Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/December 2015

Community Wishlist Survey
Hi everyone!

We're beginning the second part of the Community Tech team's Community Wishlist Survey, and we're inviting all active contributors to vote on the proposals that have been submitted.

Thanks to you and other Wikimedia contributors, 111 proposals were submitted to the team. We've split the proposals into categories, and now it's time to vote! You can vote for any proposal listed on the pages, using the tag. Feel free to add comments pro or con, but only support votes will be counted. The voting period will be 2 weeks, ending on December 14.

The proposals with the most support votes will be the team's top priority backlog to investigate and address. Thank you for participating, and we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

/Johan (WMF) using MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 14:41, 1 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Question: Is it sock puppetry to discuss this vote here, or should the discussion be restricted to the wikimedia page?--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 19:02, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see how it would be sockpuppetry but I'm not sure why you would want to discuss it here rather than Meta. What do you have in mind? —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:37, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Asking people to vote (there, I did it -- I have nothing more to say.)--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 12:07, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Bots and Bits and Software, Oh my!
I'm wondering about bots and where they are running now. Before it was on the toolserver, and I know that has been officially decommissioned (much to my sadness). I think there was some sort of replacement, but I've forgotten what it was called. I also saw a request about some extension of MediaWiki someone was trying to get pushed onto Wikiversity. I'd like to assess what's doable, how long things would take, and what impact it might have. Suggestions/takers? --Historybuff (discuss • contribs) 02:35, 12 December 2015 (UTC)


 * There is Wikimedia Labs. Most bots I know of run on user hardware.  I have one, first coded in PowerShell, now in Python.  Most of the code is available at MediaWiki API.  I have some other code I haven't shared yet, but I'm open to requests and suggestions as time allows.
 * We have two open extension requests that I know of. One was to add page variables, which was at least initially rejected as a security issue.  The other is the education extension, which I believe has been rejected as a security issue pending potential replacement or redevelopment.
 * What's doable depends on your vision and who else wants to participate. What do you have in mind?  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:45, 12 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, the toolserver was a wonderful platform; I'm not sure the Wikimedia Labs fills the same purpose; but I'll take a peek at it. Lots of older bots were run from the toolserver, and that would be a cool thing to have again.
 * As far as development goes, I have this silly vision that by teaching classes on how to code, one could turn out coders that could then extend MediaWiki and Wikiversity.
 * I'm not sure what "page variables" are, so I'm not sure I could be helpful there.
 * An "educational extension" sounds neat, but also very vague.
 * Since I don't know how they are supposed to function, I can't answer if I think there are security implications. (Everything potentially does, of course; but how serious/exploitable they are is the question).
 * Everything comes a step at a time. Right now, we have to be armies of one, I feel. I'd welcome further participation, but until we reach a critical mass, I'm afraid we have to assume that we'll have single devs working on things. Historybuff (discuss • contribs) 05:01, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The education extension is described at Education extension. Somebody refused to install it on Wikiversity due to "security issues", so I kludged this using Matlab and Excel.  You need to be comfortable with Excel and also have Matlab installed so you can run the program (no Matlab programming is required). The system is a bit more awkward than the Education extension, so we should try again to get the extension installed. Combined with the fact that Curators can now protect documents, this might lead to dramatic growth for Wikiversity.  Or it might not.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 13:11, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Spiders
Hello! I need to open a page called "Spiders" to publish an article written by one of my students, but I have the following problem: the page already exists but has only a redirect to "Arachnology" which is a project. Can I erase the redirect, or how do I publish my student's article? Thanks in advance --Silviac (discuss • contribs) 19:02, 15 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's actually a redirect to Topic:Arachnology, which isn't even an article, but a department page. You might consider helping your student to publish his or her own article at Spiders rather than doing it for them.  Have the student edit the page and remove the redirect.  I recommend also adding a See Also section at the bottom of Spiders that would reference the Topic:Arachnology page.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:14, 15 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Yes, I try to encourage students to edit but some don-t have the time or just won't and this is the case here. This is exactly what I needed, I didn't know what to do with the redirect. --190.188.228.114 (discuss) 19:46, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Here is a trick for one-time student editors who don't have time to learn wikitext or install the Visual Editors: Place the  and   tags around their page. Then type your report as if it were an old-fashioned typewriter. It renders like this: **Spiders are scary bugs** by John Doe

I just learned that spiders are not bugs but Arachnids. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. P.S If they can't think of anything to write, teach them about --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 10:29, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Topics vs. Portals
I've been thinking about the Topic: namespace. It causes confusion for new users, conflicts with MediaWiki's implementation of Flow for discussion pages, and doesn't appear to be used by anyone currently active at Wikiversity. It seems to me that most of the Topic: pages could be moved over to Portal: pages instead, with the Portal_talk or a portal subpage used for departments and department discussion rather than the existing Topic: space, when such discussions arise. Is there any support for moving topics to portals? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:24, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, you did that already on some sort of Classical Mechanics (physics), and I appreciated that. Also, perhaps we could reserve Topic: namespace for unrefereed research? We can do it sometime in the future, after the space has been emptied; each time someone complains about fringe research, we put it there. I could put a few of my offbeat ideas there so the fringe scholars don't feel lonely.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 10:47, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Or, we could reserve the space for something else, like maybe someday peer reviewed work. I am just saying, don't dismantle the Topic:Subspace.  An empty closet is a wonderful thing to have.-Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 10:53, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Candidate for Curatorship: Atcovi
I have nominated User:Atcovi for curatorship at Candidates for Custodianship. Please post there if you have any questions or concerns regarding this candidate. Curators are able to manage content at Wikiversity (move, delete, rollback, protect). They cannot undelete, block, or perform other custodian tasks. See Special:UserGroupRights for details -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:14, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should put a SiteWide Notice about this? Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 22:31, 16 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if our first Curator candidate may be interested in this but here goes: I brought Template:Infobox Organization over from Wikipedia in an effort to use it here with hyperlink attribution and of course we lack here whatever else is needed to have it work here. Would our candidate be interested in trying to get this template to work? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 12:23, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'll browse the template and do some more research into the template. ---Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 12:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Subpages I need to create for my project already exist for other purposes
I am trying to create subpages for my Academic Writing project but, as these subpages need to have the names of disciplines, I find that a number have already been created for other purposes. How do I create a subpage for my project with the same names? And in some cases (for example, Architecture)I will need to add the link to my subpage to the "See also" links which are already there. By the way, the text under "Architecture" seems a sort of joke, or does it have a reason I don't see?--Silviac (discuss • contribs) 13:18, 17 December 2015 (UTC) I have just noticed how to solve this, please forget about it. --Silviac (discuss • contribs) 13:40, 17 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, using subpages is the correct approach, but there's an easier way to create the links. Rather than using Subpage, just use /Subpage/ .  The effect is the same, with much less editing effort.  Also, the /Subpage/ format continues to work correctly after pages are moved, which reduces maintenance.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:58, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Get involved in Wikipedia 15!
''This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation. Translations are available.''



As many of you know, January 15 is Wikipedia’s 15th Birthday!

People around the world are getting involved in the celebration and have started adding their events on Meta Page. While we are celebrating Wikipedia's birthday, we hope that all projects and affiliates will be able to utilize this celebration to raise awareness of our community's efforts.

Haven’t started planning? Don’t worry, there’s lots of ways to get involved. Here are some ideas:


 * Join/host an event. We already have more than 80, and hope to have many more.
 * Talk to local press. In the past 15 years, Wikipedia has accomplished extraordinary things. We’ve made a handy summary of milestones and encourage you to add your own. More resources, including a press release template and resources on working with the media, are also available.
 * Design a Wikipedia 15 logo. In place of a single icon for Wikipedia 15, we’re making dozens. Add your own with something fun and representative of your community. Just use the visual guide so they share a common sensibility.
 * Share a message on social media. Tell the world what Wikipedia means to you, and add #wikipedia15 to the post. We might re-tweet or share your message!

Everything is linked on the Wikipedia 15 Meta page. You’ll find a set of ten data visualization works that you can show at your events, and a list of all the Wikipedia 15 logos that community members have already designed.

If you have any questions, please contact Zachary McCune or Joe Sutherland.

Thanks and Happy nearly Wikipedia 15! -The Wikimedia Foundation Communications team

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery, 20:58, 18 December 2015 (UTC) • Wikipedia 15/MassMessages/Get involved • m:Talk:Wikipedia 15

Wikimania 2016: call for proposals is open!
Dear users, the call for proposals for Wikimania 2016 is open! All the members of the Wikimedia projects, researchers and observers are invited to propose a critical issue to be included in the programme of the conference, which will be held in Italy, in Esino Lario, from June 21 to 28. Through this call we only accept what we call critical issues, i.e. proposals aiming at presenting problems, possible solutions and critical analysis about Wikimedia projects and activities in 18 minutes. These proposals do not need to target newbies, and they can assume attendees to already have a background knowledge on a topic (community, tech, outreach, policies...). To submit a presentation, please refer to the Submissions page on the Wikimania 2016 website. Deadline for submitting proposals is 7th January 2016 and the selection of these proposals will be through a blind peer-reviewed process. Looking forward to your proposals. --Yiyi (discuss • contribs) 10:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The deadline for the call for proposals for Wikimania 2016 has been moved on 17th January 2016, so you have 10 days to submit you proposal(s). To submit a presentation, please refer to the Submissions page on the Wikimania 2016 website. --Yiyi (discuss • contribs) 09:30, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey
Hi everyone,

The 2015 Community Wishlist Survey is over, and now the Community Tech team's work begins on the top 10 features and fixes.

