Portal talk:GreySmith Institute old root

This portal page looks great. I like the layout and style. The topics look interesting, too. I look forward to seeing this project develop. I would discourage the use of titles such as Director. Wikiversity is a collaborative learning project where participants can assume any role. Also, Portal pages are typically named for the topic they cover. Using such a naming convention makes it easier for someone who desires to learn to find the project that they are looking for. --mikeu talk 12:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You are of course correct using a naming convention like I have, makes it more difficult for someone who desires to learn to find the project. But what I wanted was a little separation from Hoi Paloi otherwise I would have called this a school, instead of a portal. What I am trying to capture is the nature of an Institute like NSI that is on the campus of a major university but is not following exactly the same rules as the University Departments. A sort of collaboration within a collaboration if you will.

The idea is to attract a group of pre-qualified or uncredentialed enthusiasts for the project, and encourage them to develop the discipline to create their own significant scientific contributions so that they can eventually be published in a journal, or go on to get their credentials. I admit that I am one of the uncredentialed enthusiasts that I am hoping will go on to be published. I fully intend to affiliate myself with this institute, and use it in my articles. It would have been nice to have called myself director, and I was hoping to have elections for positions of influence such as deans of the schools etc. but if it is discouraged, well that is policy, and I don't want to buck policy too far.

Another potential I see for this Institute, is as a place where enthusiasts can meet, inexpensively, in order to collaborate on related projects. The idea is that once I get enough infrastructure built, I will invite content with a request for content, and a call for papers. Thus I will be attracting people who are aware of the current state of the science, into wikiVersity. Hopefully this will spill over to WikiVersity's benefit since it will be easier for them to find the versity pages than the Institutes pages, and content will go into the main name space where it can be searched.

I realize that this is warping wikiVersity a little bit, and I hope that I am skating the acceptable side of the divide between what is allowable within wikiVersity and what is not, but the intent is to enhance WikiVersities reputation while stretching the University Metaphor a little.--Graeme E. Smith 18:35, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, Mikeu is right that Wikiversity is a collaborative project and thats why it is better not to associate ourselfs as owners of the resources or directors and so on. But if someone would like to play the game of positions and credentions I think it is possible, but it must be told to others, that it is lets say a learning game. University Metaphor? Nice. Did you know that Wikiversity is Universitas magistrorum et scholarium? It is not just for tertiary education but also for children or longlife studies. BTW, I think you dont need to use here the HTML paragraph tag as you do. to structure a conversation we are having here this ":" - it is our tag:-)--Juan de Vojníkov 23:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way, does anyone know how I can tag this portal a research site? How I can start a forum or 4 and how I can set up a repository for papers?

Other research portals
Graeme, have you seen Portal:Research? It's kind of disorganized right now but it does seem to have a similar mission to your Institute. It also has other research projects that were added to WV earlier. I like your idea of having interactive forums on the Research portals and perhaps more people would use the forums if (1) your Portal had more connection with the existing Portal, and (2) the existing Portal were visually cleaned up. --AFriedman 20:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I may have looked at it while I was doing the research for this portal, By the way I don't claim to be sophisticated in wiki programming what was that change to the NOTOC line about?
 * The changes to the NOTOC line were me trying to figure out how to edit the "Introduction" section (which I did). They weren't a permanent change to the TOC layout.  Do you plan on putting links to your page and its forums in Portal:Research?  --AFriedman 20:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Color me confused, TOC means Table of Contents? None of my pages seem to have the Table of Contents in their layout, although I haven't used NOTOC in their design, is there something I should do to make the Table of Contents visible? It looks like a good idea for the Forums.

On the Portal Research topic I am currently fishing for feedback on the research forum as to whether or not I should expect the institute to survive under WikiVersity's rules. I'd like to get that topic out of the way before I open my Institute to public scrutiny, especially since there might be legal problems with my idea of a repository if so I want to build the legal cautions required into my portal design.--Graeme E. Smith 22:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * TOC means table of contents. Tables of contents automatically appear if you have more than a certain number of subheaders (I forget the number), unless you use NOTOC with 2 _s on either side.  --AFriedman 22:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

OK table of contents is good, in a Forum, Now should the Forum be in the standard name space, or should it be part of the portal? Hmm...--Graeme E. Smith 00:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I would recomend main ns, such as AC Forum:-)--Juan de Vojníkov 01:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)