User talk:SandyGeorgia/arch92

Combine all WMF and Education program posts

Combining all of these under one header, since I haven't caught up on pending work and responses here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:27, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Medical sources handout/paragraph

Sandy, if/when you create the sentences or handout or whatever it's going to be on sourcing, could you ping me? The students on the course I am working with (Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Psychology of Language (Kyle Chambers)) are having some trouble with correctly identifying secondary sources, according to a more experienced editor I'm talking to. I think your notes would be helpful. On the plus side, they seem to have been instructed to post notes to the article talk page offering to fix problems -- I've seen this note on several talk pages, almost identically phrased: "If anyone has any comments on the material that I have added or any more material that they believe should be added please comment on the talk page and I will be more than glad to take into account any comments". Let's hope they are as good as their word. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:33, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Assessing psychology articles in the education program

Sandy, I don't know if you saw the note I posted to the education noticeboard about assessing student articles, but I thought I'd check to see if you would be interested in assessing a couple of articles in the psychology area that you've been dealing with. You expressed some concern about whether the metric we're using for quality is good enough, so you may not want to participate on that basis, but if you're interested, you'd be a big help, because you'd be a lot more accurate than I would in assessing the quality of the sources used for these articles. It's a fairly quick process to assess an article, especially if it's short. I know you've had trouble with the pscyhology classes and these metrics are intended to help answer the questions you've been raising about whether the EP is a net negative to Wikipedia. If you're interested, the relevant link is here; it should be self-explanatory but ask if you have questions. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Mike, I cracked my elbow and the pain is keeping me from working ... what is your timing? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

There's no deadline, though it would be useful to have them done by mid-July, when the working group meets to talk about the education program. We have three volunteers working on it now, and I think we'll eventually get to all of them, so if you would like to reserve a couple for your assessment take a look at that page and just put your name after "Reviewer:" under "Reviewer 1" (or "2" or "3") with {{user|SandyGeorgia}} and they'll be there when your elbow recovers. (Sorry to hear you hurt it.) I think LiAnna is going to add two sample articles from every single class, and she hasn't done all of them yet, so the classes you've been working with may not yet be represented. We haven't created the "burden" assessment yet -- we're not really happy with any of the ideas we came up with for measuring negative impact, but we'll probably go with some form of questionnaire -- I'll ping you again when that goes up. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:02, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi

Hi. Are you aware of this? I'd appreciate your thoughts, if you're interested. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:35, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Read the discussions with Iri ... concerned. Much goes wrong in here even with the best of intentions, and that one seems ripe for incidents. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:12, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. That's why I'm spamming it everywhere. The intention is obviously benign – an entity with a cheque account that can pay the minimal expenses involved in outreach to professional and scholarly organisations, NGOs, etc. – but it needs concerned eyes on it to make sure it doesn't morph into something nobody intended. Nothing is cut in stone at the moment. The discussion on Iridescent's talk page is a fair summary but some points not raised there are being discussed at m:WT:MED and m:WT:MED/Bylaws. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:25, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Burden of education program

Sandy, I know you were concerned that some of the students editing under the education program were more trouble than they are worth. This is something it's been difficult to measure, so in response to some of the discussion at the recent education program RfC I created a burden analysis page. Would you be willing to cast a sceptical eye over it and let me know what you think?

Some of the results bear out your comments from this spring -- the worst performing class is a psychology class from Kentucky, which I believe is part of the Association for Psychological Science's Wikipedia Initiative, and I recall you being particularly critical of some of the medical article edits. For some of the edits I went to WP:MED to get a second opinion; you can see those discussions here. Any feedback you have time for would be very helpful.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:53, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

There are only two things I know significantly more than squit about

One is computing and the other is psychology; pretty much everything else I've written about here I've learned about on the job so to speak. I've done a few early steam-driven computers and I might do more, perhaps even branch out into transistorised computers eventually, but I'd really like to tackle a serious psychology topic, and I keep coming back to cognitive dissonance. I just looked through the article again and it seemed full of the kind of stuff I might have written as an undergraduate, with references to individual papers that had caught my eye. One of my own favourite undergraduate essays was on the application of Fourier transformations to the understanding of brain waves, which now I look back on it I didn't even really understand myself, and my tutor certainly didn't. But I digress.

