Category talk:Wikiversity

I wonder about the usage of this category, as applied to pages in the Wikiversity namespace. It would be a little like having a Category:Educational resource, to be applied to all mainspace pages.... So much to do, so little time. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:32, 26 January 2014 (UTC)


 * That's the type of cleanup we can do by bot, if you tell me what you want and we have some type of consensus on it. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:40, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. Any mass changes should be first discussed adequately, of course. We haven't put a great deal of thought, as far as I know, into category structure. It's mostly grown like Topsy. Right now, it's not a priority, because this category does very little harm except to add, perhaps, to useless clutter on pages. We'll see. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:07, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I *am* thinking about proposing to remove Category:Wikiversity from all Wikiversity namespace pages, and then we can look at the appropriateness of the category elsewhere. We have this category, for example, on at least one user page I noticed. Is that appropriate? As a general rule, probably not. But I haven't examined the general case, nor that specific one in detail.
 * Okay, I just looked at the user page I'd seen. User:JWSchmidt/Student Union. JWS had become a bit paranoid by that time (and he had some cause to be so). He created the page as a copy of Student Union, with the edit summary, (making a copy that is safe from deletionists), The page never was deleted, and though it was proposed for deletion,, that was never likely.
 * We handle matters like this very differently now, and routinely. (On Wikipedia, a WP space activity or proposal will hardly ever be deleted, instead it is "deprecated" if inactive or obsolete.) This was a great example of how not to stand for Wikiversity as open, i.e., by attacking the "enemies" of openness.
 * The category was there from the original text in WV space. I will poke out the category. Coincidentally, I just invited JWS, one of the founders of Wikiversity, to request unblock. I'd leave it to him to request deletion of that user page as totally unnecessary. No page on Wikiversity would be totally safe from "deletionists," were they to take over here, certainly not user space pages of blocked users. You can see from, say,, what was happening in JWS' view. The user he was revert warring with was highly disruptive, by the way. It's not that there was no risk to this community. There was. But JWS got stuck there, and he was effectively allowing himself to be trolled into edit warring, so horrified was he by the "attack of the Wikipedians." Yet he was, at the time, a Wikipedia administrator, which was only removed, later, for inactivity. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

User space pages in

 * User:Jtneill/Wikiversity/Introduction
 * User:McCormack/Learning by engagement

My opinion is that both should either be removed from categories (with the initial colon), or moved to Wikiversity space in some way. The problem with category linking to user space, like this, is that pages which are, by our traditions, under user control, can then be presented or seen as if they are approved by the community. I do support linking to user pages on mainspace discussion (or other space discussion) pages, but not through the category system (or, as recently proposed, "user categories" could be used, there are other possibilities that would address the concern about possible misunderstanding and still be easy to manage.) --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC)