Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/September 2009

Template assistance
I am unsure if transwiki/transclusion(?) is the right word but I would very much like to have a template in Wikiversity that is the same as a template in Wikipedia, eg. The template is a Tibetan language template that automatically links to Tibetan script and Wylie Wikipedia articles, comparable to the template in Wikipedia. I am happy to do it if I may just have some guidance. I bumbled my way and created one Wikiversity template for Tibetan which is at the beginning of the Topic:Tibetan main page. Also if I am going to have paragraphs of Wylie or Tibetan script should they be in a field marked as Tibetan and Wylie respectively somehow? Would this maximize browser intelligibility? I await your advice. :-D B9 hummingbird hovering 06:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I have imported Bo and Bo-wo but they will need some cleanup to fix the broken red links. I'm not sure if you want to point those links to wikipedia or create your own pages here.  Let us know if you need any help in customizing the template for use here.  --mikeu talk 11:05, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikiversity Communication Widget
Since we are still a comparitively small group, but one that may be suffering from large group communication issues, I wonder if it makes sense to create a widget from the IRC software. Here is something along this idea: User:MichaelBillington/IRC  --JohnBessatalk 20:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

What Wikiversity is not
That things are going slow is a good thing IMHO, as it allows for maturing of ideas. But if they slow to a stop--that's bad. We put huge efforts into this writing, but then never voted. Can we just "ram" it through the process, assuming there are no objections to doing that or to the writing itself? This goes as well for other policy documents that are still in "limbo."--JohnBessatalk 19:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know about "ramming" things through the process, but yes. That document and its companion What is Wikiversity? have been "brought into the context" of current discussions as have other products of the earlier consensus here at meta and Wikibooks. The current team seems to be focused on Community Review/Proposed process at this time. --CQ 20:08, 3 September 2009 (UTC) [ quinobi ]
 * Well, whatever you want to call it, I think that the "plate has to be cleared" before moving on to the "next course." Possibly a concensus to either accept, table, or reject (or table instead of reject) policy ideas combined with a restrictive queue of, say, three simultaneous policy discussions will keep the table--or plate, or palette, reasonably clear.--John[[Image:bessa66.png|12px]]Bessatalk 21:06, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The section below was an attempt to prioritize which pages should be worked on first.  The CR page seemed to be the most important to queue up.  I'll add your suggestion to the list.  --mikeu talk 13:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The Wikiversity process
Proposed code for the process template based on guideline and policy.

(noinclude code ommited)

Rendering:

The current content at Process is only an example. A page, processes based on guidelines and policies can be created to follow through. Thoughts? --CQ 15:51, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The proposed template seems reasonable to me. Would certainly be relevant in places like the Colloquium and at the CR page itself (though I think we need the policy about CR separately).  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 02:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and created process with:


 * Keep it simple. -- dark lama  12:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That may be a little too simple, your Darkness. My thought was to make process inviting and comfy to encourage participation and an atmosphere of academic freedom. See Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Strategy ... Notice confluence with Wikimedia-wide process, quality. Other "directives" are on the way "down" from on high. I'm not saying we should "suck up" to WmF but I'm hoping a spirit of cooperation can increase Wikiversity's visability and relevance within the metacommunity. We have unique liberties here that other projects can't have, especially once our process is well designed. --CQ 15:01, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * How about:


 * -- dark lama  15:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 18:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The wording is fine by me. I would like to point out that official process is a link to Processes which is not "official" at this time.  --mikeu talk 18:42, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * How about:


 * -- dark lama  18:59, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Close enough for Rock & Roll. --CQ 20:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Policy roundtable
There seems to be a general feeling that this is a good time to try to move forward on some of the stalled policy development pages. Please indicate which of the listed pages you would like to see the community focus our attention on first:


 * 
 * 
 * Usurpation
 * this is part of Username --CQ 14:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Bot editing rate
 * Community Review/Proposed policy‎
 * actually after some thought, I think this should be the first step. --SB_Johnny talk 18:21, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * this one as the first to focus our attention on. --mikeu talk 13:27, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Username guideline
 * --CQ 14:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Disclosures as Guideline
 * What Wikiversity is not
 * add a suggestion...
 * add a suggestion...

