Thanks for taking this task Shani. I'm glad to see you move this conversation forward and I look forward to talking this through further.

Hi Shani,

If you have started a conversation about this with the FB group admins on the email or you're planning for a check-in or something like this, please keep me posted. I'd be happy to join. Thank you!

Hi, Samir. I was thinking of creating a FB poll and start a conversation that way.
If you feel email is more appropriate, I can do that as well. I was planning on doing so right after I submit my seminar paper in a few more days, so I'm thinking sometime next week.. :)

Great plan, Shani. Please do it your way! ;)

I've created a FB poll and pinned it at the top of the Wikipedia Education Program group page.
I suggest giving it a week or two, to allow members to do not monitor it daily enough time to respond.
Then make a final decision according to poll results.

Thanks for creating that poll, @Esh77. I'm curious to see what people will say.
I would want to make sure we are mindful of our admin's time. So if the decision will be that we will do a vetting process to determine how people are involved with Wikimedia and education, we need to make sure it doesn't take too much work from our admins, otherwise the process may become too burdensome and we may lose admins. But I look forward to seeing a process that makes sense so that we can have a lively and focused group. :)

Voting has revealed that all of you want this group to remain open, with a majority that would like admins to make sure members are affiliated with Wikimeida projects in some way or another.
Since there are already 865 members and any procedure will affect only future members, the only practical thing to do is to monitor posts. So, as of now, posting in the group will be visible only after admin approval. This will allow us to make sure posts are by contributing members and not spammers. Since there are 10 admins in the group, this means posting should not be delayed, no matter when and from where you post around the world - one of us will probably be up and approve your post quickly.
As for monitoring newcomers, they will be contacted by an admin via chat, and will be asked to provide info about their affiliation, either by a username, a course page, or any other detail that will attest to their connection to our joint efforts.
Since this change does create extra work for admins, we will try it out for about a month. If admins find it takes too much time, then we will only keep the posts being approved. If it works well and doesn't end up taking much time from us, we will continue with the new procedure.
Please note any of you can still add members to the group without any need for approval.