Talk:Australian Computer Society

Representation

The ACS claims to represent the computer & telecommunications industry in Australia, so it is relevent to include facts about how many people it actually represents. I have included solid information about this from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with references. However, user User:Acsthomas has blanked the entire section.

Note that this user has an extreme Conflict of Interest - according to his own User page "I am the Manager - Media & Communications for the Australian Computer Society." He should not be editing the page at all, and certainly he is in no position to pass judgement about whether another editor has a Neutral Point of View. --Gronk Oz (talk) 02:50, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Acsthomas (talk) 02:54, 30 July 2014 (UTC)The user GronkOz initially posted inaccurate and misleading figures, with no direct reference. Furthermore, the user is implying that the ACS does not represent at a significant part of the profession. His use of language such as "despite this" and "at most" indicates that the user does not wish to convey information in a neutral point of view.

Should the user wish to post facts, rather than attempting to dismiss the good work of the members and volunteers of the ACS then these will be left untouched. As Manager - Media & Communications, my role is to ensure factual information is presented. If the user wishes to convey his or her opinion of the ACS he or she is more than entitled to do so, but should declare it rather than present it as fact. Acsthomas (talk) 02:54, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

No, Acsthomas, Wikipedia is NOT the place for me or you or anybody else to post opinions. Stating the facts about how much of the industry the ACS actually represents is not an opinion, and it does not reflect on "the good work of the members and volunteers of the ACS". It allows the reader to understand the coverage of the ACS and to guage the validity of its claims to represent the whole industry. Your conflict of interest means that you should NOT be making judgments on these matters. --Gronk Oz (talk) 03:10, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

GronkOz, The ACS represents the profession, not the industry. If you want to talk about industry representation you should contact the AIIA. The profession refers to those people who undertake to follow a code of ethics, undertake development and certification and wish to identify themselves as an ICT professional. Our members are part of the ICT profession, and while many people work with, in or around ICT, they may not necessarily be, or qualify to be, considered ICT professionals. Your claim that we represent "at most" 10% of the profession is not based in fact, and should be removed. If you can provide a definitive number of ICT professionals working in Australia the please reference this. As such, your claims are subject to significant question.Acsthomas (talk) 03:15, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Acsthomas, if you can suggest a better, more independent, more reliable source of information than the Census then I'm all ears. Until then, we need to stick with the best source we have. --Gronk Oz (talk) 03:29, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

GronkOz, I'm suggesting that your use of certain data is misleading. I'm not suggesting you are intending to mislead, but to suggest that everyone working in a ICT related field is within the scope of the ACS is simply incorrect. Either use statistics that are actually representative of the potential membership of suitably qualified professionals, or indicate upfront that your statistics are broad, and not to be taken as wholly representative of the actual situation.Acsthomas (talk) 03:33, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Acsthomas, yes, I think we can all Assume good faith here. Are you suggesting there is a serious discrepancy between the census figures of people who work in those industries, and people who fall within the scope of the ACS? If so, then by all means let's get that clarified but more importantly - what better source is there? The census also classifies people by their occupation, but that is nowhere near specific enough to identify ACS relevance, with broad categories like "professionals" and "managers". For its lowest grade of membership (associate), the ACS "Guidelines for Membership" are very broad, encompassing anybody "over the age of 16 years who are engaged in or training for ICT practice which, either directly or indirectly, calls upon their ICT knowledge, skills and experience." So if not the Census, what source do you propose that would give a better count of that scope?

The issue is the broad nature of the census, and the classification you implied saying that certain categories fall within the scope of the ACS. The census counts people working in the telecommunications industry, but that includes frontline retail workers. They do not fall within the scope of the ACS, but are included in the census numbers. Each year a report is prepared called the Australian ICT Statistical Compendium. This is independently created and the ACS then publishes the data. We are working on the 2014 edition to provide this granularity so the numbers can be more accurate. I don't believe that it is an appropriate solution in the interim to use 'her-enough' numbers when they don't reflect the actual situation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acsthomas (talk • contribs) 04:25, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

That Australian ICT Statistical Compendium looks great, especially since there is an independent source for it: the 2013 version is at http://www.awpa.gov.au/publications/Documents/ICT-STUDY-FINAL-28-JUNE-2013.pdf It focuses on the occupations people perform rather than the industry they work in, so it looks like it should address your concerns there, and more accurately reflect the scope of the ACS candidature. So I propose replacing the Census comments with something based on the following (page 40): "According to the ABS, 460,800 workers were employed in the 18 primary ICT occupations in August 2012 ... The three occupation groups with the most workers were: ICT Professionals (233,300 workers) ICT Support Technicians (57,000 workers) ICT Managers (53,100 workers)." Would it be accurate to include them all, or are some of those 18 roles outside the scope of the ACS? --Gronk Oz (talk) 09:30, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Section removed

