User:Pine/drafts/ENWP Board of Education

Background

• The Canadian and US education programs are in transition to community leadership as outlined in the Education Working Group project.
• The group which had been overseeing the Online Ambassador Program, known as the Steering Committee, has been disbanded.
• There is no organization that coordinates selection, training, standards, and assignments for ambassadors across all of English Wikipedia for all physical locations and all types of ambassadors.
• Some regional groups, such as the Wikimedia Australia chapter, may have lead roles in recruiting and overseeing education programs in their own regions but there is no common coordinating or standard-setting group for English Wikipedia across all on-wiki education activities.
• The IEP program, if it was proposed today, would have no English Wikipedia community organization that would have authority to approve or deny the project, the authority for project oversight, and the authority to end the program if it was doing significant harm.
• There is no English Wikipedia community organization that is responsible for coordinating and responding to concerns at the new Education Noticeboard.

Proposal

I propose the creation of a new Board of Education for English Wikipedia, "BOE". BOE would be a formal organization on Wikipedia.

Responsibilities

• Review and approval of all major plans for initiatives outside of current regional lead groups. Examples of previous major initiatives include the Public Policy Initiative and the IEP.
• Coordination and response to concerns at the pages Education Noticeboard, Ambassadors Talk, and other Wikipedia Education Program pages that aren't managed by regional education oversight groups.
• BOE may set policies for civility and reversions for Wikipedia Education Program pages and talk pages, including BOE WikiProject pages, that are stricter and/or more specific than the standards that apply to Wikipedia in general. These policies and restrictions are expected to be enforced by administrators if necessary.
• The hearing of appeals from regional education oversight groups regarding on-wiki activities within the scope of education programs.
• The establishment of policies that apply to all regional education oversight groups and chapters for on-wiki activity within the scope of the Wikipedia Education Program. An example would be setting a policy for minimum standards for training and skills that will apply for all on-wiki education outreach volunteer activity on English Wikipedia, such as on-wiki ambassador activity. Chapters and regional education oversight groups could set additional standards for the volunteers in their regions.
• If BOE continues to allow participation in the Wikipedia Education Program at universities which are not associated with a chapter or other regional education oversight group, then BOE would be the primary organization responsible for the training of English Wikipedia ambassadors who aren't directly trained by any regional education oversight group.
• An on-wiki "ambassador" title, such as "Online Ambassador," "Campus Ambassador," "Regional Ambassador," or "Recruitment Ambassador," may be given and removed by BOE or a regional education oversight group within the scope of its region.
• A volunteer does not need to be an ambassador to work with classes, but their on-wiki behavior is governed by the policies of English Wikipedia including any relevant BOE policies when they do on-wiki education volunteer work.
• Preferably, at least one BOE member will attend each month's Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting.
• BOE members are expected to maintain at least a moderate level of personal awareness of education program metrics for English Wikipedia.
• BOE has the authority to limit, suspend, or terminate education programs that are harmful to English Wikipedia. With the community's agreement to create the Board of Education, the community directs administrators, checkusers, and ArbCom to enforce the ending of programs if enforcement is requested by the Board of Education, including the deletion of content and blocking of users or IPs if necessary. Programs may range in size from a specific portion of a class to multi-school programs that the Board of Education may find are harmful to English Wikipedia. The Board of Education may direct administrative enforcement to end a program whether or not those programs previously were aware of the Board of Education's existence or any Wikipedia policies that the programs may have violated. For example, if a significant number of copyright violations are being introduced into English Wikipedia from a class and warnings to the responsible accounts have not stopped the problem, the Board of Education may direct administrative and/or CU enforcement to block the class for a period of time, even if an IP block affects other individuals or classes which then must request IP block exemption to continue their non-disruptive editing. (m:Checkuser Policy and m:Privacy Policy fully apply. CU data will not be given to BOE unless permitted by those policies). The quantity of copyright infringements and sockpuppetry offenses that can be committed by determined students should not be underestimated, as shown by the IEP. The purpose of giving the Board of Education the authority to end education programs and to direct administrative enforcement to end programs is to protect English Wikipedia from significant or persistent harm from multiple editors who are in any education program which is using Wikipedia. This authority for the Board of Education isn't for dealing with single individuals or small groups of people who cause harm that can be handled effectively through standard administrative actions and/or relatively few reversions.
• BOE may refer incidents or questions, or request action, from administrators and ArbCom as it sees fit. For example, a professor who persists in adding an unapproved class to a list of approved classes may be referred to administrators for enforcement action.
• BOE may facilitate communication among ambassadors and education groups about good practices and the successes and failures of strategies in English Wikipedia education projects.

