User talk:Guy vandegrift/Archive 6

Avant-garde studies
Hi Guy, thanks for your suggestions on the art practices/ movements pages. I am a little confused as to how to proceed. Do u think we should move all pages to a new mainspace page called Avant-garde studies and then make all movements and practices as sub pages of this mainspace page? Dx (discuss • contribs) 09:50, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Also I have been looking for something like Inkscape - i will let you know how my experiemnts go with that. Thanks for the heads up --Dx (discuss • contribs) 09:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Been making some changes but still a bit confused by the different suggestions from admins - Abd has now started to make avante-garde as a subpage of art movements and then movements as subpages of that. However this is not accurate. The Avant-garde is more a trend in art and the movements are sometimes seen as avante-garde, sometimes modernist. eg surrealism is seen more as a modern art movement than an avant-garde movement. Also, avant-garde movements are always cross disciplinary - covering at least art, poetry, literature at the same time - and therefore more suitable to have mainspace pages where they can be linked from the literature or poetry pages also. Dx (discuss • contribs) 12:02, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I see your point. Wikipedia has Avant-garde and Avant-garde music as two different entries. I have been on Wikiversity and Wikipedia for only about 3 years, and still don't understand how decisions are made.  I advise you not to move the subpage into mainspace, but instead develop the subpage to the point where you can make a strong case.  At first I also tried to get articles that I create into "mainspace", but now I just let people move them where they want.  I don't think it matters where a page is because Google is the dominant search engine (I almost always use Google to search Wikipedia, Wikiversity and Commons).  I have put a lot of thought into the question of recruiting readers because I am trying to establish  open source teaching materials that others will use (see for example Quizbank and Openstax College.  If you really feel strongly about moving the page, let me know and I will find a page where you can post your opinion and get others to participate in reaching a consensus.


 * One more thing and this is important: It's against the rules to "recruit" people to take your position in an editorial dispute.  It's against the rules to recruit people into a discussion if it is likely that they will agree with you.  It's called meat-puppetry,  and the rule is a good one.


 * Also a good way to achieve multiple hierarchies is to create an Avant-garde category (if one does not already exist). If you want, I can look into that.  --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 13:42, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * ok thanks, maybe an avant-garde category is needed - also maybe a modernism category? but tbh i have no idea how a category functions ? are the pages still in mainspace? or subpages? Dx (discuss • contribs) 14:44, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

A category appears to the reader as a box at the bottom. You create it by typing the following wikitext anywhere on the page (but the convention is to place category declarations at the bottom of the page) For example,



places the box at the bottom (you don't see it because I used the used xxx  to inhibit the hypertext markup.  To make a link to the category page, write this hypertext:


 * Category:Art

The result looks like a typical link: Category:Art. Other category already present is Category:Arts. If you want to create an Avant-garde category, you could include the page Art movements/Avant-Garde/Dada.

Once nice thing about categories is that unedited (uncreated) categories don't even exist. For example, I will now create a category called Avant-garde. It will appear at the bottom of this page. But when you go there, you see that the category has not been created. Keep in mind that if you create a page, someone like me has to go through and edit/move/delete it. You want to keep your page creations to a minimum. So when you visit Category:Avant-garde please don't edit or create it.

Does this help?--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:34, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Do we want an Avant-garde category? If not, let me know and I will delete.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:03, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, when we have Avante-Garde resources other than Art movements/Avant-Garde and subpages, yes. As User:Dx pointed out, there is are movements or social phenomena called Avante-Garde in other than fields than Art. But he was creating Art resources, so I classified the Avante-Garde art movements as such. This does not prevent a broader resource from being creating. The word "studies," though, would be better avoided. Everything on Wikiversity is a study. I did use the term with Wiki studies because we had a lot of such and that terminology was thus already in use.


 * How does Wikipedia make decisions? Do you want the complete story, or only the 2-volume version? Avant-Garde is more of an attitude than an coherent movement, and what it means shifts with the time. When it has become the subject of formal training, when people study it in books and classes, is it actually "avant-garde?" It's like the term "modern." Art movements are indeed classified that way, according to how they were perceived when new.


 * I would not create the category until there are broader resources calling for it. There is, however, no harm in placing the Avant-Garde pages in the category. I certainly would not remove it.


 * To be clear, a category is created by categorizing a page with the category link, as described above. A category page is created for two reasons: one, to describe the category, if it's not already intrinsically described, and, second, to enable categorization of categories.


 * So, how do we make decisions? For years, it's been ad hoc, and users made all kinds of decisions, often with little coordination, so we ended up with a rather chaotic pile of resources, and I'm not sure anyone ever nailed how to use Schools, Topics, and Portals. My focus has been on organizing mainspace. We have discussed these things in various places, but there is no clear policy, just what is, now, mostly done and that doesn't upset people too much. Used to be, without the organizational structure that I envisioned (which was loosely held in mind by some of the founders of Wikiversity), lots of pages got deleted as being not good enough or fringe or non-neutral opinion, etc. That's almost entirely dead as a practice. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * To summarize:


 * Go ahead and include at the bottom of your pages.  They will appear at Category:Advant-garde, but please do not edit or "create" that page yet.
 * The active partcipants on the question of creating Avant-garde in namespace seem to be you, I, and Abd. I tend to go with Abd's opinion, not because of any arguments you or he might present, but because Abd has a master plan for organizing namespace, and because Abd is doing no harm in implementing it (in fact he seems to be making things better).
 * BTW, I keep thinking it would be fun to make an editable version of "Object to be destroyed" on Inkscape. Commons is like the other wikis in that images may be replaced by editors (perhaps after being autoconfirmed?).  So the idea is that someone creates a reasonable facsimile of "Object to be destroyed" as an Inkscape drawing.  Then, on the talk page to that drawing, post a statement that this image may be edited in any way that is legal.  I, for example, might replace the eye by the editable eye.  Then we post the original version on a Wikipedia page on Neoist art, and explain to the editors that this drawing is unstable.  We might be asked not to do this, but if we are polite with them, they will polite with us.  I already discussed posting editable drawings with Commons in regard to this crude sketch and the one person who answered approved the idea.


 * The copy shown on Object to be destroyed cannot be placed on Commons due to copyright issues, and for that reason would take an extra effort to place on Wikiversity. That article probably had over 4,000 viewers last year.  If you want to get noticed, get it on Wikipedia.  But please be polite to the editors and obey their rules!--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 19:44, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * If you want to be banned, do something on Wikipedia to get noticed..... We could have that image here, the same as Wikipedia. As non-free, it must be so tagged, there must be a non-free use rationale, and there must be actual usage. I've interpreted user space as possible for that, for student work, but ... that has been controversial, and our Exemption Doctrine policy prohibits it. I've never considered it important enough to test. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:01, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Template:Contrib-using
That template shows no documentation. It should be used with, because it will be signed by the user who places it. If you want to suggest to the user that she place it, fine.

I should fix the documentation, but, in fact, this is a poor way to work without "interference" on a resource. Working on it in user space is far more secure, and simpler. Discussing changes with users takes a whole lot more time!

That this user is currently involved with a "real world class" is very possibly false. Indications are that some class is being planned. What is really needed here is education of this user as to how to work on a wiki. The user seemed to have no idea that they could simply revert an edit, which would take far less time than tcomplaining. Leutha is claiming real-world connection with the user, and Leutha is highly reactive and not necessarily reliable. That is, what he writes may be ... not exactly what is happening.

The user should know that content can be created and will not be deleted, so no matter what crap people dump on her pages, she can very quickly remove it. It's a wiki!!!

(My subpage work is designed to create structures that will avoid deletion. Dave should not have deleted what he deleted, I thought he knew better than that, but it's common. Pages in coherent structures are far less likely to be deleted. Stubs there are generally safe. Dave deleted a page that was just links to a few sources, some were in French, so it was speedied as "not English." But we create pages like that all the time as part of a subpage structure. I've been asking for a merge, with a template that now creates a flag on WV:RCA, nobody has done it, so I'm going to fix the problem caused by that deletion in another way.

Right now, all the mishegas about page structure will just delay the user's work. Whatever the user wanted to do with the original structure the user set up can be done more easily with what is in place. If Leutha is communicating with this user off-wiki, that could explain why a user who was not hostile suddenly became so.

Notice the user page: User:Dx. original version current permanent link Tae Ateh is an androgynous Art practices/Multiple-use name, see Art practices/Multiple-use name/Tae Ateh From that page: "here are some pages i am working on..... any input appreciated!!!!"'

Until yesterday, my sense had been that the user appreciated the support. That suddenly and radically changed.