See below for the next round. --mikeu talk 17:44, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

learning from Nomic project
A new learning project has started at Learning from Nomic with gameplay occuring at Talk:Nomic and Nomic. Please join in! --mikeu talk 21:08, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Spanish
--Aleyska 00:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC) Hello I am interested in learning to speak spanish fluently


 * I left a note on your talk page about Topic:Spanish. Maybe someone who is more involved in that can help out some.  --mikeu talk 00:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Policy, process, etc. vs. the roundable: maybe time to skip along?
I thought the "roundtable" thing was a good idea (still do), but wasn't the point of it to focus our attention on one particular policy (or whatever) at a time? It's good that there's such interest in the topics now, but these things can easily bog down.

Since the comments on the CR process/policy/etc. seem to all be in support thus far and none of the discussion below seems to have objections to the content (as opposed to what we're calling it), should we maybe just call it "approved" for now and move on to Policies, guidelines, and processes? --SB_Johnny talk 17:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree. I suspect that we might get more input from a broader cross section of the community if we focus our efforts on one topic at a time.  Otherwise, people will have trouble figuring out where the current discussion is happening and we'll get less discussion within each topic.  We can then pick a new topic of focus next week, or every two weeks, to move through the list.  Please share your thoughts on Community Review/Proposal.  --mikeu talk 17:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The Jade Knight (d'viser) 18:28, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * --CQ 20:52, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅, marking official now so we can move on to the next topic. --SB_Johnny talk 12:13, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Just a reminder that we are currently looking for input on Community Review/Proposal. Please read the page and discuss at Wikiversity talk:Community Review/Proposal. If there are no objections in a few days we can wrap it up and move on to the next item in the list. --mikeu talk 00:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Little Red Schoolhouse -- for real!
I may have an opportunity to restore a one room school house, that is restore the entire community of knowledge.

In short, there is a rich guy next to the church I attend who wants to restore a one-room school house that is presently an unused "sportsman's club." I suggested to the rich guy restoring the "community of knowledge," that is the school itself, and he liked the idea, but balked because he got resistance from the sportsman's club. (Sportsmen do the unsporting sport of wandering around the woods shooting innocent wildlife during Autumn, when I like to hike the most.)

Well, maybe not so short. The politics are such that two girls, daughters of one of the sportsmen (who is actually having misgivings about blowing away the woods creatures), love teaching, and nearly all the women in the church are likewise teachers. There is both professional and financial support,and a family-related motive to restore the building.

Since the rich guy is a businessman, then he will probably want to see concrete documentation resembling a business plan, proving on paper that the school would be successful, at least on paper. One-room school houses were of course successful, helping America to grow to be the big power that it is today. I believe it is the type of structure that schools have become, so large to be void of empathy, that is eroding America, both morally and economically.

Naturally the church will want to be involved, which would seem to be a problem since schools are supposed to be secular, but the church actually supports Darwin's second brainstorm, that human morality is descendant of the natural affection of wild creatures for their young, eliminating what is usually a huge headache.

Wikiversityian involvement would be two-fold. Creating the proposal, and documenting the success. Wv would be a natural system for the school's education program, which traditionally involves the older children learning the material well enough to teach the younger children. Also important is that one-room schoolhouses teach students how to benefit the community, rather than prepare students to be human capital (Joel Spring, American Education). In this sense, the traditional schoolhouse would be a vehicle for what is now called non-traditional education.

I have written extensively on this topic, including Middle School Science, and I really need to catalog my educational writing. (Personally I think I am headed to school counseling rather than teaching.)--JohnBessatalk 20:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Username policy in light of SUL
Community Review/Usurpation of usernames has been opened to keep this discussion centralized. Please continue the discussion there, and feel free to copy & paste any comments from below that you would like to see included.