Do you think it would be possible to move an article like cognitive dissonance more towards what an encyclopedia article ought to look like without being blocked for 3RR/disruption/whatever? Perhaps even GA? Bearing in mind that my impatience with idiocy is legendary? What's held me back in the past is a lack of access to sources, but now that some who may be sympathetic to my cause are being offered free access to JStor things might become easier.

If you were to seriously look at working on cognitive dissonance where would you start? My initial impression is that I'd start by rewriting the whole fucking thing. But I know you to be more of a diplomat than I'll ever be, so perhaps you may have a better idea. Malleus Fatuorum 02:31, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I looked at the contribs history; there is a student at work, so no doubt the entire thing needs rewriting. Whether you can get it done without interference depends on which psych editors are watching it-- there aren't many of them who know how Wikipedia articles are supposed to be rewritten, and some of them dig in to preserve their pet theories. Do you really want to spend your time on that? At best, you'd have to wait for the student to finish, because the entire WMF is behind allowing poor student edits to stand. By the way, I haven't heard back on my JSTOR email ... has anyone? We should follow up to find out if our emails were even received, and when we should expect an answer ... what if they were "lost in the mail"? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:37, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

That explains why it looks like an undergraduate essay then, so I suppose I'll have to leave it be, at least for now. BTW, I did myself down a little with my introduction; I know a hell of a lot about ferrets as well, another article I'd just love to take a scythe to, and 17th-century English witchcraft ... and I'm sure there must be other stuff I know about as well. :-) I'll look around for another psychology article in need of a little bit of TLC. Malleus Fatuorum 02:47, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with stepping back from articles where students are active. The WMF keep repeating the mantra that this is the "encyclopaedia anyone can edit" which is as much a lie as the "sum of all human knowledge" bullshit. They use that claim to explain their unwillingness to implement controls on profs using WP for homework assignments. This is an encyclopaedia, not homework. We've now got the ridiculous situation where one of our top article writers is prevented from writing a featured-quality psychology article, because it is currently someone's homework. The students are all over the popular psychology topics like cockroaches so it is impossible to avoid them. From the discussion on Malleus's talk page, it appears the student has been told to write an academic essay from primary sources. So the longer this student carries on doing this, the more it wastes their time and the less useful the article becomes to our readers. Does it surprise anyone to look at the prof's contribution history to realise the problem here. It would be wonderful if someone wrote a top quality popular psychology article because we could at least point the students at it and say "Look! This is how you do it." -- Colin°^Talk 09:28, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

If the professor has told them to write essays on Wikipedia, then she's not getting the point of how Wikipedia is supposed to present information. That's an entirely different issue than students editing for school or pleasure. I will take a look. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:03, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

You'll take a look? Fuchs it is WAAAAAYYYY too big of a problem for even a dozen editors to deal with, a group could spend their Wikicareers trying to address article damage done by student editing, the WMF employees (the truly guilty in all of this mess) will scream "BITE" if you deal with student articles in the same way we would deal with any other editor's articles, you can never tell which articles are student edited because they don't tag the talk pages, you'll spend hours dealing with plagiarism alone, you need journal access to correct their faulty text ... there is so much more ... I despair. I truly despair. Add to that the WMF funding and institutionalizing pro-Chavez editing, and there aren't many ways one can turn for enjoyable editing without encountering WMF incompetence leaving a truly negative impact on the quality of this website. Yes, if Malleus were to write one good psych article, it may show the way ... but no, it wouldn't, because the profs and students do not engage the encyclopedia in any way-- they don't look. And Malleus might get peeved and get blocked if he really got in there and saw how truly bad it is. I'm glad you'll take a look, but I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the few editors who has enough gravitas on this site to get WMF to pay attention to the problem is Raul654 (he got us JSTOR, he makes things happen). I don't think it's possible to move PAID employees off of the position of damage that has been done here ... they have access to millions of dollars of DONATED money, and that keeps them employed, keeps our psych articles underrepresented at WP:FA, and now, thanks to their use of our donated funds, will also guarantee that the entire suite of Chavez articles remain POV. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:06, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