While there is some idea that the Neoism resource needs some protection against editing, the user is not working on it, but just created DAMTP Congress. If I saw a new user create that, I'd probably move it to user space, pending. None of the content here has been disruptive, so far. The movement described is what I'd call radical fringe. The user, on her talk page, has no settled internet access, claims to be using libraries and mobile phone.

I continue to intend to support this user.

Meanwhile, as to the archiving on Talk:Art movements/Avant-Garde/Neoism it is highly unusual to archive talk discussion for issues that have not been resolved. Collapse does not lower download size. All it does is collapse the content after download. The user really doesn't need to read that page at all. That's what is so weird about all this. The user accepted the subpaging, started to work on them, until Leutha objected to completing the process.

Subpaging makes it easier to work on content with a mobile phone, not harder. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 05:03, 2 September 2015 (UTC)


 * . Surmise: perhaps coincidence, or this user is much more sophisticated than we have thought, or someone is feeding her suggestions. I'm pretty sure of the latter, anyway. She is spreading the resources out across mainspace. We have never enshrined our organizational practices as policy. However, they are protective. She removed a reference to the Wikipedia article on Art movements. She removed the categorization of art movements there. The later is not too bad, though possibly disrespectful of other opinions, but removing the Wikipedia reference removes a protection as to neutrality. This was not a new resource. Even when I hate the Wikipedia article, I always link it. My goal is massive cross-linking between Wikipedia article and Wikversity resources, and for that to work, this site must be careful about neutrality. We are neutral-by-inclusion, whereas Wikipedia is neutral-by-exclusion. She is removing the inclusion on our side. I'm not prepared to take this on, head-on, at this time. I'm just noting the issue.


 * She is making more work for herself.

Leutha is more direct. So, he starts a resource with a mysterious name. His explanation does not explain it. I have not edited the resource. The apparent subject is Neurath or the philosoophy of Neutrath. I've researched it some. I might want to criticize Neurath. Now, where would I do that and how would we maintain neutrality? I know how it can be done, because I've done it, but not by maintaining top-level resources compiled from a single point of view.

The learning that can be created when dissent is incorporated with neutrality is amazing. Everyone can learn. I certainly have! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:40, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Art movements and Art practices subpage structure

 * Subpage structure
 * Art practices
 * Art movements


 * Well, that was the structure. The user has now been moving the resources out of subpace into mainspace. I've advised her that this makes the resources much more difficult to create, develop and maintain. But she's doing it. Including a page where she actually created the subpage, Art practices/Metagraphy that had been deleted in mainspace, Metagraphy. I requested Dave undelete, he did and placed a Merge tag on it, suggesting discussion. Since the intention had seemed clear, I replaced the Merge tag with a History merge tag, so that the former notes and the new edits to the subpage would be in one place. Nobody acted on that, and she then edited the undeleted mainspace page, redirected the subpage to it (blanking my own small work there). Ah, it could have been so simple!


 * I have some decently nice comment from this user on my user talk page. Her acceptance of moves to subpages of Art practices had been clear, and this was only interrupted, in process, by Leutha's objections, which appear to be based on a strong bias against subpage classification of resources, which is something the community has been collaborating on for about five years. It's not rigid; however, it protects pages, in actual practice. It allows for POV conflict to arise, and be resolved with high consensus. Wikipedians typically have no clue that this is even possible, largely rooted in the flat structure of Wikipedia, that does not allow "content forks."


 * Your actions were those of an ordinary user. However, Leutha's user page states that he's a custodian. It should say "probationary," since he's been that, since 2011, slipped through the cracks. Dave was not helpful here, at all. You bumbled, none of it serious. You were having fun. It is not prohibited here. The contrary, actually. None of your edits were intended to harm. You simply had not researched the issues deeply.


 * The user seems decently calmed down. I don't agree with what she's doing, but this is not important, my concerns are long-term. She may or may not run into neutrality problems. The discussion on her user talk page from Leutha could be highly misleading. Yes, we allow OR. However, we also require neutrality. I have dealt with situations here where conflict arose. Leutha seems to be operating out of reading rules that I think he does not understand, as to practical application.


