Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
Thomas Dalton wrote: Check this out: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6032750 It's about social media and education, which is an interesting topic in itself, but most importantly it contains this line: Wikis are web pages that can be easily edited, the most famous of which is Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia. A journalist knows the difference between wiki and Wikipedia - joy of joys! (The downside is that it suggests schools improve/create an article about their school as an example, which is something of a COI...) I have had one or two letters published the T.H.E. about wikis, Wikimepia, etc (an example below) and will continue to be Angry of Mayfair when the need arises! It is always a pleasure to correct journalists (and academics). T.E.S. = Times Educational Supplement T.H.E. = Times Higher Education (was the THES) http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/ Gordon *** *** *** *** *** *** The wonder of Wikipedia 27 August 2009 Phil Tresadern (Letters, 20 August) does not appear to favour Wikipedia, even if quoted by Bruce Charlton (Letters, 13 August). As every school and university student knows, Wikipedia is not a research journal (although it is peer reviewed). It is an online encyclopaedia with online and offline sources, and those sources can be anything that might verify the content of a Wikipedia article. In the past few years, the drive to cite references and sources has grown, and Wikipedia stands (at 3 million articles in English alone) to be a fascinating and reliable resource, as opposed to much of the material to be found on the internet. Gordon Joly, London. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
geni wrote: Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you blocked from wikipedia. Probably the most important thing to do is to contact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects first. I don't want to pull rank on this (much), but I have been through ArbCom discussions of role accounts. There was some merit in what I was suggesting, namely single account with email to someone responsible. If you want, I can run some wording for the User page past ArbCom members, and see if any suggested protocols are sensible. I would have thought admins would have better things to do than close down such an account for technical infractions - bad behaviour would be another matter. The supposed forum is [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classroom coordination]], which doesn't appear that active. I think you should take notice that projects involving minors (which covers most students in secondary schools) are not necessarily in the same position as those generally listed at [[Wikipedia:School and university projects]], which seem almost entirely to be at college level. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
2010/1/10 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: geni wrote: Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you blocked from wikipedia. Probably the most important thing to do is to contact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects first. I don't want to pull rank on this (much), but I have been through ArbCom discussions of role accounts. There was some merit in what I was suggesting, namely single account with email to someone responsible. If you want, I can run some wording for the User page past ArbCom members, and see if any suggested protocols are sensible. I would have thought admins would have better things to do than close down such an account for technical infractions - bad behaviour would be another matter. Arbcom don't make policy. Role accounts just look wrong to people who watch such things and a series of same name plus number accounts have been known to make admins paranoid. This is not an area I feel our general run of admins are very good at dealing with. For one example of things going wrong see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive574#University_of_Texas_at_Dallas_assignment The supposed forum is [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classroom coordination]], which doesn't appear that active. I think you should take notice that projects involving minors (which covers most students in secondary schools) are not necessarily in the same position as those generally listed at [[Wikipedia:School and university projects]], which seem almost entirely to be at college level. Charles Wikipedia:School and university projects is active and at least means there is a fair chance projects can be given a once over and supported by people who understand wikipedia and such projects to at least some degree. -- geni ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
2010/1/10 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2010/1/10 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: geni wrote: Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you blocked from wikipedia. Probably the most important thing to do is to contact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects first. I don't want to pull rank on this (much), but I have been through ArbCom discussions of role accounts. There was some merit in what I was suggesting, namely single account with email to someone responsible. If you want, I can run some wording for the User page past ArbCom members, and see if any suggested protocols are sensible. I would have thought admins would have better things to do than close down such an account for technical infractions - bad behaviour would be another matter. Arbcom don't make policy. Precisely. The last time the community discussed role accounts the consensus was against them. Until such time as a different community consensus is established, that is the policy and ArbCom are obliged to enforce it. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/10 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2010/1/10 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: geni wrote: Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you blocked from wikipedia. Probably the most important thing to do is to contact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects first. I don't want to pull rank on this (much), but I have been through ArbCom discussions of role accounts. There was some merit in what I was suggesting, namely single account with email to someone responsible. If you want, I can run some wording for the User page past ArbCom members, and see if any suggested protocols are sensible. I would have thought admins would have better things to do than close down such an account for technical infractions - bad behaviour would be another matter. Arbcom don't make policy. Precisely. The last time the community discussed role accounts the consensus was against them. Until such time as a different community consensus is established, that is the policy and ArbCom are obliged to enforce it. Shrug. Admins are never obliged to enforce policy if it gives a stupid result. ArbCom are obliged to make some sense out of what the policy pages say, bearing in mind the good of the mission. Asking for 1500 admins to come up with a consensus position is fairly futile. Asking an Arbitrator is consulting an informed person. I know what I'd think of an admin who blocked a school project on this technicality. i'll concede that what is recommended should be well thought through, but my feeling is that this could lead to second-best advice being given. If anyone would like to point to pages on enWP that actually say the practical things teachers in a secondary school should know about this issue, rather than waffling on about how everyone one will benefit if American college students edit Wikipedia (which in my limited experience they do with a role account), be my guest. Charles Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
2010/1/10 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: Shrug. Admins are never obliged to enforce policy if it gives a stupid result. ArbCom are obliged to make some sense out of what the policy pages say, bearing in mind the good of the mission. Asking for 1500 admins to come up with a consensus position is fairly futile. Asking an Arbitrator is consulting an informed person. I know what I'd think of an admin who blocked a school project on this technicality. i'll concede that what is recommended should be well thought through, but my feeling is that this could lead to second-best advice being given. You have some really big problems with your understanding of how Wikipedia works... First, you claim that ArbCom should be deciding our policy on role accounts and now you claim that admins should. You are completely wrong on both counts. Policy is determined by THE COMMUNITY. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
On Sun, 2010-01-10 at 18:34 +, Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/10 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: Shrug. Admins are never obliged to enforce policy if it gives a stupid result. ArbCom are obliged to make some sense out of what the policy pages say, bearing in mind the good of the mission. Asking for 1500 admins to come up with a consensus position is fairly futile. Asking an Arbitrator is consulting an informed person. I know what I'd think of an admin who blocked a school project on this technicality. i'll concede that what is recommended should be well thought through, but my feeling is that this could lead to second-best advice being given. You have some really big problems with your understanding of how Wikipedia works... First, you claim that ArbCom should be deciding our policy on role accounts and now you claim that admins should. You are completely wrong on both counts. Policy is determined by THE COMMUNITY. Right. And policy is enforced by admins, bureaucrats, checkusers, admins, stewards, and project arbcoms. The issue on role accounts is that anyone who can use them can change the registered email address and password. So, shared accounts are out. Any admin or, more appropriately, checkuser will tell you that generating a lot of similarly formed account names will raise suspicion. It's a common troll modus operandi - and it has been done from school IP addresses. I think Charles is speaking from the perspective of someone with access to nonpublic data. My concern is that said data may require accessed. On rare occasions a school's IT administrator may be contacted if they're a persistent source of vandalism; most admins never see that nonpublic information and may make blocking decisions they feel in line with policy but absent that knowledge. -- Brian McNeil brian.mcn...@wikinewsie.org Wikinewsie.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
Brian McNeil wrote: On Sun, 2010-01-10 at 18:34 +, Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/10 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: Shrug. Admins are never obliged to enforce policy if it gives a stupid result. ArbCom are obliged to make some sense out of what the policy pages say, bearing in mind the good of the mission. Asking for 1500 admins to come up with a consensus position is fairly futile. Asking an Arbitrator is consulting an informed person. I know what I'd think of an admin who blocked a school project on this technicality. i'll concede that what is recommended should be well thought through, but my feeling is that this could lead to second-best advice being given. You have some really big problems with your understanding of how Wikipedia works... First, you claim that ArbCom should be deciding our policy on role accounts and now you claim that admins should. You are completely wrong on both counts. Policy is determined by THE COMMUNITY. Right. And policy is enforced by admins, bureaucrats, checkusers, admins, stewards, and project arbcoms. The issue on role accounts is that anyone who can use them can change the registered email address and password. So, shared accounts are out. Any admin or, more appropriately, checkuser will tell you that generating a lot of similarly formed account names will raise suspicion. It's a common troll modus operandi - and it has been done from school IP addresses. I think Charles is speaking from the perspective of someone with access to nonpublic data. My concern is that said data may require accessed. On rare occasions a school's IT administrator may be contacted if they're a persistent source of vandalism; most admins never see that nonpublic