User talk:JWSchmidt/August 2006 discussions

Note: this is an archive of old discussions. Please do not edit this page. Continue these discussions at User talk:JWSchmidt. There are other archives at User talk:JWSchmidt/Discussion archive.

Front page edits
Hi JW, In some contexts, I have a feel for organizing and presenting information. How do you like the front page edits I made today? Done now. (Oh, forgot to mention: The browse box needs work (indenting?) and the links section could go into 2 colomns -- but out of time for today.) Btw, I am offline this Wed-Sat -- so talk to you in a bit. Doug 18:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * In response to your comment on my talk page: It looks like the top part of the meta Example page was moved to the What is Wikiversity? page and expanded. The links on the bottom part of the page may need to be created for the current WV context. Doug 19:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Being bold
I just want to make sure no one will strike me for it, because there's being bold, then there's changing everything about a wiki to conform to one person's interest. But I'll make sure that the design will be acceptable. This isn't new to me, either: I organized all the images on Wikinews and I made a system to link all the independent article browsing networks of Wikinews. Once all the pages have been transwikied, I'll get right to work. But thank you for believing in me. Messedrocker 05:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Portals
I agree with what you say about portals filling in for where "school" doesn't really fit. So, how do you see this working - something like Portal:Music/Ear_training ? Or should it be Music_portal/Ear_training ? Until we get Metadata, our best way of immediately finding something is the navigation from Main page to your point of interest, following the links, so we'd do best to find a good solution to this early on. Cormaggio 06:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, you can either be bold and set up the Portal namespace, or create a page on Structure (or whatever), and detail your ideas there for discussion. I don't have a particular preference for a hierarchical system of content - I'd just like it to be easily accessible for both teachers and students who are looking for something specific. I can see this getting kinda messy..


 * By the way, I'm self-enforcing a period of abstinence from Wikiversity to write my dissertation - hence you won't find me around much or on IRC. Oh, and while I'm here, I like your photos on your user page :-) Cormaggio 13:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Community Discussion of Administrator Candidates
I wonder if we really need a separate page beyond the Discussion page here: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Administrators ??