 * "Editing resources" includes editing the names of them. This causes no harm in working on the resource. It could cause harm if it made a neutral resource less acceptable. It prevents harm if a non-neutral or allegedly non-neutral resource is moved to an attributed subpage. That is where original research is safe! I don't think Leutha has any clue as to the issues. I may bring some up on WV:RFD. Usage of that page has been rare, because we have become skilled at less disruptive alternatives. The practices that have made those alternatives possible are now being disparaged and even attacked.


 * You may some day find your pages edited by someone with a point of view, say, that modern physics is BS. What will you do?


 * There is no one answer. Having a toolbox, a set of approaches, is useful. Using custodial tools with your project, I assume you know, would be recusal failure, generally. However, the use of custodial tools in the presence of controversy is a sign of failure to find consensus.... --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:36, 3 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, I noticed that pages are being moved into mainspace. Fortunately, the redirects have been left behind.  Let's further discuss this at either Talk:Situography or Subpages/Forking and organizing.  Please use the latter if your comment is more than 25 words. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 19:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My response to length limits, ordinarily, is to not write. It becomes far too much work, and much less fun. I will, of course, follow the rules in writing a WV:Community Review. I avoid those beasties unless they become necessary, precisely because they are so much work to write for.


 * I'm not really interested in working on that set of resources at this point. There is likely to be a problem, in the end, from what is happening, but it can be fixed later. I commented there, before seeing your note here. That comment is not too long, I think. This situation, by the way, is a great demonstration of why the "don't make any changes without discussion," besides being a drastic departure from traditions, is a bad idea. There is now quite a bit of time wasted over a simple spelling error, fixed in a minute, including cleaning up redirects. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

See This essay for my version of the final word.

Persistent harassment
Hi Guy!

Dave Braunschweig has made a request on Wikiversity:RCA. Do you consider any of Abd's entries on this page to be "personal attacks constitut[ing] persistent harassment"? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:22, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Marshall. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:31, 3 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I think it is best to just ignore that RCA. You, user:Jtneill, and I have all said pretty much the same thing and we have said enough.  I wish Adb would put the whole thing behind him.  I still have one concern regarding pages in namespace, and here I need your expertise and experience in this matter.  Should articles like Situationism  and Situography be allowed in mainspace?  Please go to the discussion at Talk:Situography and state your honest opinion, even if it is I don't know.  I will go there now, ping you and pose the question.  --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 00:23, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for both of the above comments! I left a short comment on Situationism and Situography on the talk page for Situography. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:54, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict with above) Thanks, Guy. There is no hard and fast rule. Generally, if there is a substantial Wikipedia article on a topic, I'll allow a mainspace page for it. There is no definite answer, and we have lots of mainspace pages that probably should not be there. Dave and I and some others have worked for years on site organization, and subpage hierarchies invite participation, my experience. Scattered pages are much more difficult to maintain. Yes, they can be linked by navigational templates or ordinary links, but ... if any of the pages are stubs, they are highly vulnerable to deletion. As a subpage in a structure, they are an invitation for additional work. What was unusual here was the objection to subpaging, compounded by user confusion and the intervention of that probationary custodian. If you want to see a problem mainspace name, see E4D, and the talk page and the contortions being used to try to stop anyone from editing the page, other than an unnamed manager.


 * (I wrote that Situography was a spelling error. In fact, it's an alternate spelling. The confusion here was caused by the user changing the name in midstream and not saying that she was doing that. Situography is far more widely used, as far as I could see, and that's why the user spelled it that way.)


 * Neoism is a possible mainspace topic, but was a stub, and still is. The user has created a series of related resources that really are part of a single study, and that is why I collected the pages.


 * Technically, Guy, custodians have no special authority on content. When we start to think we do (and I think of this as "we" even though I'm not presently a custodian), we start to fall into Wiki studies/Wiki disease. It has pernicious effects. It is far safer to think in terms of serving the community, and the community has not made this matter clear. So ... we need to handle that, create the discussions that will allow the community to express itself. It's not going to happen on Talk:Situography. However, maybe some issues can be delineated there. Right now, we have been asked to leave this user alone. Let's do that. We routinely allow people to create even crappy resources in mainspace, and this isn't crappy. There is no emergency, there never was, in spite of the huffing and puffing on RCA.


 * The user has now made it clear on RCA that my advice is not wanted, or will be put through the wringer to find if anything wrong with it can be detected. So I'm staying away from her pages, including the talk pages. I will be working on general policy issues and other specifics as they arise. I've got one or two Custodian Feedback filings to write. We are going to need Community Reviews on a number of issues. Hopefully not user issues.


