Yes, it is both a US centric and English Wikipedia Centric project. Have a
look at the FAQ "which universities will be
section. Not really the WMF's fault given that the money is coming from a US
donor who is personally interested in this particular area. This is billed
as a pilot project to see how the WMF (and, by extension) Chapters, could
best work out ways to get improvements in areas on Wikipedia that appear to
not be getting improved "by themselves". A noble goal, for sure. I too
harbour worries about this not being a good way of going about improving
Wikipedia - but then again - that's exactly what this is supposed to test!
Ideally, this would be something that the mythical Wikimedia-USA chapter
should be taking on, but in the mean time I hope this project produces
*documentation* about how to get subject-specific experts involved. I spend
a lot of my time trying to get GLAMs involved so I hope this produces
transferable information for the rest of us.
-Liam [[witty lama]]
On 5 May 2010 22:46, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
It would help if someone explained what "public
policy" articles are.
I've never heard of the term before, except vaguely in relation to
politics and local and national government and lobbying in the area of
governmental policy and legislation, but maybe I should have a look at
the Wikipedia article on "public policy" first (it might be a
US-centric term).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy
Seems I remembered right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_schools
Hidden category: "USA-centric" - that is an accurate label.
I think public policy is a mixture of what we in the UK call the civil
service, local government, political science and various quangos and
lobbying groups. A look through the articles in this category (if
accurately placed there) may help UK readers of this mailing list to
see what "public policy" means:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom
I haven't a clue what it is called in other countries.
My view? This seems rather a US-centric project.
Carcharoth
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi,
Given that this was published two hours ago and, not published on
Foundation-l, I forward it. It is rather intriguing. I am interested to
learn what the community thinks of this and, if this is another en.wp
only
project.
Thanks,
GerardM
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frank Schulenburg <fschulenburg(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 5 May 2010 19:50
Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Public Policy Initiative
To: WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Hi all,
I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation received a
generous
grant from the Stanton Foundation for a 17-month
pilot program that will
help inform how to best engage new contributors in the improvement of
subject-specific articles on Wikipedia. The Stanton Foundation also
supports
the Wikipedia Usability Initiative and other
Wikimedia activities; we are
very grateful for this ongoing support and interest. A public
announcement
of this grant will follow later this week.
Subject-matter experts have always been valued Wikipedia contributors,
and a
key goal of this initiative is to facilitate
their collaboration with and
among the Wikipedia editing community. We will experiment with different
methods of using Wikipedia as a teaching and learning tool in
universities,
and ways to provide incentives and support
participation by students,
teachers, and volunteers. The overarching goal of this project, called
the
Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative, is to
effectively increase the
quality
of public policy articles on Wikipedia, and to
support Wikimedia Chapters
with a model for working with universities to enhance other topic areas.
We have chosen the particular subject area of public policy because this
topic area is interdisciplinary, and requires collaboration among many
fields (including history, economics, law, and various social and hard
sciences). We also believe this subject area is underdeveloped on
Wikipedia
and therefore offers a big opportunity for
improvement. Furthermore we
recognize that public policy articles may pose special problems -- they
may
center on issues and debates that are more
controversial and less settled
than other articles in the sciences or in the humanities. We feel that if
we
can succeed with public policy articles, other
topic areas can be
improved
based on this model.
This is a completely new and exciting model for outreach with subject
matter
experts on Wikipedia. It's also a first for
the Wikimedia Foundation, and
something we hope will lead us towards new best practices and a solid
foundation to better collaborate with our volunteers and with academic
and
institutional partners.
During the 17-month time frame of the project timeline, the Initiative
will
be led by a project team at the Wikimedia
Foundation working with two
keys
groups of volunteer Wikipedia editors:
"Campus Ambassadors" doing
in-classroom training and face-to-face evangelizing, and "Online
Ambassadors" providing online support, coaching and mentoring. The
Wikipedia
volunteers will support university classes,
students and professors as
they
engage in quality improvement of public policy
articles on Wikipedia.
The execution of the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative will take a
phased
approach. This will include the recruitment of an
advisory Steering
Committee of public policy experts, establishment of quality measures,
baseline assessment of the current quality of public policy articles, and
development of educational and training materials specific to this
project.
We will then pilot quality improvement activities
with 3-5 schools during
the fall and winter of 2010, learn from the experiences of the pilot
schools, and scale up to run work with an additional 7-12 schools during
the
spring of 2011. The project will culminate in a
conference at which best
practices will be shared and prizes awarded.
We believe that the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative will both improve
public policy content during the duration of the project, and also
produce
information and infrastructure that could inform
the design and
development
of a long term sustainable model.
The Foundation will more publicly announce this new initiative later this
week with a press release, but we wanted to give everyone advance notice
and
share these job openings.
The Public Policy Initiative will be led by Rod Dunican, our Education
Programs Manager. Pete Forsyth and I will remain closely engaged as the
project unfolds, and we will build a project team specifically around the
initiative. We invite you to have a look at the current job openings:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings
For more information, click the links below to review:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative_project_details
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative_FAQ
If you have further questions about the Initiative or the current job
openings, please contact rdunican[at]wikimedia[dot]org
Thanks for your interest,
Frank Schulenburg, Public Outreach
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