information and may make blocking decisions they feel in line with policy but absent that knowledge. Come, now, save it for wikien-l. (Upper case is shouting, and I understand the operation of the enWP community perfectly well.) Admins personally decide how to apply their extra buttons. If no admin wants to block some account, it stays unblocked. That is how it is, and how it should be. User:Tottelwiki was an American college project, it was editing a page I started, I didn't block it. My discretionary call. This list is for WMUK, not soapboxing about enWP politics. Great job on the fundraising, by the way, Thomas, but why are you picking fights? It looks like this, then. Wikipedia welcomes school projects. If, however, you set one up the wrong way, you may be blocked by one of the site's jobsworths, in which case you'll find it useful to know the address of the unblock mailing list. Be quick about it, though, because if one of your GCSE class lads sets up an alternate account, your school may suffer an IP range block and you'll have some explaining to do to other staff members who had the same idea. A tad too honest for a guide, perhaps, but if the community is infallible ... Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
Thomas Dalton wrote: Check this out: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6032750 It's about social media and education, which is an interesting topic in itself, but most importantly it contains this line: Wikis are web pages that can be easily edited, the most famous of which is Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia. A journalist knows the difference between wiki and Wikipedia - joy of joys! (The downside is that it suggests schools improve/create an article about their school as an example, which is something of a COI...) The next para is pretty interesting: When Tom Rae took over as the head of Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh, he noticed the school's Wikipedia entry was outdated and short on hard facts. As he was not sure how to update it, he set his senior students the task of doing it. In just under a week, a group of more than 10 students had researched and rewritten it. They became the first Tynecastle students to be published in Wikipedia. How empowering is that? The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia- Telegraph
Another thought Is the WMFoundation putting out a press release saying 'thanks' to the thousands of donors who have helped it to hit its global fund raising targets? If it isn't, shouldn't we be doing it? -- From: Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2010 11:09 AM To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia-Telegraph Thomas Dalton wrote: Check this out: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6032750 It's about social media and education, which is an interesting topic in itself, but most importantly it contains this line: Wikis are web pages that can be easily edited, the most famous of which is Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia. A journalist knows the difference between wiki and Wikipedia - joy of joys! (The downside is that it suggests schools improve/create an article about their school as an example, which is something of a COI...) The next para is pretty interesting: When Tom Rae took over as the head of Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh, he noticed the school's Wikipedia entry was outdated and short on hard facts. As he was not sure how to update it, he set his senior students the task of doing it. In just under a week, a group of more than 10 students had researched and rewritten it. They became the first Tynecastle students to be published in Wikipedia. How empowering is that? The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Would not it be perhaps better for the individual students to have accounts, but under teh control of the school. Perhaps based on their school pupil number (e.g. Tynecastle-091 Tynecastle-122) which means that attribution for good and bad edits could be given to the individual rather than the school. Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart Antoine de Saint Exupery ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
2010/1/9 Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org: On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Would not it be perhaps better for the individual students to have accounts, but under teh control of the school. Perhaps based on their school pupil number (e.g. Tynecastle-091 Tynecastle-122) which means that attribution for good and bad edits could be given to the individual rather than the school. Yes, that's the usual recommendation. I'm not sure what you mean by the school having control of them, though. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia- Telegraph
2010/1/9 Steve Virgin st...@mediafocusuk.com: Another thought Is the WMFoundation putting out a press release saying 'thanks' to the thousands of donors who have helped it to hit its global fund raising targets? If it isn't, shouldn't we be doing it? I'm not sure about a press release. The WMF will be emailing donors to thank them, as will I. A press release might be good in addition to that. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia- Telegraph
On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Steve Virgin st...@mediafocusuk.com wrote: Another thought Is the WMFoundation putting out a press release saying 'thanks' to the thousands of donors who have helped it to hit its global fund raising targets? Well, there's a massive banner on Wikipedia saying thanks. I would think that about covers it. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/9 Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org: On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Would not it be perhaps better for the individual students to have accounts, but under teh control of the school. Perhaps based on their school pupil number (e.g. Tynecastle-091 Tynecastle-122) which means that attribution for good and bad edits could be given to the individual rather than the school. Yes, that's the usual recommendation. I'm not sure what you mean by the school having control of them, though. In the scenario of the school in Edinburgh, a group is told to execute a certain project on WP. The attraction of a single account is clear from the point of view of monitoring: a single edit history tells you everything. If you have a group editing one page - and I have met just this on WP, American college students assigned a task of upgrading a nominated page - a bunch of people all trying to edit from different accounts can lead to edit conflicts, if no worse. Any account where the email address supplied went to a computer in the school's administration would be controlled by the school, from the point of view of resetting the password. This discussion seems like fine tuning to me, actually; but, yes, I can see it might be worth going into the issues a little in a guide. (I do want to be concise, though ... all experience suggests verbose is easier to write and less likely to be read.) Charles ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
