Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-04-09/News and notes
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Pilot projects in Brasil and contributions in the Middle East
Education Program launches Brasil pilot
The Wikipedia Education Program has launched a pilot program in Brasil. The pursuit of such a program has been a recent goal of the Brasilian community, which, in late 2011 and early 2012, discussed the idea with a variety of professors from universities in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The professors the community spoke to had an overall positive response to the idea of "Wikipedia as a pedagogical tool in their classes." After discussions, five professors and 150 students were included in the coming pilot program, covering the topics of history, sociology, physics, and public policy.
This new program is just the latest in a long line of developments relating Wikipedia to the classroom, a budding number of projects and programs spearheaded by the Public Policy Initiative conducted in 2010 through 2011. The approach has already seen success in Brasil with a smaller solo project revolving around articles on . The five professors are Pablo Ortellado of the University of São Paulo, whose classes will collaborate on articles on cultural policy (of 11 proposed articles, only 1 exists); Edivaldo Moura of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, whose thirteen students have each chosen an article related to electromagnetism for expansion; Vera Henriques, whose class will improve articles related to biological systems; Heloisa Pait of the Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, whose sociology students are to "explore their cultural memories"; and Juliana Bastos Marques, whose 60 freshmen will encounter Wikipedia in their history class.
As with any pilot program, professors have been given creative freedom to fixate their participation as they think best suits their specific coursework, and the community is keen to see the results of their varied models of participation. The second component, the program's ambassadors, are coming together as well in the face of geographical logistical challenges; WEP members and local meet-ups have helped spread the word in that regard. The community will track student contributions and motivation to gauge the effectiveness of the program; potential ambassador candidates are encouraged to introduce themselves on the program's page.
Lead story one
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/06/arabic-regional-visit-encourages-contribution/
Brief notes
- Call for POTY organizers: Mono, coordinator of the sixth annual Picture of the Year contest, has released a call for participants on this year's POTY Committee. The Picture of the Year contest, annualized since 2006, is a volunteer-run event that aims to pick out the best freely licensed featured picture that had been awarded Featured picture status that year; this year's event will cover images uploaded in 2011. Last year's POTY counted a sum total of 2,463 votes; committee members are expected to help in "set[ting] up contest pages, posting messages in relevant locations, *translating interface messages,* assisting voters, and counting votes." Applicants are directed to fill out this form.
- Article Feedback Tool updates: Updates include an announcement of new office hours by Okeyes (WMF) who may be contacted with questions on his talk page. Instructions for Article Feedback Tool/Version 5/Feedback evaluation has been released. Volunteers may still sign up there.
- Board Q&A: The Board of Trustees has issued a Q&A document about its recent recently published fundraising and funds dissemination resolutions. It is divided into three sections, one an overview of the board process leading up to the decision and its summary, and the other two specific questions about the resolutions, some already asked, some anticipated. Discussions are directed towards the resolution talk page.
- WikiData office hours: The WikiData team held their first office hours on April 5; the log has been published.
- New Page Triage update: Feedback on the NPT talkpage is requested.
- Teahouse Metrics Summary: The metrics summary for the Teahouse project to date has been published, showing visitor statistics and feedback.
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes our new administrator, Yngvadottir, "an experienced clean-up editor...[who has] got a long history of rescuing/improving bad articles, often taking articles from AFD to the front page." Following her successful nomination, she plans to be most active at WP:DYK.
- Milestones this week: The Nepali Wikipedia has reached 250,000 page edits, Mediawiki has reached 100 administrators, the Japanese Wikipedia has reached 800,000 articles, and the French Wikipedia has reached 5,000,000 total pages.
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