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What is the ideal Ambassador:Student ratio?

We're trying to figure out what range of ratios of Ambassadors to students lead to success in classes. Obviously it would be awesome if we had a 1:1 ratio, but we know that's not really possible! So I'm wondering: How many students did you work with this term? Did you feel like it was just right, too many, or could you have taken on more students? What is the ideal ratio that we should ensure all classes meet? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

That is very difficult to gauge; I believe the workload for the ambassador can change massively depending on what kind of work the students are doing, and the quality of their initial guidance.
I think it's unhelpful that so many classes concentrate on creating a new article because that's such a steep learning curve and, let's be honest, we already have so many articles (many of which could benefit from incremental improvement) - seeing new articles circling the drain of AfD could be quite stressful for an ambassador.
On the other hand, a class who have already been well briefed on the basics (and in particular on issues like original research) and who set out to do things without such a steep learning curve - or who collaborate on building shared articles outside of article-space - make life "easier" for an ambassador. This either allows us to move further from 1:1, or allows us to get better quality with our existing ratio. bobrayner (talk) 16:57, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I worked with 25 students at Unirio's course in Brazil. It was ok because I taught only wikipedia editing skills during 2h per day during 5 days. Using personal's sandboxes was extremely helpful to avoid problems with community that was unaware about the project (next semester, we're working to involve community a lot more). So, I think I could work with a class with 25 to 30 students as well. However, I'd like to suggest to take fewer students if editing directly in main domain. OTAVIO1981 (talk) 17:26, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • My experience Unfortunately, my anecdotal take is probably useless, as the students never took advantage of my offer to assist, nor my wide-open availability, but I had seven students this semester. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:47, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Depends highly on how active the ambassador is. I think we need a metrics of ambassador activity instead. I've seen ambassadors who were quite active, but also some who were pretty much never available. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Some of it obviously will depend on the available resources of the Ambassador. Serving as a CA this semester, I worked with another CA to cover a class of just 6 students. However, since my fellow CA and I are both full-time students ourselves, this proved to be a good ratio. The students in this particular class each asked for a significant amount of one-on-one help outside the 3-hour class session that was turned over to our general training. However, in other circumstances I would offer a ratio of about 15:1 as seeming most reasonable. 74.96.50.85 (talk) 18:09, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Piotrus has a good point, but I think it's still worth answering the question with the expectation that the ambassador will be reasonably active. Given that the students tend to all edit at the same time, when something is due, I think it's hard to support more than half a dozen active students. However, you don't see half-a-dozen active students unless you have two or three times that many total students -- some never do much. I think fifteen is OK, and for a well-run class I could see 25 being OK. However, to return to Piotrus's point, perhaps we should allocate multiple ambassadors to classes to avoid the risk of inactive ambassadors. E.g. if the target ratio is 25, and there are two classes of 50 each, allocate four ambassadors to class 1, and the same four to class 2. That way the ratio is right but if any one ambassador drops out it's less of an impact. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:12, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Piotrus is right of course, but we have to start somewhere, assuming some median level of activity from an Ambassador. I think anything from 10 - 15 should be good, 20 manageable. The availability of online volunteers is not as volatile as the students' activity, and the focus should be on effective communication rather than just plain availability as such. Pooling (as suggested) could be one of the more workable options. Mike(the other)'s idea seems great; +1 to that. Lynch7 18:25, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • We had roughly 30 students to 2 ambassadors in the Alverno class. Even though that was a somewhat unorthodox class requiring less than average attention 15:1 seemed like a good ratio. Mixed in with the question of students:ambassadors is simply students:teacher. I maintain that WEP is a good fit for classes with =<30 students and generally a poor fit for >30 students, regardless of the number of assigned ambassadors. Protonk (talk) 20:12, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Ten students to an online ambassador means there is a chance to get to know the students. I find that most students will not go out and ask for help on Wikipedia, but are actually more comfortable with email. Where classes are relatively inactive not much time is needed to check contributions. But for big classes (say over 100) this is still time consuming. I think that MikeLynch has a good numbers estimate. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
    • That's an interesting point. A lot of long-term wikipedians seem more comfortable discussing things "out in the open" and email can sometimes be seen as, well, a bit surreptitious or sneaky. Of course, a student isn't necessarily coming here and logging in every day so email may well be more convenient too. I should try harder to use email next time... bobrayner (talk) 11:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I think it all depends on the class / the involvement of various users. In terms of in-class help - I have been in a 1-10 ratio and a 1-50, and personally didn't make a difference when giving the general introductions as a Campus Ambassador. In terms of more day to day keeping an eye on students - I would not base the number of students strictly so much as groups. Groups could be easily be one student, but when groups are 4 students, I do not think the work increases as much as adding another group does. Hence on that basis, 1 to 10-15 is ideal, 1-20 or so is probably the max I would go for too. Epistemophiliac (talk) 22:22, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Depends on the class. 15-20 would probably seem right.Smallman12q (talk) 01:15, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Not more than 10 students per ambassador. Can be stretched to 15 if pooling is done.--Sodabottle (talk) 06:21, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Not more than ten sounds about right. sonia♫ 08:25, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I am an instructor. I taught a class of 40 students. We did not have a CA. I think 1-2 CA would have been helpful. We did work with an OA. She was very helpful for the students who asked for help. However, if I had a CA that person could have sat down and walked students through some of their problems. This would have lightened my load and made the students feel more confident with their projects.

Pfancher (talk) 17:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

    • I reckon that you either need a CA or an instructor that is experienced with Wikipedia. Otherwise everyone struggles to get started. Many students will not ask for help or even be aware of how to do that when they are starting, so it is good to have a human they can talk to. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:39, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Standardizing an OA:Student ratio isn't going to help. Like others have said, there are OAs which don't do much, and there are classes which don't do much. Unfortunately, you can't be sure on how active a class will be till they start editing. I think that dynamic allocation is the best thing to do: If a class is doing fine, ask some of their OAs to help out students in a different class. Of course, this really doesn't help in planning the number of classes to accept into the program, which is what I assume you want this ratio for. For the purpose of planning, I'd say 1-10 (15 at max). I don't think that we need more than 2 CAs per class (and CAs can handle multiple classes, too), But I've not been a CA and have never been on-campus, so I'm not sure about this. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 05:25, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • For planning purposes I'd go for 1:9. A 1:10 ratio is ideal, but it is inevitable that some CAs will drop out. This is about in line with most university "tutorial" sub-classes I've experienced after adjusting for Wikipedia assignments having higher stakes (see WP:IRL, plus the assignment may be "marked", so to speak, by anyone who reads student contributed content). MER-C 12:37, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