2010/1/9 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/9 Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org: On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Would not it be perhaps better for the individual students to have accounts, but under teh control of the school. Perhaps based on their school pupil number (e.g. Tynecastle-091 Tynecastle-122) which means that attribution for good and bad edits could be given to the individual rather than the school. Yes, that's the usual recommendation. I'm not sure what you mean by the school having control of them, though. In the scenario of the school in Edinburgh, a group is told to execute a certain project on WP. The attraction of a single account is clear from the point of view of monitoring: a single edit history tells you everything. If you have a group editing one page - and I have met just this on WP, American college students assigned a task of upgrading a nominated page - a bunch of people all trying to edit from different accounts can lead to edit conflicts, if no worse. Any account where the email address supplied went to a computer in the school's administration would be controlled by the school, from the point of view of resetting the password. This discussion seems like fine tuning to me, actually; but, yes, I can see it might be worth going into the issues a little in a guide. (I do want to be concise, though ... all experience suggests verbose is easier to write and less likely to be read.) Charles Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you blocked from wikipedia. Probably the most important thing to do is to contact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects first. -- geni ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
On Sat, 2010-01-09 at 21:14 +, geni wrote: 2010/1/9 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/9 Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org: On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Would not it be perhaps better for the individual students to have accounts, but under teh control of the school. Perhaps based on their school pupil number (e.g. Tynecastle-091 Tynecastle-122) which means that attribution for good and bad edits could be given to the individual rather than the school. Yes, that's the usual recommendation. I'm not sure what you mean by the school having control of them, though. In the scenario of the school in Edinburgh, a group is told to execute a certain project on WP. The attraction of a single account is clear from the point of view of monitoring: a single edit history tells you everything. If you have a group editing one page - and I have met just this on WP, American college students assigned a task of upgrading a nominated page - a bunch of people all trying to edit from different accounts can lead to edit conflicts, if no worse. Any account where the email address supplied went to a computer in the school's administration would be controlled by the school, from the point of view of resetting the password. This discussion seems like fine tuning to me, actually; but, yes, I can see it might be worth going into the issues a little in a guide. (I do want to be concise, though ... all experience suggests verbose is easier to write and less likely to be read.) Charles Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you blocked from wikipedia. Probably the most important thing to do is to contact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects first. Speaking as someone with the CheckUser privilege (on enWN, not enWP), you want individual students to have individual accounts. Use of CheckUser will reveal their edits as coming from a school IP address - and they likely will edit from home too. Someone official, such as a teacher, contacting the schools and university projects people is a really good idea too. As a worst-case the school IP can be blocked from anonymous edits and the creation of accounts. If the school's staff deal with either telling the pupils what user accounts to create, or finding out which they've chosen, no information about minors' identities is shared online. If a pupil is blocked then real-world implications only come into effect if a member of school staff becomes aware of it. Of course, there are two separate issues here now. The first, use of Wikipedia as a resource; the second, actual contribution to Wikipedia. To people on this list, and Wikimedians in general, the two are intimately intertwined. Jon Beasley-Murray makes the best case for actually contributing to learn about Wikipedia: Overall, a Wikipedia assignment offered lots of possibilities, including: * teaching students about Wikipedia, an important site that they use (and too often misuse) * improving Wikipedia itself, by generating new content on topics where its coverage is lacking * encouraging students to produce something that had relevance outside the classroom, in the public sphere * giving them tangible goals that were measured by something other than my own professorial judgement * changing their views about writing, by stressing the importance of ongoing revision * teaching them about research and about how to use and evaluate sources His response (this is a University professor) to the using Wikipedia question is, If a Wikipedia article is a good one, then you won't need to quote it, as it will have links to all the relevant sources. And if it doesn't have those links, then it isn't a good article, and shouldn't be quoted in any case. Before this semester, I explicitly banned students from quoting Wikipedia articles in their essays. And I will continue to do so. I also look askance at them citing dictionary definitions. And though they don't quote Britannica (I think Wikipedia has
