User:Samwilson/Blog/Blogging on Wikiversity

I've been tinkering with some blogging templates here on Wikiversity. I've created the blog post comments template, modelled on the commenting system used on the Wikipedia Signpost. Now blog posts can have comments listed after them (as this one does; see below).

It's not a massively functional system: it doesn't present the user with a direct-entry form right there and then when they've finished reading the post; and entering a comment requires some slight familiarity with wiki syntax. But it'll do for now.

I suspect anyway that if blogging were to become more popular on Wikiversity then it'd perhaps not been seen in a very favourable fashion. Wikimedia projects aren't really for personal musings! I figure that, so long as posts are "educational" (for the writer!) then they're fine.

OpenStreetMap has a system called "user diaries", which is a very active platform for community members to write about the work they're doing. Everyone writes about OSM, and it's a very helpful way to see what's going on and even to ask questions (and have them answered!). The closest the Wikimedia movement comes to this is Planet Wikimedia, which is very cool but has the drawbacks of requiring people to find somewhere to host their blogs, those blogs disappearing offline, and generally the fragmentation of discussion over a wide area.

I'm not really suggesting that Wikiversity become a place for people to blog about the research they're doing for Wikipedia... but it'd be cool wouldn't it? ;-)