What BOE isn't

• BOE isn't a substitute for administrative or ArbCom action. Existing English Wikipedia policies apply to professors, students, ambassadors, and education program leaders when they are on-wiki. Violations of policies such as copyright infringement or incivility may be handled through standard administrative procedures including actions at ANI. Education program participants may get additional sanctions from the education program such as mandatory retraining, the suspension or removal of ambassador status, or the termination of a campus' formal participation in English Wikipedia education programs.
• BOE doesn't administer grants or oversee finances. This is done by the Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, and other local education oversight groups.
• BOE isn't responsible for the off-wiki supervision, recruiting, selecting, training, and conduct of education volunteers including ambassadors. All off-wiki activity is the responsibility of the individual and the education organization where the individual volunteers. BOE oversees on-wiki activity only.
• BOE isn't the primary point of contact or trainer for ambassadors who work in an area that is overseen by a regional group such as a chapter. Regional groups and educational organizations have leadership in training ambassadors.
• BOE doesn't recruit university or professor participation in an area that is overseen by a regional group. Regional groups have leadership in this area.
• BOE doesn't mandate numerical goals for all of the Wikipedia Education Program. The Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, and other local education oversight groups may decide on their own goals.
• BOE isn't a lead organization for creating and tracking education metrics. Other groups already do this, including WMF.
• BOE's scope is for English Wikipedia only. Other language Wikipedias will not be under the umbrella of BOE. Other Wikipedias may create their own BOEs if they wish.

Participation

• Any editor, including IP editors may post civil questions or comments about on-wiki BOE discussions. Only BOE members are allowed to !vote on most topics. Any registered user may vote on nominations for membership and votes for recall, as described below. IP editors may comment on nominations for membership and votes for recall but their votes are not counted.
• There is no maximum number of members for BOE.
• All nominees must:
  • have been a registered editor on English Wikipedia for at least six months,
  • have no current topic bans,
  • and have at least 1000 total edits on English Wikipedia, including a diversity of relevant experience:
    • at least 500 edits in Article space,
    • at least 200 edits in Wikipedia Talk space,
    • at least 50 edits combined on Ambassadors Talk, the Education Noticeboard, Education Noticeboard Talk, BOE Talk, and/or Wikipedia Education Program Talk,
    • at least 20 edits in Article Talk space,
    • at least 20 edits in User Talk space.
• Nominees are encouraged to summarize any work in AfC, #wikipedia-en-help, WP:WC, ambassador roles, and in other outreach and new-user fora as part of their nomination.
• Anyone who meets the minimum conditions above may nominate themselves for membership at any time. Only nominations with 2/3 or more !votes in favor and at least six !votes will be approved, neutral !votes will count as opposes, and the nominee's !vote doesn't count. A nomination must be open for voting for 30 days. In the future the BOE may shorten the nominating period as it thinks best but not less than seven days without community approval.
• BOE members are subject to recall if there is a formal RFC for the member's removal for 30 days and at least 60% or more of the !votes are in favor of removal, with neutral !votes counting as opposes and the member's !vote disregarded.
• BOE members who are inactive on the BOE, Ambassadors and Education Noticeboard pages for at least one month without a WikiBreak notice on their userpage will be assumed to have resigned from BOE.
• BOE terms of office are one year and renewable indefinitely unless BOE or the community decides to create term limits. Any change of the length of terms must be approved by community consensus.
• Election and recall votes for BOE members are to be closed by bureaucrats. Pine^(talk) 08:33, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Logo

Banner:

The English Wikipedia

Board of Education

Engaging students, educators, and the Wikipedia community

Box:

Box scaled down:

Other information and policies

Academic dishonesty

• BOE has limited authority to deal with academic dishonesty on Wikipedia. Academic dishonesty can take many forms, including blatant copyright violations, meatpuppeting reviews of Good Article candidates by students who are in the same class, ambassadors attempting to influence Good Article reviewers on behalf of their students, and professors faking their qualifications. Enforcement of academic honesty is not a primary mission of BOE, but BOE may refer cases of suspected academic dishonesty to universities, professors, and Wikipedia administrators for both on-wiki and off-wiki investigations and sanctions. Ambassadors, professors, and other leaders in the Wikipedia Education Program may be investigated and sanctioned by BOE within the limited scope of BOE's authority such as revocation of an ambassador's title, and additional sanctions from administrators would be likely in cases that violate Wikipedia policies.

