Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/March 2016

poll until March 31: Proposals for closing projects/Move Beta Wikiversity to Incubator
See Proposals for closing projects/Move Beta Wikiversity to Incubator: "This poll is timeboxed and will be open until March 31 and the option will be selected by simple mayority." Please read What to do with this proposal?, and VOTE. Thank you! Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 14:02, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Apparent Bug with Delete and Undelete/Restore
I've opened a task at the phabricator, url=https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128677, to describe an apparent bug with Delete and Undelete/Restore. If anyone else has tried to use either of these programs and it has not worked, please feel free to add the apparent problem file either here or at the phabricator. My first two under Undelete/Restore and the first under Delete are already in the task at the phabricator.


 * 1) Undelete/Restore - File:Armoutline.jpeg, I received this message: "Error restoring file: The file "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-deleted/c/r/p/crp4gfop4mlwvqeiwyquncqflb8ztwp.jpg" is in an inconsistent state within the internal storage backends". --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
 * 2) Undelete/Restore - File:LTTtemplate.jpeg, Error message: "Error restoring file: The file "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-deleted/p/a/c/pacmv4reultlw4duz05sjlhrmow3j67.jpg" is in an inconsistent state within the internal storage backends". --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * 1) Delete - File:01 Project Preparation alt.png, I received the message: "Error deleting file: The file "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-deleted/k/9/a/k9art0b8dzdhxjty717rlz46bliwu3z.png" is in an inconsistent state within the internal storage backends". --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * User:Krenair closed this task as a duplicate of T128096: Unable to delete, restore/undelete, move or upload new versions of files on several wikis ("inconsistent state within the internal storage backends"). The problem or bug is beginning to appear WMF-wide. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:14, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The bug has apparently been eliminated both for Delete and for Undelete/Restore. If anyone experiences a similar problem subsequently, please enter the file name here. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:31, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

School:Music composition
Hello !

Why does School:Music composition appears on the page of Category:Portals?

--Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 13:18, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Because it has at the bottom. If you look at page history, it was intended to be a portal, but in 2013 someone moved the title page only to the School: namespace. I've moved it back to Portal: so that it is somewhat functional again.
 * I would ask, however, whether this needs its own portal, or if it could be redirected to Portal:Music. Portal:Music gets twice as much traffic, and even that is only two hits a day on average, vs. one a day for Music composition.
 * Back in the 2006 to 2008 period, hundreds of small School:, Topic:, and Portal: pages were added with the idea that they would ultimately draw supporters. They haven't drawn supporters, and they don't draw viewers. See Category:Proposed deletions for a list of School: and Topic: pages that have almost nothing but boilerplate content and less than one hit a day.
 * By the way, creating internal links using title is preferred to using external HTML links. Internal links show up on What links here. External links do not. If you want to link to a category, use category (colon in front). The same technique works for linking to files. Without the colon, they are included rather than linked.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:19, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the links... And thanks a lot for your explanations.

You have made a really good job on the page, but I wonder if it has to be a portal instead of a simple school or even a topic which is a part of the school of Music and Dance...  I don't want to change everything ; I would just like to improve the structure and the organization of music stuffs.

Please consider my contributions just as proposals.

--Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 21:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Portal is a standard namespace on all wikis. People seem to understand portal. I have mixed feelings on School. A few are popular. I'm not sure if they are popular because they are on the home page or because people coming to Wikiversity are actually looking for a School. But the overwhelming majority of School pages draw no interest. Topic pages don't work at all. They don't draw interest, they confuse users who think it should be a topic like any other resource page, they aren't searchable with a standard search, and use of the Topic namespace has blocked installation of the Flow discussion tool. I am slowly working on eliminating Topic pages, moving them to Portal, main resource pages, or proposing deletion, depending on content. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:52, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I thought a topic was the standard type for departments. Ouch... Well, I am ready to help you as much as I can. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 08:10, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The use of Topic for departments was the original intent. But I've found very few topic pages that actually generated interaction among users. I haven't done a scientific study of it, but most departments appear to have either only been a department of one, or they were only a department of one at a time. Users spent a lot of time developing a division or department infrastructure to match their institution or vision, but not much time developing resource content. There's a lot of placeholders and boilerplate text, and few visitors on a majority of the topic pages I've been reviewing.
 * If you'd like to help, try using Special:Random/Topic. This will pull up pages in the Topic: namespace. Look for pages that either have no value and tag them for proposed deletion with, or pages that are content rather than department and move them to main resource space. If you find a portal, you can tag it with  . It's easier to let me do the moves, because I can use custodian rights to move all subpages at once. Likewise, if you come across content that should be merged, tag with  and I can merge the edit histories and the content. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:50, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah. I created a lot of that School and Topic namespace stuff as did a few of the earlier custodians. We got a bit carried away when it was all pristine and new. Several fundamental systemic errors entered and became headaches. A lot has changed and I have been quite absent since those days. (Special:Version - wow! ) If you see School and Topic pages that I created and am the only contributor to, please go ahead and delete, move, merge relentlessly. (Be bold - assume good faith) I have limited Internet access these days, but I have email notifications on and I do pay attention. Thanks all for the great work! -- CQ (discuss • contribs) 15:32, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we could keep the concept of School at least for the structure and organization of the Wikiversity. For the topics, if they are useless, I can help you to eliminate them. But I don't think the unique reason has to be the number of visits per day. IMHO, we should also consider, the interest of the text. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 14:24, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Planification
I've created a page for topic review at Topic Review. It lists all top-level topic pages with date created, last edit date, total number of edits (not including bots), total number of editors (not including bots), length, and average daily views. There's also a status column that indicates if the page has already been proposed for deletion. This page can be used to sort by the different columns to quickly find topics to save, move, or delete. This should help in the cleanup process. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:05, 4 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Wow, there's a lot of them! My first thought scrolling through the list was to propose deletion on all with daily views < 0.5. The only topic pages I visit occasionally are Topic:Astronomy, Topic:Physics, and some related to biochemistry and genetics. I have tried to get second or third opinions by visiting these department pages but only a few are active. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 19:45, 4 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I checked Topic:Fashion, listed on Topic Review as 0.50 views/day, for the latest 30 days and it has 21 hits which is 0.7. This suggests that using a simple marker like daily views < 0.5 may not be a good idea. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:40, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The Topic Review Daily Views are based on October 1 - February 29. Averages are what they are, but anything averaging less than 1 view per day is not a significant resource. Popular resources average more than 100 user views a day, and anything in the top 1,000 is averaging 8+ views per day. At less than 1 view per day it's two orders of magnitude off on the interest scale. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:38, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for Topic Review : it is really excellent ! Is this page to be updated manually ? Do you think that maybe some topics may be useful for nodes of navigation in the structure of the Wikiversity ? Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 14:34, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I can update the page by bot. I've been removing pages that are deleted or redirected so that it is more of a current task list. Page history differences can be compared if someone wants to refer back to the original list.
 * I think the Topic namespace is redundant and confusing. We have School and Portal, both of which also serve as navigation nodes. School denotes a more typical college or university structure, while portal may be used for any subject.
 * Separately, the Topic namespace is used by the Flow extension. Flow itself is now on hold, but anyone coming from a Wikipedia experience will be confused when they encounter Topic pages. Eliminating Topic and switching to just School and Portal should be less confusing for users. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * OK for me. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 17:07, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

While popularity is an important parameter, the shear number of departments or divisions overwhelms even the largest university. In addition, most of these aren't resources. They are descriptions of university departments. This suggests reduction by generalization. Topic:African languages would be better off perhaps as a lecture on African languages from the school of language and literature rather than a department, for example. But, redirecting the topic to such a lecture would not be desirable.

Concern for the future may override current popularity or trends therein. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:21, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

As another example, consider the school of ethnology. It has six subdivisions by continents and each subpage, e.g., School:Ethnology/North America, has or may have very low popularity while the school itself in the last 30 days has 40 hits. All of these divisions and their topics may be too low in popularity to remain. A simple conversion from topics and subdivisions to lectures without redirects may create a lot of red links on the school page, but this might stimulate creation of needed resources. How easy would something like this be for a bot? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:55, 6 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It's very easy to do by bot. I have resisted that so far because I haven't found any consistency across the pages yet. Some are resources just named incorrectly, some should be merged into resources, some should be redirected toward resources, some should be portals, some should be proposed for deletion, and some I just delete on sight as having no educational value.
 * What I would say that I can do is program the bot to either read a page or respond to tags. If you want to make a list of what should be moved to where and with redirect or without, I can read the list and move them all. If someone wants to tag pages with or , I can do the moving and deleting. If there is community support to delete the proposed deletions, I can have the bot do all of those. Or, we can wait 90 days and then have the bot do it. But it does need very clear rules of what to do. With clear rules, it should be able to do it. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:19, 6 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I've been looking at a few more of these. Some have a combination of department text mixed with resource text. I also like what user Thierry613 is doing! Unfortunately, many of these topic pages have portions that would be good in a resource, then the rest of the Topic page can be deleted. Topic:Abenaki is a good example. The resource portion is great and very interesting! The rest is a waste. A move with text deletions would work out well. Many of these may require manual effort. Perhaps user Thierry613 can go through a lot of them over the course of a year. If the user is interested in Curator tools, I would endorse. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 05:03, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I simply began processing topics from the oldest Last edit to the newest one. Unfortunately, estimating a page's relevancy can not be done by a bot. But I don't bother in processing topics manually. There is 1086 topics ; if we can process, let us say, about 20 topics per day, i.e. 100 / week, it will be done in about 2 months and a half. Easy !
 * If it can be helpful and more efficient, and if the community does agree, it is OK for me getting curator tools for a limited time (time enough for cleaning Topics). Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 16:49, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Deletion tag
Should I change the date each day in the tag ? --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 06:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)


