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Editing Wikipedia Helps Professor Attain Tenure
Hugh Pickens writes "Lianna Davis writes in Watching the Watchers that Michel Aaij has won tenure in the Department of English and Philosophy at Auburn University Montgomery in Alabama in part because of the more than 60,000 edits ... he's written for Wikipedia. ... Aaij felt that his contributions to Wikipedia merited mention in his tenure portfolio and a few weeks before the portfolio was due two of his colleagues suggested, after they had heard him talk once or twice about the peer-review process for a Good Article, that he should include it under 'research' as well as 'service.'"
Maybe this guy needs to list Editing Wikipedia as his primary job and Professor at Auburn University as his 2nd job?
He makes a reference to wikipedia and gets tenure, but my lecturers threaten with the guillotine if I do the same!
*humbug*
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
If he's editing articles in his field, which will be a lot of people's first port of call when learning about it, then he's providing a valuable service to his discipline. If academics want Wikipedia to be a better and more accurate resource, they know what they can do about it...
... on what percentage of the edits were to pages on old Star Trek episodes and anime? The over/under is 75%.
Working...
I'm not sure what Watching the Waters is, but this article is an exact copy of what's in the wikimedia blog.
Of course it doesn't actually matter, since any edit by anyone who isn't a 60000+ contributor will automatically be reverted. This is a one-off, with no long-term significance. Wikipedia is phenomenally hostile to anyone who isn't already an established part of the wikiscape.
To boot, this appointment is almost certainly crooked, but that's a separate matter and has nothing to do with WP directly.
{Citation needed}
We're in a job search right now for two tenure-track professors in a Physics Department. None of the five candidates interviewed so far has mentioned Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that if one did, he wouldn't gain any credit by doing so.
Our department made recommendations for a tenure decision earlier this year. No mention of Wikipedia in the supporting materials for that candidate, nor have I ever seen such a mention. I am pretty sure that neither my colleagues nor the administrators involved in granting tenure would give any credit for editing Wikpedia.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
A search of the Auburn Montgomery website, produces several "News & Events" hits which show Dr. Aaij giving public lectures and supporting student scholars. A Google Scholar Search on Michel Aaij shows a regular publication record in peer reviewed journals dating back to the late 1990s, at least. This guy is a good scholar and, from the article, strikes me as a good colleague, even without the Wiki contributions. He deserves tenure. The fact that he found the time for this other form of service/scholarship on top of his other work is very commendable and I'm glad to see it included in his portfolio. The fact that this did make it into his portfolio is better for Wikipedia than it is for Dr. Aaij, who I think wouldn't have gotten tenure no matter what. In any case, I say "Congratulations, Dr. Aaij!"
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
Well, since he is working for a public university that is subsidized by tax dollars, it is nice to see him giving back to the community at large. I, for example, work at Ohio State and our purpose statement is "To advance the well-being of the people of Ohio and the global community through the creation and dissemination of knowledge." In my humble opinion, I find it hard to see how updating Wikipedia doesn't support that vision.
In a way, this should fall under public outreach, so yes, I could see this falling under helping tenure. (assuming that he's maintaining pages in his field, and not just his favorite TV shows ... unless his field is pop culture, of course)
The 'peer review' aspect requires it to have been judged by his peers, and I don't know that other wikipedia editors would be considered academic peers, even if there's a review process.
Now, there is a need for tenure to be granted on more than just writing journal articles; we (of the data informatics community) have been arguing for years that a scientist who dedicates their career to collecting really good observational data, or processing and curating it for the use of others, if given less credit than the person who writes a bad paper written using that same data.
And besides:
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Nothing in the article suggests to me that his wiki editing helped him get tenure. In fact, it even says: "Michel expects his academic C.V. was strong enough to support his tenure without his Wikipedia contributions". There's no connection between the two. This is like saying that, since his name was also on his C.V., being named Michel helped him get tenure.
The tenure process is supposed to identify good teachers and alleviate job security issues so they can focus on their teaching and provide continuaity to any reaserch they may be working on.Now that does not mean everyone who has received tenure deserves it. It can be a subjective and often political process when deciding to grant tenure. If this guy cared enough about making sure the information on Wikipedia was valid I would include that effort when deciding whether or not to grant tenure.
An edit by anyone who doesn't follow the policies and guidelines or makes an edit that makes an article worse will be reverted.
