User talk:FNartey (WMF)

Nomination of Amin Sulley for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Amin Sulley is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amin Sulley until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. DrStrauss talk 11:52, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to participate in a discussion about publicly disclosing subscribers of TWL resources

Hi FNartey (WMF), I have started a discussion over our Village pump with the aim of maintaining a public list of all editors who are granted access to any TWL resource. Your thoughts and opinions on the proposal are welcome:-) Regards, ∯WBG^converse

#1lib1ref campaign

Hi FNartey (WMF), A lot of thanks for planning the previous campaign 1lib1ref on January. Are you intented to reiterate this experience for the next campaign planned on May - June 2020? Thanks in advance for you answer, Madehub (talk) 17:47, 27 April 2020 (UTC) -> I've created a campaign #1Lib1ref May 2020, could I add you as an organizator ? That will help me in my first step ! Best, Madehub (talk) 12:08, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Madehub, thanks for reaching out and your interest in organising 1lib1ref in May. Most certainly the campaign will be happening in May, I sent an announcement a couple of weeks ago, and I wish to reiterate that in view of the current crisis we are encouraging virtual events. Thanks for taking the initiative to create the campaign on the programs dashboard, I have added myself as an organizer. I can see you have also created your event and I am hoping its a virtual event, if it is kindly [add your event here --FNartey (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FNartey (WMF) Thank you so much ! Yes, virtual event ! I'm planning to be available for my collegues encountering somes issues by video call. We mainly work on the french wikipedia. I'm really excited to participate. Best, Madehub (talk) 13:51, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

African Librarians Week

I've had a lot of problems reported to me about the way that the participants in this event have been editing. The principal complaint is that they are going far too fast and adding citations that simply don't support the text. I've tried hard to persuade editors here to talk to them and explain the problems that being caused, but that has not always resulted in any improvement in the problems, and one prolific participant, Agnes George shauri, has been blocked for two days.

Here are some of the discussions I've been involved in:

As you're named as a one of the facilitators at the outreach dashboard, would you please take steps to ensure that the participants are aware of the expectations to edit slowly and carefully, and especially to make sure that they are only supplying citations that accurately support the content in the article. From what I can see, there is going to be a large amount of work needed to help the participants understand what is required of them, and I'd appreciate it if you'd attend the issues as a matter of urgency. Thanks --RexxS (talk) 18:42, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: Since its late in the day in West Africa, I am going to jump in with a brief response. I am the lead on Felix's team, facilitating the partnership and collaboration as part of our twice annual #1lib1ref -- and we began to recognize that enthusiasm and "gung ho" lets edit a lot late last week. For this May campaign, we did our normal amount of preparation for #1lib1ref: we ran a series of webinars for this audience and a facilitator training with librarians throughout the continent. We expected this would be enough preparation. However, last week we realized that a few of the contributors may not have understood what reliable sources mean on Wikipedia. We begun addressing this at the beginning of the week: messaging that through the contact information the AFLIA partner has with them (see for example this post by the lead partner organizer yesterday, which I believe was accompanied by other communication as well)-- moreover, we have been working with regional community members in context, to reach out to the editors that are both a) high frequency and b) receiving message on talk pages or editing poorly and not improving. However, we want to also acknowledge that as far as we can tell (we have been keeping an eye on the editors for the last few days), the disruptive editors are only a very small subset of the whole cohort, with by far most of the editors producing small volumes of edits or producing high volumes of minor edits (i.e. adding internal links or citation needed statements), or high quality edits (i.e. Special:Contributions/MKCheserek or Special:Contributions/Acngetich). We didn't explicitely focus on encouraging adding citation needed statements or links, but some of the local trainings seemed to have emphasized that.