 * Don't expect me to "put this behind me." There are ongoing situations, some of them are deteriorating, and it's time to stop sweeping them under the carpet. I did that for years, to avoid disruption. It doesn't work. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:13, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * You are a good person, and clearly Wikiversity needs to improve its community decision building skills. I think you will have more success if you take a softer line, and I think you probably already know that.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:23, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Softer line
There was a question asked of you on your user talk page. You responded, I responded, and you responded again. However, because you promptly collapsed that, I did not see your response before you moved it to the archive. This is your user page, and you have high freedom here. I'm just noting that it didn't work for me.

Collapse is useful when a page becomes cluttered. It is not normally used when a discussion is active. In fact, it isn't normally used on user talk pages at all. However, it's a kind of close, and can express that "I'm done." Then, normally, archiving is not used until a certain time has elapsed, to allow people time to respond. We will not want to edit your archive!

Not a big deal, but when you start to handle central discussion pages, which have similar considerations, it will be important to understand the implications.

So, you wrote:
 * You are a good person, and clearly Wikiversity needs to improve its community decision building skills. I think you will have more success if you take a softer line, and I think you probably already know that.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:23, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. "Success" is an interpretation that assumes goals. That someone reacts to what I do does not demonstrate failure. I have high experience with this, sometimes it is the harbinger of success, which I will define on Wikiversity as the development of an active community that, among other things, empowers its members and protects them from harassment. It is obvious to me that some people may interpret what it takes, to create or awaken that community, as hostile. My goal remains consensus, which includes those people, unless they exclude themselves (which some have).

However, behavior exists on a continuum, we'll define it as "soft" to "hard." Soft sell vs hard sell, as common expressions. Which is better?

In fact, there is "selling" that is far too soft, and selling that is far too hard. If I never encounter a response to "hard sell," I'm probably not caring enough, and I probably will not create what I'm seeking to create. If, on the other hand, I always encounter that response, I'm obviously trying to push the river, not allowing people space to come to their own conclusions. Finding that sweet spot will always involve erring in both directions over time.

The goal of never making mistakes is massively disempowering. There is an easy way to do it: Never try to accomplish anything where you don't already know how.

In my training, we were encouraged to "throw our hat over the fence," to declare goals that we did not know how to reach. Why not? Fear of failure? What is the problem with "failure"? Does the sun stop shining, does food taste terrible, what? Sometimes what happens when we "fail" is far better than we might have dreamed.

Anyway, thanks again for your kind words. It's appreciated. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:22, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

discuss subpages named after user (or other author, in fact)
represents a radical departure from past practice. Custodians are servants of the community, and it has been long practice that others may comment on questions and answers on a custodian's talk page, or on any user's talk page, but especially custodians. Any user may create special rules for their talk page, such as banning particular users from the page, but such rules are not absolute; they will normally be respected by custodians. For a custodian to ban non-disruptive comments from other users may be contrary to being a custodian .... the only example I've seen of a custodian doing this, the custodian was headed for desysop. In itself, not a big deal. However, bad sign.

Now, to the question. You asked:
 * The page Bell's theorem was given subpages named after two users. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of forking such pages with capital letters (A, B, ...) because the titles look better when viewing on screen and printing as pdf. Is there a policy on using usernames as subpages? Should there be?--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 11:49, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Forking like that is a practice I developed out of long experience with en.wikipedia and then wikiversity. It's a way of avoiding content conflict. We have seen very little content conflict here, largely because of the small active user base. I forsee Wikiversity becoming more active than Wikipedia. Content conflict, if we do not set up structures to avoid it, will become routine, and so will incivility and other disruption. You can see, already, what happened from a fairly minor dispute over page names. Multiply that by a million. Subpaging was not, in that case, accepted as a solution, and the reasons for that are only beginning to come out. Normally, it works and totally defuses dispute.

It has worked every time it's been used. (The recent subpaging issues were not over forking, per se, and no username was used or suggested.)

Why the user name? That's not essential. What is essential is that the subpage be explicitly attributed to an author or organizer or manager. Consider academic practice. Are there anonymous pages in peer-reviewed journals or other academic journals? It would be extremely rare, and when it happens, reasons are given by the editors, who become responsible for that content.