So we're trying to finalize this decision by tomorrow so we can adjust the participating classes accordingly. Sounds to me like we should aim for a 1:10 or 1:15 ratio but should accept classes even if they only have a 1:25. Anything over that, we either need to recruit and train more CAs or deny participation until a later semester when we can find enough ambassadors to meet our requirements. Does this sound agreeable to everyone? Also, based on this feedback, we'd like to have [at least] one Wikipedian supporting every class. Thanks so much for the feedback, and please continue to contribute any opinions or suggestions about other ways to improve support with our courses. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd do it like this: count up how many active ambassadors you expect (maybe plan for the same as last semester as a starting point). Multiply that by your target number (say 15). If you have thirty ambassadors that means you can support 450 students. Pick classes to support till you get over 450 students. Then ask ambassadors to assign themselves to those classes (and to remember to double assign themselves if you want to try the redundancy idea mentioned above). The ambassadors should understand what the target ratio is -- obviously a class of twenty students has to be over or under ratio, but ask ambassadors to use their common sense. Then at the end see if there are obviously uneven allocations and talk to ambassadors here or on their talk pages to move them around to resolve the unevennesses. Does that make sense? If you end up with more ambassadors, add another class to the supported list; if ambassadors drop out then you have redundancy. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:21, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Great! This is exactly what Annie and I just discussed. Glad we're on the same page. Thanks for everything! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • The question should not be "Ambassador:student" ratio, but "Wikipedian time:student time" ratio. Some ambassadors are more connected to the Wikipedia community and can get students the help they need without doing the work themselves. When a student makes an article, especially when the student considers it "finished", it needs to be reviewed quickly. The review need not be for content, but rather for Wikipedia technical competence. The article needs to have links in and out, categories, sections, references, and a discussion page started. After that, it needs to have at least a single comment on the discussion page to show that someone actually saw it, and I think this best comes serendipitously somehow from a Wikipedian who stumbles upon it. For me, it takes me about three minutes per new article to check it and maybe fix 1-2 small problems. If the problems are big then I may just name some steps to take and see if the student wants to engage. I would like to think that ambassadors can check everything out in a maximum of 5 minutes per student article, and would need to check articles twice during a school term. When an ambassador checks an article they probably will ask for a response which it will take a student 30-60 minutes to meet. Hopefully an ambassador will have Wikifriends or partners who can do some of this work, and actually I think it is best to mix up responses and not have all feedback from one editor/ambassador. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:20, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Who is doing a favor to whom?

Having read the excellent essay by Mike in the recent Signpost (which should be an obligatory reading to anybody connected with our program), I would like to express my strong support for what I consider to be the main underlying idea. Namely, that we should abandon the idea of explosive growth and increasing our editor base with students, in lieu of focusing on recruiting academics with the aim of turning them into editors. In other word, one professor-editor is worth a hundred (or several hundreds) of student-editors. With that, there is a need to reframe the program. Till now, we have been pulling out all the stops to get any professor who have shown some interest on board. This means we have been seen as those asking for help, and the professors, as those graciously offering it. I think we need to change the perception of what we are doing here: we are doing a favor to academia, allowing them to educate their students better and to serve humanity through facilitating their participation here, and offering help and resources. I'd like to see a situation where being accepted as a Wikipedia Teaching Fellow, and/or having one's class be part of our program would be something one could reasonably brag to among their peers. Now, how realistic is that we could accomplish such a change? What do you think? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Piotr, based on everyone's feedback about the necessary ratio of ambassadors to students, the program is going to transition to a model similar to this for next semester. Though the process may not be exactly like "accepting" and "denying" professors based on selecting one over another, everyone seems to agree that we should deny participation should we be unable to find enough ambassador support by the start of the semester. At this point, we can recommend that the professor try to come back the following semester, once we all have more time to recruit and train effective ambassadors. Hopefully this meets your desire for "selecting" professor involvement on this short of notice for next semester. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I would like it to be the case that professors want to compete for a Wikipedia Teaching Fellow, as Piotr suggests, but I think that's optimistic, though there's no harm in keeping it in the back of our minds as a goal as the GEP evolves. However, there is one thing I think we should do. Jami, I assume the professors who want support fill out some information giving their school affiliation, size of class and so forth? I suggest we add a question to that asking whether they would be interested in significantly improving an existing Wikipedia article. Any professor who answers yes to that question should get preference for ambassador support, and we should follow up to offer collaboration with that professor on an article of their choice. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:39, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea. Personally, I think the emphasis on new editors creating completely new articles is harmful, due to the steep learning curve and the likelihood of deletion. There's lots of other work to do... bobrayner (talk) 02:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Mike! As always, thank you for your dedication to our program and your interest in making it as successful as possible for both Wikipedia and our participants. I like your idea to highly encourage our professors to edit Wikipedia themselves, as it reminds me of the very positive "call to arms" the APS and ASA have made.
However, to your point of giving ambassador priority to those who agree to edit, I fear this would not align with the overall goals of the Education Program. The Education Program is designed to get a recurring group of students to edit Wikipedia for class, exposing more and more people to the "under the hood" part of Wikipedia. Having a Wikipedia-experienced professor (Jon Beasley-Murray or Brian Carver) is of course wonderful for a class, but we saw in the Public Policy pilot that professors who never edited themselves (Carol Dwyer or Rochelle Davis) were nevertheless able to have their students make important and lasting contributions to Wikipedia. In fact, one of the key facets we identified about successful courses from the pilot was that the professors cared above all else about their students' learning -- and that they spent extra hours of their day helping students learn. That's not to say they couldn't also contribute to Wikipedia, of course, but in general, the classes that we've seen produce the best content are those taught by professors who put student learning above everything else, and I'm afraid prioritizing professors who edit Wikipedia may be too high of a barrier for some professors whose students would contribute exceptional work.
Another concern I've seen on talk pages is that the more we reject professor participation in the program, the broader the group of professors who are going to use Wikipedia anyway, simply without our support, will become. This is one of the reasons we're working to scale the project in an attainable way--with sufficient online training and materials. We're hoping the new professor orientation will not only educate our participants but also inspire them to make some edits themselves. Like I said, I certainly don't think yours is a bad idea; I just see the get-experts-to-edit as being outside the scope of the Wikipedia Education Program's resources. Just as we are encouraging the ASA and APS initiatives, I'd encourage you or others to pursue a project to get professors to edit, but just like ASA and APS, we simply don't have the staff resources to support a related effort (as can be seen by how long it's taken me to reply to you, our staff resources are stretched quite thin). JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
I take the point about the suggestion I made not aligning with your goals. As you know, I'm a bit sceptical about the effectiveness of recruiting students through this program, but unless you change that goal I can see the conflict. However, would it be at least possible to ask the professors if they are interested in working on articles themselves, without having any consequence to their participation from the answer to that question? If anyone who indicated an interest were then to be told that there are experienced editors who would be glad to work with them, we might be able to encourage them to participate more, and I think that would be good for the program. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
I think that's a great idea, and I can send a note about it out to professors with the online training modules that will be ready in the next week. That way, they can already be thinking about it when they're learning about how to edit, policies, etc. I definitely don't see any harm in suggesting professors edit themselves to get the hang of editing and contribute in a substantial way! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike, I just wanted to update you. I just sent an email to all professors for the current semester about some online training materials we developed. I included the following message at the bottom of the email. I just wanted to thank you for your contributions and suggestions on how to make the WEP more effective!
Many of our community members recognize that our very professors offer a wealth of information and expertise on topics that are poorly represented on Wikipedia. Since we understand you are extremely busy people, we would never impose any requirements for you to edit articles yourself. However, many of our valued Wikipedians would like to highly encourage you to contribute in your field of expertise. Hey, 100,000 other people out there edit Wikipedia on a regular basis, so you may be surprised what you can get out of it. Plus, you just might understand your students' struggles and achievements that much better!
Thanks, again, Mike. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 02:28, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks -- glad to hear it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:30, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

What about Oceania/Australia?

