3 ms·

I was a Wikipedia campus ambassador for two courses - one at Boston College the other at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. The students were assigned to co

I was a Wikipedia campus ambassador for two courses - one at Boston College the other at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. The students were assigned to contribute to articles and my role was to help them navigate Wikipedia. I thought both courses went well - the BC class in particular had a professor who was very involved in selecting articles, having the students write drafts and reflect on their work. The students wrote a lot of good content and I had four or five of their articles featured on the Wikipedia home page's Did You Know section for new articles (More would have been featured but Wikipedia's rules for what qualifies are pretty arbitrary). There were three cases out of fifteen that were problematic - in two cases someone expanded the article while the students were working on their drafts, pre-empting their work, in the third case after the class had concluded some editors felt that the student's work misrepresented the topic and rewrote it. Overall the students wrote well-sourced, well-written content and I think they had a good experience.

x1798DE 12y ago
Looking at this particular case, I'd say the experience would have been much better if the teacher had been an experienced Wikipedia editor or had contacted one of the projects that deals with this sort of thing ahead of time to put them in touch with a mentor editor. The article mentions that seniority is important (I've never found that to be the case), but what's actually important is understanding the kind of content that Wikipedia is looking for. In this case, the reversions were mostly because of "original research" violations, where the student synthesized new opinions out of the sources. This is something you'd do if you were writing a high school report on a topic, but on Wikipedia you're really only allowed to summarize what the sources say. Having someone who understands that around would have helped both student and teacher understand why the material is being removed, and how it could be improved if they still wanted to contribute to the article.
- niels_olson 12y ago
  You have a lot of thoughts about how this could have been done better. Have you passed any of these along to Professor Duffy?

x1798DE 12y ago

Looking at this particular case, I'd say the experience would have been much better if the teacher had been an experienced Wikipedia editor or had contacted one of the projects that deals with this sort of thing ahead of time to put them in touch with a mentor editor. The article mentions that seniority is important (I've never found that to be the case), but what's actually important is understanding the kind of content that Wikipedia is looking for. In this case, the reversions were mostly because of "original research" violations, where the student synthesized new opinions out of the sources. This is something you'd do if you were writing a high school report on a topic, but on Wikipedia you're really only allowed to summarize what the sources say. Having someone who understands that around would have helped both student and teacher understand why the material is being removed, and how it could be improved if they still wanted to contribute to the article.

niels_olson 12y ago
You have a lot of thoughts about how this could have been done better. Have you passed any of these along to Professor Duffy?