A user name is totally explicit as to attribution and, then, as to an expectation of support from the community for management. It was written:


 * I'm inclined to suggest that naming subpages after users isn't helpful to anyone except the user

This depends on context. There seems to be a concept that naming a page is somehow stroking the ego of the user. It is helpful to the user, because it attributes, and edits to the page, then, that are not approved by the user create something misleading, something that would, in academia, immediately be recognized as utterly improper. That is, naming the page allows the user to develop it with no hindrance at all. It creates freedom. For deep education, freedom is an essential ingredient, is the modern pedagogical position.

Yes, this should all end up in policy and guidelines. Wikiversity's policy development was stymied by a lack of agreement and a lack of people willing to work on policy. The real problem was that the community had little experience; Wikiversity opened the door very wide. Massive disruption appeared before I arrived; I've extensively studied it. The conflict massively damaged Wikiversity, users left, the most active founder, who would have been a bureaucrat if he had merely accepted the nomination, a few months later was desysopped, became highly disruptive, was nearly banned, and was indef blocked. That founder wrote many of the policy pages, and had no clue what was coming and how to head it off. It completely blind-sided him.


 * One potential exception would be a class main page with student subpages. However, most of those have also been handled by naming the subpage after the content rather than the user.


 * That is in a managed class, an example is Motivation and emotion, which is a brick-and-mortar university class run using Wikiversity, by the professor at the university. The students are officially enrolled there. Chapters are assigned or picked, and the project is a book being built. Student names as the pagename would be highly inappropriate. However, notice a table of contents: Motivation and emotion/Book/2015. These are chapter assignments, with the student named. Interference on those pages by another student, or other Wikiversity user, if perceived as unconstructive, might result in a warning or sanction. See last year's TOC: Motivation and emotion/Book/2014. Chapters are still attributed, but ... the pages themselves do not have attribution. There is some editing by the instructor, and I see on the first listed page that another student did a little editing.

That user names would not be appropriate in one context -- a collaborative book production effort by many students, organized by an instructor -- says nothing about other contexts. We know and accept that users may write essays in their user space, and when I find a page in mainspace that is inappropriate for mainspace, I commonly move it to user space or to a mainspace subpage. Understand that former common practice was to delete such pages. Dave did get the idea, and began extensive organization along those lines. In some cases, though, the name of the user is important. We have users who are published experts, as one example. If a page is clearly on or clearly related to a mainspace topic, could possibly be non-neutral, attributing it by name can make sense. I can give many examples from academia. A lecture will be announced, always the name of the lecturer will be clearly shown. When I use usernames for subpaging, I always describe the page where it's linked. The full pagename gives the general topic, the username telegraphs that this is attributed, may be opinion, a draft, etc.

This is all experimental, but, so far, the results show: conflict that has arisen disappears. See [] for a list of subpages, where some are named. One in particular, Cold_fusion/Theory/Ron_Maimon_Theory could easily have become a content conflict. Instead, it became a discussion that actually led to agreement. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Unless you object, I will give "my" subpage a different name. Give me a few days to ponder the options.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Whether I give them to you or not, you have them. It's a wiki! If it's your subpage, you can name it "Green cheese" if you like, as long as links to it are not misleading and neutrality is not expected. Pagename conflict only legitimately arises with mainspace pages or unattributed subpages. Then we need consensus! And we have as much time as we need to work it out.
 * (If you do not attribute the subpage, except in History, then anyone may edit it, move it, etc, at will, the latter only autoconfirmed users.) Thanks. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

pages freezing
Summary:
 * flooding parameter, the system, this is all one editor. See Special:ListGroupRights, "Confirmed users" will "not be affected by IP-based rate limits." See mw:Manual:$wgRateLimits and mw:Manual:Autoconfirmed users. A workaround: create a role account. You will give away the password to your students, and you may block the account if there is any problem; Normally, role accounts are prohibited.

You wrote:.
 * Aside on a student not wanting CCbySA:Requests_for_Deletion/Archives/12, if Wikiversity participation is required for a class, and suggestions on how to handle that. Summary by Guy, edited by --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:15, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The problem at Bell's theorem seems to be resolved.

