dubious PR efforts. I understand that PhET's CC-BY-NC-SA license prevents a direct cooperation with Wikipedia, but it would still be great if the authors could use their (I assume) considerable skills in science education to improve scientific content on Wikipedia, rather than using it as a vehicle to promote the interests of their employer.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:46, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

There is no "blatant disregard" and I'm not sure what would make you draw that conclusion. Kathy made a strong effort to disclose her connection and seek input to ensure her contributions are within policy. Your conclusion is at odds with the conclusion drawn by another Wikipedian above, who as far as I know has no connection to the topic besides having used the simulations in their schoolwork, so it is not as definitive as you seem to think. Your initial statement is unnecessarily hostile. I'm reluctant to read the rest of what you have said until you have addressed that problem. -Pete (talk) 16:58, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Although I don't feel I have a significant conflict of interest here, I'd like to clearly disclose my own connection here. Kathy and Trish are students of mine in the class Writing Wikipedia Articles (course page on Wikipedia). PhET is not a client of mine, and I have no professional interest in this article beyond my efforts through Communicate OER to work toward better Wikipedia coverage relating to Open Educational Resources (as discussed on my user page). But, I did provide guidance to these new Wikipedia contributors in my role as their instructor; if interested, you can find archives of all our sessions on our course page. -Pete (talk) 21:05, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

So we did start this article in the hopes to be completely open. Discussion, suggestion and criticism (as we learned and am learning) is a very important part of Wikipedia so let me try and address your concerns.

• I tried to address that we are part of the University of Colorado Boulder, which is a public, state, education institution. As such we are a non-profit as I believe all state public institutions are. I added in also more on the organization and removed the Funding part completely.
• As an educational institution, what we do is to enhance learning. But I added in that PhET designs, develops and makes available interactive simulations. Can you help with what you would like in there?
• As to the sources, we are not associated with Time, NY Times, Harvard Magazine, Science or American Journal of Physics (the last two being refereed, highly respectable journals). Can you let me know which of the 19 (I know that those two have our director and founder in there but I thought that since they are refereed journals it would be OK to have two of the 19?) Hopefully Trish can help with the other references?
• I removed the links in the text.
• I removed "extensive." As part of an educational research university we do research, specifically education research.

I hope that this is at least a start. Our goal, as with any educational institution, is to provide information. That's what we hope to do here with adding information on PhET to Wikipedia. Klidessau (talk) 21:21, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I continued to add information about OER communities that have communities of teachers who share ideas about using PhET. I originally had a list included in the section, but because grammar and citation needed improvement, much of the section had been deleted. I hope that my additions to this section will help with the feeling that the article does not align with WP practices. BTW, being a novice is quite a challenge and I appreciate the support from my classmates, instructors, and the WP community at large in my endeavor to be an active Wikipedian. I am still hoping for ideas for a more clear title for this section. Thanks. Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 18:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Patricia, I am glad to see that section growing, and as I said in class, I think your idea about addressing neutrality issues by putting more focus on efforts not led by PhET the organization is a good one. It's probably a good idea to give HaeB a little while to get back to this and see if your and Kathy's edits are sufficient to persuade him to remove any of the tags; but I do think you are doing good work in that direction.

Also, I think it's good that you have only covered the efforts that have some discussion in independent sources, rather than the full list you had originally. Most of the independent sources are not readily available online, so I haven't closely evaluated them; but at least, I can say your selection looks like a good one, and I am encouraged by the presence of academic sources that are independent of PhET and the partner organizations.

Two specific points: (1) MERLOT has a Wikipedia article, so you might want to give it an internal link in the text; and (2) the Wikipedia article on the National Science Digital Library probably shouldn't be included as reference 16. See WP:CITEWIKI for some background on that. Wikipedia itself does not live up to its own reliable sources guideline, because it is open to edits by anyone; it's important to cite things to external sources. In this case, it's possible that you could incorporate one of the citations sourced on the NSDL page itself; I would start by looking at those references and see if they support the claim in this article.