In November and December 2015, we invited contributors from all Wikimedia projects to submit proposals for what they would like the Community Tech team to work on for the purpose of improving or producing curation and moderation tools for active contributors.

634 people participated in the survey, where they proposed, discussed and voted on 107 ideas. There was a two-week period in November to submit and endorse proposals, followed by two weeks of voting. The top 10 proposals with the most support votes now become the Community Tech team's backlog of projects to evaluate and address.

You can see the whole list with links to all the proposals and Phabricator tickets on this page: 2015 Community Wishlist Survey.

For everybody who proposed, endorsed, discussed, debated and voted in the survey, as well as everyone who said nice things to us recently: thank you very much for coming out and supporting live feature development. We're excited about the work ahead of us. -- DannyH (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 21:34, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikiversity Course Management System: Question and Update
Wiki Ed is a Wikipedia LMS currently stalled for installment on Wikiversity. We should be cautious about criticizing this decision because the people at wikiedu.org seem to be extremely busy placating what 60 Minutes calls the persnickety editors of Wikipedia. Moreover, the current Dashboard is not quite optimized for Wikiversity. For these reasons, I have created this kludge:


 * Wright State University Lake Campus/Mock Course 101a

Question: The names wikiedu, wiki Ed, and Eduwiki all appear to be taken. I was thinking of calling it Viki ed, with the substitution of V for W representing the prefixes v: and w: for the two wikis. I googled Viki ed and it seems to be relatively unused.

