[WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

Tue Aug 24 23:17:24 UTC 2004

RickK wrote:

> Unfortunately, even though the class assignment required that the 
> articles created by the students meet Wikipedia requirements, now that 
> most of them have been listed on VfD, the instructor is trying to 
> claim that they do meet our requirements.  It seems if the vast 
> majority of the articles have made it to VfD, then not only has the 
> majority of the class failed the assignment, but the instructor 
> doesn't understand the nature of Wikipedia.  If the majority of a 
> class fails an assignment, that has to say something about the 
> instructor, as well.

I phoned the instructor a couple of days ago.

I am almost certain that RickK is wrong in saying that "most of [the 
articles created by the students] have been listed on VfD." I checked 
out one or two that the instructor happened to refer to indirectly, and 
they're fine. They're almost models of what we'd like to see on 
Wikipedia. Since they're a) not obviously connected to Dartmouth and b) 
first-rate articles, they never got listed on VfD, and I don't believe 
they ever will be.

One purpose of the exercise is to give nonprogramming students hands-on 
experience in a collaborative an open-source project is like.

The persona he projects in private emails and on the phone is so 
different from the uncooperative persona he projects in Wikipedia VfD 
discussions that at one point I actually wondered whether it was the 
same person. It is. When I commented on the apparent personality 
difference he said something to the effect that he'd been on USENET for 
years, knows a flamewar when he sees one, and was just determined to 
defend his students.

The instructor's perception is that there is actually an anti-Dartmouth 
animus among WIkipedian. I would have said both were wrong, but after a 
recent "second wave" I am actually starting to perceive such an animus.

Many Wikipedians' perception is that a group of Dartmouth students are 
systematically and deliberately spamming Wikipedia with a flood of 
Dartmouth-boosting promotional pieces.

The well-written assignment directs students to all the places you'd 
want them to be directed, such as "What Wikipedia is not." 
Unfortunately they call for creating entire articles. The instructor 
commented that he didn't know how you could give an objective grade to 
"improving an article."

The pieces that are starting to arouse such irritation are not all that 
terrible. In most cases, what seems to me to have happened is that some 
feature of campus life that should have been a line or a short 
paragraph in the Dartmouth College has become the subject of a 
full-page article that uses the sort of breezy, promotional language 
that is appropriate to a college's website, or a campus freshman 
resource guide. We should patiently cut 'em down, clean 'em up, and 
stick 'em in the Dartmouth College article and make the articles 
redirects. No big deal, except that people resent having to do the 
work. There's not even any big rush about it. Who cares if there's a 
page up for a month or so lauding the wonders of the Nelson A. 
Rockefeller Center? These article all fall squarely in the "borderline" 
category. Get them cleaned up, but we don't need to drop everything and 
do it right away.

Not that it matters, but the instructor personally seems to fall 
somewhere in between the extremes of the deletionist/inclusionist 
spectrum. He cited "Internet is shit" as a good example of an article 
that needed deletion. (And I hadn't mentioned it. He knows more about 
Wikipedia than I had thought). But he's uncomfortable with measuring 
"notability" and would set the bar lower than today's VfD community 
consensus would set it.

I'm getting Wikistressed about all this, by the way. Here's a lovely 
opportunity for what should have been a positive interaction. It all 
has a beautiful tragic Rashomon-like quality to it. I wish people would 
just cool down instead of piling on. If you've dealt with too many 
Dartmouth articles and your patience has run out, then deal with 
something else and stay away from them. Come back in a month and if 
they're not all cleaned up by then, start cleaning them up.

And I think we really need to ask whether something about VfD is 
actually _inducing_ the demeanor shown by User:Pcw in VfD discussions.

Just for the record, so there's no misunderstanding, I think every 
Dartmouth article placed on VfD by RickK is royally VfD-worthy, and 
sparkling examples of article meriting "ruthless editing" (or what some 
editor called a "POVectomy"). I just happen to think that the right 
resolution for most of them is trim them down to 5 to 20% of their 
current size, merge into Dartmouth College, and redirect.

Sir, as I have said, it is a small college, and yet there are those of 
us who are starting to see it as a PITA. But, personally, if I can't 
judge an article on the basis of the content of the article, rather 
than on the presumed organizational affiliations of the article's 
authors, then I don't think I should be discussing that article's 
deletion.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/