 * No, the date allows it to expire in 90 days, so that it may be deleted without further discussion. Changing the date would prevent the proposal from expiring. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:35, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Further discussion
See the page https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Thierry613&oldid=1529354 (--Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 13:40, 14 March 2016 (UTC))

From the oldest Last edit to the newest one
I have reached the year 2015. It has begun to be more interesting and more complex. I have changed (Little question : shall one rather say : I changed ?) with the Daily views... --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 17:13, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

From the smallest Daily views to the biggest one
Reached Daily views of 0,23. Met already some topics which deserve to be kept, as resource, portal or merged to another page. Maybe deletion on all with daily views < 0.5 is too drastic ? What are your opinions ? --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 11:16, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The goal is to eventually empty the Topic space. But views alone shouldn't be the only measure, because users wouldn't typically be able to find articles in the Topic space. Content worth saving should be moved or merged. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:07, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * OK. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 15:53, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

List processed
I have finished to process the topics list. There is probably still left some difficult cases.

Dave Braunschweig, what is the next step ? --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 08:51, 19 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your hard work! There are several next steps:
 * Others should review your efforts by going to Topic Review and reviewing the proposed deletions, checking to see if they contain any content which should be preserved by moving or merging with other portals or resources. You might review them again yourself, as your perspective on what to keep or delete may have changed as you learned more about the overall content.
 * I will continue to work on the merges and difficult cases as time permits. Others are welcome to join me in this effort.
 * We wait for time to expire on the proposed deletions. We can clean up some of the content that was moved while we wait. I'll see if I can add moved topics back to the list with the new destination listed for the status.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. It's important to have several reviewers, if possible. Thierry613 --109.11.116.44 (discuss) 22:46, 19 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Just FYI but I've been doing # 1. It's great! Some of the descriptions used for the topics add rich text to lectures and resources here. For example, see Agronomy and Psychology/Lecture. If you like I can add references, but the topics themselves needed to be deleted. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:14, 19 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The correct approach is to merge the Topic page into the resource by merging history. That way, the original author receives credit, and all of the content is in page history for anyone who wishes to refer back. I've already completed dozens of merges. Note that Thierry613 has offered to do this if supported as a curator. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

School of Music and Dance
I know it has changed several times, but what do you think of having separated schools for music and dance ? Thanks --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 10:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Let me play Socrates here. This isn't specific to music and dance. It could apply to all performing arts, for example, or all sciences, etc. What is the purpose of a school? What are the advantages to having a separate school? What are the advantages to having a combined school? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, the lone question I had is : What do prefer most of contributors, because I don't want to impose my own opinions to everyone else.
 * Advantage of a separated school : versatility, mostly when there will be (are ?) a lot more of music resources.
 * Advantage of a combined school : contacts between contributors of both sides
 * Then I return to my first question (what do prefer most of contributors ?)... And I don't know... Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 15:17, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting question. Based on my review of the various schools and topics, I find there are generally two types of contributors here: there are those interested in organization, and those who are interested in content. Those who are interested in organization rarely contribute much beyond organizing. They'll create a new school or a new topic and discuss how things should be, but don't often follow up creating courses, lessons, or learning projects. Those who are busy creating good content have a reason for doing so, and are busy doing that and less interested in the overall organization. They prefer to be left alone to create their content.
 * My thoughts on separate schools are practical. When a school or department may be created at the whim of one individual, we end up with 120 schools and 1,000+ topics, the majority of which average less than one viewer a day. They may go for almost a decade without any updates. I would prefer a much smaller and more inclusive organizational structure that could be maintained more effectively. I could see where a School:Performing Arts would be useful, and be unique and different from School:Visual Arts, for example. But if the purpose of the school is forming contacts and gaining contributors, I would want to cast a wider net than just Music or just Dance, or even Music and Dance, for that matter.
 * My vision would be for Wikiversity to have a limited number of schools (less than 20) that group academic areas, and then have separate portals for each field of study. So, Portal:Music and Portal:Dance, but School:Performing Arts would be my vote. This allows the versatility you are seeking at the field level and the collaboration of like minds at the area level. I think it is also more consistent with the real world, where schools are collections of fields gathered together to coordinate and simplify administration, and the portals approach appears to work for Wikipedia users and contributors. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:34, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, we should have the following structure :