There is an attempt at a discussion on SUL Usurpation of usernames, the accounts attached to which have edits, at Wikiversity_talk:Changing_username. However, the discussion is far too thin (the Crat who started the discussion hasn't been back since his first post and I'm the only other commenter). The gist of the matter is this: Our usurpation policy says you can't usurp a username that has edits and this is defended by saying it's a GFDL issue. However, this position pre-dates SUL. Meta does not suggest such an overriding concern at Unified login and on those projects which have developed SUL usurpation, there is a substantially more liberal policy for SUL usurpations than for ordinary usurpations.--BewareofDoug 07:13, 13 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I think assuming good faith is required on the part of the person who originally created the account locally too. I think names should be first come first serve without regard to who may be using it elsewhere. I think unless a person agrees to give up the username a change should not take place. I think any person who wants a SUL account where there name is not available on all projects should request a name change for there own name instead. I think the practice of forcibly renaming other people with "(usurper)" in the name is a very bad one. What gives person A more of a right to a name then person B? How would you like it if you returned to Wikiversity to find you cannot login because you've been renamed "BewareofDoug (usurper)"? I think usurpers can damage projects by upsetting people who return to find they can no longer login and use a username they registered, just as I imagine not being able to use the same username everywhere can be upsetting for some people. I think there is no way to keep everyone happy. I think usernames should be no big deal and that people make a bigger deal out of being able to use the same username on every project then it should be. -- dark lama  12:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that more input is neeed on this topic. Usurpation is one of the items on our policy roundtable discussion above. I'd like to invite everyone to comment at the central discussion at Wikiversity_talk:Changing_username. --mikeu talk 12:16, 13 September 2009 (UTC)


 * This would probably be better handles as a CR case, since there's no clear policy about it. --SB_Johnny talk 12:53, 13 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree. We really need more input from the community on a decision like this. I have started a Community Review/Usurpation of usernames to draw more attention to this discussion. Please post new comments at that page, and feel free to copy & paste anything from this page that you feel the community should be aware of.  --mikeu talk 13:31, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Rich-text editing on Wikia
I noticed that rich-text editing has been rolled out on Wikia: http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:New_editor based on FCKeditor. Anyone know how far off is it for WMF projects? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 03:12, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * With regard to this, see the strategy proposal: WYSIWIG default editor. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 02:08, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikiversity strategic planning
There are a number of proposals at the http://strategy.wikimedia.org Wikimedia strategy site that relate to Wikiversity. Please take a moment to review these pages. --mikeu talk 02:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The Wikiversity specific proposals are at: Wikiversity --mikeu talk 14:07, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikiversity as key OER site
Brion V. and I attended an Open Educational Research Search Discovery workshop in July. Representatives from a few of the large repositories, archives, and educational institutions were present.

There was an unanswered question that came up: Is Wikiversity interested in including a complete overview of the world's [notable] educational materials?
 * Subquestion: does the answer vary based on whether you're describing all notable materials, or simply free ones. If the former, then the list of notable non-free materials would be a good place to start looking when you're deciding what new free materials to create; if the latter, highly abbreviated lists of non-free materials could be left in their own ghetto and linked to their wikipedia pages where appropriate.
 * Subquestion 2: How does notability here differ from that on Wikipedia? (there, any individual publication or material would need to satisfy notability guidelines for publishers or authors; or be the flagship of a popular website; however even best-selling highschool textbooks which clearly satisfy some of those guidelines don't have entries or categories.   (Try finding any of the popular history textbooks reviewed here anywhere in WP, for instance.)

Noone had a solid answer for how we would all search for, discuss, and share the best available OER works two years from now. None of the other possible sources for such an overview had a clear handle on scalable community discussion, flexible classification, or linking into and association with specific courses and projects.

If this were considered within Wikiversity's scope, there could for instance be a page per notable module/course/activity (or a group of them), with links to repositories and archives that contain that resource. (some might be only at wikiversity, some might be at a dozen different public repositories, each offering its own slightly different features.

That would be a large, cleanly described task: every new archive you find can be described in terms of the % of its collections that are unique to it; and the metrics it provides to demonstrate how widely used / notable / distinct each of its materials is.

