Talk:Education Portal/Discussion

Suggested actions

What is the reasoning for "Downsize the overview-template of HE projects to include only WMF projects as as most links have been transferred to the new portal." and is there consenus behind it? I would feel more welcome if our efforts in WEP (that we also got funding from WMF through our Program plan) could be listed in Template:Wikipedia Education Program sidebar. Ainali (talk) 19:08, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I also disagreed with the decision to remove non-WMF programs from the sidebar, so I've removed the sidebar entirely. The Wikipedia Education Program is not just Foundation-run program, and I remain sad and opposed to the decision to brand it as such. I still firmly believe that any program who wishes to call themselves part of the Wikipedia Education Program should do so, and I encourage all programs to use the Wikipedia Education Program visual identity as a way to link our work. We share a common goal of wanting to encourage the use of Wikipedia in educational settings, and we want the Wikipedia Education Program to be a global effort shared by individuals around the world. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 00:29, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Where and by whom was this decision made? This page has the heading suggested actions and first an IP made a suggestion that Beat later just implemented and marked as done. It seems like we have just as strong opposing numbers and also have some arguments for keeping it in there. I would love to here Beat's thoughts on this. Ainali (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Dear Ainali, thank you for raising this question. You have indeed missed a part of the discussion that has taken place between LiAnna, Leigh Thelmadatter and me. For transparency reasons I've posted my original e-mail response to LiAnna's "lengthy comments" on the wiki page, and I will see with Leigh and LiAnna in what form we could make the outcome of our skype dicussion of 9 August available here. Maybe this will make it a bit clearer in what vein and in which context these decisions were taken.

Dear LiAnna, I'm a bit suprised that you have removed the sidebar from the Wikipedia Education Program (WEP) page altogether. Just for the record, when I changed the WEP main page on 9 Aug, it read "Welcome to the hub for the Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia Education Program". So when you are saying that you are sad that the WEP was branded as a Foundation run program, the WMF's own communication may have contributed to this "branding".

One of the points I was making was that, given this branding and given the existing program of the WMF with this name, it didn't make much sense to call the new education portal "Wikipedia Education Program". Another point I made was that the projects and programs we re-unite on the new education portal don't really form a program, but a rather loose network. For the rest, I have no strong opinion about whether the Swedish education projects should (claim to) be part of the "WEP" or not. In order to prevent misunderstandings in the future, it might make sense that you take some time for reflection and maybe debate to clearly define what the "WEP" is supposed to be - in terms of scope, ownership, and governance. If you don't want to take this time, then please just go ahead and revert the changes I made to the sidebar. Or do both. ;-) -- Beat Estermann (talk) 11:26, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Beat, if what you were opposed to was the fact that it said "Wikimedia Foundation" there, I wish you'd told me that at the time. It was a remanent of a past page, and I have seen the page so many times I didn't even see that there was a reference there to WMF until you told me. I would have removed it immediately if I'd known. As I have written over and over, and as we discussed on the Skype call, I firmly believe in everyone's ability to associate themselves with the Wikipedia Education Program name if they would like to do so, and I remain sad that you deleted people who had gone in and added themselves to that page. If you look through the edit history of Wikipedia Education Program you'll see that most of those descriptions were added by the chapter members or individuals who were running those programs, not by us. I removed the sidebar because I would rather have no listing of programs on a sidebar than only listing WMF-led programs and making people like Ainali and Chmee2 (who commented on Talk:Wikipedia Education Program sad that their programs were no longer included. I think giving it governance or structure is too much, personally: It has always been a loose collection of education projects led by volunteers around the world who want to associate themselves with a global program, be mentioned in media about the program, share learnings with each other, and celebrate each others' successes. Assigning ownership or governance is too much in my opinion; what would be governed? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 27 August 2012 (UTC)