In general we want to apologize for this, and are trying our best to make it less overwhelming. We didn't anticipate a) quite this much enthusiasm and energy, b) the volume of participants (the number of interested participants doubled in the last few weeks) or c) that librarians would not understand reliable sources or referencing in the same way Wikimedia communities do. Library communities in other parts of the world appear to have more consistent research/information literacy skills and we hadn't encountered quite this kind of expectation mismatch before in our 5 years of running 1lib1ref all over the world. We expect the volume of new participation to tail off this weekend, and understanding their audience/network/participant pool more now, plan to invest more in training and communication in the future. The partner recently applied for a Project grant to train their community in understanding Wikipedia, we are hopeful they will get the grant -- and we plan to advise that they spend considerable time on refining these skills and making sure that folks understand how to engage in quality research.

Anyway, I hope that is helpful: we will keep working through AFLIA to communicate community expectations better. Please reach out to us with any editors you think need to be contacted directly, and we are entirely supportive of following normal patrolling procedures for keeping folks like Agnes George shauri from becoming disruptive -- we will address any concerns they have offline as well. I hope this is helpful -- and if let us know if there is anything else we should be considering, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) @Astinson (WMF): thank you for that really prompt response; it's much appreciated. As lead trainer for WMUK, I've seen similar problems from your position as well, and I do empathise. Nobody that I've discussed this campaign with believes that the participants are anything other than well-intentioned, and we value the chance to welcome new editors into the community. There are always lessons to be learned from these projects, but that is all the more reason to be going ahead with them. My take is that the most stress-free events are the ones where there is an least one experienced and committed editor "on-the-ground" that participants know locally and will turn to for guidance. Of course, in these troubled times, that's easier said than done. Nevertheless, I'm keen to do whatever I can to make this campaign an enjoyable learning experience for all taking part, and you should feel free to involve me if there's any help or advice I can give. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 23:39, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kuru, Doug Weller, and Hipal: Pinging you since you were involved in the chats with RexxS, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: Unfortunately the new reality we are operating in doesn't allow in person training -- and an underlyingpremise of #1lib1ref for the last 5 years or so is that this audience (librarians) is able to self-teach either by themselves or in small groups -- however, working in a new context is very different, and we are learning :)

The job of Felix and I at the Foundation is to try to find the happy medium between high-hands-on-engagement/direct training and scalability to run meta:Campaigns in the movement. #1lib1ref or Wiki Loves Monuments have both proven effective methods for encouraging new people to engage in high volume, constructive contribution -- our work is to help make that more actionable, with focuses on knowledge gaps (like African content) and workflows that get newcomers (and less experienced editors) from knowing nothing to their first dozen or so successful contributions within the expectations of the community. Though, I like to run editathons like you BUT one of the problems that we run into right now is that a lot of our offline trainings/activities focus new editors on "writing a whole article" and "teaching them everything" -- neither of which are sustainable or scalable -- and editathons have a really bad track record for retention. Anyway happy to chat -- we welcome if you want to reach out to either of us (or leave feedback on the campaign pages) Astinson (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What you and Felix will find is that there are two aspects to learning how to edit Wikipedia: one is the underpinning knowledge and the other is the skills involved. Most people can learn facts from observing written or visual material, but very few can learn skills without actually doing them and getting feedback. When you don't have the ability to teach face-to-face, you need to have students spend more time in sandboxes to practice. That allows them to get feedback without running the risk of getting attention from recent change patrollers before they have enough mastery of the required skills. As a retired teacher, lecturer and instructor, I've had a lot of experience in exploring different pedagogies across the age spectrum, and I appreciate the problems inherent in trying to teach new editors too much before they get a chance to try out their skills – and that's nothing to do with scalability. It's true that editathons have a poor track record on retention, but none of our initiatives have a good record for that. For what it's worth, my own experience is I get far better retention rates when I train an existing group who have a sense of identity and already know each other. Initiatives like African Librarians Week have great potential and I hope this one turns out to be very successful. --RexxS (talk) 16:27, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: #1lib1ref retention is actually pretty high, as far as we can tell: we reactivate a lot of existing editors who haven't edited in a while and evidence from other spaces like the New Editors research suggest that folks are way more able to stick around if they get exposed to the community while learning small behaviors. We also know that some programs are good at retention (the one that stands out to me is the Czech education program --- I think the idea that our programs won't or shouldn't retain folks is kindof...wrong, on many levels -- if the thing Wikipedians like doesn't retain people we need to step out of our box a bit, and do a bit more targeted strategies for engagement. We also expect, that the future of programs like this will always have a solid hybrid model: with lots of online engagement like this, but also a really solid set of smaller events attached to it (like Art+Feminism or #WikiForHumanRights). Astinson (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Astinson (WMF): Yes, my experience is that librarians are an excellent fit for what we would look for in potential editors, so we shouldn't be surprised when a lot of them stick around. I'm involved right now in doing follow-ups for Wikipedia-trained librarians to introduce them to Wikidata, and I'm hopeful they are also a good fit for that. Exposure to the community is a two-edged sword: our research shows that where new editors get a personal friendly welcome, they are likely to persist; whereas the often toxic editing environment on Wikipedia is very corrosive to retention where new editors don't make wiki-friends and have little guidance from more experienced editors. I saw the Czech programme and was impressed. You'll notice that the participants were targeted from libraries, senior citizen learning centres and third-age universities. That very much reinforces my view that working with groups that have a pre-existing support structure – even an informal one – is a key factor in retention. You're right that targeting is crucial. Under the present circumstances, re-activating "lapsed" editors who already have wiki-editing skills would be a priority target (as we don't need the techniques for skill-learning from scratch), if we can find ways of addressing the factors that lead editors to stop in the first place. That needs more research. --RexxS (talk) 19:06, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Astinson (WMF): I'm really sorry, I've had to make a bit revert [1] here at Edo people, removing unsourced material, material sources to travel sites including some copyvio, etc. I haven't got the time to counsel the editors I reverted just now and hope someone can do it because I don't want us to lose potentially good editors. Doug Weller talk 14:26, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Doug Weller: No worries -- we are cautiously optimistic: most of the editors are taking the small setbacks in stride, and AFLIA is learning a lot about facilitating this. A good example of where folks are acknowledging the learn curve. That editor that you reverted, by example, has been doing much better edits subsequent than that one. We feel moderately confident that the support systems that we have offwiki are helping folks learn through these kinds of experiences :) Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Astinson (WMF): That's a real relief, I hate reverting them. Doug Weller talk 15:03, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If I could give some feedback; I'm really struggling with a few of the editors.

There are just a handful that really seemed to gravitate to Wikipedia mirrors as sources, and now that I'm looking back at their edits in more detail, I'm seeing that almost every reference is to a blog or other cheap site that has copied the Wikipedia article. I think what is happening is that they are taking a long sentence to source and then pasting it into a search engine (likely with quotes). That's going to hit one of two things - a site that has mirrored our content (with or without the proper attribution/license) or a local copyright violation (here) that needs to be removed. I'm seeing the former about 99% of the time. Perhaps giving them feedback to look up concepts, instead of exact quotes?
It would also be helpful to emphasize communication. If they are reverted; look at the article's history for a clue in the edit summary. Then, use the talk page to ask questions. Repeatedly making the same serious errors (BLP problems, copyright) without acknowledging warnings on their talk pages is going to lead to more blocks (I just can't ignore those serious problems like I can general bad sourcing). Kuru (talk) 00:20, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Next time, maybe don't incentivise volume. It looks like there was a minor contest for the "top 50 contributors" or some such. That's going to emphasize volume and speed over quality - and sourcing can be tricky.

