[Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
You can't copy-paste this homework Padmaparna Ghosh | September 10, 2011 http://www.timescrest.com/life/you-cant-copypaste-this-homework-6226 http://www.timescrest.com/timthumb.php?src=http://www.timescrest.com/media/content/2011/Sep/img_6226_19431_Pc0080400.jpgw=500zc=1 The students of the Symbiosis School of Economics have suddenly rediscovered the college library. Like most other students, whenever asked to produce a research paper they would routinely look to every lazy researcher's best friend, Wikipedia. But all that changed four months back. Like most members of the academic world, Ishita Ghosh, assistant professor at the SSE, was worried about students turning into a copy-paste generation. Till she decided to beat them at their own game - she asked her students to write original entries for Wikipedia itself. There are others like Ghosh in various colleges across Pune. For more than 1, 000 students at SSE and the College of Engineering, Pune, Wikipedia, the world's largest online, collaborative encyclopedia, is not just a free online encyclopedia, but also a platform to prove their worth as researchers. Professors at these colleges, under an India Education Project by the Wikimedia Foundation, are not asking their students to write papers but original Wikipedia entries, complete with paper citations, references and facts. This novel idea of student contributions has sparked a flurry of activity on campus and is helping teachers judge fundamental research skills of their students. Unlike what it sounds like, writing an entry for the encyclopedia is not easy. They have to research primary sources. I judge their entries on the content, flow and argument of the piece, how many external sources and references they have used and how comprehensive the article is, says Ghosh. In a semester, Ghosh gives 10 per cent weightage to these Wikipedia entries. For the Foundation India and its participation, in fact, is important enough to warrant the foundation's first office out of San Francisco being in here. And it is here on a mission to help India represent itself better. The project had targeted 250 such students initially but already have more than 1, 000 and will spread to other cities next year. While initially reluctant, students have now warmed up to the idea. Every morning Abhilasha Sharma, a 20-yearold student at SSE, craves a hit. Over the last 30 days, she got 950 but this 20-year-old keeps wanting more. Sharma's day is now incomplete if she doesn't log on to Wikipedia, the world's largest online collaborative encyclopedia, at least once a day to check how many hits her entry received. But it hasn't been easy. Within five days of her putting up her article on Robinson Crusoe Economy her worst fear came true - the article got nominated for deletion. For these students, writing an academic paper is no longer an exercise in isolation. It means putting up your labour of weeks online to a prospective audience of 400 million worldwide, all of who can remark on the content and its quality, find holes in the argument and edit it. I went live with my article too soon, when I had little content. So I chatted with the guy who wanted it deleted, a 70-year-old guy in the UK. It was really cool. My work was being watched but not by my professor and he really pushed me to improve my content. This is a dog-eat-dog world but not Wikipedia. If a stranger can be so nice to me so can I, said Sharma, who intends to continue contributing to Wikipedia. And that is what the Foundation wants. Out of about 100, 000 editors worldwide, only about 1, 250 are from India, which is a shame. By population or internet access proportion one in every 5 or 6 editors should be from India, said Hisham Mundol, consultant to the foundation. The students are helped along the way by volunteer campus ambassadors, who are Wikipedia enthusiasts. This is about institutionalising the habit of writing and editing. This does not have a shelf life. Here is an audience of 400 million or even take 10 per cent of it. You are not writing for a dustbin, said Ram Shankar Yadav, a campus ambassador. The foundation, whose only office out of San Francisco is in India, had called for applications for volunteers for 20 positions and they received more than 700. This was unexpected because all I had promised was a T shirt and some love from me, laughed Mundol. Students are even putting their experience up on their resumes for campus placements in a bid to differentiate it from the crowd. The project has also brought out the intense competitor in Sharma thanks to the Leaderboard ranks for contributors according to the amount of content added in bytes. I am really obsessive about it. That has motivated me so much. I want to be on top, said Sharma. The India story of Wikipedia is, however, different from the solely English-speaking world. Though at present most of the editors and contributors are in the English language version, more and more
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
Good article on the INDIAEDU programs. :) On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 14:05, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: You can't copy-paste this homework Well, but some reality check, quite a few have been found copying[1], the drive is on to educate more about copyrights and inform them copying is wrong. But this is a big cultural issue, we have to expect and work on it as more and more of the 1000 start to edit. If you wish to help, please sign up for online ambassadors and help the INDIAEDU program participants. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fluffernutter/checks -- Regards Srikanth.L http://srik.me ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
On 10 September 2011 14:44, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Well, but some reality check, quite a few have been found copying[1], the drive is on to educate more about copyrights and inform them copying is wrong. A question - how hard is it to write a bot that runs contributions through Google and flags it based on the degree of match and whether a footnote exists or not? It's what https://turnitin.com/ and it's ilk offer as a service. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