"they don't look" -- that is indeed the problem and you will note I said that we'd point them at the example of how to do it. I repeatedly see students writing material on WP that we already have, but they write it in the wrong place because they've been told to expand a stub or a redirect into a GA. So yes, they don't look. But also, with psych articles, if they did look, it would set a very bad example to them. Perhaps that's because it isn't a hard science so the articles are littered with discussions of the crazy experiments psychologists think up rather than actualy explaining how our minds work with the same level of confidence we can explain how blood cells work. Colin°^Talk 15:40, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

My experience of class-assigned art history articles is that they are often pretty poor, and sometimes need wholesale reverting, but I have never experienced any resistance from the volunteer "Camus Diplomatic Corps" to me doing so, let alone from WMF employees. Students tend to do their diff & submit that, sometimes entirely removing the pre-existing content, but neither they nor anyone else seems much to care about what happens afterwards. Anyway, WMF are now "narrowing their focus" as you will have seen, which will I think mean leaving the college programme to shift for itself, with a little cash for expenses. The WMF staff stick pretty rigidly to the "section 230" policy of leaving content well alone in my experience. I don't say that's a good thing. Johnbod (talk) 15:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not sure what you are referring to with "narrowing their focus", but I suspect it means they've realized that they aren't getting any editor retention from a program where students are only editing for a grade, and they can for sure get real editor retention by advancing programs that recruit folks with a committed political POV-- now those are the types of editors who will stick around to advance a cause (not just editing for a grade), and growing the ranks of editors is what WMF really wants. Maybe they realized they aren't getting that from student editing. I guess the real fools here aren't the WMF employees, but those who donate money to the WMF. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok, that is http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus, this year's big thing from WMF, board-driven I think. Specifically on the college programme, you may have missed this update. Johnbod (talk) 15:37, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Johnbod, yes I had missed those. I find Sue Gardner's writing about as informative as The Signpost. But yes, it seems that my hunch about what was going on was correct-- they are now directing grant money towards areas that will increase editorship better than the education programs did (anything is better than nothing, and get some POV warriors on board, empower them with money and collaborative editing as a group, and they will stick around). It's possible that they are so incompetent that they don't even realize they are funding institutionalized POV. They will get committed editors this way, and dealing with the editors they are now recruiting will result in even more damage to content. Welcome institutionalized, funded POV (which is the same as we were getting from the education program, but now we are paying to get committed POV warriors instead of those editing only one article one term for a grade). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:48, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Her writing style really grates with me. What does "execute on" mean for instance? But I see she doesn't really accept the point you're making SandyG: "Aside from supporting Wikimedia's continuing growth in unique visitors and pageviews, we've achieved important successes through our work .... and a global education program with thousands of students contributing high-value content as course assignments." Malleus Fatuorum 15:55, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

That's a gem. I mean Really, Sue? Who are you kidding? Or, who are you ignoring? Or, how much are you getting paid to push this BS? Will Jimbo turn over in his virtual grave when he comes to and realizes where donated dollars went to institutionalize POV on Wikipedia? I will admit that as a strategy, the current focus on granting Wikimedia Chapters around the world is much more likely to keep WMF employees in their jobs-- it will increase editorship. And POV. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

←(ec) I've sent an email to the professor who was running the class. Finals are upon us so I don't think there's much concern about more issues there, but I recommended that she more clearly distinguish between essay and encyclopedia writing to her students and pointed out WP:PSTS and WP:MEDRS as useful links. Malleus, I can only beseech you to be patient in explaining things to such users in the future; it's unfortunate that a misunderstanding on the teacher's part can trickle down to the students (of course they're going to pay attention to the prof, they want a good grade.)

The matter of exposing new editors to featured content and the years of accumulated wisdom and grit from trying to create those articles, I think, is a more general problem that I have no idea how to solve in a world of 3+ million articles and people entering from every nook and cranny of a Google search. I know when I started editing I probably tried to reinvent the wheel on a couple of articles. It's mostly a matter of whether you wise up or get repulsed. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:32, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