 * If a few more people self nominate that are not already on the admin list which will obviously grandfather in barring any large persistent problems I can set up an initialization page linked to the main page and the existing two nomination pages to facilitate it. I am a bit concerned my acting as facilitator may damage my candidacy.  There are not exactly a lot of outspoken people willing to publicly cross the big guys at the Wikimedia Foundation at the drop of a hat.  Some people will no doubt view this as an initial negative and try to put me on some type of scout's honor or initial probation in exchange for their lukewarm support.   Anyway, since you asked and I do have the time, if some further activity threatens to flood the existing two pages for nominees I will help setup some kind of additional page dedicated to community discussion of admin candidates and try to help evolve some initial bullet guidelines for new admins at Wikiversity.  No doubt something can be quickly tailored from other Wikimedia projects to provide an initial framework for synergistic electioneering/policy drafting.  Mirwin 06:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi JW, I agree we need a policy governing admins and community buyin for all active admins. It simply seemed premature with only 5 committee/temp admins and four or five others. Still much better sooner than too much later. I will get on it tommorrow and get some drafts sloppy enough to encourage markup participation in place. If no participation is forthcoming within about a week I will clean it up and we can decide how long to wait before implementing on some temporary or official basis. If some participation drifts in I will attempt to encourage it and lobby for a longer initial temporary period (weeks not months) while further participation (and thus longterm legitimacy) is gained. Mirwin 08:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi JW, it would useful and give me a bit of credibility if you and the other Wikiversity Activation Subcommittee were to here and endorse discussing and evolving guidelines about administrators. I intend to link the page into the official policy voting as a draft policy development in progress as well. I will put a copy of this note on the subcommittee members talk pages. Thanks! Mirwin 07:25, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Regarding Admin Process: Mission Failure, I could not stimulate any real community discussion.
JW, I have concluded that any local criteria or process for legitimizing admins, bureaucrats, or stewards in the eyes of local users, particularly inquisitive newcomers, as acknowledged project leadership is pretty much not feasible and a waste of time. As I currently understand it: Stewards are either appointed by the Board or possibly some are elected from specific projects then approved by the Board I am still unclear on this from my reseach.
 * Any admin can give someone admin priveleges
 * Any bureaucrat can give someone bureaucrat or admin priveleges
 * Bureaucrats can violate privacy of chosen username to check for sockpuppeting. As an aside: We should probably check the privacy policy to make damn sure this is described effectively and that we are not promising any anonymity.  This was a serious problem at Wikipedia way back.  They were promising people anonymity and then occasionally outing someone they did not like.  This privelege is supposedly to establish credibility that elections cannot be sock puppeted away.  Obviously someone must be trusted to check the votes honestly.  So here you can see we have appointed leadership which can appoint its own checkers.  If trust is not already present in legitimate leadership it can hardly be established by these elections.
 * Any steward can delete those priveleges (and maybe give adminship and bureacrat status)
 * The bottom line is it appears that we have a buddy system initialized by the Board consistent with Jimbo's policy of extending maximum trust and assuming good faith. To have someone stripped of priveleges means clear violations of something. Local or personal criteria of the steward?  -->> Both as near as I can tell, but effectively the steward's criteria as they must be convinced someone should be ejected from the club.  Wikipedia has the Arbcom Committee but we are a long way from sufficient participation to justify that and then we need appropriate people who want to do it, I think Fred Bauder who was appointed by Jimbo to head arbcom is/was a practicing lawyer.
 * At this time I see no way to stimulate sufficient community interest and discussion to establish any kind of system different from the Wikimedia default as described above. I layed out a spread of questions linked from the front page to try to stimulate interest and was unfortunately attacked as "divisive" and had people shouting let us all get back to "real work".  Unfortunately I have a tendency to shout back and there has been no activity on that page since my defensive reaction.  Likely the page is now totally useless for its purpose of stimulating discussion of our "organizational" approach from top to bottom and designing some kind of system participants like locally.  I will check it every couple days for while but I think it is a dead issue.  Most people do not like to step into the middle of serious long running controversey.
 * It was brought home to me how flat and chaotic our leadership situation really is when a newcomer asked about setting up downloable Java applets for students use. The best I could come up with for him is check with the Foundation mailing list or the Technical mailing.  We have no way of specifying our project's capabilities beyond wiki nor any way to setup funding for such a thing or a way to resolve technical issues on the servers.  How much load is ok?  We do not know cause we have no budgetary or capacity information, no information on other projects sharing the systems, no way to analyze or change anything on a known schedule, no way to estimate any of the above.  It is merely a matter of joining a mailing list and yack yacking enough to get some attention but not too much so the unknown person who might be able to help you does not get irritated.
 * Very educational. I had not really realized previously how much my proven "project management" skills depend on picking compatible people who were willing to participate in a passionate discussion if necessary to figure out key points.  I will keep this firmly in mind for the future when picking or recruiting project teams and not get myself into a potential failure mode.
 * So for now Cormaggio is effectively our appointed "project leader" whether he likes to admit it  or not.  There is no one else capable of "validating" elections unless bureaucrat status propagates.  Project elections might be useless anyway.  If some Stewards wander in or are appointed by the Board then I guess they are the "leadership" or maybe it is the Special Projects Committee as they are the ones who will review our progress on the "research" issues in 6 months.
 * I may need to rethink my participation in this project. I have pretty deep seated convictions regarding effective leadership layered through organizations and I do not like to waste my time.     I had not really followed and assessed how the Wikimedia Foundation had been interfacing with the projects since I was on the Board's shit list and clearly not eligible for effective project leadership interfacing with the Board.  This is an amazing stack of cards.  Maybe the volunteers get enough satisfaction they can control their project destiny by being able to edit boldly and vote on local policy to participate hard enough to succeed.  Maybe not.  I noticed for the last six months en.wikipedia.org has stabilized at about 1,300,000 articles.  I saw some casual claims that they have been sorting out the cruft and deleting it.  Now I wonder if new participation (where I assume creative new article starts come from) has been falling off?  Maybe there are only 1,300,000 "real" encyclopedia topics in the human mental universe?  lol  Anyway it is my conviction learning processes and data is quite a bit different from target reference data.  If people cannot control their own learning environment or depend on what it will be in the future I wonder whether Wikiversity will grow and thrive.  Obviously I will be back to check but maybe it will not be my efforts invested to help make it happen.  I have always kind of liked sure things and my faith in the viability of this project environment has now been seriously shaken.  Good luck with it. Mirwin 03:45, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