So I've been chatting with a professor I know in Australia, and he would like to try teaching with Wikipedia. He is willing to work with just an online ambassador (likely myself), but it would be nice if there was somebody in Australia to stop by for half an hour class presentation or such. The only problem is... do we have any infrastructure there? Oceania is a blank section at Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Current_ambassadors

Hence, I am wondering if anybody knows of any potential ambassadors there? Was there any interest from Wikipedians or instructors in Australia, any word from Wikimedia Australia...? If not, wouldn't it be a high time to get the ball rolling in that corner of the world as well? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 02:03, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Talk to User:LauraHale -- you can see more of what she's planning here: outreachwiki:Outreach_Oceania. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia on Campus on Facebook - dead since August

So, why is the http://www.facebook.com/WikipediaOnCampus inactive since August, without any discussion or announcement I can find? Did the WMF staffer responsible for it got fired/reassigned, and nobody took over that responsibility? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 13:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

  • LiAnna removed the link from the Ambassador Welcome template that we place on student talk pages. Why? Beats me. There was no communication about it. Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 15:54, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
The goal for that Facebook page was to have a place to interact with students -- our hope was we could offer suggestions to students and information about Wikipedia policies, etc., in a forum where they already are (Facebook). Unfortunately, very few students ever liked the page, so it was mostly Ambassadors. I spent a lot of time coming up with things to post every day, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the time or energy -- our stat reports from Facebook showed very low levels of engagement, no matter what I posted. I'd love to hear any suggestions anyone has for the page or how to get more students to like it (we asked all CAs to announce it in class and it was included on the OA template; I removed that when I decided not to continue doing it). -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

New Participation Requirements for spring term

Hi Ambassadors,

Thanks to all of you who have participated in a number of discussions on the U.S. Education Program talk page or Mike Christie's incredibly useful Signpost article over the last few months. Every term with the Wikipedia Education Program brings new challenges and opportunities to learn what works and what doesn't. We know there's been a lot of frustration over the last term as we grew faster than we were able to support at this point, and we're sorry about that -- so we wanted to let all of you be the first to know that we've just instituted a new set of Participation Requirements across all country versions of the Wikipedia Education Program in operation this term (which is the U.S., Canada, and Egypt), so that we are explicitly focusing on quality over quantity.

The requirements are here, but to summarize the high points, we're enforcing a 1:15 Ambassador:Student ratio, requiring each course to be supported by at least one Wikipedian, and making an orientation for professors mandatory. This affects Ambassadors most in the fact that we're making a concerted effort to limit the number of students you are expected to support. Our hope is that we will be able to provide better levels of support to participating professors and students next term, and that professors will have a greater understanding of Wikipedia thanks to the orientation (thanks as well to all of you who offered input on suggested topics for that orientation).

Unfortunately, the downside to these requirements is that for the U.S. and Canada program, we've had to turn down interested professors this term (hence the reduction of quantity in favor of quality). We hope this will not continue to be the case in the future, but this will mean attracting more Ambassadors to the role, so we can continue supporting professors at the 1:15 ratio with at least one Wikipedian present. We're sad to turn away interested professors, but we want to ensure that we can support classes well, so the quality level of student contributions remains the same as it was during the Public Policy Initiative pilot.

Thank you for all your amazing work -- the Wikipedia Education Program's successes are thanks to you!

On behalf of the Wikipedia Education Program staff (Frank, Annie, LiAnna, Jami, and Ayush) -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

So what happens if an online ambassador volunteers for more than one class? Can they support two or more groups of 15 students? Or is this now discouraged? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
The intent is to make ambassadors more available. I am with two classes each with about 20 students, but in both cases, I am with two other campus ambassadors and have one online ambassador for each class. For one of the classes I am a primary contact and for the other class I am a backup. This is what works for me. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:29, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely -- I encourage you to read the full details at outreach:Wikipedia Education Program/Participation Requirements, and post any further comments there so we have all questions and comments in one place. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
In fact, we should encourage ambassadors to take up more than one class, so that even if an ambassador fails to be present on that day, a class will not be leaderless. Lynch7 17:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Just so you know, since the notice on this was extremely short (I found out during the last week of December), I have so far let this rule slide in my region for this term BUT am making sure everyone's fully aware of the rule before they start planning for future courses. It's a lot to ask of these professors to make drastic syllabus changes without much notice, so I'm doing what I can to avoid souring our relationships with these professors. I think it's the least we can do, anyway, since they're going out on a limb to help Wikipedia out. That said, while the Foundation itself may not be supporting all the classes in Region 5b this term, I still am providing what safety net support I can to those classes. For future reference, it would be a good idea to have new rules set in place before midterms so we can avoid having to turn down professors we've already agreed to work with. I'll pass this along in an email to the Foundation, too, jsut so it doesn't look like I'm trying to sneak around people. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 21:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, all -- again, I encourage you to post any comments on the Outreach wiki talk page; it's very easy to miss feedback when we're evaluating the comments across multiple talk pages. I try to post notices like this on various pages to make sure people are aware of things I post places, but I really encourage you to make any comments you'd like to be taken into consideration for future revisions of the requirements on the talk page that lists the actual documents; when making revisions, we definitely check out the talk page of that page, but not necessarily the talk pages of where I've posted notices. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Ambassador Barnstar

I thought that participants in this project might want to know that after multiple requests at WP:AWARDS, a Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar has been found and added to Wikipedia:Barnstars#Wikipedia-space Barnstars. The description says, "The Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar may be awarded to campus or online ambassadors in recognition of excellent service." Pinetalk 10:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar
Insert a personal message here, followed by your signature.
  • Any requests probably should have been routed to the Steering Committee. The Ambassador Barnstar template has been available on the resources page since March 2011. Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 10:16, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
As with most such awards, I believe anybody should be able to award this to any ambassador they see doing good job. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:30, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Two applicants awaiting review

(cross-posted at Wikipedia Talk:Online Ambassadors)

Hi folks. Just a note to let you know you have two candidates for Online ambassador awaiting review. If you are not accepting new Ambassadors, this should be made clear on the "Apply" page. I'm quite excited about being an Ambassador, but if there are problems, I'd prefer to know. The term is getting on. The application process took some time; would be nice if the applicants could get some timely feedback. Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors/Apply Thanks, The Interior (Talk) 04:22, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Taken care of by the illustrious NikkiMaria. The Interior (Talk) 03:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

New visual identity!

(cross-posted from email list) Hi Ambassadors,

I am very excited to let you all know that the Wikipedia Education Program now has a visual identity!

What's a visual identity, you ask? It's a common look and feel that stretches across all implementations of our program, but it gives each region a chance to localize the look. Many of you may be familiar with the visual work done for the 10th Anniversary celebrations last year and all the truly awesome localized works that came out of it; we want to capture that spirit for the Education Program as well. David Peters, the designer of the 10th Anniversary identity, has been working with us for several months to get this look right.

Here's how it works:

  • We provide a handbook that shows you how to create a mark for your local region (school, state, city, etc.).
  • We provide assets in SVG format, which you can incorporate into your local mark.
  • You upload your new mark to Wikimedia Commons and add it to our gallery.
  • Use your new mark on campus T-shirts, outreach banners, wiki pages, etc.

