[WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD

Wed Aug 25 01:25:41 UTC 2004

> Message: 8
> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:25:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
>
> 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.
>
> RickK

I think [[Hanlon's razor]] applies.

The instructor has really gotten his knickers in a twist with this:

He's obviously got an IT background (at least to some extent) or he 
would hardly be an instructor at all (maybe I'm too optimistic ;-).
However, as we all like to forget, IT has ''somewhat'' diversified in 
the last two decades or so and somebody might be an old pro who knows 
his x86 assembly language by heart but has somehow, say, never touched 
Usenet. Or (more recent example) doesn't know what a blog is. I request 
that for virtually everybody of us, there's some "essential" part of 
the entire IT experience that has passed us by. Now maybe User:Pcw was 
just a bit unfamiliar with the entire copyleft, open-source-philosophy, 
Bazaar-and-Cathedral, Free Documentation and community collaboration 
thing.

The next problem would be hubris.
Most of us have on some occasion fallen into the trap of assuming that 
me had "instantly grasped it" when there was a lot more to "it" 
(whatever the particular subject be).

This might have led to a situation where User:Pcw might have skimped on 
the lurking, waiting and observing part and where he's been a bit too 
swift to officially present the Wikipedia to his students, who duly 
took it "straight from the horse's mouth".

Seeing that he's failed to grasp a few very relevant nuances about the 
critical collaboration process (which I for one am only just now 
learning by trial and error), he's gotten himself into this Catch-22 
situation:

- He probably finds it difficult to admit to his students "Sorry guys. 
My Bad. Missed a few bits there, threw you all into the fray and most 
of you found your good efforts (which you've all worked for) wasted and 
rejected. It was a shite assignment. Let's move on." -- I mean, my 
understanding is that they are just starting this course w/ him. Three 
words: Loss of credibility.

- On the other hand, he can't ignore the fact that all or most of the 
articles WERE really rejected (for IMHO mostly valid reasons).

So what he's doing now is holding that "we" (i.e. all those Wikipedians 
who somehow opposed the said articles) got it all wrong. So "he's right 
and the others are all wrong".  (I was only a lurking passive reader on 
this one btw.) It's a very human reaction to a very unfortunate 
situation that he's gotten himself into for very human reasons.

At least that's my interpretation of the entire affair.

- Jens

PS:
==Can WE learn from this?==
It's in our interest to gather more potential future contributors and 
initiatives like this would have been an excellent opportunity to 
"recruit".
Maybe we should think about how we can more prominently feature 
[[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] -- Suggestion: Main Page 
link "Educators - click here".
And then we should figure out what info we can write into 
[[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] to avoid such fiascos in 
the future?
Sounds good?