Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/September 2017

"Filmmaking" courses
I can contact Robert Elliott to await his response, but he hasn't been active since 2008. Meanwhile, pages related to Filmmaking, like "Filmmaking Basics" and "Film editing" pages, look very dated because it tells a student to obtain a free disk after completing other courses. Also, the "Film editing" page still retains a dead external link, i.e. Template:Star Movie Shop. What to do with the pages? --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 10:59, 9 May 2017 (UTC); edited, 01:04, 25 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Please feel free to update these resources! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 12:00, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I'm not a filmmaking expert or anything like that. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 06:36, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I tried emailing Robert Elliott twice, but I received an error message saying "550 Rejected". In other words, his email is not working anymore. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 01:04, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
 * User:George Ho, I was scrolling down the Colloquium just to see what I've missed by... and I saw this. I went ahead and tried to email Robert Elliott, and for me, it said: "Your email has been sent"... How did you encounter that error that you got? I never got it, and it seemed the message I sent to him via email has worked. Let's hope he reads it. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 10:56, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was sending an email to "r_elliott@innercite.com", Atcovi, rather than "Email this user". That's when I received the error message. I tried the latter as well, but he's not responded for months. --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 18:14, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Shame... thanks for the clarification. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 01:28, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

The Mind of the Universe: open source science documentary
Dear all, I'm new to Wikiversity, so apologies if this is misplaced. I work at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, a provider of large quantities of media on Wikimedia Commons. We have recently collaborated with Dutch public broadcaster VPRO to publish raw material of the documentary series The Mind of the Universe on Commons, (see here c:Category:Media from the Mind of the Universe). The Mind of the Universe is an international tv series and open source digital platform about the rapid evolution of our knowledge. It explores the human destiny and the world of tomorrow through the eyes of great minds from all continents all over the globe. The material on Commons consists mostly of interviews with researchers and academics from all over the world, covering topics like quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, robotics and evolution. I am curious to know whether this material is of use for some of the educational materials that Wikiversity contains. The videos are subtitled, which should also help in searching through the (long) videos to find appropriate segments. Please contact me if you see opportunities and if there's anything we can do to make it easier for you to reuse these materials. Also, because it's such a unique project (broadcasters rarely publish their material openly, if at all) we are trying to measure the impact of doing this in order to have a stronger case the next time someone considers producing 'openly'. Are there ways to measure reuse and reach on Wikiversity? Many thanks! 85jesse (discuss • contribs) 09:51, 5 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Welcome! Thank you for sharing these materials openly. I teach computer classes, but I'll let others speak to their learning opportunities. Regarding measuring use and reuse, files on Commons have a section at the bottom for File usage on other wikis. That gives you incoming links. Pageviews Analysis can be used to determine views. To increase reuse, I recommend adding visible categories to the files. All of the existing categories are hidden, at least on the first file I checked. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:42, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe this might interest you. I have put everything connected to a scientific project into a Wikiversity project. It is a nice way to keep a coherent set of information together. Please take a look at Hilbert Book Model Project The project supports English, Dutch, and a German version. These versions are interlinked.HansVanLeunen (discuss • contribs) 11:00, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Upcoming Wiki Science Competition
Did you hear about the Wiki Science competition, starting in November?

The competition will focus on images, but it might evolve in the near future, so every content platform should take a look at it.

I've informed the village pump on commons, since there will be an intense workflow of technical uploaded by newbies, that will require some better categorization and translation of descriptions here and there, I think it's time to discuss it also here. I give you some details.

In 2015, limiting to Europe, we got thousands of entries, we can expect two or three times more this year. In the case of Italy for example we will send emails to many professional mailing lists, and other national wikimedia chapter will use their social media too to inform the public.

We have finished with Ivo Kruusamägi of WM Estonia to prepare some of the juries. I did my best to gather, besides people with a strong scientific background, also some expert wikipedians (because I ask first on wikipedia) here and there to take a look to the files on commons and not just the quality of the images. I have also informed users on English wikipedia, and will do the same on some other wikimedia platforms in the following weeks.

The final international jury is made of expert researchers, usually with interest in photography, but no real knowledge of the details of any wikimedia platforms. Some national juries should have enough expert wikimedians and wikipedians probably, I guess because of the presence of active national chapter in their set up, so someone might take care of some the uploads at least improving some categorization and using them in some articles.

Now that I am sure that we have enough "scientists" here and there and from different fields, maybe we can see if we can also gathers specifically expert wikimedia users. Or for example simple teachers and not researchers that can evaluate the quality of the images for more specific uses.

For the countries without juries, there is the possibility of creating a second-level jury to select images from the rest of the world to the experts of the final jury. For such second-level jury I have found some names, but the numbers of entries could be really high, so maybe that's where we can look for more standard wikimedia users.

if you are a citizen of a country with a national jury you could also join them directly (rumor has it, more will appear). I don't know the details in many cases, if they need more jurors or they are fine.