FTFY
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It's too bad that this happened at Auburn, as it's often otherwise a negative example. It is, after all, the school where a prof. recently bowdlerized Huck Finn by editing out the word "nigger," a moved decried by people a sensitive to race issues as Ishmael Reed. Now that's "scholarship" you don't want to imitate. I could offer further reasons that no program wants to imitate Auburn, but saying too much would cause problems for friends.
but why did they get such protection in the first place?
Two words, Teacher's Union.
Hostile much? I have under 4000 edits, almost all of them vandalism removal related and any time I make a content update, it sticks. Even when I was much lower in edits they stuck and I was actively encouraged to edit more with constructive edits than simple removal of obvious vandalism. Did you source your edits? Non-grammatical edits without source from users with low edit counts that haven't been mentioned on the discussion page do tend to be reverted as the volume of edits makes trying to discover information sources very difficult. My guess is not that the community was somehow biased against you, but that you may have been doing something outside of community guidelines (even if unintentionally). Wikipedia editors have a hard job when it comes to sorting out useful submissions from harmful ones and will tend to err on the side of caution.
AJ Henderson
It appears that a lot of the reverters attempt to exert undue control over an article's text and give Wikipedia a bad name.
I have less than a dozen edits. Several are still intact. A few were replaced by more detailed edits. One I disagree with but life goes on.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Of course, he just wrote a script that adds "That's what SHE said" to the end of every article. That's still better than the average Wikipedia edit...
It IS a subjective and ALWAYS political process when deciding to grant tenure.
There, fixed that for you.
I am a PhD molecular biologists with expertise in areas like gel electrophoresis, PCR, etc
I no longer contribute to wiki for two reasons:
1) because of the license, people can take my work and resell it for a profit; I don't mind people reusing it, but the thought of some biz marketing type making (probably a right wing free market wierdo) making money off of my work seems just wrong
2) I am tired of morons editing my work, and making it worse; for instance, the article "dna sequencing" has gotten worse over the last year or so - things I put in, that were correct, and (immodestly) not to bad, were changed to things that were incorrect and poorly written, wit serious spelling and grammar errors (not like this email which i am dashing off quickly)
She did not write that for Watching The Watchers - she wrote it for the Wikimedia Blog and they just took it. Please correct this and link to the original source.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
In my opinion, undue control over an article begins where a reverter neglects to leave an edit summary beyond the default "(Undid edit by X)" and/or fails to defend a revert on a talk page.
but why did they get such protection in the first place?
Because of unions.
And perhaps it is indeed more like a "job contract for an extended period". "extended" meaning "until retirement".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If you want to get information into an article, try citing scholarly or mainstream media which in turn cite the first-party "manufacturer's technical brochures". Wikipedia is not about the world; that'd be original research. It's about the reaction of the scholarly and mainstream media to the world.
on wikipedia...****sending her this article**** :-)
Unfortunately, for every "gifted Masters student" writing in Wikipedia there are three angry fourteen-year-olds focused like lasers on advancing some social agenda or another.
This is good to hear. At the Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org), a website that is aggregating scientific information for all 1.9 million named species, curators are encouraged to edit Wikipedia content where it is appearing on a species page. One challenge, of course, is getting academics to devote valuable time to this type of service work. Institutional recognition for these contributions seems to be on the increase as alternative forms of academic contributions become more widespread. The education group for EOL (education.eol.org) is also encouraging instructors of biology related courses to use the EOL LifeDesk tool as a way for their students to make contributions to science through the writing of species accounts. The species accounts can be published to EOL. This exercise is both motivating and rewarding for students who have a chance to make a real contribution rather than writing a more typical term paper that will likely be thrown out when the course is complete.
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
This in turn leads to less social mobility and increased stratification of society, both of which are bad IMO.
What? I keep asking the librarian how to find the book [1] and keep getting told off..
ive been telling folks for the longest that wikipedia is credible.
I was going to reply that it's not so, but I checked Wikipedia first. And guess what, my last edit (a page creation with references and everything) has been cited as a candidate for deletion. So yes, it seems Wikipedia is becoming a closed circle of 60000+ club
Professor Wikipedia
I've never found this so. But ofcourse, I write about technical topics of which I know a lot. Not about stuff I don't know anything about but have strong opinions on.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
oh god this guy is a hoot.
he's been posting on most of my recent posts and he has even decided that all the other people laughing at him are me using extra accounts and ACing.
Of course since you are an AC that means you are me as well.
we're all against him!
(as are the voices)
actually that's one of a number of posts, he's been stalking me for quite some time.
others appear to have had similar experiences with him.