 * School
 * Portal
 * Department
 * Resource

and for example :


 * School:Performing Arts
 * Portal:Music
 * Rock
 * Classical
 * etc.
 * Portal:Dance
 * Departments...

Is that correct ? --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 18:15, 7 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I see it as:
 * School
 * Portal (department)
 * Resource
 * Which does lead to the example outline you provided for music. I'm not necessarily opposed to more departments. We should be so lucky as to have so many contributors that they need a separate place just to discuss a particular genre of music. But it seems unnecessary at this point. The school allows collaboration across performing arts, and the music portal allows discussion and coordination of all forms of music. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:10, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * OK --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 18:15, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Music categories
I have seen quite strange things in music categories, the hierarchy and the subdivisions, some wrongly categoryzed files (from my point of view), etc. May I try to reorder some of them ? --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 10 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I would recommend something along the lines of Outline of music. As I've been working through other subject hierarchies, I've found the Wikipedia "Outline of ..." pages to have already had vigorous debate and reached consensus on the outline for the given subject. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:22, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok. Thanks. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 10:13, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Open call for Individual Engagement Grants
Hey folks! The Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) program is accepting proposals from March 14th to April 12th to fund new tools, research, outreach efforts, and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), IEGs can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space. Also accepting candidates to join the IEG Committee through March 25th.
 * Submit a grant request or draft your proposal in IdeaLab
 * Get help with your proposal in an upcoming Hangout session
 * Learn from examples of completed Individual Engagement Grants

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 23:01, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Single use template
We have developed a template that is a subclass of. This is for use with files that we do not have a license to reuse. The discussion that brought this about can be found at Community Review/Fair Use. Comments, questions, criticisms and opinions are most welcome! I will start using it on some of the files in Category:Files with no machine-readable license. That's one neat feature! It takes the file out of this category. These will be listed here (at least a few of them, especially from different categories). What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:46, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Examples
Each of the following examples and others can be found in Category:Single use files.


 * File:119-Reflections.jpg, author: User:TMcCormick31.
 * File:119-Rotations.jpg, author: User:TMcCormick31.


 * File:User Sebmol.jpg, author: User:Sebmol. The Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0 author supplied was used to try to upload this file to Commons. The CommonsHelper transfer failed because this file has already been deleted from Commons. Here, using Template:Singleuse takes this file out of Category:Files with no machine-readable license. Template:Fairuse is another possibility. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:32, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * File:Save page.png, author: User:JWSchmidt. The author supplied Template:GFDL-self was used to try to upload this file to Commons. The CommonsHelper transfer failed, received "ERROR: Warning was-deleted : Save_page.png duplicate-archive : Save_page.png".