welcome to the world of education. it's very interesting to me how this situation is actually a very accurate reflection of the general disarray that edu is in nation-wide -- no consensus, alot of passivity, and a kind of deadedning chaos. so let there be disarray and let's just proceed. having materials online for anyone to use for free on any subject is in and of itself a very important thing, and having ANY collaborative learning on ANY topic is also a good thing. to have it all centralized under wikiversity is also a good thing. the general plan for wikiversity is very bold and ambitious, but heck, that's fine. let me know what you want me to do. i can help write content on any of these pages, if you want. i can certainly mentor students in the humanities when they come along, and i can mentor teachers too. --Smithgrrl 03:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Adjusting
JW, I went ahead and changed that when I read the policy regarding all that earlier. Thanks for bringing it to my attention though. I guess I'm still trying to adjust from the playfulness of the whole project at the old place. Atrivedi


 * My ideas weren't always popular over at the Wikibooks/Wikiversity, but I did put a ton of work into it. I don't know how many edits I have, but I'm sure there's a ton.  For a while I was the only one holding down the fort over there.  On Wikipedia, I haven't added/edited as much, but I have spent some time combating vandalism, but with the care they ask us all to do it with there (recognizing that some folks are just trying to learn how to use a Wiki, etc.).  Even though some things have taken a long time, I have yet to find it boring.  I think the only reason I slacked off a little with this project on Wikibooks is because nothing had changed for a long time and there were no people interested in the courses.  Hopefully we can get people excited about learning from what we create here.  Atrivedi


 * Ah, no no, no thanks needed for it. I really just enjoy doing it.  Atrivedi

NPOV Policy
"Maybe that one sentence could be the short form of the Wikiversity NPOV policy" Someone else will have to propose it. I have a history with NPOV from back when it was a million paragraphs (<<-- OK, very slight hyperbole) of self contradictory garbage which allowed Larry Sanger (the philosopy trained Bomis employee who cofounded wikipedia) to step into an edit war or crowd of angry POV pushers and pick his favorite answer to hand down from on high. The existing "NPOV" policy at Wikiversity was not really all that bad except it is mistitled. NPOV is sacred and sacrosanct to the Wikimedia Foundation regulars. It shuts down brain function in many. It is used maliciously in attempts to censor by others. Jimbo will not budge on it (nor should he) as it gives him effective precedent to step in and shutdown obvious propagandists attempting to infiltrate and takeover his sites and dependent projects. No longer such a big deal for established projects but still critical with small ones. With large participation the mainstream users shut them (the POV infiltrators) down. Personally I think well labled and identified POV and even highly deceptive propaganda has a place at Wikiversity. Take the North American NAZIs for example. They are good at targeting poorly informed and functioning groups and recruiting them. When they come to a small wikiversity they are a major hassle and problem. Jimbo thunderbolts from on high. When they come to a large Wikiversity, the mainstream scholars and energetic opponents can take their material and analyze it, add verifiable facts, interact with anyone who wanders in and is recruited but fails to runaway from the rest of the information and community and suddenly the whole local NAZI party except the crooked con men and propagandists are at serious risk of exposure to sufficient learning to dissolve it individual and even entire cliqes and subnetworks at a time. Further, previously sheltered people who were good targets stand and excellent chance of absorbing enough verifiable fact and reasoning to be innoculated against them. I think the existing Wikiversity "NPOV" policy could be relabeled "Scholarly Ethics" or "Expected Wikiversity Learning Conduct". The sentence you like added as a footnote, and as you suggest a direct link to Wikipedia NPOV (it is the bedrock of their editorial policy for the Wikipedias so they can be trusted to keep it maintained effectively now as a community) at the first statement of "objective" or "unbiased" of "NPOV" or labeling expectations. I will check the author (sebmol?) and leave them a short note and link here in case they are interested. Mirwin 05:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Aha! You were originator beginning to tailor something useful around the bedrock.  I will change my vote but leave the negative comments regarding wikimedia NPOV for valuable congnitive dissonance and trust the future editing will smooth off the majority of confusion for the majority of our future wiklars Mirwin 05:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Help, I'm being impersonated
Somebody grabbed the account Awo I lf002 and is doing havoc. Do we have an admin around here? Awolf002 00:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for blocking that account. Can I tag it as impersonation, like it is done at Wikipedia? Awolf002 00:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * sure --JWSchmidt 01:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Mentors
Thanks for your note earlier, John - and just to repeat what I already said - I'll need mentoring myself too :-) Cormaggio 16:45, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucratship
Hi John, I nominated you for bureaucratship - as I said I'd do earlier. Cormaggio 17:12, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