Anyone interested?--Alexmar983 (discuss • contribs) 03:57, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

noratelimit Right
A situation has come up recently where an instructor wanted students to be able to create new accounts and begin working on content at Wikiversity. However, they ran into a problem creating multiple accounts from the same IP address. According to mw:Help:Mass account creation, the work-around is to grant the noratelimit right. Special:ListGroupRights shows this right assigned to Account creators, Bots, Custodians, Bureaucrats, and Stewards. I see two potential opportunities to quickly resolve this situation in the future:
 * 1) We add the noratelimit right to the Curator role so that instructors can create accounts for or with their students. The Curator role was created to allow instructors to support their students.
 * 2) We add the Account creators group as a group that Bureaucrats (or Custodians) can grant to users. Currently, neither Bureaucrats nor Custodians can add users to this group.

Please discuss and ultimately vote for or against each of these proposals. We need a vote in order to change group rights. Support submitting request. Thanks. While these rights are slightly dangerous, the value outweighs that, and in the very unlikely possibility that harm is cause, it could easily be fixed, even if a thousand accounts were inappropriately created. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:53, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Add noratelimit to Curators Role

 * ,, or


 * - this seems reasonable! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:57, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * They are trustworthy members. If this ends up being a problem, it can be removed. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:43, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:04, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * - I experienced this problem first hand. It would be enormously helpful to be able to create accounts for students. After all, our goal is to turn them from spectators into participants. --Ireicher2 (discuss • contribs) 04:02, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Add Account creators membership control to Bureaucrats

 * ,, or


 * - a good idea! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:57, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Some of the most trusted members. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:43, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 12:02, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:05, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Add Account creators membership control to Custodians

 * ,, or


 * - also a good idea! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:57, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Could be very useful for making example user pages or user talks. I can easily see this being practical. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:43, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 12:02, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:05, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Cleaning up OpenStax College
For some reason the editors at Openstax chose to follow the standard practice of placing the sister-link to Wikiversity at the end under the "More resources can be found on Wikipedia" template (I had originally inserted sister-links directly into the textbook names so readers would quickly find them.) This means we need to clean up Wikiversity's OpenStax College resource, since it should be getting more traffic. If you wish to participate, look at my suggestions at Talk:OpenStax_College--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:03, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

25,000
Hello! According to the main page on this wiki, this site is now "with 25,000 learning resources and growing."! Cheers. (= Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 01:57, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Good work everyone. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 11:34, 21 September 2017 (UTC)


 * A large part of the last 1,000 comes from adding links to pages on Special:DeadendPages. When each of these pages is connected to something else (See Also, for example) it will then appear in the count. I've been adding a to subpages on the list. Note that the list is only updated occasionally, so there are some pages on the list that have had links added since September 8. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:29, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Resource in German?
Is it a good idea, to put here a German-language resource? Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 17:56, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Not really, since there is a German Wikiversity. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:24, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * - = That is not German, but rather Dutch. I say we leave it as it's under a page named "NL", which shows that it is a page intended to be here at the English WV as a non-English resource [as part of the project, I assume]. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 18:43, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, actually looking at it and seeing the "een"s and all the words with j's and z's is a give-away. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:46, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * For some reason, the scheme at Category:Materials by language was created just for four pages in Dutch. Altho I think that v:betawikiversity: should be shut down and incorporated into, that is clearly the place for material in Dutch. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I am more in favor of keeping this resource, as I believe the teacher intended this Dutch version of the project to stay as a sub of the main English project [for whatever benefit to him]. I believe we should contact the teacher and ask him about this... @1sfoerster... maybe? It's hard to figure out the person behind this project as the main page itself was created by an IP Address. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 19:00, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * These pages are not related to the Howard County (Maryland, US) engineering projects (1sfoerster). The originating IP is from Belgium. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:29, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks ... should've checked the IPs then myself. I change my mind: We should go ahead and move this project to beta.wikiversity. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 14:22, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Idea
From Wiktionary: "On May 1, 2004, Tim Starling initialised Wiktionaries in every language for which there was an existing Wikipedia, leading to 143 new Wiktionaries." Shouldn't this be done with Wikiversity (something like new Wikiversities for every language with an existing, non-closed Wiktionary and/or Wikibooks)? KATMAKROFAN (discuss • contribs) 20:41, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * See Betawikiversity --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Improved original sources
On Wikisource there is the |The Long Telegram, which is terrible to read with half the articles missing since it is, well, a telegram.

From the Wikisource Scriptorium |Wikisource:Scriptorium came the suggestion to add a cleaned up version to Wikiversity. Would that be the right place? -TriTachionTertiary (discuss • contribs) 21:49, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

It would make an excellent historical resource! As the author was at the time in the employ of the USA government, the entire work is likely Public Domain. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:08, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Strange doubling of characters
Since some weeks the visuual editor shows a strange douubling of the uu character (as it is shown here) HansVanLeunen (discuss • contribs) 11:03, 28 September 2017 (UTC)