I really believe in the program - just acquiring a few good editors is worth the large number of hours I've spent on this over the last five days, but there are some ways to maybe fine tune the approach. Also, I'm finding several new mirrors to add to my search list. :) Kuru (talk) 00:20, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Kuru (talk) 00:20, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kuru: A few responses: 1) we definitely are learning that we need to spend more time on source evaluation -- that is planned in all of the future training for this particular group. 2) historically talk page communication is not a priority for this campaign, but we will and 3) we are going to calibrate the message on volume for next time for sure -- this is one of the tensions in all content campaigns: how much do you tap competition vs natural incentives to get people in the door and participating. Thanks for all the feedback on this we really appreciate it, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Astinson (WMF): I'm concerned by the fact you name MKCheserek (talk · contribs) as a good example. Their Talk page is littered with requests and warnings to not use low-quality sources and Wikipedia mirrors. In two weeks of editing, they have racked up two blocks. All the while there has been zero response to all the concerns raised; the only bit of communication from them has been an unblock request. Robby.is.on (talk) 07:50, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Robby.is.on: Hi, I wasn't digging into all the sources as much as you were, so the mismatch between sources wasn't apparent to me -- the ones I spot checked were high quality, and did cite reliable sources that described the information -- I understand if the community warnings were not heard, and you had to go to a block -- we will definitely reach out to that editor offwiki. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 13:06, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Astinson (WMF): Thank you. Robby.is.on (talk) 13:48, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One of the more enthusiastic participants, Agnes George shauri (talk · contribs), has made a couple of dozen edits yesterday and today, still using the #Aflibwk edit summary. I do not think that edit summary is very helpful in the first place unless it is Wikilinked to a page about the event, or (even better) accompanied by some explanatory text about what "Aflibwk" is and what the edit actually contains – it took me quite a while to track down what the code meant. That aside, since the event actually ended a week ago, should the participants still use the edit summary at all?

What is more concerning is that only a very few of the 20+ edits made by Agnes George shauri over the past two days were constructive. Most of them added references which did not do anything to verify the content; some of these refs were tangentially related to the article topic but some didn't even come close. I posted this warning and two personalised messages to the user's talk page, but they had a similar explanation previously which they acknowledged, promising to stop, so I'm not sure how much it will help. The sources they add are generally of the type we'd consider to be reliable sources, so that is good (no blogs or low-content newspapers), but that doesn't help when the source doesn't verify any of the content.

Now that the event is over it is possible that you are no longer in contact with the participants, but I don't know where else to report this unless I take it to ANI which seems a little too harsh at this point. --bonadea contributions talk 17:41, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I should add, btw, that I can very much empathise with the difficulties of keeping track of a quickly growing number of enthusiastic contributors who are editing in good faith but without necessarily understanding quite how things work, and I do think this kind of initiative is immensely valuable. Thank you for your hard work on improving the breadth of Wikipedia content, and encouraging contributors from a range of different backgrounds. --bonadea contributions talk 17:47, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ANI report

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Specifically, this report. There are several problems associated with the programme, not least of which is the high volume of low quality edits, including but not limited to copyvios, circular or poor sourcing, spam sources, and so on. The other key problem, is that many of us active on the English Wikipedia were not made aware of this effort in any way, so all we saw were bot-like, low quality edits on a massive scale by multiple accounts. I applaud widening the scope of contributors, but I really feel this could have been carried out far better, especially with respect to nominal training of the editors involved into how Wikipedia operates (copyvio, reliable sources, etc.). Anyway, please refer to the ANI report for more details into the issues we have been encountering. El_C 22:51, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

1Lib1Ref

Hi I saw your comments at the related ANI thread and this is something I've been debating bringing up myself for the last two weeks when this really started. Many of the additions seem well intended but ultimately are not helpful. In particular, several edits by various accounts really just amount to nothing more than spam. I don't know what can be done but edits like these are unacceptable and I hope they will be addressed. I realize this is one edit but there are dozens, if not a few hundred similar spam additions under the guise of #1Lib1Ref. Praxidicae (talk) 19:42, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]