We should have more "problems" like this! Mostly resources are developed in isolation. No conflict! (But also, way too often, no depth, loss of neutrality that may not show up for years, when the original author has disappeared, and disjoint resources on the same topic but with variant names, etc. Working together, yes, there can be disagreements. However, that's why I quoted Feynman on Talk:Bell's theorem as to his experience with "great men" sitting around a table, disagreeing with each other, when, in fact, once they were finished speaking, there was a consensus and one person voiced it, and ... done. My hit: they were great men because they were capable of tolerant listening.


 * An entirely different problem arose at User:Guy_vandegrift/sandbox/01/Presidental_sandboxes, where I set up a community where students could simultaneously work on one project. As you can see, I had 12 parallel efforts by IP editors on subpages (we also had a screen that provided the entire class to see one subpage).  A few of the subpages would "freeze":  The students could read but could not edit.  We surmised that this was a protection that was triggered in order to prevent a group of people overwhelming the system.  Is that correct?  Is there a workaround? --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 10:49, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe the system recoiled in horror at the misspelled page name! (Not worth fixing!)

Yes, there is a flooding parameter. Look at Special:Contributions/130.108.111.105. To the system, this is all one editor, not many. Those edits would also look to a Recent Changes patroller as vandalism, at least some of them. Don't imagine that an RCP will look at the page supra, or even the page content, they will only look at the actual change. I looked, however, there are no blocks, neither locally nor globally. So if editing froze, this was very likely from flooding. See Special:ListGroupRights, "Confirmed users" will "not be affected by IP-based rate limits." There are other, more permissive rate limits, and custodians are, in turn, not affected by them. These limits are there for very strong cause.

See mw:Manual:$wgRateLimits, the parameter in the setup file that controls the limit. There could be a workaround, but it's probably not worth the effort. What you did creates a lot of edits that are actually distinct users, and this will cause the head of our intrepid volunteers to implode, if they notice it, creating a mess.

It's easy to see how you thought. I run into users all the time who thought creatively like that, and did things that did not appear to be against the rules, who were promptly indef blocked. The real rule: thou shalt not offend people's expectations. Or else.

If you want your students to use Wikiversity, encourage them to register an account. It will then be four days before the collection of them will be IP-based rate exempt.

mw:Manual:Autoconfirmed users. Again, the two autoconfirmed parameters are set through a setup file, not through MediaWiki namespace settings.

A workaround: create a role account. Carefully specify what it is, and that you are responsible for monitoring this account. You will give away the password to your students, and you may block the account if there is any problem, i.e., if you try to change the password and are prevented because one of your students gave the password to someone else, or left it lying somewhere, who changed the email address for the account. Your students would never be disruptive themselves, right? You can then create a new role account.

Normally, role accounts are prohibited. However, they are used for various purposes, such as by the WMF. Any custodian can block such an account, but very important: don't leave this loose end lying about. The account should be blocked if the password is known to more than one, i.e. to more than you, and you cannot change the password, and only you can check that. That account will still need to be autoconfirmed. Here, that is rumored to be four days. I am not sure what the edit count must be. Have them create a user page, it could simply say, "I am enrolled in [so-and-so's] class at [such and such institution]." And you can, for any on-wiki resource, have them sign up as participants. I've used these sign-ups, many times, to distinguish between clumsy editing and vandalism. They get extra credence if they've signed up for a resource. If I see their edits, as described, I'll welcome them, which, many times, later, allows me to protect them, because I'll see warnings, etc. in my watchlist, which currently has over 5000 pages on it.

A bureaucrat could define users as a "bot." That would exempt the user from rate limits. My opinion: given that it might take longer than four days to get a 'crat to do this, plus the 'crat might not want to do it, much simpler to just create the role account and make a few edits with it. Doing this with disclosure will be considered legitimate here, my opinion. Better, though, to encourage your students to register.

On the other hand, User:Jtneill ran into trouble over this, see Requests_for_Deletion/Archives/12. So if any student does not want to register an account, you can offer them a role account. You could have have enough of these that each student would have their own role account. I think of a user name like GVstudentN, where N is a number. So if the account misbehaves, you'd know who it was, but nobody else would. You would change the password on all those accounts at the beginning of the next term. You could block them at any time (as could another custodian). Students could register an account and link it to the old role account, and you would know if this was legitimate. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Bell's theorem

 * Actually I plan to place the entire "calculation" essay in mainspace because it is almost unique on the internet. Virtually everything on the internet falls into one of two categories:


 * 1) Words and philosophy with no calculations
 * 2) Calculations of a highly specialized nature.