User:JWSchmidt/Student Union

Things you can do
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." -Albert Einstein

At many places of learning, students get together to share strategies for learning. It is constructive to have a place where students can take note of their learning needs and take action to help each other. Right now, the Wikiversity Student union is under attack by deletionists who cannot stand the idea that students might participate at Wikiversity. In order to understand this strange state of affairs, students can participate in the Student Participation Project, below. This project will introduce you to Wikiversity's "learn by doing" educational approach.

Student Participation Project
The main page says that "students are invited to join us", but this page was proposed for deletion.

study question. Does it make sense that Wikiversity claims to be open to participation by students while at the same time Wikiversity users try to delete the main page for students?

study question. Why would one user want to delete the main portal page for student participants at Wikiversity?

At the deletions page, the reason for deleting this page was said to be: "This page is an ancient relic from a time when it looked like a good idea. It's unlikely this page will ever be developed, and it might encourage silliness."

learning activity. Let's carefully examine this "reason" in detail.

1) "ancient relic". The "Student union" page (this page) was created on 21 June 2006. As outlined at History of Wikiversity, the Wikiversity project was not approved until August 2006. In order for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to have some idea of what Wikiversity could become, a few "starter pages" were made for Wikiversity and connected by this template. The "Student union" page was created as one of the few main portals for Wikiversity participants, see the original Student union from the time before Wikiversity existed as an approved project. This page only becomes an "ancient relic" if you adopt the attitude that it is not a good idea for student participants to have a main portal at Wikiversity.

2) "unlikely this page will ever be developed". Wikipedia has developed a toxic culture in which self-appointed "cops" look at the contributions of other editors and say, "unlikely this page will ever be developed", and then the pages are deleted. One well-known example of this kind of deletionism is Mzoli's, an article created by the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, Jimmy Wales. You can read this to see the story of how Jimmy's contribution was marked for deletion. The lesson to be learned is that when you see someone saying "unlikely this page will ever be developed" what it really means is "I'm a deletionist, and I don't care about this page, so I want to delete it".

3) "it might encourage silliness". The "Student union" page originally welcomed new participants, "Wikiversity is devoted to the joy and adventure of active learning. Explore what is of most interest to you. Ask for help. Create and join Learning Projects. Have fun." Humans have an instinct for play. Some "educators" go out of their way to prevent students from having fun. Wikiversity invites students to participate and help create a fun learning environment. Silliness can be an important part of learning. See Learning fun.

Deletionism, more tricks of the trade
Of course, deletionists do not really need to delete pages, they have many other tricks that they us to prevent wiki participants from participating. There is no need to delete a page if you remove the links to the page.

When the community decides (by consensus) that a page should not be deleted, another fine trick used by deletionists is to just turn the the page into a redirect.

study question: Which Wikiversity participants have systematically worked to remove links to the Wikiversity Student union, delete the Wikiversity Student union and turn the Wikiversity Student union into a redirect page?

Deletionists can also just delete the page content that they do not want students to see. Such content deletion is often done under the cover of false edit summaries such as saying that the deleted content "will serve to distance new users from this project", even when the deleted content was, in fact, explicitly designed to promote participation.

After being thwarted in their audacious attempts to delete Wikiversity content such as this page, deletionists can then fall back on edit waring. In this case, their efforts include making use of false claims to "justify" their deletionism, such as calling educational resources "very hostile" and "aggressive".

study question. Why is it a good idea to aggressively delete content but it is not a good idea to aggressively develop content? How does aggressively deleting educational wiki content promote the mission of Wikiversity?

Discussion

 * Deletionists believe that consensus is clearly against keeping the educational content. Maybe the deletionists will participate in this discussion and explain how they established the idea that Wikiversity consensus favors the deletion of this learning exercise. --JWSchmidt 16:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Other things you can do
Wikiversity is devoted to the joy and adventure of active learning. Explore what is of most interest to you. Ask for help. Create and join Learning Projects. Have fun.
 * 1) Participate
 * 2) Ask questions
 * 3) Browse Wikiversity content.
 * 4) Make yourself at home. Register a user name. Describe your learning goals on your user page.
 * 5) Wiki 101 - if you are new to wiki
 * 6) Be bold.