The subject of the mail is a bit ironic actually ;) Anyway, I guess the copyvios should be ironed out once Online Ambassadors step in. Swaroop Rao (MikeLynch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch) On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 14:44, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: Good article on the INDIAEDU programs. :) On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 14:05, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: You can't copy-paste this homework Well, but some reality check, quite a few have been found copying[1], the drive is on to educate more about copyrights and inform them copying is wrong. But this is a big cultural issue, we have to expect and work on it as more and more of the 1000 start to edit. If you wish to help, please sign up for online ambassadors and help the INDIAEDU program participants. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fluffernutter/checks -- Regards Srikanth.L http://srik.me ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
On 10 September 2011 14:51, Swaroop Rao raul.swar...@gmail.com wrote: The subject of the mail is a bit ironic actually ;) Anyway, I guess the copyvios should be ironed out once Online Ambassadors step in. Now that you mention it... I wonder if they were trying to be sardonic. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
A question - how hard is it to write a bot that runs contributions through Google and flags it based on the degree of match and whether a footnote exists or not? One such bot existed called corensearchbot which used yahoo to flag copyvios. But yahoo changed its terms of service and it had be to stopped. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-09-05/Opinion_essay last week in a conversation in jimbowales talk page in en wiki, jimmy said he and coren were talking to google to allow this free of charge or something and something good is to be expected in the near future (i am not sure, i might be mangling his meaning). On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: On 10 September 2011 14:51, Swaroop Rao raul.swar...@gmail.com wrote: The subject of the mail is a bit ironic actually ;) Anyway, I guess the copyvios should be ironed out once Online Ambassadors step in. Now that you mention it... I wonder if they were trying to be sardonic. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
On 10 September 2011 16:23, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: last week in a conversation in jimbowales talk page in en wiki, jimmy said he and coren were talking to google to allow this free of charge or something and something good is to be expected in the near future (i am not sure, i might be mangling his meaning). Interesting. Sadly, the Google Search API is no longer free: http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/v1/overview.html Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 16:23, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: A question - how hard is it to write a bot that runs contributions through Google and flags it based on the degree of match and whether a footnote exists or not? One such bot existed called corensearchbot which used yahoo to flag copyvios. But yahoo changed its terms of service and it had be to stopped. Infact, we need not go all automatic way, the kind of copying here is very elementary. 1500+ chars without wiki syntax means something suspicious.None of us write paragraphs at one shot. I guess Huggle might already flag those(not sure). I just added watchlist to all course pages[1], so that ambassadors could monitor them and check manually. It will be great if some common template is applied on all talk pages where students edit so we could get one consolidated watchlist with some template. Will work over sometime during next week. On the other hand, if the teachers could monitor individual watch-list for content getting added as and when it will be good. Instead of doing one review at end, spotting diffs would mean lesser rework for students,shorter the duration junk stays(Some of the topics chosen by the program have very few watchers). But it cant be done by ambassadors without subject knowledge. I definitely cant review Artificial Intelligence topics :D [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Courses -- Regards Srikanth.L http://srik.me ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
hi, Another way to look at it is that a few tried to copy paste their work and were caught - which is a good thing and proves, that you can't copy your homework. :) They're new to Wikipedia and I think these are important lessons for them to learn up-front. warm regards, Pradeep Sent from my Nokia E63 On 10/09/2011, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: On 10 September 2011 16:23, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: last week in a conversation in jimbowales talk page in en wiki, jimmy said he and coren were talking to google to allow this free of charge or something and something good is to be expected in the near future (i am not sure, i might be mangling his meaning). Interesting. Sadly, the Google Search API is no longer free: http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/v1/overview.html Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Pradeep Mohandas How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] You can't copy-paste this homework
On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 16:27, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: On 10 September 2011 16:23, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: last week in a conversation in jimbowales talk page in en wiki, jimmy said he and coren were talking to google to allow this free of charge or something and something good is to be expected in the near future (i am not sure, i might be mangling his meaning). Interesting. Sadly, the Google Search API is no longer free: http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/v1/overview.html This is the Google Custom Search API, which in my understanding works only for a specific list of websites. The Google Web Search API is deprecated: https://code.google.com/apis/websearch/ ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