Sj 23:21, 25 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I think Wikiversity is interested in including everything the world currently knows, people would like to know, or would like to study. Wikiversity tries to encourage people to explore, learn and research whatever they want. Learning and research possibilities are limitless. I think that includes notable educational materials. I think the answer does not vary because AFAIK Wikiversity has no notability requirements.
 * I don't know what form "a complete overview of the world's [notable] educational materials" would take. Maybe representatives from OER Search Discovery could start a learning project like "What is educational notability?". Maybe they could also collaborate to create a learning project like Notable educational materials in which contributors could limit the learning project's scope to whatever definition of notability there is consensus for and use subpages to organize the overviews. -- dark lama  15:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

News
Please contribute to News. Do you have a new project that is starting? Remember to watchlist the page to keep up with what is happening. --mikeu talk 14:19, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Categorization
I have a problem - no category for multidisciplinary topic / course type

Genezistan 04:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Is this for Reflective thinking? We can create a new category if an existing one does not fully describe the type of resource.  --mikeu talk 17:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Realize that you can categorize pages in multiple categories. There is no need to limit yourself!  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 18:41, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Display random image from commons
One for the mediawiki freaks :) - how could a random image from commons be shown on Wikiversity? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 12:39, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * An extension could do it, or javascript. -- dark lama  15:00, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Philosophy
What is the ultimate test for say, achieving the highest degree impossible to philosophy? --Mystyck 02:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC) PS- I made an odd observation today. From my perspective, I saw that tonight was a half moon. But then I observed that we can only see half of one thing. Next month to this day is a quarter moon. And from this I asked two questions =If theres light on the other side of my perspective, who can see it? =Is this a Coincidence?

Follow my learning path... at Wikiversity
User:Darklama has created some buttons that can be used on external websites (such as Facebook, blogs, etc.) to draw attention to resources here at Wikiversity. Feel free to use this button and link to your favorite page here at wikiversity. Or create your own button! --mikeu talk 15:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A smaller version with larger text would be useful. Lemuel Akins 20:37, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * He has created a second button that can also be used. --mikeu talk 22:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Curious - what image editing software do you use, DarkLama? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 03:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

help please
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic_talk:Wiki_business_ventures Sir Soapy


 * Sir Soapy, you left a message on my talk page about this earlier, and I notice you still haven't replied to that message. Do you want us to remove Wikademia from the spam blacklist? Well, maybe you should explain why it was put on that blacklist in the first place and why you think it should now be reviewed for removal from that list. After you do that maybe somebody could help you out. Thanks, Trinity507 23:27, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, please remember to sign your posts with four tildes so that this conversation can be more easily followed. Trinity507 23:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Due to abuse of multiple accounts (see Wikiversity:Community Review/User:Wikademia), the User:Sir Soapy account has been indefinitely blocked. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:31, 30 September 2009 (UTC)


 * All right, sounds like a good decision to me. I had no idea what the Wikademia thing was until I went back and read some of the archives, but of course that was after this whole conversation. :-) Trinity507 02:37, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Please help integrate proposals for assessment content and assessment review into MediaWiki
I am having trouble with http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Assessment_content (which was started before I even knew the MediaWiki Quiz extention existed) because I realize now that the review system, which is described seperately in http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Develop_systems_for_accuracy_review needs to be much more tightly coupled or the two parts will be much less useful.

Please see for a set of states in a state transition flow, followed by a list of fields with some really important ones missing. I updated the question about the necessary database structure on w:Talk:Database_normalization but I wanted to ask for help here, as there seems to be a greater quantity of volunteers eager to make something of free interactive educational content here.

Specific questions:

What fields need to be added to each question in order to support accuracy review?


