According to this, Dr. Jonathan Obar, assistant visiting professor in the Michigan State telecommunications department, "is teaching a course this semester on how Wikipedia is governed and how administrators are selected." The students' coursework will be based in part on interviews they will conduct with Wikipedia admins. About 25 admins have already signed up to be interviewed.

A previous thread discussed an article by Obar which sung the praises of using Wikipedia in the classroom. I guess he's progressed from teaching students to use Wikipedia to teaching students about Wikipedia's inner functions. Unfortunately, I suspect that Obar will teach the course with a pro-Wikipedia slant.

I was unable to find a course description on MSU's website. Presumably it's out of date.

What do you think the sourcing standards are like for papers in this novel class? Surely there's not much out there in the way of peer-reviewed literature about Wikipedia's governance.
More to the point, is this the first time you've heard of a college course being taught about Wikipedia's inner workings?

Is this, I wonder, a precursor to being able to get a BA in Wikipedia Management?

Looks like Professor Obar had a bit of a tiff last year trying to prop up an article for himself;

My, my. The good professor seems to have a bit of a glitch in his understanding of Wikipedia.

Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law. Prominent in editing this, Jaobar (T-C-L-K-R-D) . Of course, that was nearly a year ago. He added his own name to the article, along with unsourced peacock language.... The changes earned the article an "unreferenced" tag, still there.

Jaobar created the page on himself in his user space, but then moved it to article space. Two days later, he moved it back. It can be seen in the history that he was getting some assistance from people like the "Online Facilitator for the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative."

My76Strat helpfully moved it back, and the kerfluffle mentioned above ensued. With the page safely back in user space, the professor went "Bananas," though that section was removed when the page was blanked. Jaobar then started to create what looked like a normal user page, but it now reads, again, like a biographical stub. Mostly.

The professor only rarely uses edit summaries. He has students, some of whom are listed at Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Wiki-Project Management (Jonathan Obar). What's the quality of their work? I was less than impressed! I rather doubt that the professor suggests that they use edit summaries, since he doesn't. I'd be fascinated to read the course materials on "becoming Wikipedia administrators."

Is he going to be at all realistic?

This project is similar to certain projects that have been done on Wikiversity, and would really be more appropriate there. Doing it on Wikipedia could result in ... well, I suppose it will be educational if they find out for themselves.

The course materials, so far, are elementary stuff about how to edit Wikipedia. It's not clear to me that the professor has a decent grasp of this himself.

It's not clear to me what the goal of the course is. The page claims "the main emphasis [is] the study of the Wikipedia social network." Cool. Again, this is a university-level course. Is it going to be university strength? Academically sound? Or will it be puffery for Wikipedia?

Does the professor have any idea of the ethical issues involved in the study of how Wikipedia works? Of what happened on Wikiversity when the study of Wikipedia operation was attempted? Do you study this stuff by looking at primary evidence? Secondary sources? Will he rely, in the study of how Wikipedia administration works, on what administrators say about it, or on what actually happens as shown in editing history and the logs?

He'll probably do what the rest of us did, ie figure it out as we go along. Unless of course one doesn't get either blocked or disheartened in the meantime.

Sure. But this guy is teaching a university course on the topic. Apparently the university has even lower standards than Wikipedia.

I just see it as gaining perspective on WP, well either that or the Prof is out of work and his mortgage payment is due.

Tempting, but nah.

It should be noted that Dr. Obar is a Wikimedia fellow:(quote from Dr. Obar's faculty page at MSU.) I think it's fairly unlikely that he'll take a "fair and balanced" approach to this "course", which is really just a recruitment vehicle.

I was going to email him to suggest that he look at some of the threads here at Wikipedia Review until I saw that. It's fairly certain that he's been immunized against external criticism, and so I doubt there's much point.

Interesting Obar got his training at Penn State, and that Derrick "strong opposition to any policy that blocks users solely because they 'self identify as pedophiles'" Coetzee has volunteered to be examined as an admin.

I would be curious to know what, if any, financial support Dr. Obar is getting from the Foundation. It's also interesting that he lists himself as a fellow, but doesn't appear on the Foundation's own list.

Ah, found it. He's a "teaching fellow". Whatever that means. From what I can tell, not much. I would say, however, that these "teaching fellows" are people who should be monitored for wikistupidity in higher education.

Hopefully, a WR reader will enroll in the course and keep up a constant barrage of questions to the instructor about the contradictions, dichotomies, inconsistencies, and corruption in WP's administrative processes and the almost complete absence of any kind of administrative leadership from the Foundation. What would be even better is if that student was thrown out of class or given a failing grade.