BTW: you guys may not be aware of this piece of propaganda. And see the "Education program metrics" section on my talk page. It appears that the "Our data shows that students improve Wikipedia articles an average of 64 percent" statement is based on an analysis that didn't check for plagiarism nor specific guidelines like MEDRS. The plagiarism-detection and fixing-up-student-edits issues are absolutely huge. Because you can probably count on one hand the number of medical editors with decent access to a wide selection of sources. The best I have been able to do is use Google Scholar to find snippets of the inserted text inside paywalled journals, but I'm unable to read the journal articles as I have better things to spend $30 on than three sheets of A4 paper. And if they plagiarise their student textbook then essentially nobody other than the prof probably has the ability to check it. So these students expand unwatched stubs and redirects (how many folk watchlist a redirect) and the plagiarism and other issues go undetected and unfixed. We need to shift the burden of plagiarism-detection onto the profs and other teaching staff because we simply don't have the resources to do it, even if we had the inclination. Colin°^Talk 16:06, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, of course; we only have to consider SOPA to know that copyvio isn't one of WMF's concerns. And, we know that the WMF staff is replete with folks who don't know anything about actual editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:33, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Here's a doozie; find the hidden student gem, and save that one for the Annals of Student Editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:32, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Classroom

FYI, I have some good news about that neuroscience class and WP:MEDRS. I'm in contact, and I will be writing up some advice about how to do things next Fall term to make everyone happier. =) Biosthmors (talk) 19:51, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

That is most encouraging, Bio ... but what about the legions of other classes? I hope your info will address more than that one class (although it is particularly problematic, it is not unique). I had plans long ago to write something up, but instead I gave up in despair and went to my garden all spring, summer and fall. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I do hope to scale up from one class to more than one for Spring semester, and I put any thing I see that comes up that is an eye-sore at User talk:Biosthmors/Intro Neuro to hopefully transmit to future "generations". Who knows, maybe it will become a Wikipedia guidance essay. Or used by me to lecture classes before, or assigned by professors as required reading (and quizzable). We'll see! Feel free to share any random points that pop up and frustrate you there in "What's missing?" Best. Biosthmors (talk) 20:32, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I do already mention a lot about secondary sources, etc. at the main user course page. Biosthmors (talk) 20:33, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Note to self: five hours today on cleanup, and I have barely scratched the surface, and realize I won't be able to fix most of the problems without a whole lot of journal articles that I don't have. What's troubling is that I'm making these articles look good, and they look better than they did before, but before they were accurate-- now they are not. No information is better than wrong information in medicine. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:17, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

True... give me one to work on/tell me (hopefully without using too much more of your time) the main things you see that are wrong? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 18:22, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I left lists at Talk:Palilalia and Talk:Echopraxia, but they are incomplete and working on them now may not be productive. Lots of missing info on sources, and I fear those students will never return to fill in the missing info. Completely wrong focus on both as they used old sources or sources not specific to the topics, resulting in just about no mention of main condition in which these occur (Tourette syndrome). Lots of queries about where they got some info that is wrong as far as I know. Much more to do, not sure if starting now is the best idea, maybe wait and see if they return to answer questions? I've got to run ... busy day now. I've not even started on Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, and I can't remember now the fourth article I need to fix. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Well I haven't made much headway in clean-up, but I did make a note of your recent post, FYI. Thanks for putting it there. Good idea. Biosthmors (talk) 16:59, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Psychology student edits

You and/or some of your talk page stalkers may be interested in yet another strand of discussion about edits made by psychology undergraduates as part of an education program, this time at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#New editors making huge edits. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 14:05, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

customized probation to deal with problematic classes?

Hi Sandy - this idea isn't entirely thought out yet, so I figured I would solicit your feedback here rather than bringing it to EN/B yet. How would you feel about a customized community probation that dealt with classroom assignments that worked on articles covered by WP:MEDRS that said something like "If more than XX% of student editors in a particular class make mainspace edits on articles that are covered by the aegis of WP:MEDRS that substantially fail to meet the requirements of WP:MEDRS, the edits from all students in that particular class will be forcibly sandboxed until they can be independently reviewed by Wikipedians experienced with applying WP:MEDRS?" I understand the significant problem that exists here, I just want to find a way to deal with it that fixes the problematic classes, without punishing the non-problematic ones. (I think a similar clause about "If more than XX% of student editors in a particular class violate our copyright policies, the entire classes edits will be rolled back" would also likely be a good idea.) Obviously we'd have to figure out exact wording of the terms of the probation and then get community agreement to it, but do you think this could be a viable compromise path forward? Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I suppose it might help, but it still seems kind of backwards. First, there has been no class I've encountered that hasn't been problematic (to varying degrees), so the burden seems to be backwards (sandbox all of 'em, bring out what is salvageable). Second, it adds a whole 'nother dimension to the burden on established editors-- that is, we have to now check every article written by the class to see if the percentage that fail to meet requirements is met. So, instead of me having to fix two or three articles per problematic class, I would be tasked with checking up to 40 articles !!! So, I think Slim's proposal is more in the right direction-- sandbox them to begin with, bring out what is salvageable. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:36, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

