Wikipedia talk:Wiki Education Foundation

Suggestions solicited for WEF grants

The WEF will soon be reaching out to funding organizations, looking for grant money to support the program manager and executive director (when hired), and to enable us to take on projects that will benefit both Wikipedia and the educational community. Please add your thoughts below on what activities the WEF should try to fund. Here are some ideas drawn from conversations I've seen or participated in over the last year or two -- I'd like feedback on these, as well as any new ideas others can come up with.

1. Plagiarism detection tool, e.g. by working with Google to find ways to test content against Google Books or journal contents
2. Research on reliable quality measures so that we can reliably determine if a set of edits by a large number of editors improved or damaged article quality, and determine the relative value added by different classes
3. Better metrics on the difference between student editing and other new editors, and the impact that they have on the community
4. Comparative analysis of student work in different disciplines
5. Research on whether there are factors such as instructor knowledge of Wikipedia, or prior classes done on Wikipedia, that are correlated with the quality of student edits
6. Seeking funding to bring new classes into Wikipedia in specific areas known to be underrepresented (global south topics; sociology; public policy, etc.). This could include working with professional organizations such as the APS, which already have Wikipedia initiatives.
7. Campus-based initiatives such as training specific staff on individual campuses, or establishing support relationships with specific educational institutions to train and advise their teaching staff
8. Creation of additional training resources such as videos and brochures

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:35, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey Mike. I think we should keep discussion focused in one place: WP:ENB. I haven't read all of this here, FWIW. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:01, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Revert of redirect to Meta

Hi @Jbmurray: I'm not sure how you mean that it's moving things "off wiki" when I'm encouraging central organization of information about an organization to be on Meta. There aren't pages on English Wikipedia's Wikipedia space for Wikimedia NY, Wikimedia DC, Wiki Project Med Foundation, or other similar organizations to the Wiki Education Foundation. You'll note, in fact, that the Wikimedia DC page has a soft redirect to Meta, exactly as I did for this Wiki Education Foundation page.

I'm concerned trying to keep two pages on two wikis up to date will lead to really outdated information on one. I'm committed to better transparency of keeping the Wikimedia community informed about the Wiki Education Foundation activities, but I feel like that's better done on Meta, where all the other organizations also post information.

Can you explain your concerns more? --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:22, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, LiAnna, my point is that it's by moving things off en.wiki, to the variety of places that the Education Program has been migrated (Outreach, Meta, its own wiki, its own webpage, Commons...) that you get further lack of transparency. These pages on these other sites tend to languish, unseen and un-updated. This is the only place where anyone bothers to update and to look for info. If anything, I'd suggest the redirect should be the other way around.

Or to put this another way: nobody in the WMF or the WEF has ever made a consistent attempt to keep information up to date. They've done a poor job with these constant out-migrations. The people who do that work well are ordinary Wikipedians on en.wiki. If you want a decent page, rather than these periodic purges, it would be better for you to attend to this page--which, unlike what was suggested in your rather misleading edit summary, did not simply duplicate what was on Meta.

And you well know that if you want to be transparent and improve communication, WP:ENB is the place to go. I look forward to seeing you respond rather more quickly to queries there. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:45, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

@Jbmurray: I think everyone involved understands and shares your frustration about the lack of communications in the past. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I was hired in part because everyone clearly saw the need to have someone on the Wiki Education Foundation team whose job it is to proactively ensure information gets out as well as reactively answer questions.

That being said, I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the best place for this information: I firmly believe the Wiki Education Foundation should be treated similarly to its peers and document its activities on Meta like other movement organizations do. I'll also point out page view stats of the English Wikipedia page and the Meta page suggest that more people are using Meta to find out information about the Wiki Education Foundation, so I will continue to update that page instead.

I'm sorry you feel that there's information missing on the Meta page I put up this afternoon; as you'll note from my Talk page message there, I welcome any suggestions for what I've missed. I'm happy to answer questions about the Wiki Education Foundation on the education noticeboard or on the Meta talk page. If you'd like to take responsibility for continuing to update this page, feel free to do so, but I will be directing my time to making sure the Meta page contains the most up-to-date information. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:07, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

...the irony of your hiring being that, of all the mess and obfuscation that the WEF has come up with, it has to rank close to the top. The position was not announced. Then for a month nobody wanted to take responsibility for it once the hiring had been announced. It hardly bodes well.