GLAM

• BOE won't be involved with approval or oversight of GLAM projects unless the English Wikipedia decides to expand BOE's scope to include approval and/or oversight of the on-wiki activity of GLAM projects.

Transparency, confidentiality, and voting

In general

• Generally, BOE activity should be transparent and public. The more formal a discussion or action is, the more important it is for the discussion or action to be public. For example, an email discussion about BOE that includes a majority of BOE members generally should be made public, but an informal email discussion between two board members about BOE wouldn't generally need to be made public.
• BOE may conduct its business on-wiki or through any other form of communication such as IRC, email, or videoconference.
• For all business other than discussions which fit the exceptions below, any off-wiki meeting such as an IRC meeting must have the meeting's time, location, and agenda announced at least 72 hours in advance in public and posted on each BOE member's Wikipedia talk page. Notice of two weeks to a month is preferable. Meetings are to be scheduled by the BOE chair if there is a chair, by an on-wiki vote of BOE members, or by a Doodle. On-wiki or Doodle votes for scheduling meetings are subject to the rules for on-wiki votes below.
• Announcements that an on-wiki vote will be taken must be announced in public and posted on each BOE member's Wikipedia talk page, and the vote must be open for at least 72 hours. Votes generally should be 72 hours to one week in length to give members a reasonable length of time to vote and give non-member editors a reasonable length of time to comment on the issue that is the subject of the vote.
• For any discussion through any communications method that includes half or more of BOE members or half or more members of any BOE committee, and the discussion is on the subject of BOE business, then the discussion should be made public in a timely manner such as under one week. For discussions that aren't logged word for word, sich as telephone discussions, the meeting minutes must be written and made public in a timely manner such as under one week.
• All finished votes are to be made public in a timely manner such as under one week. Each boardmember's vote must be identified separately. Secret ballots are prohibited.
• If any discussion includes a formal vote, even if the discussion doesn't include half or more of BOE members, the same rules apply as above.
• When a vote happens among BOE members, all affirmative !votes must be done by consensus, with consensus defined generally as 60% or more of !votes in favor of an action, and neutrals counting as votes against an action. "Weak support" votes count as a half vote in favor, and "Weak oppose" votes count as a half vote opposed. Votes must have the participation of 50% or more of BOE members who aren't on a declared Wikibreak to become effective. BOE votes cannot override a consensus of the broader English Wikipedia community that has been established through a formal RFC, but BOE can vote to refer an issue to the community to ask for community consensus.
  • If BOE decides to break itself into subcommittees, then for the subcommittees a vote have the participation of 50% or more of subcommittee members who aren't on a declared Wikibreak to become effective. The same 60% affirmative vote standard applies.

Exceptions

• These exceptions apply to discussions only and not to formal votes. When any discussion that is under one of these exceptions occurs, the Board is to make public that a confidential discussion is taking place and the exception under which the discussion is to be kept confidential.
  • The discussion is in regards to a specific misconduct allegation against one or more specific people, unless the person against whom the allegation is made requests that the discussion be public. "Boardmember Smith is stupid" isn't a specific misconduct allegation, although someone who feels that Boardmember Smith is stupid can start a recall petition for Boardmember Smith. "Boardmember Smith vandalized the Wikipedia page of his town's rival sports team" is a specific misconduct allegation. Although the discussion of the allegation against Boardmember Smith may be private, any vote to take action or not to take action against Boardmember Smith must be made public and each boardmember's vote must be identified separately. Although boardmembers don't have the authority to remove Boardmember Smith from his board role without a public recall petition, the Board may suspend or revoke any other English Wikipedia education titles and roles of Boardmember Smith such as ambassador status, the Board may reprimand Boardmember Smith, and the Board may start a public recall petition for Boardmember Smith. Anyone who has a specific misconduct allegation made against them and will have a vote taken by the Board regarding the allegation must have an opportunity to hear the allegation and make a statement to the Board during the confidential discussion before a vote is taken by the Board.
  • The discussion is in regards to a dispute which two or more parties have mutually agreed to ask BOE to mediate confidentally and no formal BOE vote will be taken.
  • The discussion is in regards to a legal issue.
  • The discussion includes personally identifying information that isn't already public. The confidential portion of the discussion is limited to the portion that includes personally identifying information, and the remainder of the discussion should be public unless it fits one of the other exceptions listed here.
  • The discussion is in regards to a security or privacy issue that has been identified by the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation and referred to the Board of Education for confidential consultation. This exception is highly unlikely to be used because such confidential actions are currently handled internally by the Arbitration Committee and/or WMF and it is unlikely that the Arbitration Committee and/or WMF would need to consult BOE on a security or privacy issue.