How about a change to the text to make it clear that it's not placing any requirement on established editors to conduct such reviews, just requiring that the content stays sandboxed until such reviews are done? (Which may mean it's sandboxed indefinitely.) I'm just trying to come up with a mechanic that targets problematic classes, while allowing high performing classes to continue to function unimpeded. I haven't reviewed many medrs covered classes; if they are truly all bad, then I would consider supporting forcibly sandboxing all of 'em. I just know of a high enough number of non-medrs covered classes that perform at a high level that I don't want to support a general EP-wide forcible sandbox. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

And I do see your point re: figuring out XX% being a pain in the ass for MEDRS covered classes. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

What you're trying to accomplish is in the correct direction; the problems in medical articles are occurring because the profs are completely unaware of MEDRS, the sourcing is inadequate, and the undergrad students are simply not up to the task of writing medical content for an encyclopedia. Generally, a problematic class results in every article being problematic. So your intent/direction is right. Yes, if they were forcibly sandboxed it would help ... but no one but the medical editors would know which of these classes needed to be put on that probation, so the burden on medical editors to identify the problematic profs would still be there. What would help MUCH more are two things: 1) educate the profs on MEDRS, and 2) get the students to post to talk so we can guide their edits, point them to adequate sources, make sure the content they are adding belongs in the article they are editing, etc. They are students at universities, and so should have better access to sources than, for example, I do. If I knew someone wanted to write on topic X, I could say-- go get this source, which is high quality, recent, compliant with MEDRS, and from there, you can write an article. Instead, they're getting whatever (usually faulty) sources they can find, and trying to generate meaningful content from often bad sources.

On another matter, I had a friend look at the law articles you suggested. He found several grammatical errors-- not a big deal-- and generally felt that the articles were decent quality. He did comment two things, though: 1) he noticed that every article had a) an editor, b) a copyeditor, and c) a reviewer (a good setup), and 2) he said he couldn't address whether the articles were adequately writtten for a general audience. He understood them because he's a lawyer, but said there may be problems with general audience comprehension (that is, encyclopedic tone aimed at laypersons). He also added that he wasn't surprised that they were better than what I'm seeing in medical articles, since they are written after all by law students. And he said that one reason that class's choice of articles probably worked out well is that case reports follow an established structure which lends itself to an encyclopedic format. Hope that helps, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

They are written by students at the graduate school of information, generally people getting master's degrees in information science - not law students (and not always grad students - I've taken both his classes.) It is still definitely the case that they articles written by primarily graduate students are going to be better in quality than undergrad articles though, that's been a pretty consistent finding throughout the ed program, so it is still a point. Re: point (1) from your friend - they do indeed all have that, it's built in to his assignment design. I've somehow lost a link to his full instructional design, but you can get the gist of it from this page. I think it works quite well, and have been encouraging new professors I encounter to adopt it. And re: point (2) - he has a point there, too. Not all of the articles are written in a way that is as appropriate for a general audience as they should be. That said, I feel like they're certainly of a quality that is worthwhile for Wikipedia to have - they're not perfect, but pretty damn good, and I suspect better than an average Wikipedia article. (And his classes have produced a ton of content - I think at this point they've written a majority of case summaries about American internet law that exist on Wikipedia, or at least a huge chunk of them.) His class is definitely on the higher end of successful as far as GEP classes go, I just wanted to show it to y'all to make sure that it's clear to everyone that even though there are unsuccessful classes, there are highly successful ones too.

