Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/March 2023

Request for comment: GreySmith Institute pages

 * Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:GreySmith Institute (1504 pages!!)
 * Special:PrefixIndex/User:GreySmith Institute (21 pages)

The GreySmith Institute portal is a huge group of pages created by User:Graeme E. Smith in mid-2009, describing the projects and activities of a research institution specializing in neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

However, the "institute" doesn't actually exist outside these pages. None of the pages in the portal that I've looked at so far go into any sort of real detail on the topics they describe; most of it is just a huge maze of notional "labs", "divisions", and "subdivisions" of the institute which were meant to carry out specific pieces of research, without any actual content to back them up. And Graeme stopped editing in 2010; the pages have been dormant ever since.

My concern with these pages is that they're effectively a trap for visitors. The complex structure of the portal means that it takes a significant amount of clicking around to realize that there isn't any content behind any of the links.

What do other editors feel the most appropriate way to handle these pages would be? The options I see are:


 * 1) Leave them in place. It seems unlikely that the content is going to improve; Graeme E. Smith hasn't edited since 2010, and it seems unlikely that anyone would be able to step into their shoes to continue the project. But they aren't causing any overt harm either, just disappointment.
 * 2) Move the remainder of the portal to User:GreySmith Institute. The portal contains a large number of internal links which will be broken if the portal is moved, but I don't see any practical way to avoid that. It's unlikely to get improved in userspace either, but at least it'll be out of the way.
 * 3) Consolidate the portal to a minimal number of pages. I actually have some scripts partially written to turn the portal pages into a structured outline. I'm not certain the results will be particularly useful, but at least they'll be a lot more compact than the portal is right now. I've created a sample of the results at User:Omphalographer/sandbox/greysmith.
 * 4) Delete the portal entirely.

What are your thoughts?

Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 06:03, 26 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I find the use, or more likely misrepresentation, of "GreySmith Institute" to be inappropriate. I would delete the Portal and move any remaining GreySmith content that exists in main space to User:Graeme E. Smith user space. I'm not opposed to moving the portal to the individual's user space instead of deleting it if that's what others would prefer, but I think a mischaracterization of an individual as an entire educational institution isn't appropriate here. Others who have tried something similar during the past 10 years or so were ultimately blocked and deleted. The only reason GreySmith Institute remained was because of its inactive legacy status, and no one else expressing similar concerns. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:30, 26 February 2023 (UTC)


 * This is too big for me to move/delete, and sufficiently dormant to justify deletion. As a matter of policy I think prod is best, even though the delay is almost certainly unnecessary in this case.   I have no objection to deleting whenever you wish.-Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:22, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I have no remaining objection to deleting the portal pages. After a bit of digging around, I have found a couple of content pages under that hierarchy, but none of them seem to have any substantial educational value, and I don't think anything of value would be lost by deleting them along with the rest:
 * Portal:GreySmith Institute/Courseware Forum
 * Portal:GreySmith Institute/CLARION Architecture Description
 * Portal:GreySmith Institute/GreySmith Virtual Architecture/Page3/GreySmith VA Description
 * Portal:GreySmith Institute/Student Union/Request Course
 * As far as I'm aware, every other page under that hierarchy is either a navigation page, a component of one of those navigation pages, or a wrapper page to display a single file (e.g. Portal:GreySmith Institute/IDE Architecture/IDE Architecture Diagram). With this in mind, I'm much less concerned than I initially was about any potential loss of valuable content. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 21:14, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Reminder: Office hours about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use
Hello everyone,

This a reminder that the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department is hosting office hours with community members about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use.

The office hours will be held on March 2, at 17:00 UTC to 18:30 UTC. See for more details here on Meta.

Another office hours will be held on April 4.

We hereby kindly invite you to participate in the discussion. Please note that this meeting will be held in English language and led by the members of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team, who will take and answer your questions. Facilitators from the Movement Strategy and Governance Team will provide the necessary assistance and other meeting-related services.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team,

~ JPBeland-WMF (discuss • contribs) 16:08, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Transcluding Filtered Tables
Hello, everyone. Do you know of a way to get wiki tables to be partially transcluded based on content (just like they are filtered in Google Sheets or Excel)? That would be very useful for projects that cut across each other, e.g., cross-cultural ones. Let me give a simplified example with health resources between countries:

A unified table is very useful for coparisons and understanding differences between countries, while having it (entirely) used in specific countries' pages would be nonsense. Having it transcluded would solve this problem and would encourage people to update the general table as they update country specific information, and so everybody wins. That's not my exact purpose, but was the first simpler example I could think of.