Get started: outreach:Wikipedia_Education_Program_visual_identity

And if you have any questions… let me know! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Pretty, but it is going to be used by only the few most active campus ambassadors; it does nothing to the rest of the program. And preaching to the converted is nice (in the spirit of wikilove, we do appreciated the toys), but it is not the real problem. What I'd like is some support from WMF for recruiting them elsewhere. Me and Sage are still the only ones for western Pennsylvania, and I have mostly exhausted the avenues of recruitment (I've held several teaching with Wikipedia workshops, but nobody wants to join). The above toys are nice, but they are not likely to help with much recruitment. On that note, I'd appreciate if the foundation could comment on my proposal above. Based on my experience with academia, this is the way to go if we want more participants (including motivated ambassadors). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 20:12, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Piotr, we're not particularly concerned about recruiting new professors at the moment, as we're having to turn some away for participating in the program this semester as it is, thanks to the participation requirements. While of course any ambassadors can do outreach for the program, Campus Ambassadors are not expected to bring in new professors for next semester. However, everyone who continues recruiting new ambassadors for next semester, so we can support the growing number of interested professors, should definitely use this new visual identity on letters/fliers/etc. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

teachers/ambassadors newsletter

There has been some discussion about having some kind of newsletter for education related Wikipedia projects. The reason for this is that while there is a Global Education newsletter, it is focused on what the Foundation is doing, rather than what various professors and students are doing. (top-down rather than bottom-up) Im thinking of something patterned after a newsletter for the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums program [http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter} Id like some feedback and who might be interested in such a thing.Thelmadatter (talk) 16:37, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

'Summaries' tab on wiki-courses

Moved from User talk:Ragesoss § Template:Course page.2FTabs
Moved from User talk:Mabdul

Hi Madbul. I've removed 'Summaries' as a standard tab, since its purpose was not described, and the vast majority of classes were not using it. Something like this could be added for classes that want it, though.--Pharos (talk) 16:11, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Pharos and I discussed this already and cam to the conclusion that I should post it here.
Yes, I realized too late that this would add the summaries tab to every project using that template. It wasn't that easy to get this tab into that template after a request in #wikipedian-en-classroom connect by a teacher. I don't know how all these classes were created (and by whom, is there a wizard?), but why isn't the wizard not using the {{tabs}} template like every other wikiproject else? These pages can then be easily expanded (after request) and I'm also willing to help to improve the wizard. (for example: I have done many improvements at the WP:AFC related pages and templates!) mabdul 17:14, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

second discussion mabdul 12:32, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 A few minutes ago, I was helping User:Kechambers with Template:Course page/Tabs. Why did you start with such a mess of code? Why not using the great tabs-template like (defacto) every WikiProject? mabdul 17:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Part of the code mess there is because it's part of the course page creation wizard. See Template:Course page. Setting up a wikiproject-like set of pages isn't very easy for a beginner, so that template was built to guide people through making a generic course page step by step. Unfortunately, that makes it a little harder to adjust than the regular tabs. I also don't like the appearance of the usual tabs as much, which is why I didn't start from that code.--Ragesoss (talk) 13:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
So, I believe that I'm able to create a new wizard using any method to improve the existing one... I would like to see any consent on this, that the wizard get new features like changing the colors or adding new tabs. Depending on the effort - it might get also easier if using a toolserver script creating new course pages after prefilling some preferences. mabdul 12:32, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi mabdul -- there's actually a whole new MediaWiki extension under development right now that will replace the course wizard entirely (so after this term, nobody will use the existing wizard). The extension will be ready for very early testing in early March, at which point I'll be asking 3-5 Ambassadors to start testing and make sure we're not missing some key functionality; if you're interested in joining this test group, let me know. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
LiAnna, I'd be willing to volunteer to test this new plug-in when it becomes available. Let me know if there's somewhere particular I should put my name down. MyNameWasTaken (talk) 19:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
This is as good of place as any for now. :) I'll keep you posted. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Program Structure Working Group

Please take note of an in-person meeting that, pending approval, will be taking place in the San Francisco WMF office on the weekend of March 22-25, 2012. This event will serve to bring together active community members who taken leadership opportunities in the Education Program with WMF staff to rebuild a volunteer structure that defines roles and delegates responsibilities related to the Education Programs in the US and Canada. The goal of the weekend is to create a community-driven foundation of the US/Canada Education Programs that will address specific concerns, such as expansion techniques, ambassador recruitment, community relationships, etc.

I will select the final list of 10 participants. The group of attendees will be selected based on a number of criteria, including:

  • demonstrated leadership within the Education Program in the past
  • Steering Committee members
  • Regional Ambassadors
  • Other Campus/Online Ambassadors who have gone above and beyond the expectations of the Ambassador Program
  • cost of travel and lodging, based on an approved budget
  • preliminary ideas for how a volunteer structure could work

If you are interested in contributing to a productive meeting that will greatly impact the US and Canada Education Programs, please fill out the following form explaining why you think you could help in this endeavor. Please do not fill out the form if you are not available to travel to San Francisco March 22-25 (and potentially traveling a day before or after that). If this event is approved, travel and hotel costs, as well as some meals, will be covered or reimbursed by the Wikimedia Foundation. If you have any pertinent questions unanswered here, please either post below, on my talk page or email me at jmathewson@wikimedia.org.

In order to make travel arrangements that are cost-effective, please fill out the interest form by 9AM Pacific on Monday, February 27, 2012. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Ambassadors/volunteers, I want to update those of you who were interested in the outcome of this event but have not indicated interest (in which case, you should receive an email from me). We have discussed and finally decided that these meetings are going to so drastically impact the US and Canadian Education Programs that we would like to make sure it's as well-planned-out as possible. We will postpone such an event to an undecided time in the near future. Thank you so much to all of you who have taken time to show interest and think about how to restructure the program. I have heard you and appreciate all you continue to do for the program. I hope each of you will still be interested in participating in the future conversation and will keep everyone updated on any further discussion. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 01:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

A new large scale course in sociology

It seems we have a new rogue course; there are several dozen of new editors who have been making edits to sociology related articles (in particular, sociological theory), and one of them created a userpage with "(SOC100)". It doesn't appear that this course is using any of our tools, so I am assuming the instructor is not aware of us. As I am a bit busy today, perhaps somebody could go through all of the student talk pages and ask a message asking them to tell us who the instructor is, and introducing them to our program(s)? For a list of students, just check recent entries to article I mentioned above, that should catch about 75% of them. If you want the rest, just check my user talk page contribs and look for the ones from this week when I've been welcoming people to sociology project, about 95% of those are the presumed students. PS. More info, still none of the instructor. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I tracked down an email address for the instructor, and sent them a hello + offer of help for any future classes. No reply as yet. bobrayner (talk) 23:36, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Request for Comment

Ambassadors' comments on this discussion would be appreciated regarding service awards, especially for newer users. Pinetalk 02:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

US/Canada Updates

Hello, Ambassadors! Those of you who are on the ambassador email listserv should've received a notification from me of the new page where we are posting updates about the program. Please use this page to post any weekly activities in the classroom--whether they seem large or small! Let everyone know when you give a presentation in class, host an outreach event on campus, recruit a new Campus Ambassador for the Fall, etc. This should be a great place for us to all keep an eye on what is going on across the US and Canada! Thanks ahead of time for your awesome contributions. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Should there be a WikiProject Ambassadors banner?

It might be handy to have a template to put on the talk pages of material that relates to this program to indicate the relation to this program (e.g. {{WikiProject Ambassadors}}). Similar to the way that various WikiProjects have banners for marking pages in their area Category:WikiProject banners. (I am not sure if Ambassadors is a WikiProject, but it seems similar to one.)