User Names
thanks for your concern about the professor chaos moniker (that's butter's alter ego in south park, but i get that it's problematic in the wikiversity context). i am now just smithgrrl. great to be on the deck of this amazing cyber-ship of babel. --Smithgrrl 19:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

no problem! happy to do whatever's best for the consortium. --Smithgrrl 20:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

the fan fic stuff looks amazing; i have a former student who is miss fan fiction stargate. i'll tell her, if she isn't on there already...--Smithgrrl 21:56, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Welcome
Welcome to Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 18:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I doubt I'll be doing much, content-wise, but I thought it might be advisable to claim this username as mine here too, and to establish a presence as most developers tend to do. robchurch | talk 19:05, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Custodians

 * "right now, Wikiversity mainly needs people who can contribute to building Wikiversity content; for example, by working on learning projects. I think that custodian candidates should demonstrate (by good editing) their commitment to the Wikiversity project before expecting to become a custodian."


 * Fully agreed. Cormaggio 08:34, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Dropping of deparments
Hi, I meant about "dropping of departments" that some people have start moving naming of departments from "Subject/Topic: Department of X" to "Topic:X". I meant that a number of schools now have the topic usage in place. "Topic" seemed awkward for the "Department" context. But it is not awkward in the case of Topic:X as in Topic:Physics. That is all. No pages beind dropped. Just noticed that the toipc renaming was well underway :) Reswik 16:33, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

"Division" and "Area"
To respond quickly: Division has a similar meaning as Department -- structural. Some universities use Division as a main subsection of a school -- like Division of Physical Sciences.

Area is a more flexible term. Was trying that at Sociology. If we use any structural sounding term, like "department" or "division" then I think those pages could actually be better placed in a "school" or other structural sounding namespace.

If we use a "Topic" namespace then some way of referring to Subjects as areas of study or subjects of study is perhaps a way to go -- more like a scholarly association or network than a department. We could even call it the sociology association (or network) -- inviting different and flexible kinds of interaction from a dept naming. Reswik 16:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * [Also posted at my talk page]: This is not a strict distinction: It seems that there can be at least two kinds of structure that could be organized -- hierarchical and network based. Topic and area inviting network organization.  Brick-and-mortar terms such as school and division/department invite hierarchical organization. Just a thought: I wonder if it would interesting to restart and develop topic (department) pages using a topic/area/network approach? I might make up an alternate naming page/policy to suggest that. Depends on how much time it takes! Reswik 16:57, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * (I am also posting version of this to main colloquim page): I am concerned that the current naming conventions page may prematurely encourage the unnecessary expansion of a heirarchy of substructural elements. Hence I created this alternate policy: Naming_conventions/Network_naming_conventions.  It calls for strict limint on heirarchy of school elements (school, area, project) -- encouraging horizontal spreading of study areas and the creation of interdisciplinary areas that draw on other areas -- hence diversification and cooperation of efforts.  It would be more messy and make for longer lists of areas -- but that is the nature of networks. It is an alternative. Reswik 17:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the network of categories will receive less development than the departments. I think we should consider if the network of areas should be developed first as it could encourage a different approach to developing content and perhaps a quicker focus on creativity. We are week into this? It could be considered? Reswik 17:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Japan
Everyone's ignoring me so, where can I create a lesson or article or whatever on beautiful Japan?68.96.23.7 20:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Lessons go in the main namespace, like this: Exploring Japan. --JWSchmidt 20:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!68.96.23.7 20:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi :) I request Custodianship on Wikiversity. I have been on English Wikipedia for quite a while, and have around 1,500 edits. I have my own wiki that I mess with and test things on, so I am familiar with the tools. I have Vandalproof and Rollback priv's on english wp, so I am trustworthy. I would be happy to be under the full watch of a mentor or two, and am happy to learn new things. I would mainly watch Recent Changes, New pages etc for vandalism; and would protect pages and temp block users where necessary. Thankyou. --Deon555 03:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

To the candidate: Please indicate who you will accept for your mentorship
 * Custodians offering mentorship:
 * None yet


