User:Vanished user adhmfdfmykrdyr/Review analysis 2

This is a follow up to Wikinews Review Analysis.

After the University of Wollongong class in the first term of the year, a few of the regular reviewers on Wikinews decided to try to actively change some of our reviewing practices in order to better insure potential student at getting articles published and reducing frustration with our system. This largely done in three ways. The first was to try to write much more detailed reviews. The second was to screencast a few of the reviews to give students and fellow reviewers a better idea of some of the thinking going on when doing reviews. The third technique was to change red X marks on not ready reviews to blue question marks.

Beyond the things that English Wikinews could control, there appear to have been changes in how the classroom situation worked. It appears as if one or two students from semester 1 assisted second semester students in reporting. The second semester class also appeared to be more willing to try to do original reporting.

While the previous class had only ten stories successfully published, the second semester class doubled the total articles successfully published at over 20. Three of these were syndicated in print by a newspaper with Wikinews credited as the author. While the previous class had no original stories published, at least two pieces of student conducted original reporting were published.

From the first semester to the second, there were differences in content issues that led to published articles initially being marked as not ready. 22% of the first semester published articles initial not ready reviews indicated a problem with copyright. This number dropped dramatically in the second semester to 3%. This pattern was also mirrored amongst new Wikinews reporters who were not part of the course. In the period between January 1 and June 1, 18% of published articles were initially marked not ready because of copyright problems. From June 1 to October 24, only 7% of new reporters had this issue with their stories. At the same time, there were no substantial changes for regular reporters who saw a 1% increase and accredited reporters who remained at 0%.

Overall though, when total reviews are looked at for University of Wollongong students, there appears to be little difference between the first and second semester when it comes to including copyright violations and plagiarism in submitted work. Students dinged for plagiarism appear less likely to be interested in successfully guiding an article through the publication process. It might be that overall rates of plagiarism reflect student motivation in this regard. They submit to Wikinews because of a class requirement or for some form of course credit, where getting published is not the end goal. The act of submitting is.

Some of the early data appears to support the notion that the changes made on English Wikinews had a net positive not just for student reviews but on overall success for reporters who had articles not-readied.


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