I'd like to come up with a solution that allows his class - and classes like his - to continue to function in the way they have been, that at the same time limits the harm caused by the subset of classes that do not represent a net benefit to Wikipedia. (I don't think slim's current proposal does this, which is why I can't agree with it.) I do agree with you that my idea in this section as I originally presented it is probably unworkable. Thanks for your feedback on it, and I'll try to come up with a more workable idea. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:13, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Your response has me pondering ... I'm pretty sure some of my most problematic classes may also be grad students. I wonder if medical encyclopedic writing is just ... harder. Most interesting is how really poor their basic writing skills are ... anyway, nice ideas coming out! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, I do think that part of it is that it is just harder, partly because MEDRS is a standard that is both significantly more serious than RS, and significantly different than what students are used to, and partly because medical writing is just harder. I've been discouraging everyone in a medrs-covered area who has contacted me at Berkeley from participating in the program, because I think that their success rate is inevitably going to be significantly lower than the success rate of general classes, at least until we come up with a better approach to them. Re: general writing skills... I've had some term papers turned in to me that would make you cry :). Sometimes it seems like the average person is a way below average writer, heh. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

If we could get one good medical class to do it right, it just might show the way. If the prof would engage, understand WP:MEDMOS (speaking of an established structure, like law case reports-- MEDMOS has an established structure that students rarely follow), choose appropriate topics for expansion, and use MEDRS-compliant sources ... we might show how it should be done. Were you and BIO going to do something in SF early next year? I was considering joining you depending on my travel plans ... although I'd have to give Berkeley the big axe :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:39, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm actually not sure who BIO is offhand, so I probably wasn't planning on it, but would be definitely up for something :) is BIO another bay area wikipedian involved in education issues who I haven't encountered yet? If so, it'd be greatly appreciated if you introduced the two of us. If you're ever in the bay area, let me know if you have some free time. I'd love to meet up with you for drinks or something, and brainstorm about some of this stuff in person. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:58, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I got the wrong person then. I encountered a conversation somewhere recently where Biosthmors mentioned to another editor something about helping direct a class in the Bay Area ... I can't recall who the other editor was. BIO will surely pop in here (see his earlier posts in this section); if not, give him a ring! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:39, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Ooh, ooh, more bay area stuff I can help out with! If there's a medical class going on nearby, I'd love to help out with them. I'll poke Bio, thanks. And seriously, if you end up in the bay at some point, poke me on my talk and let's get drinks or something. Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:12, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

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

Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

WMF noticeboard

Weren't you instrumental in getting the Education noticeboard up and running? I think we should have a WMF noticeboard, that way users can express their desires for specific actions (non-Education program related) that could conceivably be addressed. I guess a central concern there will be whether or not certain things violate the WMF interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Best. Biosthmors (talk) 19:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

No, I wasn't involved in the set up oF ENB ... I was one of the first to find, need and post to the board, though. The initial reaction was to shut down anyone criticizing anything about the program. WMF staff pretty much silenced us and moved our posts to talk. I unwatched. Then months later, when I peeked in again, I found Slim raising exactly the same issues several of us had been raising for months, so I joined in again. I'm unclear on the focus of this new board you propose. Generally, I think there are too many dispute resolution boards, and that has stretched resources and has led to diluted resolution. I'm not sure anything can be done about the fact that WMF doesn't care about copyvio. There was only one thing that worked in the past, and her name was Moonriddengirl-- they hired away to a job unrelated to copyvio, and now copyvio gets little attention. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:02, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I created Wikipedia:Visual editor the other day because it is a WMF activity. If someone wants an update on the Visual editor, or an update on RTCE, then I think they should be able to go to the WMF noticeboard to get a reply from either knowledgeable Wikipedians or WMF people about WMF activities. I imagine it should exist to serve as a place where Wikipedians could communicate to the WMF from a bottom-up approach. I think it would encourage effective understanding, transparency, and (I hope) positive results. Biosthmors (talk) 23:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

The tone-deafness of some WMF staff with respect to the problems in medical articles could lead bad places wrt Section 230; they've been notified repeatedly, but nothing is done. But if we raise that, someone will cry "legal threats". They really should be thinking not only about the legal, but also about the moral, repercussions of supporting a program that recruits unprepared and unqualified editors to add medical content to such a prominent website. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:01, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Done

Done with WP:AFSE now! Biosthmors (talk) 17:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)