Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-09-04/WikiProject report

I'd love to hear more on how effective was the Association for Psychological Science program. Was it useful? Was it trying to engage the WikiProject? What was done good, what was done badly, what was improved, what could be improved? A similar project by ASA ([1]) as far as I know resulted in noone (but me) caring. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:51, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

The ASAAPS program has generated a great volume of content which is reliably sourced, thorough and reflects an academic view of the subject. The content could be made more accessible for a lay audience, and there could be less duplication between articles. So it hasn't produced a lot of top-quality articles but it is making a huge, huge, improvement over what was there before. When you find an experimental psychology article with a lot of citations to reliable academic sources, it was most probably created in a student assignment, and most probably one encouraged by the APS. A great many articles related to memory were improved by a Canadian university course (not part of the APS program) and there are some really interesting articles on the psychology of self and identity that were created or overhauled by final-year undergrads in the University of Southampton, UK (predating the APS initiative).

The APS has also encouraged academic members to contribute directly, as well as students: that's how the Stereotype threat article got improved to GA. Personally, I wish there were more attempts to engage the existing Wikiproject infrastructure, and to put more information on Talk pages about who is improving them and over what time period. Then again, as my colleagues and I say above, there aren't enough active Wikipedians in this area to do all that needs doing.

There's cleanup to be done, but I'd rather have an article that needs cleanup or simplifying than no coverage of the topic at all. It's when educational activities cause disruption that they get talked about on noticeboards or here in Signpost. That's understandable, but it's easy for us to ignore, or just not hear about, the very much greater amount of improvement that is going on quietly. And of course we are giving undergraduate students a real experience of publication and all the other great educational benefits. I used to despair about psychology on Wikipedia ever getting any good, but the arrival of educational assignments has lifted that despair. MartinPoulter (talk) 14:04, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

@User:MartinPoulter: thank you for the answer, it's very interesting. Do you know what APS has done to attract people to this project? It would be a very interesting case study. (Also, I think you mean APS not ASA in your opening sentence?) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:13, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

@User:Piotrus: Thanks for the correction. I'm not very familiar with how the APS encouraged participation because I don't follow their internal communication, but the initiative has been publicised in their internal newsletter and web site. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 16:40, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Not sure if this was related to the APS efforts but one of the schools that contributed created a great deal of copyright infringement per [2]. As there are few long term Wikipedians in the topic area much of it still sits on Wikipedia making us look bad. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:07, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

• If Wikiproject Psycology has any articles they would like to nominate over at Todays articles for improvement, we can work together to improve their quality. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 04:27, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I served as Campus Ambassador for a Psychology class under the APS-initiative. This class focused on biographical articles about psychologists, rather than articles about psychology, so it didn't have the impact discussed here. Beyond the normal stresses inherent in any student-program on Wikipedia, some good content was added and students were introduced to editing. Initiatives like these are great cover for those of us trying to bring Wikipedia in front of the generally-hostile faculty. I wish every association representing an academic discipline would hold similar initiatives. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

@User:MartinPoulter, User:Chris troutman: Thanks for more information. I've been somewhat involved with launching the ASA initiative, which sadly seems to be a failure (as in - I am not aware of a single lasting series of Wikipedia edits that originated thanks to it). Compared to it, APS is as you've pointed out much more successful. Yet ASA initiative was also promoted in similar ways to your description of promotion for the APS initiative - it was endorsed by its leadership in speeches/newsletters, there is a webpage and a portal both modeled after APS ones, WMF had booths at two ASA conferences (at least in 2011 and 2012, I haven't heard if we had one in 2013); I helped manned the two former - we passed leaflets, held a workshop, send invitations for the Education Program, etc. So on the surface the projects look very similar - why is it such a success for APS, and a failure for ASA? I can't help but think that APS did something more (or better) compared to ASA, and understanding that something is a key to working out the best practices for such projects. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

• I wouldn't worry too much about "imperialism" by the philosophy project Martin. Like some other wikiprojects they had one or two people who went banner-crazy a few years ago. In reality I think they are just as sensible and undermanned as most other wikiprojects, including this one by the sound of it. Johnbod (talk) 13:31, 9 September 2013 (UTC)