 * Hi JWSchmidt, Thanks for your note back. I will contribute more and hopefully you'll be able to mentor me in the future. Thanks --Deon555 02:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you
I cannot thank you enough for handling all the tedious organization tasks singlehandedly. Messedrocker 07:01, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * [[Image:WikiThanks.png]] Ditto that. Stellar! --HappyCamper 19:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, you sure have contributed a whole lot. Thanks! Rayshan 21:11, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Naming conventions
Ah, you noticed that edit? :-) I've read the proposal quite a few times already, but I haven't got an intuitive feel for what we want from it yet. Maybe I'll hang out on that page a bit more. --HappyCamper 19:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * JW, If we can develop and justify soon (based on existing objections) changing the namespaces to something like:
 * (conceptual alt) Area -> Subject -> Topic -> Lesson
 * or: (conceptual alt2) Area -> Field -> Topic -> Lesson
 * or: To whatever reduces or removes the school/topic dissonance and problems with school
 * Then I would help with substantial editing of pages to support such a transition. I have a few more days of vacation before I get swamped doing stuff. Reswik 22:44, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You asked: What are the advantages of above (or something else)? Just what has been mentioned:  School/Topic is a cognitively dissonant connection. School is quite variable in meaning and invites everybody to form a school. The leap to Topic doesn't feel correct at all. Of course, Area/Field have variability but could be defined ahead of time such that Area relates to the 10 or 20 or 30 largest study areas in the University and Field for any academic grouping contained with in Areas (schools) (with hierarchies possible) and topic to an individual course of study.  This seems to flow better cognitively for me than School/Topic.


 * Also, I wrote the previous comment quickly to get the idea out. Any new structure would have to be run by the community for comment - perhaps on short time frame if something clearly helpful was put together?  Reswik 23:03, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * So many issues to remember... One of the main problems with the way Topic is used now as a namespace is it is used for Departments and such - structural groups - not for courses of study. We need a structural sounding namespace term to replace Topic or push Topic down to the course of study level at the very least. That could be Field or something else.  It would be nice to replace School at the same time with something more neutral or flexible - Area comes to mind. Spatial metaphors are good for cyberspace, eh? Reswik


 * I replied to your comment at my talk page in context. One of the main points is the last point above. Reswik 00:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Is the use of school namespace being misapplied with media studies and psychology being included in school namespace and Social Sciences being moved out of that? Reswik 02:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I just reread the naming convention policy page. I read it a second time. I see that the above follows the direction things are going. The page needs editing down in the topic section to clarify this. Reswik 03:00, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Regarding your comments of schools at Wikibooks: perhaps fine, perhaps not. How much of that legacy should determine wikiversity? Portals are another issue I am concerned about.
 * Portals seem to be at the top of a structural hierarchy now and not a space for networking categories now (at a top level anyway)? Or are they? I removed my objections to the current structured system because I thought creative cross-cutting of content in creative ways would happen in the portal namespace -- such as with develpling social research and social theory portals (which cut across humanities, social science, medicine, professions (law, architecture) etc. Or am I wrong about the major Portals being top of the structure hiearchy now?  If not, and portals are the top structure hierarchy, are major schools needed on browse page?  If not, what is going to be the main space of the network playful major categories? Or are portals both structural top and network top? If so, that is an interesting approach and something to consider. Reswik 03:11, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, so it is the later is seems: Major portals can be both top of the structured hierarcy and major portals can be for major interdisciplinary fields, like social research. Why not? Fine.
 * Sure, ok, all sorts of schools (many of which will be departments) will be there on the browse page -- like psychology and media studies -- but with that being the case there will be eventually a hundred and more schools (departments) up there -- but no problem with that -- there is room i guess. I'll move sociology now to the school namespace. (That is one thing I was wondering about.) Reswik 03:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * To reply here as well: What I mean about 100s of schools on browse was: Per the wikibooks page, there will be at least 50 schools (major schools) up on browse. Some new or not universally accepted or known subjects/departments will think the wikibooks list doesn't seem to be an exhaustive list. So, there will probably be at least a 100 "major" schools eventually on browse. But, 100 is not a bit deal - 100s was exaggeration. Calling 50-100 schools "major" seems strange to ear when we had just a dozen divisions as top level schools a day or two ago. But those are over in portals now, so it is not strange in the current context. The new image on the browse page works better - to indicate that departments don't go under "major" schools (really, it is top level schools, which fit now under portals). Reswik 08:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Question
Hi there! User:Stevenfruitsmaak asked me a question here, but I'm not sure how to best answer it. Perhaps you are more in the know? If you could help him out at your convenience, that would be great. I think he might be interested in importing some other stuff from Wikibooks too. Cheers, HappyCamper 02:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I did it manually because only admins can import pages, and I saw a pile of pages waiting to be imported and decided not to wait for that. If it's ok for you, I'll start a template for manual moving (but not just right now).--Steven Fruitsmaak (Talk) 13:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