 * File:12-1.svg, author: Heejun Chung. The author stated "In case this is not legally possible: anyone has the right to use this for any academic purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:54, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * File:12240080 10205143636613944 3236422460620291551 n.jpg, author: Shazza. Source of file is a .com. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 05:09, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * File:162649 483237484033 582964033 5588155 3875283 n.jpg, author: Chayanee. This file is used on a user page. While fair use files are for educational and research resources in resource space and not for use on user pages, using single use may allow selfies on user pages so that Wikiversity may be more of a social network as well as educational and research .org more like a brick-and-mortar university. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 05:49, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your opening statement that "This is for use with files that we do not have a license to reuse." It should not be used on any files that already have a license, such as GFDL or GFDL-self. Taking files out of Category:Files with no machine-readable license is a separate issue from files needing license information. By definition, files eligible for a move to Commons wouldn't be appropriate for single use. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:48, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * While I agree, I wanted to show that single use also can be used with files that will likely be deleted on Commons if I upload them there. This assumes we want to keep them. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:23, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It appears that File metadata cleanup drive/How to fix metadata describes the changes necessary to resolve Category:Files with no machine-readable license. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:12, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * This may be good news! I'll take a look. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:23, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The File metadata cleanup drive/How to fix metadata mentions several items of interest:
 * adding an information template - we add Template:Upload Information but this does not take the file out of Category:Files with no machine-readable license,
 * our and  do take the files out but I did not see any of their examples in the our template software, and
 * it looks like the best way is to combine added statements to the various free license templates and to Upload Information. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:36, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The best way is to read the corresponding documentation, compare working templates with those that do not provide machine readable licenses, and then update license files appropriately. Combining is not necessary and has already been rejected by the community. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:05, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Found it! The template is within a noiclude <> in both  and  but not in. Ran a test by putting the noinclude phrase in the GFDL template and 9,000 files are no longer in Category:Files with no machine-readable license. I'll check out the others as well and perhaps add it to Template:Upload Information. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:25, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * No. indicates that the template is protected. See https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AGFDL&type=revision&diff=1531240&oldid=1515575 for why 9,000 files are no longer in Category:Files with no machine-readable license. Please don't change anything else until you have a firm grasp on which changes are causing inclusion in which categories. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:03, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I had noticed the license class but did not know you had inserted this. The template uses class="license2", and has  so I did find out that  was not the answer for all. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:16, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, changing from class="license2" to class="licensetpl" or class="licensetpl_short" does not work for in spite of  File metadata cleanup drive/How to fix metadata. This I also knew before your above comment. Please feel free to make a note here when you've changed something about 3 hrs before so that we all know what's working. Apparently, something else is needed in addition to a license class change. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:52, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Good idea! Checking what license class is working on Commons is great. Meta so far hasn't been helpful. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:18, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

The information at File metadata cleanup drive/How to fix metadata is correct. The examples at Commons work. But it takes a lot of time to edit the license templates correctly and there are many of them. Please work on something else for awhile. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you! As an expert and published authority on failure analysis, it's always great when an accomplished IT expert steps up and handles what in this case turned out to be more complicated than initially expected. Kudos! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 18:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

License tags have now been updated to include metadata. There are 546 files remaining in Category:Files with no machine-readable license that will require manual review for either information correction, license addition, or deletion as unlicensed. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:28, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Individual Engagement Grant proposal
On meta-wiki, I have proposed Curation of learning projects, resources, course, and other efforts here hopefully for recruiting several volunteer curators. I have found or am working on curating Upper Limb Orthotics, North Carolina World War I, Creating Dynamic Lessons, Gastronomy/Food in antiquity, Sport/Volleyball, Category:Possible copyright violations, and CIVICS so far. Anyone interested either in participating (as a volunteer) or as an advisor, or manager (you are welcome to list yourself on the proposal and ask for a small amount for your efforts), please feel free to comment, criticize, or join this proposal at its presentation. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 19:26, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

There is an announcement occasionally appearing at the top of the page regarding Wikimania. If anyone is interested in going to this to help recruit Curators for Wikiversity, I will help you formulate your proposal. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:46, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Osmotic Acquisition
Hi all! I've been working on some VARtech (virtual and augmented reality) stuff in real life, and it occurred to me that wiki content might be channeled through an api like apparatus to display and animate in a headset display. Would the wiki elves be interested? The thought is, say I am learning Calculus or French, the Wiki content is streamed to my headset, converted, and displayed as an animated progression of the information - like automatic lectures or something. A true LEARNING MACHINE!!!

Any thoughts? I'm lost on how to propose such a thing to the wikipeeps...