I don't understand why y'all are complaining about Obar on this forum.

Instead, write up a precis that Obar is incompetent/dishonest, and send it to the trustees.
The bullshit with his BLP and other editing practices is actually rather embarrassing, it
doesn't make him look like a good academic. Just write up a blow-by-blow account of
what happened, print out the diffs, and send it in with a cover letter saying that Obar
has been raving about Wikipedia while he's been repeatedly violating Wikipedia's own
regulations (pathetic though they are), and might also be collecting money from the WMF
under the table(difficult to prove, but one never knows). Stand back and see what happens.

Doesn't the above come under the "loading someone else's gun" heading?

That crosses an ethical line, Eric.

Rather than generating a one-off letter, I think it would be better to reach out to perhaps a Michigan State alumni group on Linked In, and get people talking about the visiting professor's misdeeds. Then maybe a larger wave of communication could hit East Lansing.

One letter from Joe Random Idiot on the Internet is not going to even reach the Board of Trustees, let alone have any impact. Much more likely to have impact if the complaints come from alumni or from student parents, especially those who have a history of making gifts to the university. In addition, they should probably be targeted at his dean, not at the Board of Trustees; most letters to the Board of Trustees of a university get shitcanned, whereas deans get less such correspondence and are therefore more likely to actually read it. Honestly you'd likely have better luck trying to target the members of the Michigan State Assembly on the committee that oversees funding to state universities (but only if you're a resident of Michigan).

In any case, the guy is a visiting professor, which means he's probably on a one or two year contract, which is unlikely to be renewed anyway. He'll be off to somewhere else before long.

I don't know the details, but anyone can see that his user page states "Dr. Obar currently works as an Education Programs Advisor for the Canadian arm of Wikipedia's Global Education Program". It is not clear if he is paid for this "work", but I'm sure the WMF would be only to happy to answer this question.

Ah, so Wikipediotic.

I'm not complaining about Obar, speaking for myself. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of the situation. I can't imagine trying to attack him, to get him fired or the like. Why? Just because he's an idiot?

Or, more accurately, someone a tad out of his depth?

He made some mistakes as an editor, and it looks like he might have benefited from some protection, but so what? I don't see that he went after anyone, trying to get them banned, in favor of a personal agenda. So he's like many or most newbies, simply naive, optimistic, clueless. I don't see "malevolent." Not yet, at least.

What's been remarkable to see in some recent threads is pointers to a change that happened with Heidi Weiss/Gwen Gale. Much of the stuff that mbz1 has been pointing to as examples of how Bad she was actually shows that she understood at least some of the Wikipedia dysfunction, and spoke openly against it, particularly as Heidi. (Which may also be a pseudonym, I haven't seen anything truly definitive, and it's not worth the effort to exhaustively search.).

Give a good editor some power, what happens?

Too often, we know. Power corrupts. It would probably corrupt me, too. Folks, please get this. The Wikipedia Problem isn't due to this or that Bad Person. Wikipedia brings out the worst in people, it's a structural problem, a set-up. It could be fixed, but part of the problem is that the structure creates resistance to the necessary changes. It's like clockwork.

He's a working academic, someone who affixes "professor" to his name, going around and raving about Wikipedia--to his students. Does the MSU management realize that he's propagandizing, on their dollar, a thing that virtually none of their other professors would even say somewhat-positive things about? Remember, I've talked to professional educators, and every one of them has said that Wikipedia is untrustworthy and can't be used for schoolwork. Obar sticks out like the proverbial hammer-smashed sore thumb. Wiki-cheerleaders are extremely deviant in the world of higher education.

If not the MSU trustees, at least his fellow professors should be aware. Although you're right, he's a temporary adjunct, and will very likely be gone next year. Perhaps this is why they're "putting up" with him.

If he wants to use wiki software to demonstrate peer collaboration, he could just put up his own wiki (or, horrors, even use a Wikia wiki) and have his students generate content for it. Then he'd have no problem with deletionist patrollers removing their work. (Which he has, multiple times.)

But no, he's using Wikipedia as if it were a platform for "civic engagement, communication policymaking and the inclusiveness of public culture", which could easily violate that NPOV and COI business that WP nerds are forever abusing people with. Plus, he's been upbraided on WP, for writing his own bio (plus other things). That shows a singular lack of judgement, unless of course he is also conducting a "breaching experiment". (Is he?)

Is this another dig at Fae?

Thankfully, Obar is not paid on behalf of his work with/for/related to the Wikimedia Foundation or its projects.

