Help talk:Resources by completion status

Line breaks
This needs debugging so there are no line breaks. --Remi 00:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅. --McCormack 09:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

On the origin of the word "complete"
I never thought the word "complete" was going to be such a big deal. But here's the history. On 4th May 2008, User:Robert Elliott asked me for a list of "completed courses" (his phrase), and as there wasn't one, and as it was obviously a good question, I started Help:Project boxes. As part of this project, I picked up on something started by User:Remi0o (now User:Remi) in February 2007, where User:Remi used the word "complete" over and over again. He had probably borrowed the term from other wiki projects, such as Wikibooks. Unfortunately I simply perpetuated the use of the word, never thinking it would be such a big deal. As I've already said, on reflection I agree with User:Cormaggio that "ready" is perhaps more politically correct, and I also like the word "ready" myself. However, I have no truck with political correctness and I don't really want to spend all my time thinking up new template variations to cater for every possible concept of resource development cycles. Nevertheless, in the course of time, I will try my best to improve names and wording, and think up useful alternatives. --McCormack 15:35, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a problem with your use of the term "politically correct" - even though you've explained it on IRC. My aim, in problematising the word "complete", is to raise questions about the wiki way, and how this impacts on categorising of resources - as well as on how the categorising of resources might be definable within particular paradigms. Perhaps the 'wiki way' is similar to the way you mean politically correct. But anyway, I absolutely agree that we should work on a suite of alternatives here - so that people can use one (or a combination) that suits the resource. And again, I would want to push that process to leave itself open to discussion - so that someone saying that something is ready is itself contestable by someone else who thinks it's not. This is absolutely not about political correctness (as I understand it) - it's about defining how Wikiversity works, and making transparent the thinking that is implied in whatever model is chosen by the particular person/group involved in a given resource. Cormaggio talk 10:21, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Suite of alternatives
This is to list a range of alternative ways of tagging resources, and to define the thinking that is implied in each tag. Please edit, and augment. This list could/should be eventually moved to a better space.

I added Stub so that useless pages are clear to viewers. Robert Elliott 14:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Development processes


(Replying to Darklama, who posted his comment as an image and caption.) Our attention here should be on the development processes of educational content, or more specifically, wiki-hosted educational content, not wiki content. Every Wikimedia project has a different "object" of which its content consists (e.g. article, book, news item, dictionary entry). Each of these objects has its own development cycle. Wikiversity is unlike the other projects in that it has many types of resources (e.g. lesson plan, reading list, reading group, course, research project, essay, debate, quiz and loads more), and each of these resource types has its own development cycle. --McCormack 12:58, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Every wiki project shares a common basic process for developing content regardless of whatever type of work is being created. The work can be as small as  dictionary entry, as large as all of human knowledge, can be entertaining, or can be educational. Every work involves either someone requesting its creation or creating it themselves, people reading and using the work, and people developing and revising the work, and people organizing and publishing the work so people can read and use it. The only difference is in how people do so. As in how someone goes about creating the work, how someone requests a work be created, how someone goes about reading or using the work, and how someone goes about organizing and publishing the work so people can make use of it.
 * I think every work falls somewhere within this develop process or cycle, even Wikiversity with its different types of work. The implementation may be different but the basic fundamentals of the process is the same. Describing how learning resources or quizzes should be made, may be different, but people still either have to request or make it themselves, develop it, revise it when its needed, and do all the other things in the process. --dark[[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]]lama 13:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Where?
In lists it's fairly obvious where to put the boxes. But where do they go on a project page? The Jade Knight 10:40, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Utility
I think it's fair to say that many projects are never "completed", but I think the entire purpose of completion boxes is to tell newcomers which projects need work and which projects are most useful as learning resources. Generally, I see the following useful categories for this (stages [in brackets] may be considered optional): Additionally, it would be useful to be an "Abandoned" template for marking projects where significant work has not occured in say, 6 months.
 * 1) Empty (contains no significant content)
 * 2) Stub (little content)
 * 3) [Forming (little content, but active discussion about developing content is occuring)]
 * 4) Developing (some significant, useful content; still needs significant additions or work)
 * 5) [Under Revision (for a project with lots of significant, useful content which contains problems preventing it from being "quality" (such as poor organization, significant usage errors, significant factual errors, etc.))]
 * 6) Quality (a project which contains lots of significant, useful content, and, while additions may be added, does not need additions. A quality project is ready to be used by a learner who has come to learn about that topic)

The idea is to show users what projects would need their help, and what projects they can go to expecting to find learning resources "ready for use", etc.

I could also see breaking "Developing" into two sections which might give an indictator as to how much useful content is there, but definitions and lines might be problematic there. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 00:25, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Departments could similarly be rated. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 00:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the general idea of the existing completion status boxes is to generate a wide array of options, so that they can be applied as needed to different projects. Whilst that may seem unwieldly (to have so many options), it also seems to be realistic since I'm doubtful that we could create a universal set of completion status steps to be broadly applied - Wikiversity is just too varied. So, I think you should feel free to flesh out your proposed scheme and develop a set of related project boxes. Personally, I mostly use the 0%done, 25%done, 50%done, 75%done and 100%done and sometimes miscellaneous boxes like experimental and permanently incomplete. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 04:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with James that it's going to be difficult to be universal here - and the help page itself does say that this process is largely "arbitrary". But I do like both "Quality" and "Under revision" as categories that indicate (and drive) a quality control process. Would you see "quality" as not quite yet "featured", or supplementing it? Cormaggio talk 08:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
 * "Quality", in my mind, would be a more broad category than "featured", but would be similar in nature. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 11:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the categorizations could be simplified some: --darklama 23:28, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Use something like for "empty" pages and pages with "little content". Maybe built on that some more by including links to resources that might inspire people to participate.
 * Active Community for resources that have an active community that is developing and/or discussing the resource.
 * Under Review for resources which are currently being scrutinized to improve qualify, grammar, spelling, usefulness, etc. Could also just be used to alert people to important discussions taking place on the discussion page that someone feels needs people's attention.
 * A quality, useful, featured type categorization which means that the community feels that this resource is in good enough shape to learn and teach from.
 * One of the things I'm thinking about in particular, Darklama, is how to show people who come to resources quickly and clearly what kind of content they'll find there. In addition, part of the goal is to be able to mark resources in this way before a newcomer even reaches them; completion status pictures would do this to an extent.