Specifically I wanted to mark the talk page of {{WAP assignment}} with a project banner, but couldn't find one. Certainly the template's documentation mentions the program. Just thought it could be handy to have a box on the talk page linking back to this program. (If there already is such a template, it should be listed in the templates section of the documentation). Thanks. 21:51, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Standardization of term parameter on template:WAP assignment

Just to let people know, I started a discussion on the talk page for WAP assignment about standardization of the term parameter (there seems to be some variety in usage) Template talk:WAP assignment#Term parameter needs standardization. If you wish to discuss the mater, please do so on the template talk page. Thanks. Zodon (talk) 22:16, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Welcome Rob Schnautz, new Education Program community liaison

I'm really pleased to announce that Rob Schnautz has joined the Wikipedia Education Program team as an online communications contractor. Rob has been editing Wikipedia as User:Bob the Wikipedian since 2006, and he self-identifies as a WikiDragon, working mostly with the Tree of Life WikiProject. He also helped develop the automatic taxobox system. In 2011, he became the Regional Ambassador for part of the Midwest, and he joins the team now to serve as a liaison between the existing English Wikipedia editing community and the Education Program team.

This means I'll be less active on talk pages and IRC and return to a traditional communications role (writing blog posts, outreach to news media, etc.). Rob will now be the program's primary point of contact on-wiki; if you have questions, feel free to reach out to him either on program talk pages like this one or on his talk page. Welcome, Rob! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Ambassador email lists

I think there may be some new Ambassadors who aren't on our email lists -- and if you aren't on our list, you missed my call to have a Wikipedia Ambassador shirt mailed to you. Please email me if you need to join. And yes, I am not above bribing you with a shirt. :) -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

What would one have to do to get one of those hoodies? ;) The Interior (Talk) 22:38, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Email me and I will add you to the Ambassador email lists and send you a form. Sadly, we discontinued hoodies in favor of T-shirts (they're much easier to ship), but I do have a few leftover hoodies if you're XS, S, or M; otherwise, your only option is a T-shirt. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Ooh. I would very much prefer a hoodie over a t-shirt, if that is still possible - sorry for any shipping headaches! bobrayner (talk) 23:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
To quote Stringer Bell from The Wire, "I'm an XL." But thanks anyway, still got my Wikipedia 10 shirt, and my classic blue globe unit. The Interior (Talk) 23:29, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I love my hoodie --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 16:00, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Hoodie arrived today. It fits nicely. Thanks! bobrayner (talk) 14:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Article in The Guardian

FYI, The Guardian published an article about student editing on Wikipedia. Pine(talk) 06:00, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Signed up for a course -- checking on process

I just signed up as OA for one of the classes, but I confess I'm still a bit confused about the process, despite a recent email on the ambassadors list. I haven't seen any effort to contact ambassadors to check they're still available for the spring term, or any effort to recruit new ones, so I don't know how we know how many classes to take on, given the 15 students per ambassador limit. I also haven't seen any instructions for us to sign up for classes -- it sounded like (from an email to the ambassador group) that the professors would choose us, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Anyway, I've signed up for one and will keep an eye on it. Let me know if I'm out of process in some way. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:42, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike. Definitely appreciated. I've encouraged the Great Lakes Reaches campus ambassadors to venture out to recruit online ambassadors from the list, and some of them have done this; some may not have. With only three courses in this region so far appearing on the MOU, it's difficult for me to know who's secured online support and who hasn't. Regardless, I think it would be great if OAs took the initiative to sign up to assist courses that clearly need an OA without the prodding (last semester we had five sign onto one course that already had a former CA teaching the course, and loads of courses with only one CA that knew Wikipedia supported by no OAs. Let's try and balance it out this time). Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 15:51, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses we have one course this term. Yeah, I can see how this can be confusing. Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Present gives a better overview, and it's not pretty. Now, if we are indeed supposed to enforce the 15 students per ambassador, who is in charge of vetting which courses are accepted? Because something, somewhere, is obviously failing, at least according to the list of courses and ambassadors above. We need dozens of ambassadors to sign for many courses, I am not seeing a good "how to" for ambassadors, and I wonder how many ambassadors should support a course with, let's say, 16 students? 2? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:33, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Hello, all. I know there were some people in the last months who were speaking with OAs to determine who all is active, but I can post on each listed OA's talk page to ask them to remove if they are unable to take courses this semester. As for the process, I have asked both professors to request via the OA list and OAs to sign up via the Course Page list. The goal is to pair OAs with a class in which they're interested or with a professor they already know. Thanks for pointing out the need for clarification! As for vetting the courses, I'm compiling a list of classes that already meet the qualifications and trying to pair more ambassadors with the classes who don't. Would it be helpful to separate these course pages in some way? To clearly show which classes still need an ambassador? JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
If everyone thinks it would be helpful, I could try to go through the course pages and post on the talk page of the OA page which classes appear to need an OA. I'll get started on that, but somebody please let me know if you can think of a better way to point those out! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Just wanted to link the OA Talk Page here. These are the courses who will need OAs to officially participate this semester. Thanks for everyone's patience; hope this is helpful. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if it is just me, but this term I am having trouble finding a class to support. No instructor (or another ambassador) contacted me for help, so I tried asking the instructor of one local course if he needs help from a CA, and an instructor of a course close to my area of expertise if he needs an OA. Neither replied, which does not do much to show their enthusiasm for the project. We were complaining in the past about the poor communication, and it seems that this is still a problem that we have to deal with. It's one thing if the students are poor communicators - this is to be expected, but if we are having trouble reaching to instructors, this is an even larger problem. Mind you, the two courses I mention where ones which were falling behind the curve and not getting any ambassadors, which I though was an indication of ambassadors not being able to find them. Now I am inclined to think that the courses which don't have ambassadors are the ones where the instructors are simply failing at communicating with the community. Either way, the problem of courses without ambassadors needs to be dealt with, somehow. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:25, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

  • I agree Piotr. It's become a joke. I'm not signing up to help anyone, until the program is fully organized and we have an official list of schools and classes that are "approved". There is no structure in place to manage the number of courses that sign up to participate. And there are more and more courses that sign up each day. There's no accountability. Anything goes. Don did a lot in the past to help out, but is basically burned out with all the misinformation, disorganization, and what not. I attempted to address the lack of communication and transparency by streamlining the online presentation of the program, only to get my hand slapped. Nobody knows what is going on anymore, because the WMF has asserted their authority over the program, disregarding the volunteers and the community. While LiAnna rolled out her version of the visual identity of the program, I'm left puzzled. If this is all she has, quite a bit of time has been wasted. I'm inclined to "be bold" and begin streamlining the online presentation of the program again. This is just a mess. Best regards, Cind.amuse (Cindy) 19:20, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
You're right that professors are creating their own course pages without contacting an ambassador or the WMF, and we have people contacting those professors to let them know they will not be able to participate in the program this semester without going through the proper channels (finding ambassadors, training, etc.). Thankfully, a tool is being developed that will solve this problem for next semester, as we will no longer be using course pages (which anybody can create if they find the page--the blessing and curse of the wiki, in this case). Piotr, if you check out the OA talk page, you can find a list of some professors who do need Online Ambassador support to join the program. Cindy, a class can't actually be "approved" until they have the proper support, which is something in place thanks to the great feedback from the community. Hopefully you understand at this point (we have spoken since you posted this) that everyone around here is extremely interested in working with the community to develop a more effective structure that delegates responsibilities to ambassadors and volunteers. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
I did sign up for a course this term, in response to a request on a project talk page (the professor is an active WP editor). That class has now grown to 25 students, but I have had very little to do so far. What bothers me is looking at the classes I signed up for in the fall term. Out of 25 students in 3 classes, none are still actively editing (one edited his user page in January, another made three edits in February to the article he worked on for class). None of the three professors. Even the one who had edited in the past has not done so since January. -- Donald Albury 13:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Donald, what do you think are some ways we can get students to stick around after their class and become editors? I wonder if somebody can look at the instances where students have stuck around and reach out to them to find out what positively impacted them most. Any other ideas of what we can do? Also, if we want to discuss this, maybe we should create a separate discussion below so other people may contribute. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Beta testers needed for new MediaWiki extension

Some of you may have heard about a new Wikipedia Education Program MediaWiki extension that's been in development for a few months. This new tool will completely replace the existing course pages and Ambassador listings beginning in Fall 2012.

Some key features:

  • Ambassadors will create a profile in the system and associate themselves with classes, meaning there's no updating information on what class you're helping with three different pages each term.
  • Professors will create standardized course pages through this system once they've been given the "instructor" user right, meaning we will ensure that all professors have gone through an orientation on best practices for using Wikipedia in the classroom before creating a course page.
  • Students will use an enrollment token to add themselves to the course page, meaning we will have an up-do-date, database-driven list of student usernames (anyone involved in the Pune Pilot will know how important this is).

We'll be talking a lot more about this extension in the coming weeks and months as it's rolled out and we begin using it. Currently, we are ready to have the first beta testers use the tool, and we are looking for 3-5 Ambassadors and professors who are willing to spend a few hours over the next week doing a thorough test of the new extension. We specifically want people who are experienced in creating course pages and adding themselves to the Ambassador lists. We have two goals for this version of the beta test:

  1. Determine if the new extension is lacking a major functionality that Ambassadors and professors rely upon in the current system.
  2. Find bugs in the new extension.

In later rounds, we'll be looking at user experience and more bug testing, but this preliminary round is focused exclusively on back-end issues while we still have developer time to fix them.

If you are interested in helping out with beta-testing, we will have a kickoff meeting on Google Hangout on Monday, February 27, with Jeroen De Dauw (the developer) and Frank Schulenburg (who has served as the project manager for this extension) where they'll explain a bit more about the tool and what they need for this round of beta testing. Please sign up on this Doodle if you're interested in helping out, (confirmed for 10 a.m. PT on February 27) or if you're interested in a larger beta testing later, please indicate that below. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Anyone interested in helping try out the new Education Program extension, we're ready for you to begin beta-testing now. Thanks in advance for any and all help you can offer! Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:45, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
I tried to register at [1], but I get "The connection has timed out". Will try later, but if this keeps up... :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:30, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
The site was down for a good deal of time yesterday. It's up again. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 16:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Apologies, this was my fault as I was trying to get rid of the /index.php/ bit in the URL, which I have removed and created a redirect so that the old links will still work. Any more issues, please feel free to let me know directly on my talk page. The Helpful One 23:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Interested in helping test now

(please fill out your availability on the Doodle as well) Confirmed for 10 a.m. PT on 17 February

  • Yes, I realized it too late, I'm a bit busy helping some rl friends and forgot to finish some open tasks (my web browser is getting "unhandleable" since the list of tabs are now at ~70 tabs) mabdul 20:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Interested in helping test later

Round 2

I'd like to thank everyone on behalf of all the Education Program staff for the great help we had in testing the new extension. The programmers have made revisions and are ready to begin a second round of beta testing. The link to the site has changed slightly. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 23:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion About OA selection/removal

I've moved the following discussion from the Outreach page about successes/problems in the classroom, as I believe it pertains more to the ambassador program and structure as a whole. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