You have a new student
Hi JWSchmidt,

I've enrolled myself in the Cell biology course. As a med student I already know tons on that topic since I've had that course. Actually, I'm more interested in how Wikiversity works, so as an experiment I want to learn about this topic. Of course, I still have many things to learn about cell biology and have forgotten a lot already.

So, where and how should I begin my journey? (please reply on my talk page)

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Talk) 18:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Machinima
Hey, is Wikiversity the Movie going to use Machinima, or are you going to do live performaces recorded by users?--Rayc 01:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I think there are plent of people who play video games who could put their skills to good use! It really depends on what types of users we get. I think we should keep the requirements for entery into a learning project low.  Video games or video cameras. Did you see the 3DTheater.org project?--Rayc 03:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Main page redesign
Hello! You commented on the proposed main page design, so I'm inviting you to view a modified version that I created. If you have the time, please post your opinion at Wikiversity talk:Main Page. Thank you! &mdash;David Levy 08:38, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Some help
Most of the work related to importing files from Wikibooks and the meta-wiki does not require that you be a custodian. If you would like to help, contact User:JWSchmidt.

Contact! :). If you point me at some instructions, and ensure I have the necessary privs, I'll bring some stuff across.  TimNelson 12:32, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so it seems like the steps you're following are:
 * Import school page/talk page (requires admin)
 * Correct namespace for school/talk pages
 * Replace entire school with boilerplate, and then put the information from the (old) school into the boilerplate
 * Link to known sub-material
 * Place in appropriate categoies, including "Pages moved from Wikibooks"
 * Repeat with all sub-pages
 * Come back to this page, and ensure links from "parents" exist (eg. Browse, the appropriate Portal, etc)

I took the liberty of creating a new Category:Pages needing cleanup after Import. My thought is that we could do it as follows: 2. Non-admins can do the rest of the work; I've written a process for this on the Category page (based on the list above)
 * 1) Admins import a page, and add it to the category above (can this be done with a stub with a shorter name?)
 * 2) If they feel it needs moving to a different level (ie. Topic:Classics -> Department of Latin Classics), then note it on the page

Unfortunately it's my bedtime, and I'm unavailable tomorrow, but hopefully we'll be able to sort some of this out, and then I and others can use it to help you.

TimNelson 13:38, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

In response to your message on my page, I'm trying to figure out the answer to the same question :). My advice would be to let me worry about it -- it's near the top of my  Todo list. TimNelson 10:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've told Atrivedi about the duplication of material -- he seems active, and is the best person to be able to tell the difference between the different pages which exist. TimNelson 13:18, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikinews podcasts
in response to:

video news programs for wikinews" <-- Do you know if they ever had any luck doing podcasting for Wikinews? --JWSchmidt 02:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * In video no. both attempts at video didn't really get off the ground much after the pilot. in the first time Broadcast The contributor (DV) left (over a lot of issues with wikinews, quite a few have been fixed, see his talk page if your curious, none of these were related to video though), then later MrM tried to restart it with and tie it into other various medias of wikinews in what he called WNN, which really didn't get off the ground. He also left a couple months after that (See arbcom and RFA archives for more details on that if your curious). In total DV had a pilot (which I'm in the process of finding out if its PD and trying to get on commons) and two episodes (If you want to see it I can email it to you, the link is dead on the page), MrM had one pilot (I'm not entirely sure where that went, but it was basicly moving text on a screen).