No, I don't proposed to "take responsibility" for this page. Per WP:OWN. But so long as the en.wiki community has shown itself much, much better at openness, collaboration, and transparency, then I'll trust this page much sooner than I'll trust the information management you want to introduce (not "continue," but introduce) to meta. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:36, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I can't speak to how things were communicated before April 1, since that's when I started. But I'm committed to trying my best to make the communications from and with the Wiki Education Foundation better from now on. LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 05:41, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I just spotted this discussion, and I'd like to +1 LiAnna's choice of Meta for a central page about the organization. Oddly enough, I spent a good chunk of time today working on the "Wikipedian in Residence" pages on Meta, Commons, Outreach, Wikipedia, and even Wikisource. Jon, your point that many of these pages languish is very well taken -- but in my experience that's just as true of Wikipedia-space organizational pages as any others. I agree that a movement-affiliated organization should make a strong effort to keeping its pages up to date and thorough. I don't know that I've seen the Education program in as much depth as you have, but I think it's important to keep in mind that in her past role, the Ed Program's Communications role was responsible for a much broader range of things, in a much broader range of lanugages, than the WEF's will be. I have a good deal of faith in the people involved to do the right thing, and I don't think it's fair to apply frustrations that reflect now-obsolete organizational constraints to the individuals involved. -Pete (talk) 06:21, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

JB: certainly you understand the trickiness in hiring people in almost any situation well enough to understand why LiAnna's move might not have been clearly announced when it was first being discussed? A successful hire has a ton of dependencies, and if any one of them fails, then the hire may not go through. And some of those dependencies are going to be things that public discussion of isn't desirable about - I certainly wouldn't expect LiAnna to stop by ENB to explain every single variable that was influencing her decision about whether or not to take the job, and I'd also fully expect that there were organizational uncertainties that couldn't necessarily be discussed publicly that could have also changed the outcome of the situation. I certainly expect the WEF to be more transparent than an average GLAM organization, but there very well might have been dependencies that effected whether or not LiAnna was hired by WEF from WMF that involved outside organizations - funders, etc. I'm also not surprised that it wasn't an advertised position - in an organization that is just starting up, you want to bring people onboard who are already up to speed, and who you are already comfortable working with. There have been plenty of breakdowns in communication during the lifespan of the USEP, but I don't really think LiAnna's position can reasonably be considered one of them.

I hope and expect that LiAnna will be an active presence at ENB and ENI to maintain active lines of communication - and bluntly, have confidence that she will. But it doesn't make sense to maintain the particular page in question on ENWP - it should be on meta, with a soft redir here, as many other orgs do. The WEF is not specific to the English Wikipedia; it's specific to US and Canada. I know of USEP related projects that have occurred on the French, Chinese, and Spanish Wikipedias - and I doubt I know them all, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if an Arabic class somewhere in the geographical region covered by the WEF has done a project on the Arabic Wikipedia, etc. I doubt those respective communities think that an organization doing things on their projects should maintain it's headquarters on ENWP, instead of meta, the established place for orgs that touch on multiple wikis. Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:31, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

In that this is something that has specifically been the object of criticism from the WEF's funders, you'd have thought they'd have been a little more careful. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 16:19, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Which reminds me that we still await some kind of updated timeline. When things are punted off to meta, the WEF has historically felt it can ignore any queries that come up. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 16:21, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I was speaking of outside funders, not movement funders. Grant-giving foundations are often very loathe to discuss business publicly before it is finalized. I legitimately had no idea this was coming, but this is exactly the type of thing I had in mind. The WEF just received over a million from Stanton. Anyway, can we agree that an org that effects multiple wikis should follow common practice and headquarter on meta, restore the soft redirect, and just extend some good faith that LiAnna will actively be monitoring ENI/ENB as she has said she will be? Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:14, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

ENB and ENI should definitely still exist, but it's not standard practice to have an org like the WEF maintain their primary page on ENWP - doubly so when their work effects more than just ENWP. I imagine Quebec will involve a lot of French Wikipedia, and I've already run brief projects on the Chinese and Spanish Wikipedias. ENWP is our biggest wiki and the wiki that will be most effected by the WEF certainly, but given that WEF is not ENWP specific, meta is a much better idea. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:11, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

• Since this discussion has been quiet for a while, unless it starts up again, I'll be restoring the soft redirect in about 24 hours. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:38, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I still think that's a bad idea. Not sure what further discussion you want. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 02:54, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

    How about posting notes at WP:ENB and WP:VPM to ask for other comments? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:52, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

    Feel free. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:18, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

    Done: ENB note and VPM note. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:34, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

In short, here are my concerns:

• The WEF has, on the whole, even over its short span of existence, tended ever more towards opacity and against transparency. This has been manifest in dozens of ways, but one of them is a) moving information and discussion off en.wiki and b) dispersing such information to an ever-growing number of other sites (individual user pages, meta, commons, its own wiki, its own website).
• This dispersion would not necessarily be such a bad thing, if the WEF/WMF had not done a simply terrible job of updating and maintaining those off-site nodes of information. This has again been manifest in dozens of ways, and in some senses Lianna's recent moves have been a recognition of that terrible job.
• The WMF/WEF has also consistently gone beyond obscurity and towards obfuscation, for instance with a series of misleading edit summaries, such as the one announcing this move here, which was not in fact a "move" at all, but the deletion of the material found on wiki, and its substitution with a new, promotional page recently written by LiAnna.
• In short, and in lieu of the WMF/WEF's appalling efforts on this front, the page found here has been the only one consistently updated by the community, a repository of information updated frequently in response to information gleaned elsewhere. It's been the only reliable source of information about the WEF. Deleting it, as LiAnna (effectively) proposes is simply another lamentably retrograde step. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:56, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Jon, I had a thought: I think the problem is we have different views of the purpose of the page on the Wiki Education Foundation. I'd like it to provide information on the programmatic work the organization is doing that directly affects Wikipedia; that's what I think most people will care about. I think they want to know what the organization does and how it's affecting Wikipedia. I think you're more interested in surfacing how the organization is functioning (board decisions, structure, funding, etc.). While I think that information is also important, I don't think it's what people coming to a page about our organization are primarily interested in. Thus what you see as "obfuscation", I see as surfacing more important items, such as information on the programmatic activities. I'm not trying to deliberately hide information so much as bring forth up-to-date information about the programmatic work we're doing that affects Wikipedia. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:40, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, there are plenty of pages on the program. Yes, I feel this one page should be on the organization itself. And yes, you are confusing the two: in wanting to make the page on the WEF another vehicle of marketing/publicity. See for instance your use of peacock terms, which I have had to delete. Though this is part also of the conflict of interest of a paid employee writing a page about their own organization. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:04, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

@Jbmurray:, you seem very convinced that the standards we apply to a Wikipedia article should be applied to an organization's page in project space or on Meta. I disagree with that. The approach to the page that LiAnna endorsed above seems reasonable to me, and very much in keeping with how chapters and other organizations have typically approached recording their work in project space or on Meta. While I do agree that you were right to remove the word "incredible" as you linked in your comment, I also don't think it was big a deal at all that it was in there. You seem to attach some significance to that little detail, and I'm not sure why. -Pete (talk) 19:12, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

It's quite typical for paid employees of Wikimedia movement entities (and yes, the WEF is a Wikimedia movement entity) to edit project space pages about their own organization. I would expect LiAnna to not edit an article about the WEF, but she wouldn't be doing her job if she didn't edit project space pages about her organization. As for what further discussion I expected: I was hoping that someone would put forth convincing reasoning as to why the WEF should deviate from standard practice for movement organizations that effect multiple wikis and document here on ENWP rather than on meta. Obviously ENI and ENB should exist here, but I really don't see any reason for the main page documenting the WEF to exist here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:25, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd add that if any page is to be deleted, it's probably the one on meta. After all, unlike Wikimedia NY, Wikimedia DC, Wiki Project Med Foundation, the WEF has only a tangential relationship with the WMF (apart, that is, from the fact that all its employees are former staffers). It was refused status (or on the verge of being refused status) as a thematic organization, and is apparently unwilling to reapply. It has a transitional grant from the WMF, but aims to be completely independently funded. It no longer even has WMF presence on its board. It is simply an independent organization that organizes efforts to edit in specific ways on (almost entirely) the English Wikipedia. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:03, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

• Support meta being most-updated place I go to Wikimedia NYC meetings and also participate in about five other regional chapters, plus I follow the medicine and LGBT projects. I have seen chapters try maintaining on English Wikipedia, other language Wikipedias, their own websites, other social media platforms, or WMF-granted website spaces. Every option is lousy and has lots of drawbacks. However, the historical precedent is that when organizations can maintain a meta page and keep that up-to-date then that satisfies the Wikipedia community the most. The important stuff on meta can then be periodically copied to other places, and those other places should be noted as not necessarily being as up-to-date as meta. If anything happens other than this then it would not be unorthodox because there are no standard practices, but it would be against what precedent exists.

I regret telling English Wikipedians to follow what happens on meta but there is a trend in community organization that this should happen.