I have removed the "Representation" section because, in my view, it violates our guideline against original research, in particular, synthesis. It is not correct to take census data and the group's membership figures, and make a connection that neither of the sources makes. It is not up to a Wikipedia editor to decide that the census figures constitute the exact number of the organization's potential membership, nor to imply that a calculated percentage is high or low. This can only be discussed if reliable sources discuss it, and no such sources are cited in the article. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:44, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Cullen328, thanks for helping out a couple of less experienced editors here, and particularly for taking the time to explain your reasoning. I would be grateful for your advice about whether my proposed approach would address this, because it is not as clear-cut we might wish for. I have collected six articles from major newspapers and one from a major magazine, which all include explicit comparisons of the ACS' claimed membership to the potential pool of IT professionals. (I'm happy to supply that list; it's just a bit too big to put here.) But the articles don't all agree on the figures, they come from different times and use different sources, in fact most don't disclose the source of their numbers at all. So for the sake of transparency, I propose something along the lines of:

"Industry commentators have variously estimated that between four and fifteen percent of Australian IT professionals belong to the ACS.(References) The latest figures available from the Australian government's ICT Statistical Compendium found that 460,800 workers were employed in what it classifies as the 18 primary ICT occupations(reference). On that basis, the ACS' 22,000 members represent 4.8%."

I think this will satisfy the synthesis problem, since the newspaper & magazine articles raised the issue and I am simply providing more recent and verifiable figures. How do you feel about that approach?--Gronk Oz (talk) 15:50, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that you should select the best two or three of the six articles that you have found, and build the statement on summarizing what those sources say. So, pick those that are more recent, and those that go into greater detail about the point, and those that mention the source of their numbers. Especially important are sources that describe the significance of such comparisons. Avoid any kind of wording that implies that the group fails to represent its target membership group just because you think that it should have a larger membership to be judged successful.

Unless reliable sources mention the Australian government's ICT Statistical Compendium in the context of this organization, our article shouldn't either. To do so without mention in reliable sources is original research. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:33, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again, Cullen328. My aim is not to deprecate the ACS; just to adding some independent perspective about their claim, balancing the advertisement-like tone of the current article. So would the following address your concerns, including original research and synthesis?

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The ACS refers to itself as "the professional association for Australia’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector" and "Australia’s primary representative body for the ICT workforce", but industry analysts have questioned this based on the percentage of IT professionals who are ACS members. The issue has been discussed in the press since at least 2004, and in 2013 the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that "the ACS aggressively seeks to control the important software engineering profession in Australia, but ... less than 5 per cent of the professional IT workforce belongs to the ACS." The ACS Foundation came up with a slightly higher figure: "Depending on the data used to calculate the number of ICT professionals in Australia, however, [ACS] membership represents approximately 6.5 per cent of the total."

References

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--Gronk Oz (talk) 09:17, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

 Done There has been no comment about this proposed wording, which has been here for over a week, so I have added it into the article. --Gronk Oz (talk) 15:24, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

 Comment: Gronk Oz Just some comments on the formatting, not on the content, of what you added.

First of all, I just fixed a few things in your talk page post (the indentation, moved the "reflist" template and replaced it with "reflist-talk") to make things easier to read per WP:TPO. No content was changed at all.

Secondly, according to this link, the Lucas/ Weckert edited book was co-published by CAPPE; Therefore, you should probably add this info if it's really true. You can do this by using another parameter called "other" as in like "other=Co-published with CAPPE" to the "cite book" template. I also think it might be best to word the chapter title as "Chapter 2: Professionalism in the Information and Communication Technology Industry" just to make it a little easier to understand. - Marchjuly (talk) 22:06, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, Marchjuly. Especially with the reflist-talk: I wanted to find a better way to show what references I planned to use, and that was precisely what I needed. I have added CAPPE to the Lucas/ Weckert book. The "other" parameter did not work; it gave an error message. I tried using "others" instead, but that placed the publisher and co-publisher in quite different places, so in the end I put them both in "publisher" for clarity - I hope that is okay. --Gronk Oz (talk) 12:33, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I pretty much mess around with the citation templates until i find something that seems to work. It looks fine to me, but if it isn't somebody will come along and fix it. - Marchjuly (talk) 13:08, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Related organizations: ACS Foundation

I am just wondering if it is OK to link directly to the "ACS Foundation" website. It seems like an "embedded citation" to me. If it is then I believe it should follow the example given here. Right now the link has a title added to it which seems to contrary to what "Link titles" says. Furthermore, "Avoid embedded links" says that this style of citing information is no longer recommended. Maybe the "ACS Foundation" should just be a "red link" and the website added as an "external link". Not sure, so I'm interested in hearing what others think. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 13:04, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Looking through the article, there are several external links: as well as the ACS Foundation, there is also the Australian Council of Professions, the Code of Ethics, and the Code of Professional Conduct. And I'm not sure why the ACS Foundation is not listed as related, but simply as an "other Australian computer association". --Gronk Oz (talk) 14:28, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I didn't notice the "Australian Council pf Professions" one until you pointed it out. That link probably shouldn't be embedded as well. It was added in 2010 by this edit . It may have been one of the recommended ways to cite sources at the time, but even so it seems to have been done incorrectly according to "MOS:Link#Link titles". - Marchjuly (talk) 21:26, 11 August 2014 (UTC)