 * However in other areas of Wikinews media including print and audio we do have podcasts with mixed sucsess. Print is currently produced as a daily international eddition (Screenie), and a weekly New Zealand eddition. Print has a podcast of the international version (Not really sure if you'd technically call it a podcast) but its a podcast of PDFs so that kinda of limited its popularity (I believe) as most people really wouldn't find a podcasts of PDFs intreasting, but Apple did list it on intreasting new podcasts of the week for a bit and that boosted its popularity. There is an OGG podcast of Audio Wikinews, however the majority of podcast players don't support OGG Vorbis so it limits its popularity that way.

Note I don't know these things for 100% certainly. n:User:Cspurrier would be able to answer your questions on Print, and n:user:gumboyaya on Audio, better then I could. Bawolff 04:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Imports and custodians
Hi John, I just thought I'd add a note here, seeing as you're doing trojan work in moving work from Wikibooks and getting it in order here. Since you're monitoring this process closely, please feel free to recommend people to become custodians or offer to mentor people who have already offered, as you see fit. I'm not saying we need new custodians - I'm simply leaving it to you (and others) to make that decision. Just let me know if you need me to do anything here - and, I promise, I'll get back and fully into everything by the end of September. Cormaggio 11:33, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've now made SB Johnny a custodian - thanks for letting me know. Yes, I'd seen that Help with importing pages from Wikibooks page - that was one of the main inspirations I had for sending you this message. And as far as spreading the word about learning by doing etc. goes, well, that's one of the main messages that needs to be heard by all newcomers. I think we need to really work on making Wikiversity understandable and usable for the newcomer - I think we're starting to get people now from all over the web, so this is really important. I try to encourage new users that I see, and I've been answering queries by email also - I really should put it all into one of our introductory pages sometime soon.. Cormaggio 17:41, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

this is great. i will email some of my students about the project. some are grad students, some are very smart graduates, and so on. they'll build some great content in creative writing, lit theory and who knows what else...--Smithgrrl 03:11, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Thanks for your imported page help
Ok. Now I'm marking subpages from School_of_Literature_and_English_Studies and noted that b:Talk:Wikiversity:School of Literature and English Studies/Engl 3800 was missed :) sorry for my English 555 14:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. 555 15:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Learning by Doing question
I saw you made some comments regarding Learning by Doing, and that Wikiversity has adopted this model. Since I didn't see anything about it on the Policies page, I came here to discuss it. Feel free to move this entire message to eg. Wikiversity_talk:Naming_conventions before replying.

At the university I went to, all lessons were one of three types:
 * Lectures: learn by listening to authority/notetaking
 * Tutorials: learn by discussion
 * Practicals: learn by doing

Can I suggest that we have the same setup here at Wikiversity? My intention here is to let people choose whichever method suits them best. Possibly we should even have more methods of learning, possibly based on Theory of multiple intelligences. Basically, that theory says that different people learn different ways. Ignore the fact that Gardner had to redefine the word "intelligence" to make it mean what he wanted to refer to -- the theory makes sense to me (I just don't like his terminology :) ).

Anyway, bedtime for me.

TimNelson 14:10, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

--

Ok, I'm a drongo (nong, dumbkopf -- substitute local insult as preferred). Thanks for that yellow "Where are the courses" notice. I didn't really "get" what Learning Projects were until I saw that. So I've merged my Unit boilerplate into your Learning Projects boilerplate (because they were essentially the same thing). Thanks for the links to the other stuff; I've added a link on the Policies page, to help reduce confusion. I also didn't really understand "learning by doing" until I read some of the stuff on the Learning page. I've added some links to that (which will hopefully reduce future messages like mine, above). I've also moved some of the instructions on the learning projects boilerplate page to the Talk page under "Directions for use", and then linked to that from the Boilerplate page.

Thanks for your patience.

TimNelson 04:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

What Wikiveristy is Quiz
See if I got this right, it was kind of hard to come up with chalenging quesitons: User:Rayc/ProposalQuiz--Rayc 15:33, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Learning Project
a learning project that leaps to mind off the top of my head is a war learning project, in which all wikians are invited to engage in collaborative research articles, creative work, cyber round table discussions and the like about the history of war as a cultural practice and relate that research to the current wars going on throughout the world.

another thought: does Wikiversity have a MySpace? Could that be an important consulate in cyber-space?--Smithgrrl 04:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

"a war learning project" <-- Great idea! I'll start War.

"does Wikiversity have a MySpace?" <-- Good idea; new myspace account for Wikiversity.--JWSchmidt 06:38, 30 August 2006 (UTC)