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 Brazil pilot
The Wikipedia Education Program has launched a pilot program in Brazil for editing the Portuguese Wikipedia. This has been a recent goal of the Brazilian community, which, in late 2011 and early 2012, discussed the idea with professors from universities in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. These professors 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 pilot program, covering the topics of history, sociology, physics, and public policy.
The 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 Brazil, 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 one exists); Edivaldo Moura of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, whose 13 students have each chosen to expand an article related to electromagnetism; 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 all pilot programs, professors have been given creative freedom to shape 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 and 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, held since 2006, is a volunteer-run event that aims to pick out the best freely licensed featured picture promoted to featured 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 fill out this form.
- Creative Commons 4.0: On April 2 Creative Commons, whose CC BY-SA license powers Wikipedia since June 2009, announced the release of the first draft of CC 4.0. According to the timeline the first opportunity for public input – either via the mailing list or the wiki – is open until May 2.
- 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 is an overview of the board process leading up to the decision and its summary; the other two are specific questions (some already asked, some anticipated) about the resolutions. 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 [with] 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 a total of 5,000,000 pages.
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