Benefits

Copied from talk page:

• A lot of this proposal is about preventing recurrences of problems that the Education Program has experienced and/or "caused" here on English Wikipedia.
  • WMF's own consultant's report on the IEP shows that there were serious problems in the planning and execution of the IEP. IEP participants introduced so many copyright violations that an administrator blocked a university's IP, there were communication difficulties between the English Wikipedia community and WMF, and a "small minority" of participants created sockpupets. The consultant's report says, "One global administrator estimated that the total impact on the community was between 2,000 and 3,000 hours. The Foundation hasn't yet found a good way of systematically measuring the impact, but it acknowledges that the impact was enormous." The purpose of giving BOE a role in the authority regarding the approval or shutdown of significant WEP programs on English Wikipedia is to provide the English Wikipedia community, through its representatives on the WEP, a role in the approval and oversight of these programs. Hopefully by having the BOE involved in the approval of a program, the BOE will verify that the planning of future programs doesn't repeat the problems that happened with the IEP. If BOE feels that a program has shortcomings in the program's planning, then BOE can withhold approval of a program until those problems are addressed.
  • The previous lack of a clearly designated place for editors to voice concerns about the competence or actions of ambassadors and Steering Committee members resulted in at least one editor seeming to feel that their concerns were not being addressed, and the user posted his concerns in multiple places.
  • The Steering Committee's deliberations and actions could seem opaque and slow. These seemed to contribute to editor frustration when a concern was brought to the Steering Committee. The BOE rules on confidentiality and transparency are far more public and specific.
• The community, through its representatives on BOE, will have leadership on WEP programs. Up to this point leadership seems to have been done largely by WMF. WMF has stated its goal of handing off responsibility for the US and Canadian WEP programs, but there is no community organization that has a coordinating role for all WEP programs on English Wikipedia. BOE fills that gap and it's a community organization, not a WMF organization.
• BOE members are clearly accountable to the community, not WMF. If the community feels that it has not been adequately served by any one or more BOE members, the community can recall those members or refuse to reelect them when their terms expire. On the other hand, if the community feels that someone who currently isn't a member of BOE would do a good job as a BOE member, then the individual and the community can begin the nomination process at any time.
• Because the Steering Committee has disbanded, there is currently no one clearly "in charge" of online ambassadors. Also, there is currently no single organization that coordinates selection, training, standards, and assignments for ambassadors across all of English Wikipedia. BOE will fill the gap. BOE may have a role in making sure that there are basic standards and training for all ambassadors on English Wikipedia. I have heard that there have been complaints about the vagueness of expectations and lack of prerequisite training for ambassadors, and BOE would be in a position to address those issues.
• BOE would have the ability to respond authoritatively to questions and issues that are posted to the Education Noticeboard, which currently has "no one in charge".
• BOE would be responsible for having clearly designated and adequately organized places for discussing subjects that are relevant to the Wikipedia Education Program. Topics might include the effectiveness of WEP classes, training for ambassadors and professors, best practices for recruiting professors and ambassadors into the program, developing online and offline materials that introduce students in WEP programs to Wikipedia, and discussion of metrics for WEP programs. BOE wouldn't necessarily set policies in all of these areas but BOE would be in a good position to facilitate discussion among the many interested participants including ambassadors, professors, students, WMF, and chapters.
• Regarding simplicity, I think that we had simplicity with the old Steering Committee, but the simple system proved to be vague, opaque, slow, and not strongly accountable to the community. Also, unless the BOE or something like it is created, there will be no community organization that has an authoritative role in approving significant new WEP programs.