 * The answer scored as incorrect which is challenged as correct, among other things. 99.25.113.203 15:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there a Village Pump/Technical forum here where these questions would be more appropriate? --99.35.130.5 18:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Please see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Quiz -- You probably want someone with Tim Starling's level of MediaWiki/SQL expertese for this. The enwiki VP/T may be more appropriate for this question, but let people here try to answer first, I guess. 98.210.193.221 20:11, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * McCormack is the person who developed Quiz, here. He's not been around lately but you might get him interested in working on this. I'm doing some similar work for generating dynamic content with MediaWiki but I'm mostly doing with the #time parser function so far, but was planning to get to some Test and Quiz topics further down the road. Looks like it would be wothwhile. I'll dig a bit deeper. CQ 16:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I'll try to figure out the additional field variables for being able to review a newly submitted question item. 76.254.67.112 20:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any more interdependencies in the data structures or dataflow which would suggest any more database complexity than what's already described. However, readers have been making some odd challenges and have asked for diagrams on http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Develop_systems_for_accuracy_review -- I think it's fair to say that both need a formal source data syntax and semantics, as well as copious diagrams before we try to get a set of interoperable implementations. 98.210.193.221 17:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

survey says...
According to en-wv pages hits the most popular pages during the month of August were:


 * Psychology
 * Great Repeal Bill
 * Blues basics

Take a look at the list linked above. It is a handy way to see what topics and pages are most in demand by visitors to wv and suggests areas where we might want to focus our development efforts. --mikeu talk 14:54, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Another project that I have just started is Google Search and Wikiversity. This project will study how people using Google search are brought to Wikiversity.  There are already some interesting results.  For example, Principles of Management and Principles of marketing are two of our pages that goodle searchers visit after finding those wv pages in a search.  Please participate or comment if you find this topic of interest.  The goal is to both learn how Search engine optimization works and also to think about how the results can help us develop Wikiversity by informing us of high visibility pages that newcomers are viewing.  --mikeu talk 14:14, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * This is very interesting. The most popular pages are not necessarily blue-ribbon pages.  One the the pages listed is Amateur radio (8 hits/day) which I though was exceedingly sparse and almost a stub, but it does show a need for amateur radio education in the WWW.  Should we assign pages like this for development?  Can we somehow influence brick and mortar educators to give Information Society credits to enrolled students who research and develop such pages?--John[[Image:bessa66.png|12px]]Bessatalk 19:26, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This is actually what caused me to adopt Portal:History; I discovered it was WAY more visited than School:History. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 18:32, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I have to say I studied some psychology before focusing purely on my computing courses, I may be able to contribute something to the psychology resources, although my knowledge is mostly basic. Still if wikiversity rises close to the top of a google search result for psychology related articles, all the better! Lysander89 10:24, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Publication of bachelor thesis or master's thesis
Hello! I'm completly new to Wikiversity but I have some experience in other Wikimedia-projects. I have noticed that you allow original research here (as the only project, I think?). Is publication of bachelor projects and master's thesises welcomed here? If so, how does it work? Is PDF acceptable? How to categorize the uploaded file? Should links be added from somewhere in the project? And what about non-English publications? (I have noticed that a Danish Wikiversity does not exist.) If such texts are not welcomed, do you know where they would be suitable? --Nillerdk 08:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Nillerdk, yes, your thesis would be very welcome. PDF upload would be fine/easy, perhaps with a dedicated mainspace page containing meta-info and abstract? If its in Dutch, it could go on http://beta.wikiversity.org. Category? Well, try whatever the subjects are - we can help out. For an overview try Browse and Portal:Research. Hope this helps. Sincerely, James. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 11:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the answer. So an English bachelor thesis or an English master's thesis is within the scope of en.wikiversity.org. So far so good. It seems that beta.wikiversity.org does not allow file uploads. So where do a thesis in another language (not being one of the few languages for which a xx.wikiversity.org exists) belong? Nillerdk 12:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Great question. Theoretically at beta, but you point out a problem (I wonder if someone more familiar with beta can help you?)  Does there happen to be a Topic:Danish here?  If so, that might be one place to link to it from.  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 18:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe upload to, then link from beta? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 06:34, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The last time I checked, you can upload .pdf files to Beta. What was your problem?  Filesize? Hillgentleman | //\\ |Talk 17:25, 18 October 2009 (UTC)