Please put nothing on outreach. That site persists without a community and is stagnant. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:00, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree with @Bluerasberry:'s comments 100% -- very well put. @Jbmurray:, you make good points, but as Lane says -- among the various imperfect options, it seems abundantly clear to me that Meta is the least imperfect. If you would like to create a supplementary page here on Wikipedia, I will try to help keep it up to date -- but I think it's essential that it not try to duplicate the entire page on Meta. That should be the central and authoritative page. -Pete (talk) 17:30, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I would agree: please put nothing on outreach, heh. I'd also note that there are plenty of pages on meta related to organizations that have no official status, e.g., the page about a theoretical bay area user group that Pete and I had talked about pursuing status for, but never actually had. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:25, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

• I read this discussion as fairly clear consensus to close with a soft redirect to the page on meta. I'll be implementing such a close in around 24 hours, unless someone insists that an uninvolved admin close, in which case I guess I'll list it as a closure request on AN or something unless someone feels like running an RFC. Consensus to run the main page on meta seems pretty clearcut to me. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:20, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
  • As you are involved, that is fairly obviously inappropriate. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 03:09, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
    • @Jbmurray: - it is not inappropriate for an involved party to take an action when consensus has been reached, it's pretty typical. I read this situation as one where consensus has been reached, since there's near universal agreement on restoring the soft redirect, and no convincing argument has been put forth as to why a soft redirect should not be put in place. However, since you disagree with me, your choice as to next move: I'll either list this at AN to request an uninvolved closer evaluate consensus tomorrow, or, if you really really want, you can run an explicit RfC on the issue. (There's a reason I posted my intended action before taking it.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:42, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Kevin, of course that's your reading. But the choice of "next move" is yours, not mine. My view is as evident from what's gone on above as yours is: I don't think any such "next move" is required at all. However, if you wish to treat this discussion as some kind of little RFC that requires "closing," then feel free to go ahead and seek a closer. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
      • I'd only add that edit summaries such as this one hardly indicate assumptions of good faith on your part. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:58, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
        • If that wasn't your intention, my apologies, but I'm not the first person on this page to accuse someone of obfuscation :) If you don't view this as something akin to a miniature RfC, then your complaint that I am involved is irrelevant - all discussants here are involved, and you can't really argue that because of that the discussion automatically cannot result in any change. Besides for maybe Lane (I don't know how long he's been involved,) I've actually been involved in the education program for less time than anyone else here. If you want to view it as something akin to a miniature RfC I have no problem with the idea of asking a neutral administrator to assess consensus; if you want to view it as just a content dispute in project namespace, then I'll just restore the soft redirect later today - the normal thing to do in a content dispute after consensus has been reached, even if a lingering party doesn't think consensus has been reached. After fairly extensive discussion that has pretty much stopped, it's clear that most interested people find the most appropriate location for the page to be meta; I know we don't count votes and all, but since I doubt I can convince you on the strength of the arguments, I'll point out that there are very few situations where five people !voting one way and one person !voting the other way doesn't represent consensus in favor of a change like this. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:28, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
          • • I believe you missed a "not." Boldly adding it, for clarity (and as part of my own personal war against obfuscation). --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:45, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
          • A agree with Kevin's assessment -- the consensus is very clear, and it's past time to just implement it. I don't see any particular need to wait 24 hours, but if that makes you feel more comfortable...sure. I agree this isn't about vote count; as a default, it seems obvious to me that a movement-affiliated organization should be given broad leeway to operate however it sees fit, unless there is a clear and compelling reason to do otherwise. After a great deal of discussion, I see no such clear and compelling reason. -Pete (talk) 17:22, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
            • Hi Pete - I usually just throw in a 24 hour clause on things like this because waiting another day does relatively little harm, and it reduces the number of times I'm mentioned at ANI and the amount of edit/movewarring that arises :) 24 hours is enough time for someone who has a serious problem with a proposed action to pursue alternative pathways, but a short enough period of time (especially in a discussion that's been running this long,) that it doesn't do much damage. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:29, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, you've gone ahead and deleted, I see. Oh well. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:48, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

ENWP and all of our other projects pretty much run on a consensus model. Even after posts at ENB and VPM, you were the only poster here who opposed homing the WEF on meta. Even disagreeing with the result, surely you acknowledge that consensus here was against your view? There are plenty of places on ENWP I can think of where I've disagreed with the general consensus reached, but recognized it anyway because consensus is, well, how we work. Even with the redirect restored you have several pathways (for example, a formal RfC) that you could pursue if you feel strongly about keeping a WEF page on ENWP not as a soft redirect and believe you could achieve consensus in the opposite direction. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:19, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, I know quite well how Wikipedia works, thanks very much. :) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:48, 29 April 2014 (UTC)