 * You can create a project proposal at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ . This may be related to Open Linked Education as a basis for the API. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:55, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
 * See Sonic user interface for a similar idea proposed nearly a decade ago on Meta and here at Wikiversity. Along those same lines, there's some progress evident by the Wikiradio (tool) project at meta, too. See m:Category:WikiRadio_stations. When I get the resources together, I hope to greatly expand this prospect via the SYZYGY17 project and Wiki Campus Radio and hopefully involve a new network of actual college and university campuses around the planet. -- CQ (discuss • contribs) 23:43, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Curation projects
Is this project: Federal Writers' Project - Life Histories a learning resource that we should be curating? Comments, opinions, criticisms, concerns are most welcome! I'm not familiar with this project. Should I find more I'll temporarily add them here. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:15, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Here's another one that I'm not familiar with: Instructional design. It has several files missing licenses. I usually tag these and will do so for this one unless opinions for deletion prevail. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:22, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Both the Federal Writers Project and Instructional design are active learning projects right now. We should not do anything with them until the semester ends (May). Then Instructional design could be improved if we want, but the graduate students do a fairly good job of adding content. Federal Writers Project should be left as is other than page moves. They are all student essays completed for their English writing class. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:38, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict with above) Instructional design was # 15 out of 100 in Statistics/2015 Projects for hits! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:43, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It would probably do no harm to tag their files as fair use. With North Carolina in World War I, some of the students began adding licenses. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:46, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Files that have some type of source information can be added as Fair Use. If there's no source information, we can try to add source information. With no source and no way to identify a source, I'm not sure how Fair Use could be claimed. We may be able to contact the instructor for these projects, but the students who completed North Carolina World War I are no longer enrolled in that course. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:10, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * While I tend to agree, the US Code does not require that the source be known. If the file is being used in a resource such as Instructional design or the Federal Writers' Project - Life Histories, it is likely I (or a Curator) can find a source if the instructors have not indicated where these older files are coming from. With North Carolina World War I, the instructors later on indicated where the files are from so I have been able to go back and add source information with the Template:Upload Information as I curate the resource. This is why I'm taking them out of the Category:Files with no machine-readable license using . With these two new ones, I'm willing to assume there is a readily discernible source. Google search with an image works rather well! The Federal Writers' Project - Life Histories is associated with English 105 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Here "students worked with original primary sources from the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In the url is the source for the files (lib.unc), specifically the "Southern Historical Collection". The other one Instructional design is tougher. I looked at the first page and it comes from two .edu's but that's it so far. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:42, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Here's another one Automotive Technology. Perhaps we can list these somewhere else than here. Suggestions? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:59, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure of the goal here. Everything at Wikiversity needs curating. If a particular resource or project has specific needs, there are tags and categories that can be added. Those interested can then work on the pages listed in the categories. My recommendation would be prioritization. Collectively, we spend way too much time on content users never see, when there are pages receiving sometimes hundreds of visits a day that get no attention. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:41, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thierry613 Curatorship
Thierry613 has been nominated for curatorship. Please share questions and comments. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:52, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thierry613 is now a curator. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:20, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Daily Views vs. Incoming Links
Something interesting has come up as part of the Topic Review. I just added a column for incoming links. There is a fascinating inverse relationship between the number of incoming links and the number of views a page receives. Or, stated differently, adding too many incoming links to a page results in lower readership of the page rather than improved readership. I suspect this is due to the overwhelming nature of long lists of links. Too much information or too many choices causes inaction and avoidance rather than engagement. Pages are better with a few appropriate related links vs. extensive link bars of all possible related content. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:33, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Very interesting, indeed. A question : is it normal that a page can have 0 incoming links ? --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 15:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Pages with no incoming links are considered orphaned pages, and listed at Special:LonelyPages. Pages would typically have incoming links of some type, although there are situations where those links wouldn't be reported. Links from Category pages don't count as incoming links based on the software, but most of our overall navigation is based on category membership. Category membership is easier to manage and maintain, so it isn't a requirement that pages have incoming links in order to be found. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * OK. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 20:12, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Category problem
I have seen a very weird thing...

The category Category:Authors & seems to belong to... itself... So you can go on and go on in the deep depths of this category without reaching the bottom.

I don't know how to correct that, so I did not change anything. But I am very curious to know how it can be corrected. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 15:07, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The problem was the cite onlyinclude at the top of the category. That included the category in the code. Fixing it may have left out some other pages, but it eliminates the recursive inclusion. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:52, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * OK. Thanks. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 20:12, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

File:UBgWGbgSY2qCGhNxiiwxVoO G3Dh2eMd EV6eAc52WRQa!l8lPcdGVJSi89hhqiP.jpg
There is a discussion on deleting File:UBgWGbgSY2qCGhNxiiwxVoO_G3Dh2eMd_EV6eAc52WRQa.21l8lPcdGVJSi89hhqiP.jpg at. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:29, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Upload File Instructions
The Special:Upload instructions have been simplified to make it easier for users to correctly source and license their file contributions. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:58, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Research Namespace
There is a proposal to add a Research namespace (Research:) to Wikiversity. Please review and discuss. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:10, 31 March 2016 (UTC)