I agree with Abd; I think that writing a letter to the MSU trustees would be an overreaction. Obar is indeed out of his depth, but is that really surprising? He's only been editing for about a year, and it looks like many if not most of his edits are for facilitating class projects. His edits suggest inexperience, indicating that he probably doesn't know too much about Wikipedia culture and administration. Does he know much more about RfA than is listed on the "community-endorsed" Guide to Passing RfA? I doubt it. He probably knows nothing about how difficult it is to get problem admins desysopped; perhaps he hasn't even heard of ArbCom.

When I had been editing Wikipedia for a year, I was blissfully unaware of the noticeboards, RfA, ArbCom, and most other Wikipedia processes (I knew a little about AfD). My point is that, unless Obar was looking to dive into Wikipedia head-on, he probably didn't learn many of Wikipedia's intricacies. Perhaps he still views admins as a generally benevolent bunch, although hopefully he realizes that most of them are not academics like him!

A better approach in this case would be to expose Obar to some criticisms of Wikipedia and its administration. Trying to convert him would be kinder than trying to get him canned. Also, because he's an academic who might end up writing something important about Wikipedia, it could pay off to give him a different perspective on the site's inner workings.



I'd say it's pretty unlikely that he knows about what happened on Wikiversity. As for the rest of those questions, I'd be very interested in seeing how Dr. Obar would answer them.

I was thinking it might be very educational if he were to insult and denigrate his students, then kick them out of class. I can't think of a more efficient way to teach the material.

He needs a tag-team partner.

Everyking is back!

Hi Everyking!

I just have to remind people here that Everyking lost his adminship for offering to look up deleted wikipedia pages for non-admins if there was a good reason to do so, here on WR. That practice is now commonplace (SBJ, Alison). It took him years to get his adminship back, but he stuck to his principals.

I found this today on Gwen Gale's user talk page. I guess he doesn't know enough to teach the course.

(I'll get this link right if it kills us all. Sorry about the series of errors.)

Well, maybe we should ask the man himself. It looks like one Jon Obar just created a WR account.

How are you doing, Jon? What do you know about Wikipedia administrators, and what would you like to discuss and learn? I'm sure the currently active "History of Administrators" thread will be of interest to you.

I've been in e-mail correspondence with Dr. Obar, and I encouraged him several times to join WR. Glad to see that he's going to take that step. Please treat him kindly, as he says he has not made any final decisions about the value of Wikipedia.

That classroom routine sounds just like one of my best teachers in college... There's no better way to take things up a notch than to burn a couple people who are coasting.


t

And who has made their mind up about the value of Dr Obar?

You're an idiot, Cunningly Linguistic.

Greg, I agree it's a good idea to invite these people whatever their opinions on Wikipedia. There's all kinds of things he'll learn here that are censored and forbidden to speak of at Wikipedia.

Well technically I'm a genius, but you have your viewpoints on everything and I doubt I can dissuade you of any of them.

Given that I am technically a genius I seem to be able to see the hole in the erstwhile Prof's plan, ie given that the average 13 year-old admin took roughly 10 mins, give or take, to suss out how one goes about becoming an admin. Which is of course to:

• Spend about 6 months making friends whilst simultaneously kissing the butts of some of the most power-hungry admins (and of course identifying them in the first place).
• Take on the task of wiki-gnoming to up one's edit count whilst not running into trouble whilst creating content (whatever you do, do not try creating content, you'll only piss people off in the process).
• Just revert obvious vandalism, leave non-obvious vandalism. Don't even try repunctuating anything or you might run into international differences and as a result piss someone off.
• If, in spite of everything, you do accidentally piss off someone, apologise effusively then do your best to make friends with the person.
• Oh yeah, agree with whatever Jimbo says and be as obsequious as possible in the process.
• Then start an RfA in which one only gives answers that are expected and none that involve truth.
• Then sit back and wait for all your 'friends' to !vote your ass into a lifetime of power.

Now how the Prof intends to create a semester course out of that I have no idea, but then some people will do anything for a job...especially gypsy profs. Mind you, he can save himself some ground work and just point his prospective students at this post.



All of which are entirely inconsequential and unimportant in the real world.

maybe you and Ottava have more in common than what first meets the eye.

Shall we lock him in the whine cellar and watch the cage match?

Would that not be cruelty to children?

(Please do not argue that they are old enough to be deemed adults!)

During my Asperger's assessment the psychologist did say that there's a fine line between Asperger's and sociopath and one of the purposes of the assessment is to decide which.

So yes, maybe you are correct... for once.