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
On 9 Jan 2010, at 21:14, geni wrote: 2010/1/9 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/9 Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org: On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is that empowerment is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors should not give personal details, so a role account for say, Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will have its password changed by a school staff member. Would not it be perhaps better for the individual students to have accounts, but under teh control of the school. Perhaps based on their school pupil number (e.g. Tynecastle-091 Tynecastle-122) which means that attribution for good and bad edits could be given to the individual rather than the school. Yes, that's the usual recommendation. I'm not sure what you mean by the school having control of them, though. In the scenario of the school in Edinburgh, a group is told to execute a certain project on WP. The attraction of a single account is clear from the point of view of monitoring: a single edit history tells you everything. If you have a group editing one page - and I have met just this on WP, American college students assigned a task of upgrading a nominated page - a bunch of people all trying to edit from different accounts can lead to edit conflicts, if no worse. Any account where the email address supplied went to a computer in the school's administration would be controlled by the school, from the point of view of resetting the password. This discussion seems like fine tuning to me, actually; but, yes, I can see it might be worth going into the issues a little in a guide. (I do want to be concise, though ... all experience suggests verbose is easier to write and less likely to be read.) Charles Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you blocked from wikipedia. Probably the most important thing to do is to contact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects first. -- geni On the narrow point of whether schools or pupils should have accounts, I have come across a similar issue at work. We provide a web service with some similarities to WP, and we started off with company accounts. For security (and accountability) reasons, we moved to giving each individual a user name which can be given access to any number of accounts. The incentive for a business is that they can add or ban users from their own accounts without having to go through us (ie they can administer their own users); and also they can monitor usage by each user of their own account, which is a big incentive to do it our way and not to share user names in business. Providing some incentive for people to do it the WP way - which basically could be a similar combination of information and control - is a good way to get schools to do it your way. As it happens, our web service is available to all UK schools at no charge to them (paid for by a charity), so I suppose it has a parallel existence. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
The Times Educational Supplement contacted WMUK today about the ofqual guidance, with an urgent deadline to meet (2.30pm). I explained to them that the information they provide is good, and that Wikipedia is a great starting point, and a stepping stone to learning more (emphasising the references at the bottom of the articles, etc.). I also commented (hopefully not in a way that will get quoted...) that I don't know where the Telegraph and Mail got their headlines from. I also talked a little about the Schools Project, saying that we want to help teach students how to use WIkipedia properly, and provide guidance for teachers too. Hopefully that will get some sort of mention in the article. I also pointed them towards the website, although looking again at it we don't seem to have much useful information on there at the moment about the schools project, so that's probably a missed opportunity. :-( I believe the TES is published weekly, on a Friday, so I don't know whether this would have been for today's issue (unlikely) or next week's (more likely). Mike On 7 Jan 2010, at 17:16, Thomas Dalton wrote: 2010/1/7 Steve Virgin st...@mediafocusuk.com: As a Board member I personally believe we should be attempting to promote our Schools Project here and that should sit at the heart of any release. I don't disagree that this is an opportunity to mention our project, but I don't think it should be the heart of the release. Our PR work should be more than just about promoting our own stuff. It should also be a way of directly promoting and educating people about the Wikimedia projects and the concept of free content. We should be issuing press releases about subjects relevant to Wikimedia even if they have nothing to do with anything Wikimedia UK is doing. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia - Telegraph
Check this out: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6032750 It's about social media and education, which is an interesting topic in itself, but most importantly it contains this line: Wikis are web pages that can be easily edited, the most famous of which is Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia. A journalist knows the difference between wiki and Wikipedia - joy of joys! (The downside is that it suggests schools improve/create an article about their school as an example, which is something of a COI...) Also, did anyone send a link to this article (from Nov 2009) to this list? http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6028137 The headline: Wikipedia is good for pupils and teachers. You know what? I think I like TES more than the Telegraph! No sign of an article about the Ofqual guidance on their website yet, though. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