Hope this all helps. Keep up the good work! -Pete (talk) 02:07, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Pete. (1) I changed the MERLOT link. When I originally searched WP for MERLOT, I had not capitalized so I found the Merlot page about a type of wine. We had a similar issue in lab 6 when you were searching for PhET and didn't find the page. I am wondering if someone should add a way for people to find the organization if they don't know to capitalize it - I am confused about what to use. I do think that I don't want to add a "redirect" because that would break the search for Merlot the wine. (2) Will do my homework - I guess this class is never over, lifetime Wikipedian. Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 15:49, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Pete, I found a reference from National Academies about the selection process for what is included in NSDL and replaced #16. I was reading through the talk and wonder if I have addressed all of the concerns. KD has a comment that says "Hopefully Trish can help with the other references?". Thanks for reviewing and suggesting. BTW: I also plan to ask HaeB for some more of his time and thoughts. I see that he has also flagged the NSDL article. I put a note on the talk page that someone might want to use the book that I referenced to help the article, but I do not feel qualified to edit that particular article. Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 19:30, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

HaeB, Not really sure the best way to make sure you see that your concerns are being taken seriously and that we hope to hear back from you. I read on your talk page User talk:HaeB that you prefer to communicate not on your talk page, but on the article page which you made comments. I hope that you will review this article soon. We are would like to see the banners removed by addressing criticisms. Please excuse any etiquette errors on my part, I am just completing my first Wiki Education Program Education Program:Peer to Peer University/Writing Wikipedia Articles (2013 Q2) Thanks Trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 19:44, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Removing flags

It appears that all the concerns have been addressed. To read more specifics,see the other sections in the talk page. Reflections have been requested and several replies demonstrate on this article's talk page, contributors' user talk pages, and reviewers' talk pages that the removal is justified. Additionally there had been sufficient time for anyone to dispute. There are clear comments in the talk section to support this change. Respectfully, Patricia Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 19:39, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

History section needs work

The history section is very thin. Part of the history was moved to the lead section. Third party references to the evolution, past and present should be added to make this more comprehensive. Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 14:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

It would be nice to include references to the NSF grant numbers perhaps. Does anyone have them? Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 18:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if anyone else thinks the "History" section covers so much of the same material as the lead that the article would be improved by deleting the "History" section? Or should the lead focus more on what PhET provides and move some of the historical parts to the History section? Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 18:12, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I worked on cleaning this up and added the NSF grant #'s too.Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 21:24, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Patricia, this all looks good to me -- and I do think you have achieved a good level of balance between the lead and "history" sections. (A little repetition is fine -- it's always a judgment call.) I think the grant numbers are a helpful addition. Good work! -Pete (talk) 22:04, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Pete, thanks for checking this out Trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 21:36, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Photos

The two photos in the article are an excellent addition. But it would be a good idea to more clearly document that they are available under a free license (mainly to eliminate the possibility that somebody thinks they need to be deleted in the future). There are basically two ways to go about this: (1) publish the photos on the PhET web site (or official Flickr stream, etc.) with a clear indication they are available under CC BY, and link to that page; or (2) send an email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org with links to the files, ideally from an address affiliated with PhET or the university, clearly indicating the license and that you understand they may be reused, for commercial or non-commercial purposes, and used as the basis for derivative works. (I should note -- when I first looked at this, I thought this page on your web site covered this issue; but on closer inspection, and with the input of a fellow Wikipedian, I now note that the page talks only about the simulations and thus doesn't cover these photos.) Let me know which option is easier for you, and I can provide more details on how to do it. -Pete (talk) 22:04, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Pete, I uploaded these to WP Commons and filled out the info, but I am guessing that you think that is not enough? People whose images or voice we use have signed a waiver. We are doing lots of revisions on the PhET pages, so I don't think we will add these soon. I can easily send the email if you think it is necessary. Trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 21:41, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's a good idea to send that email, to make sure the photo does not get deleted some time in the future. What you said about the consent of the students is already sufficient -- well done -- the remaining issue is that it needs to be clearly asserted that the photos are freely licensed by the copyright holder. The email will reach a group of volunteers who review things like this and endorse uploads. See here for more info if you like: Wikipedia:Contact us - Licensing -Pete (talk) 13:53, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

ok will do. thanks trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 00:19, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

If you haven't sent it yet: please feel free to CC me so if there are any issues I can spot them! -Pete (talk) 05:52, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I sent the email today. Please watch for it and add any comments. Thanks again for the advice. Trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 20:39, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

The email looks great! It's more thorough than it needs to be, since the person processing it will just be looking for a credible assertion of the license -- but that doesn't hurt :) Good job! -Pete (talk) 01:54, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Glad you approve. I did want to make sure the email didn't cause more harm than good. Trish Patricia.Loeblein (talk) 21:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)