Comments on: This founder’s vision has not yet become reality

By: Jon

Jon — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:22:03 +0000

I am humbled that my students, totally unbidden, should have come here to defend the project from their point of view. Thanks, guys! And thanks also to Erna for your observations and support.

By: Erna

Erna — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:35:33 +0000

I think that Jon’s project is absolutely fabulous. Students can clearly relate their research work to a target readership, avoiding the sometimes pathological inbreeding generated in academia, where an obscure terminology and even obscurer concepts bar normal human beings from engaging with the topics discussed. I consider writing for wikipedia a very healthy thing to do. So thumbs up for that!
The problems of quality are another matter. As someone engaged in Latin American studies for some time, I suspect that no edit wars have ensued as yet, because not many people know much about the topic, many don´t really care, and there is very little at stake.
Having said that, though, what I could verify on a quick glance (of some articles, like those on García Márquez, of whom I know a bit more about than, say, Vargas Llosa) that they are indeed excellent and I would recommend them to students any time as an ideal point of departure for their own research. No one single article, from wikipedia or other source, can feed you all the information; and even the articles of acclaimed academics can be based on poor research (see Harlod Bloom on García Marquez, for example). So you always have to check your facts, whether they have been published on WP or by Harvard University Press.
Awsome, Jon!

By: Gregory Kohs

Gregory Kohs — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:45:52 +0000

One might question why students are encouraged to put so much work into a project that has taken tax-deductible donations and spent them on things like $1200 dinners for four, a bottle of wine that costs more than an iPod, and (worst of all) a massage parlor visit in Moscow. When an employee of that project actually put his foot down and said “no” to these ridiculous and shameful expenses, he was later described to the press as a “disgruntled former employee”, and the perpetrator of these offenses was described as having “never done anything wrong”.

I don’t care how rigorous the “Featured Article” standards are on Wikipedia. The leadership of the project is corrupt, and to participate willingly while that corruption festers is like praising how efficiently the autobahns ran in 1938. A fish rots from the head down. Some of us recognize that. Others of you don’t.

How does the academic community react to the recent proposal by the Wikimedia Foundation’s lawyer to “swap” the GFDL distribution license that has governed the millions of editors and billions of edits, where it has no legal right to do so? Does the academic community even understand the ramifications of a licensing “bait and switch”?

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:35:06 +0000

I hope other, more important things influence your college decision than whether or not Wikipedia is a part of one of its college courses. To me, Wikipedia is the ultimate test of whether John Stuart Mill was right when he wrote On Liberty way back when. If everybody really has a voice, will the truth come out? I think that when Wikipedia is at its best, it is the best tertiary source out there. Period. When it’s at its worst, it has the potential to become the best source out there.

By: Eva

Eva — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:19:26 +0000

Jon has been by far one of the most interesting and creative professors that I’ve had. Keep in mind that our course grade is not based solely on this Wikipedia assignment; and there are definitely other assignments in the class. I agree with all of Monica’s comments above. Getting an article to FA (or even GA) status takes a lot of work and persistance, something our page The General in His Labyrinth is still trying to achieve. The amount of work I have put into this page far surpasses what I would usually put in for a “one-night paper”. I now know not to rely entirely on Wikipedia for research, BUT instead to go to the references at the bottom for a good starting point for research.

If anything, Jon’s class is a good reason to attend UBC.

By: Monica F

Monica F — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:52:34 +0000

As a student of Jon’s class, and given the hours I have spent working on this project over the last four months, I implore you to take a look at El Senor Presidente, an article that finally reached FA status. Also, the standards are far from lax, if anything they are much more extreme than any professor I have encountered. They dissect every single sentence written and ask clarfiication questions, ask you to re-write something so that the prose is more engaging. There is no question in my mind that this is an extemely challenging assignment and I have put a lot more time into it than I would a term paper, which is given a grade based on my professor’s mood that day or how good the essay he/she read before mine was. So, I would say that if you really are critical of this assignment, give it a shot yourself. Try to bring any article to GA or FA status and I think you will find the reveiwers are everything but lax and it is fair that if one achieves these statuses, one should be guaranteed a higher grade. I don’t know if this adds to the discussion or not but I thought I would add the opinion of one of his students from the class.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:45:08 +0000

Chris, I agree that an overly demanding review could also be a problem. Oversight is always going to be necessary: the point is not simply to abrogate responsibility for standards or grading to wikipedia; the point, however, is that there is some kind of external goal.

But obviously, others are welcome to do things differently. I’m not trying to be prescriptive here!

By: Chris D

Chris D — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:01:07 +0000

Note that an anal review can be as bad as a lax review too, with respect to the student getting a fair grade. Some people nitpick to perfectly good articles. I guess what i am suggesting is the grade should probably not be dependent on getting to a GA status although I do agree that to go through the process would be a benefit. I think if I set this up myself having TA’s and myself doing the “graded” external review would be more fair for the class. Then additional input is a bonus and never a detriment. Also, under such circumstances there is no temptation to game the system.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:05:11 +0000

Chris: This could indeed be a problem, and in one case almost became one. In one case we did have a lax review; but there has been sufficient oversight that more experienced editors came in and re-did the review.

Of course in the normal course of things, it would be more likely that such a problem would be caught only much later, as an article is put up for reassessment; we didn’t have the time to wait for the normal course of things. Wikipedia’s oversight mechanisms can work slowly, and there’s a particular backlog when it comes to Good Articles.

So, yes, this could be a problem. But I don’t think it is unmanageable.

By: Chris D

Chris D — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:27:01 +0000

Jon, the reason I wondered about the grade was not the gaming of the system, although that could happen too, but the fact that some FA reviewers are very anal while others are lax. Worse i have seen articles placed up for deletion after entering FA review. Consequently, trying to get FA or GA might be very tough for some students yet trivial for others. May be you are lucky and have not come across such disparities in review but it seems quite likely it would happen in any given class.