  • I wanted to bring broader attention to a complaint which someone made against an online ambassador who is part of the ambassador steering committee. The accusation is serious and merits attention. It seems like many people involved in this are experienced editors. Here is the conversation - JMathewson's English Wikipedia talk page. I am not sure what I think about this. A certain amount of drama always happens on Wikipedia, but something seems different to me when this is happening in an outreach program. Do complaints in the ambassador program require any more attention than complaints on any other message board? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks so much for noticing this. It's been almost a month and I haven't found anyone who is involved with Online Ambassadors. The new community liaison between the WMF and the Education Programs Rob Schnautz (WMF) says in a pending Signpost interview (I've read the draft), that he is not aware of Online Ambassadors, but rather it's the Campus Ambassadors that he works with. Who does supervise the Online Ambassadors? Anyone? I'm always referred back to the "Online Ambassadors Selection Committee" by all the WMF folks. Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 14:15, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
This board is new and I am not sure that it is much watched. If nothing happens sooner, then at our next IRC meeting I will raise the issue there and we will settle a course of action there. That will be in about a month. In the meantime I will direct some other people to this thread. I appreciate the effort you put into this. The problem is not that no one cares, but rather that the CA project put a large new work burden on the community and right now there are not good systems in place for distributing that work. I really think there are people who want to handle issues like this, but the people who are doing CA and OA work already are taking on a lot and investigating possible bad behavior is not what the ambassadors signed on to do. If anyone wants to talk about this then things may go more quickly by phone or video conference - email me if anyone wants to talk in that way. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:30, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
I think this issue stems from how the online ambassadors were always supposed to be community-driven, while the campus ambassadors worked with the WMF (whether they were already editors on-wiki or not). The selection process, which was originally done off-wiki but has transitioned past that, was originally supposed to catch any issues of this nature. However, none of us, including me, saw any red flags when she applied. If I remember right, any issues arising after the selection would have to be referred to the Steering Committee. The only other possible venue would be the OA Selection Team, which hasn't done much since most of the process was moved online, rather than email. If the Steering Committee doesn't think they can do this and/or the Selection Team isn't specifically given the 'power' by someone (the Steering Committee?) to deal with conduct issues, then we'll have to create a new and separate committee... which isn't exactly my preferred solution, as we don't need to bloat the bureaucracy we already have. Ed [talk] [en] 19:22, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for posting this to the talk page of the steering committee. I should say again that one of the problems was that the complaint is issued against a member of that committee. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:34, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
It's difficult to balance two conflicting demands:
  • We don't want a small, lean, mostly-volunteer project to be burdened by extra layers of bureaucracy;
  • We want an independent body to deal with possible problems. And if there's a problem involving that independent body, we want that to be dealt with by somebody else independent, too.
Personally, I think it could be better to create a general-purpose disputes page. It wouldn't involve much overhead but it would be a good place to bring non-routine problems to community attention, and could help identify (if not solve) any weaknesses that other institutions (ie. a steering committee, selection team &c) aren't well placed to address. Of course, a drama board is a double-edged sword... is that a good idea or a bad idea? All comments/criticism welcome. bobrayner (en.wikipedia talk) 20:30, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. Campus ambassadors frequently are not Wikipedians and should never have to deal with Wikipedia problems. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:36, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
(ec) yes, something like that would have helped me. Just someplace where feedback/complaints could be registered, so you could see that it wasn't just me. The problem with Cindy was that she didn't understand copyvio/plargiarism/close paraphrasing - and I notice that you don't ask about that specifically in the application. Perhaps you could stress that and also check into article building experience. If you look at her contributions it is a lot of NPP patrol, welcome templates etc. Not much article building, and she says in her application that she's mostly interest in article deletion processes. Also, perhaps some supervision. Some of the problems were caused perhaps by a lack of understanding of her role, as she was advising things that were against en:wp policies/guidelines. Perhaps if OAs were clear what their role is. MathewTownsend (talk) 20:44, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps two separate issues are getting tangled up here; can we make better selection decisions in future, and how can we deal with disputes better in future? bobrayner (en.wikipedia talk) 22:02, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
And a third issue - there is an outstanding, unaddressed complaint against a member of the steering committee. I would request that someone take responsibility for addressing it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
I am trying to remain somewhat neutral here as I member of the committee mentioned above - but there is an agreed upon process of removing Ambassadors here that you could look into. Or alternatively I would have no objections to someone suggesting a formal way to recall Steering Committee Members; but whatever it is can't just be specifically targeted at Cindy, versus a process that could be used in the future if need be. Anyways sorry for trying to stay out of this but, at this point, the situation appears to be borderline personal attacks - not constructive debate on fixing what you believe to be the problem with how do you pick new OA. 71.238.90.211 23:44, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Oops - just noticed I was not logged in to Wikimedia. but the 71.238.90.211 above is me.Epistemophiliac (talk) 23:46, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Epistemophiliac. I do not want to initiate a recall process and I do not want to say anything about the complaint except that it exists and I would like for someone else to take responsibility for responding to it. I also am sorry for trying to stay out of this, but besides asking for someone to hear the complaint, I want to stay out of this. From my perspective, someone has brought a complaint about an online ambassador to this program and I am trying to get a neutral third party to consider it and respond to it. Right now I want to find either an established complaint handling process or some volunteers who want to take it up. I personally do not want to get involved in handling, investigating, or deciding what to do in response, and several other people have also said for the person issuing the complaint to take it elsewhere. It would be ideal from the perspective of the ambassadors if there was a dedicated place to get answers for these things. How would you feel if I turned this over to the steering committee to handle, despite the conflict of interest in asking the committee to respond to a complaint about one of its members? Can the steering committee arrange for a third-party review by some trusted experienced editors? If not the steering committee, then who should handle this? What do you think should happen? Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:15, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the Steering Committee could handle this, but they would have to carefully and purposefully exclude Cindy to avoid the obvious conflict of interest. Otherwise, there's no other established OA-related body that can look at this except for the Selection Team, which as I said above is relatively inactive. I suppose the Sterring Committee could outsource the problem to a designated group of, say, three experienced online ambassadors ("experienced" meaning experienced/trusted/respected Wikipedian), though. Thoughts?
I'd support a dedicated page to report these sorts of issues, but we have to keep in mind that getting a decent amount of people to watch a new page is relatively difficult. Perhaps the Steering Committee's or the Online Ambassador talk page can be designated as the place to report these incidents instead?
Bluerasberry, I understand your frustration (really), but we've never really had a problem with this sort of thing before, so we never really got around to fleshing out the details of something like this. I think we all owe you an apology, and I thank you for staying calm during what can't really be a fun time. :-) Ed [talk] [en] 02:51, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
If anything I said came across as frustration then I never intended it. I am happy with how this is going. I know this has never happened before and my biggest concern is just asking other people to solve a problem, which I feel is a disagreeable task. This is not why I am on Wikipedia; I do not mind sorting it this time, but in the future I would prefer this task go to someone who wants it. I am doing this on behalf of user:MathewTownsend, who has gone to trouble to be heard. I do not know the sides of the issue, but it seems that Mathew has presented a concern which merits addressing. I want to be neutral about this by keeping my part as only getting the complaint to whoever wants to take it.
If the steering committee would, in the future, handle complaints on OAs and CAs either by addressing the complaints or by turning them over to anyone else, then that would be wonderful. If they would also handle this complaint as they see fit, that would be great too. I just checked the page - the very first draft of the steering committee page says this - "In the future, the committee might also be given the authority to resolve disputes among ambassadors (not an issue that's come up so far, thankfully)". That text is still on the page. If it is not burdensome to the committee, can they take that authority now? Steering Committee, I give you my support for authority in handling disputes. Will you accept this authority? Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:14, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I would love to accept the additional Authority to handle matters such as these, but it would look like a power-grab if the SC just did it unilaterally. Also please note there is already some degree of this authority here, so if you feel passionately about this - please feel free to use it. That being said, there is talk behind the scenes on restructuring things to help improve the situation (which outside of a few hiccups, has been successful at bringing in new Editors & some great articles to the main space) - and if anyone would like to volunteer to help to do that, please let me know and I will be glad to find you spot to help move along the process. 71.238.90.211 05:09, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Blah got logged out of Wikimedia again for some reason - the above is me. And in the case the above link doesn't work: http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering_Committee/Ambassador_Recall_Process Epistemophiliac (talk) 05:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Blue- ah, and here I thought you were just hiding it well. :P My apologies. Epistem- why not start a conversation on the OA talk page? If there's consensus there, you have your authority. There has to be someone to take care of this, and the Steering Committee or a small group of OAs they delegate authority to are the only ones who can handle it right now. Future restructuring doesn't factor into this particular case. Also remember that you're going to get a lot of Wikipedians mad if you say 'outside of a few hiccups' again, as the IEP program was a disaster that quite a few Wikipedians are still angry about. I do agree that outside of the IRP, we've been doing well, but choose your words carefully. :-) I'm interested to see how are you are thinking of restructuring it, but that's outside the scope of this particular discussion. Perhaps you could leave a note on my talk page?
Side note- Epistem, to link to en.wiki on this (or any other WMF wiki), put :en: in front. I.e. en:User:The ed17 (or in wikicode, [[:en:User:The ed17]]). Ed [talk] [en] 08:01, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
If there is "talk behind the scenes on restructuring things", I would love to help with that. bobrayner (talk) 08:29, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Is there an Ambassador recall process?

Hello,

I've posted this multiple places but received no satisfactory reply. I reviewed a good article nomination by one of your Online Ambassadors who is on the Online Ambassadors Steering Committee. The article failed because the ambassador doesn't understand what copyvio/plagiarism/close paraphrasing was. See Talk:Douglas W. Owsley/GA1. The ambassador attacked me for my review. Now a second reviewer has failed the article for the same reasons. See Talk:Douglas W. Owsley/GA2. This Online Ambassador does not understand how to write an article without misusing sources. Please address this issue. Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 21:25, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

You are bordering on WP:FORUMSHOPPING here, you have been told at least a score of times that this is the recall procedure. You can either take it or leave it. If you choose not to take the procedure then I request that you drop this issue. It feels like you are getting close to the line between dispute resolution and harassment. --Guerillero | My Talk 22:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Sorry. I looked all over for that page. It's not linked to any of the pages I could find. I have been promised an answer, but I've found that many of my posts have been removed. What should I do? If I post there, will that be more "forum shopping"? None of the "forums" I have posted at have addressed my concern. ok, I'll post there, but please don't accuse me of anything, as nothing is clear. If you want people to post there, then I will. (I'm very confused by all the pages and all the WMF editors I've been referred to who say they don't have an answer.) Sorry! MathewTownsend (talk) 22:08, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
That would be because the online ambassadors is a Wikipedian-run initiative. See the section above. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:43, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
ok Guerillero, I'd like to suggest that giving the link this way this is not very visible, as I can't see it. Also, please show me the "at least a score of times" that I have been shown that link. If you are going to accuse me of WP:FORUMSHOPPING, then show me a forum that actually responds to my complaint in a way other that saying the equivalent of "I can't do anything about that; it's not my responsibility. Why don't you contact such and such." I guess my only resort is to file a formal complaint against Cindy. I was hoping to avoid that. MathewTownsend (talk) 21:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

WAP assignment - what happens when course is done

I have started to see these templates {{WAP assignment}} cropping up on article talk pages. What is supposed to happen to the template when the class is done? Is it to be left in place permanently? Are the instructors supposed to come by and remove them, or at least assign an ended= value? Is it okay for other wiki-editors to take them off once the course is obviously done? I can see where they might serve useful purpose to keep records for the Ambassador program, however on "popular" articles they contribute to over-buildup of templates. It does not look like the template compresses itself once one assigns ended, but if it is the intention that these templates be left on the page, then at least they should compress themselves to a minimal amount of space. See for instance talk:HPV vaccine, which has two of these templates so far.

