Grants talk:Project/John Cummings/Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO 2017-2018/Final

Response to report from User:Cordless Larry

Having tracked some of the outcomes of this project over the past few years, I would like to highlight some problems that I believe are not reflected in this report.

Many of the articles created did not (and still do not) contain sufficient attribution of UNESCO's opinions, with the result that those opinions are often presented in Wikipedia's voice. See, for example, en:User talk:Susan Schneegans#Science and technology in Cambodia. Of the 255 articles reusing open license text from UNESCO mentioned at Grants:Project/John Cummings/Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO 2017-2018/Final#Working with UNESCO staff to share knowledge, I suspect that the majority need to be in large part rewritten to make them compliant with Wikipedia policies. The report lists as something that didn't work: "Wikimedia community members complaining or actively stopping our work, including harassing people we were working with, deleting their work, their user page etc. Harassment and rudeness to new editors with little recourse or discouragement". I don't know all of the details here and it may well be that there was genuine harassment, but a lot of the push-back that I saw and was involved in was just pointing out the problems being introduced into Wikipedia by UNESCO editors - and that shouldn't be portrayed as harassment, if that's what is being suggested here.

The report also notes "Misunderstanding of Conflict of Interest guidelines by experienced editors", which again may have been the case (I'd like to see some evidence), but there was also seemingly a failure to impress on UNESCO staff the importance of those guidelines. I had to remind UNESCO editors of the requirements, including the need to declare paid editing, as at en:User talk:Besalgado#March 2020 and en:User talk:Lewis UNESCO SC#June 2021 (I guess this is beyond the scope of the 2017-18 report, but indicates that these problems were continuing several years later).

I think the report needs to note insufficient training of UNESCO staff in Wikipedia's core policies and guidelines - or a failure of the lessons from that training to be followed. Cordless Larry (talk) 13:45, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

I've checked some of the 255 articles mentioned above, and thankfully it looks like it's not the majority that need significant rewriting, as this number includes existing articles that had UNESCO text added to them, rather than being created based largely or solely on UNESCO reports. Nonetheless, there is work to be done to fix what we've been left with here. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:17, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

On the training point, if this is in any way representative of the type of material that was presented as a model early on, I'm not surprised things went wrong. It contains UNESCO POV ("The Delors Report was aligned closely with the moral and intellectual principles that underpin UNESCO, and therefore its analysis and recommendations were more humanistic and less instrumental and market-driven than other education reform studies of the time", "These seven tensions remain useful perspectives from which to view the current dynamics of social transformation", etc.) presented in Wikipedia's voice. That said, John Cummings was responsive to calls to improve the guidance, at en:Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 137#Does/should WP:NOFULLTEXT apply to more than just primary sources?. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:24, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

• I see the required COI statement was never added to User:Besalgado, despite the promise made on the user talk page, prompted by Cordless Larry's question. I've had some experiences looking at and editing these articles as well, and have been consistently struck by the lack of awareness of Wikipedia's guidelines, particularly when it comes to the difference between primary and secondary sources, and our definitions of notability. Huge articles with text that in all other articles is deleted as material for the website's organization, that's not article improvement and it does no one any favors--not UNESCO but certainly not Wikipedia. Drmies (talk) 16:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Report accepted

With apologies for the delayed response, I'm accepting this report, with the following comments:

• Thank you for taking the time to provide a panoramic view of this project via this report, and to suggest future developments for WIR in UNESCO.
• While acknowledging how frustrating it must be to have to scale back ambitions in order to address basics, I also want to offer appreciation for your efforts to establish a stronger infrastructure that will support ongoing development of relationships with outside organizations. You've named many foundational and essential supports that you have put into place.
• Thanks for your accounting of progress in troubleshooting the obstacles around data imports by outside orgs. I appreciate your observations about concerns about buggy tools, data integrity and the need for a centralized place for tracking and discussion.
• Kudos on the datasets that were imported.
• Because your report reflects the shift of priorities from planned activities, to the more essential preliminary groundwork of establishing a documentary background for ongoing endeavors, I really appreciated the robust catalog you provide for all the documents that were created.
• I've read the comments above stating concerns about compliance with Wikipedia policies, and am glad to see that the majority of articles were sound, and that John was responsive to feedback.

Thanks for all your work on this project.

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 02:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Mjohnson (WMF), can I ask what you're basing your conclusion that "the majority of articles were sound" on? That doesn't match my experience (I suspect the same is true for Drmies too, though he can speak for himself). Cordless Larry (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see now that I wrote that "it looks like it's not the majority that need significant rewriting". I'd say that the majority of the newly created articles have significant problems, if not the majority of all of 255 articles. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:45, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Cordless Larry for keeping me in the loop. I think I'll say the same thing, but a bit differently perhaps: there are two main problems here--the POV and the overwhelming amount of material that lacks secondary sourcing. They are related: part of the POV is the thought that all this material from this organization, as important as the organization itself is, is deemed inherently noteworthy and notable, which leads to the practice of simply accepting primary sources ("imported datasets", I imagine) to not only verify text but to justify it. This is not the only place where we see it: in K-pop and MMA articles, sourcing is accepted that is connected to the entertainment companies that own the product; in military articles sourcing is accepted that merely lists facts that are derived from primary sources (or hobbyists); in biographies for academics and academic administrators sources are accepted that are either publications by the subject (in BLPs) or links to resumes on the company/university website. Common in all those cases is, if no judicious decisions are made by editors, that articles are overwhelmed by primary and often promotional material--as if all of it is inherently worth including in an encyclopedic article. Those are typically not good articles. Drmies (talk) 22:28, 5 February 2023 (UTC)