Thank you for your attention to this!

User:ManaraKM 14:42 (UTC), March 02 2023


 * There should be a way to do this with Wikidata. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:28, 2 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid that Wikidata is unlikely to be any help here. That project is more focused on cataloging structured data about entities, e.g. that New York City (Q60) is a city, that it is located in New York, and that has an area of 1,213 km2. It isn't a general-purpose database.
 * In principle, Extension:Semantic_MediaWiki or Extension:Cargo might be closer to what ManaraKM is looking for, but neither of those extensions is available on WMF wikis (and that isn't likely to change). The best solution here may simply be to restructure the resource in such a way that data doesn't need to be duplicated across pages. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 20:52, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Omphalographer Have you seen things like Wikidata: Countries and Temperatures or the various pages under Research in programming Wikidata? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure, but that's pulling from items (countries) and properties (maximum temperatures) that already existed in Wikidata's data model, and which represent facts which are independent of any project. If you're trying to build a table which consists entirely of data which already exists in Wikidata (or which could easily be added by working with existing items and properties), that's no problem, but I don't think that's what ManaraKM is trying to do here. Reusing the same example from above, it's unlikely that Wikidata could be convinced to add subjective, project-specific properties like "where to get help". Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 02:09, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much @Dave Braunschweig and @Omphalographer. I'm not sure if Wikidata will solve my specific problem, but I'll give it a try. Your conversation has helped me to get a good sense of what the possible issues could be. All best for you! ManaraKM (discuss • contribs) 15:30, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Relativity live video recording
I'm thinking of recording videos to accompany the Wikiversity course Special relativity and steps towards general relativity, with the first recording on 10 March 2023. These will not be official brick-and-mortar university lectures, but I'll generally record them on nearly the same day as the brick-and-mortar university lectures, so the content will be fairly similar, with the difference of having a possible online audience rather than a face-to-face audience. There's no point just watching/listening to the videos or live participation - you'll have to spend time doing the exercises if you really want to learn. Special relativity does make sense as long as you develop your intuition properly and have the minimal mathematical background, and take the time to rewire your thinking using both calculations and intuition together. Wikipedia content on the topic is extensive, and the aim is to optimise complementarity of our different WMF knowledge resources - not duplicate them.

Anyone interested in participating live is welcome to add a comment at Talk:Special relativity and steps towards general relativity, including which time slot(s) would be suitable. I'll post the bbb URL there if there's at least one person (apart from me) likely to participate. Boud (discuss • contribs) 17:48, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikimania 2023 Welcoming Program Submissions
Do you want to host an in-person or virtual session at Wikimania 2023? Maybe a hands-on workshop, a lively discussion, a fun performance, a catchy poster, or a memorable lightning talk? Submissions are open until March 28. The event will have dedicated hybrid blocks, so virtual submissions and pre-recorded content are also welcome. If you have any questions, please join us at an upcoming conversation on March 12 or 19, or reach out by email at wikimania@wikimedia.org or on Telegram. More information on-wiki.

Board of Trustees have ratified the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines
Hello all, an important update on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines:

The vote on the Enforcement Guidelines in January 2023 showed a majority approval of the Enforcement Guidelines. There were 369 comments received and a detailed summary of the comments will be published shortly. Just over three-thousand (3097) voters voted and 76% approved of the Enforcement Guidelines. You can view the vote statistics on Meta-wiki.

As the support increased, this signifies to the Board that the current version has addressed some of the issues indicated during the last review in 2022. The Board of Trustees voted to ratify the Enforcement Guidelines. The resolution can be found on Foundation wiki and you can read more about the process behind the 2023 Enforcement Guidelines review on Diff.

There are some next steps to take with the important recommendations provided by the Enforcement Guidelines. More details will come soon about timelines. Thank you for your interest and participation.

On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,

JPBeland-WMF (discuss • contribs) 21:09, 24 March 2023 (UTC)