The template documentation should include when/whether it is okay to remove the template. Perhaps they belong in a separate container template that just shows the most recent one, and keeps a compressed list of all the others. Zodon (talk) 07:57, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I have thought about the same thing. Just like any discussion on the talk pages, I think that these should be left somehow, but obviously they need to be archived eventually. I have been looking into another kind of overview project particularly with health articles where instead of college student review certain articles could get medical professional or research institution review, and that could be another type of template to start appearing. Probably other people over the years will develop other templates.
Just showing the latest template and having the rest in a container could work, and I cannot think of a better way to do things. I would support that option. What other templates should go in that container? I think the templates from the Guild of Copy Editors should, and there must be others. When we make instructions for a container, we should probably list all the things which should go in it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:29, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
What about DYKs? Can they go in the same container? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:57, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
DYK's are often contained within the "Article milestones" template with other peer-review events (GA reviews, FAC), like here: Talk:Adams River (British Columbia). I'd avoid grouping them with the Ambassador temp. Putting the GOCE and the WAP temps together makes sense to me, both document efforts by a WikiProject to improve the article. The Interior (Talk) 17:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
The template includes an optional parameter |ended=. If you include that, the template will show the article as having been part of the Wikipedia Education Program. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 19:15, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
The ended option seems to be little used. It might help if there was an option to simply put ended=yes. Then one could provide some closure to a tag that is obviously past (e.g. from last year), without having to make up data. (See Template talk:WAP assignment#Ended parameter - include a yes option). Zodon (talk) 22:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
That's a pretty simple revision to make; I'll do that now. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 16:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 Done Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 16:45, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Another template that should be included in such a grouping is {{Educational assignment}}. Zodon (talk) 20:51, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the templates {{WAP assignment}} and {{Educational assignment}} are very similar. I have proposed that they be standardized (to include same/similar parameters) and possibly merged (make one a redirect to the other). Discussion at Template talk:WAP assignment#Merge and standardize. Zodon (talk) 21:01, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Ways we can get students to stick around after their class and become editors

Above, JMathewson (WMF) asks "[W]hat do you think are some ways we can get students to stick around after their class and become editors? I wonder if somebody can look at the instances where students have stuck around and reach out to them to find out what positively impacted them most. Any other ideas of what we can do?"

  • Get involved right away. Encourage the students to find a WikiProject that deals with a subject they're interested in. This doesn't have to be the field they're studying-- I studied computer science, but I've found my niche at the Tree of Life WikiProject. Once the student finds a project that interests them, he or she should sign up for it and then (if not sure how to help) ask on the talk page what sorts of things need done or what backlogs the project has. Most active WikiProjects have folks monitoring the project page for comments and should be willing to take on new contributors. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 23:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Has anyone looked at a large sample of past participants to see which ones continued to edit? My sample was only 25 students, and nine of them were in a class that never really got off the ground. How much success have you had communicating with students? -- Donald Albury 01:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

How about a brochure that tells students how Wikipedia can be useful for their lives and careers? I find that most of my students are not convinced that knowing how to edit Wikipedia is something really useful. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 05:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

the best way is for a prof to give them class credit to do it. The advantage is a) that they are covering material in class that can be incorporated; b) they are using textbooks/ readings that qualify as RS. c) prof/ ambassadors can help. Students on their own are perhaps more likely to want to work on an article on some character in a video game. (my last video game was called "pong" so i'm not sure what's going on these days. :) Rjensen (talk) 15:52, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
I think you (or I?) are missing the point. The question, I think, is how to get them to edit after the class (course) has ended, and grade/credit has been awarded. It's easy to force them to edit as long as they have not been graded yet. It's what happens afterwards (99%+ stop editing) that is what we would like to change. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:11, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Ask profs to encourage on-wiki interaction as part of the course. The more edits students make to talk pages, fellow students' user talk pages, and their prof's user talk page, the more comfortable they become with editing and our style of discourse. I think many students go through the system without actually clearing that first technological hurdle. Of my three classes, one has taken this approach, and I know of two accounts that have made improvements to non-course pages (i.e. regular volunteer edits). Almost all the accounts in that course have over 15 edits already. In contrast, another course has encouraged no on-wiki discussion, these accounts have set up their userpage and that is all. This pure speculation, but I predict the chances of return editors from the first class are much higher than from the second. The Interior (Talk) 16:03, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

From a practical standpoint, the more interaction someone has with the greater community, the bigger the chance they'll stick around is. It doesn't even have to be entirely positive interaction: a good part of the reason I am still around today is that when I AfD'ed a hoax article while I was first participating in the education program, the person who created the article responded with something like 30,000 words attacking me and everyone I had ever associated with over the course of the week. It was so insanely insane that it kind of sucked me in.

I do want to note though, that I think it's important that student retention is always at most a tertiary goal of the program as it has been in the past. Student retention is nice, but shouldn't (and can't) be a top goal (other than maybe shooting to turn students in to ambassadors.) Many professors would be (and should be) sketched out about participating in a program where one of the primary goals was something other than furthering the educational objectives of their course. Student contributions are valuable, even when none of them stick around to edit more - especially when we retain the professor and their future classes. For a good example of how valuable this can be, take a look at Brian Carver's classes - at this point when I'm looking through cyberlaw cases, it sure seems like most of them were written by his students.Kevin (kgorman-ucb) (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

  • Kevin, I totally agree with you and Richard (rjensen) above. The student contributions during the program are a great impact, and retaining professors should maybe be more of a priority than each student. That being said, I think it definitely makes sense that we want to retain those students. So even though it's not necessarily a priority, I think we can do more to encourage them to edit (maybe just by making their experiences better) even after their classes. Great points by everybody; so what are our actual steps in creating more editors (and ambassadors) from the student contributors? Should we analyze contributions (like on tools like the Leaderboard) and reach out to those 'top' students? Should we encourage more Campus Ambassadors to start Wikipedia clubs at different universities where we have classes participating? Those are just some ideas, but I know you all probably have many more. Also, who in the program can take responsibility for implementing any new ideas?JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
what sort of person becomes an active editor? what motivates them? I've heard that the Foundation is sponsoring research studies on this issue. Any results available? Rjensen (talk) 21:12, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
JMathewson- it would be good to know what ideas they are first. I suspect one person won't volunteer for them all! Reaching out to the 'top' students is a good idea, but what will we send to them? Ideas? My first thought is if they write articles in their field of study, perhaps they could put that on a resume, but we'll need more incentives than that to get them hooked. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:45, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I joined the ambassador program because I hoped it would help recruit new editors. If it turns out that retaining students as editors is neither a goal nor a result of the program, I lose a good deal of my motivation for working in it. I certainly haven't gotten much in the way of warm, fuzzy feelings from my participation so far. -- Donald Albury 10:32, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
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