Wikiversity:Vision/2010

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Community goals
this section is for ways to make Wikiversity more useful for the Wikiversity community.

Usability goals
this section is for ways to improve the usability of Wikiversity by making changes to Wikiversity.

Merge School and Topic namespaces
Confusion about whether something is a school, a department, or a topic is still a problem a year later. How are people using the school namespace? How are people using the topic namespace? How are people deciding which namespace to use for what?

Some sampling:


 * There is School:Medicine and Topic:Medicine.
 * There is School:Computer science and Topic:Computer science
 * There is School:Accounting and Topic:Accounting
 * There is School:Biology and Topic:Biology
 * There is School:Chemistry and Topic:Chemistry
 * There is School:Physics and Topic:Physics
 * There is School:Astronomy and Topic:Astronomy
 * There is School:Geography and Topic:Geography
 * There is School:History and Topic:History
 * There is School:Law and Topic:Law
 * There is School:Business and Topic:Business

Most of the topic pages in the sampling redirect to the school pages. How are people using the topic namespace? The answer appears to be as redirects. How are people using the school namespace? The answer appears to be to list other schools, since topics redirect to schools. If every topic can eventually be turned into a school than there appears to be no community need for both a topic and a school namespace. The straightforward solution would be to merge topics into schools, however topics are more definitive for learners to understand. I propose that the school namespace be dropped and the topic namespace be used in its place. -- dark lama  15:01, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * see also Vision/2009/Namespace reform, Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat (try) 15:07, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Discussion
I'm not much a fan of the Topic: and School: namespaces myself - content in there seems to go cold. I wouldn't be unhappy with all the content from Topic: and School: going into the main space. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 18:35, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I have a sample organizational scheme that we could discuss upon. Since Wikiversity is a university of open learning, I say we adopt a formal layout of all the schools, departments, and topics. Something along the lines of this:

My suggestion is to break the university down into 7 major colleges (or faculties):
 * 1) Agriculture
 * 2) Business Administration
 * 3) Engineering
 * 4) Environmental Design
 * 5) Humanities
 * 6) Science
 * 7) Social Sciences

A sample "college" might look something like this:

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
 * Aerospace Engineering Department
 * Chemical & Materials Engineering Department
 * Civil Engineering Department
 * Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
 * Engineering Technology Department
 * Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering Department
 * Mechanical Engineering Department

In addition, under each department can have subtopics.

By adopting this organization scheme, we then can start categorizing "classes" with an agreed acronym for each department. Take physics for example, we can agree to name it (PHY) and have all relevant courses and information numbered under that acronym (other acronyms can include something like CE=Civil Engineering, ECE = Electrical and Computer Engineering, etc..) Man4857 04:25, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Outreach goals
this section is for ways to attract and get more people involved with Wikiversity through outreach efforts.
 * Has anyone tried asking our friends who can read/write or teach?