Update: Editing the current Viki ed dashboard page requires familiarity with the Excel spreadsheet and installment of Matlab on the computer that uses it. But the program is simple enough that it could be accomplished with Python. I presume Java could also be used, but I am not an expert in such matters. I plan to attempt to use it in three courses this Spring. Meanwhile, anybody interested in trying this out as a "mock" student is welcome to enroll in this mock course. If two or more real users enroll, I will drop the three socks who are currently enrolled and let you create a Wikiversity resource on this or any other page that interests you.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:37, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I just received an email from wikiedu.org (unrelated to wv) and I learned that they are launching Wikipedia Year of Science 2016 in January. That might explain the rush to get their bugs fixed first. I'm guessing that you might find they will be more receptive to other requests after the projects gets going. In any case, I was thinking that we could do something similar, ie. a Wikiversity Year of Science. Anyone interested? --mikeu talk 21:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, we should do something, although I tend to view it as something analogous than rather than something similar. Similar triangles have the same shape but different sizes.  Wikiversity is much smaller than Wikipedia because we haven't found the right niches to fill.  I selected the plural niches because  multiple and diverse roles are feasible for Wikiversity.  Wikipedia is my primary source for: (1) fact-checking statements made by politicians, (2) learning the plot of a movie on Netflix, and (3) educating myself on science topics outside my field.  These are three entirely different functions.  We can, for the most part, each follow a different vision for Wikiversty.  I believe that someday, one or more of those visions may cause dramatic growth.  If we launched  a Wikiversity Year of Science, we should have one or more visions in mind.  I, for one, would be interested in recruiting teachers to join Wikiversity as Curators.  With the addition of an user group with easily granted powers to protect pages, we have added yet another significant difference between Wikipedia and Wikiversity.  Combine that feature with a culture that is tolerant of student-authored parallel resources on any topic, and we might find a significant niche that Wikipedia cannot fill.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:03, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I'll mention this to the Educational Partnerships Manager. I agree that recruiting educators is an important goal to focus on. When I started here I took the approach of "If you build it, they will come." That has happened to some extent, but I see many valuable learning resources here that are underutilized. Some of the Observational astronomy pages have barely been edited since they were created in 2007. Despite a prominent link from the main page there have only been a handful of participants who have collaborated on the project. My thinking now is that it is better to focus on finding teachers and students and create resources based on the needs of those learners. A high visibility Wikimedia-wide Year of Science could help attract interest to expand our resources. I tried something similar with the International Year of Astronomy, but it attracted very little interest. I'm not sure what lessons can be learned from these attempts. I'll start Year of Science 2016 as a page to coordinate our planning. --mikeu talk 20:09, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * My perspective is that there is greater interest in quality learning resources and specific titles than there is in participatory learning. Take a look at Statistics/2015/12.  Business and computer resources have the highest hit counts, followed by biology, electronics, and engineering.  Even pages with 10,000 views a month aren't seeing edits.  The successful collaborative learning projects are all based around real-world classes that are required to contribute as part of their course assignments.  So, yes, bringing in teachers who will bring their students is probably the best approach in terms of generating contributors.
 * Something else interesting is that at the end of November I added Courses to the Explore Wikiversity box on the main page. In December, Category:Courses jumped to number 13 in the rankings, while Category:Schools is still down at number 33, consistent with November placement.  Category:Portals is at number 187, Category:Resources is 207, Category:Learning projects is 130, and Category:Help is 946.  The viewers we have who are browsing are interested in courses.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, the data suggests that quality learning resources are Wikiversity's "best-selling product" (to make an analogy to a commercial venture).  Both the w:Wikipedia:Education program, as well as Education extension can facilitate efforts encourage students to write in subpages, keeping mainspace free for quality learning resources. Also, the Curator user group can be used as an incentive to bring in quality authors because this power to protect against unwanted but well-intentioned edits is easy to grant.  The parallel structure of WV resources solves a problem that often arises with WP articles on technical subjects over the article's mathematical level.  Such topics must be directed to a narrowly defined audience, and are more suitable for a wiki that encourages parallel efforts.  I think WP and WV are each capable of doing both (quality resources and participatory learning).  Moreover, in some respects, WV is better configured than WP to serve both roles. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 00:22, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking it might be worth trying to revive Google/Search and Wikiversity. --mikeu talk 13:21, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Difference between Topics and Schools?
Question says above, what's the difference between Topics and Schools? Is Schools for like "interactive" studying and Topics are like "Departments"? And I feel like there should be a policy made about the difference, as these two are quite confusing to make out. Hm.... something like Topics vs Schools, or something along the line? Thanks! ---Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 02:10, 19 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The original intent was that there were schools made up of divisions, and divisions made up of departments. There were two namespaces established, one for schools, and one for topics, with topics covering both divisions and departments.  The problem is that after almost nine years and no coordination for at least the last four or five, there is no real difference between any of these.  Up until a couple of months ago, there were more than 120 schools, and hundreds of topics.  Further complicating the matter is that in some disciplines, IT in particular, many content pages have been created in the Topic: namespace rather than main space.
 * I have begun an effort to clean up both School and Topic namespaces. My personal vision is to get down to maybe 15 to 20 schools, with the titles based primarily on Library of Congress classifications, but with sensitivity to a world-wide rather than American audience.  This approach allows the organizational structure to be viewed on a single screen without scrolling, and then what is referred to in user interface design as progressive disclosure as users drill down to a specific subject.  Rather than using the Topic namespace, I would like to see Portal: be used for the actual subject content.  I have an idea of how this can work to include both the portal concept of user content and the department concept of organizing like-minded content developers.  I don't have the template finished yet, but I've been working from one of the three-tabbed designs.  The plan is for the different tabs to support the subject, the content, and the community/development aspects. I'm hoping to have an example I can share in the next week or two.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 04:56, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
 * A good idea.
 * For the classification, what about the UDC or the Dewey ? --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 22:28, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Namespaces describes the differences in detail. Schools were intended for broad subjects like School:Physics and Astronomy and Topics were for narrow or specialized subjects like Topic:Atmospheric physics or Topic:Condensed Matter Physics. Both were meant to be the local equivalent of a WikiProject where contributors would discuss and plan the improvement of resources. I agree that it has become unwieldy and is difficult to navigate. Portals were intended as a welcoming entry for people new to wv, much like w:Wikipedia:Portals, while Schools and Topics were for long time contributors that knew their way around. One feature of this organization is that we can control search across namespaces. For example, we could setup the default for the search box to exclude "behind the scenes" work pages in the School and Topic namespaces and only return results for mainspace and Portals. Typically the portal would be at the top of the search results. Experienced editors would know to check other boxes in advanced search when looking for all related material. At the moment that does not appear to be how it is setup. The default is only the main resource space and Portals are not returned. That one minor change could improve navigation considerably. Anyway, that is a long winded exposition on how we got to where we are. --mikeu talk 02:05, 31 December 2015 (UTC)