Wikiversity:Wikiversity Studies

Please note the discussion page. There is evolution at the Wikipedia wrt to article development with a loosening of the rules for discussion pages (where Wikipedia article development happens). There is no more appropriate site to support Wikipedia evolution than the Wikiversity.

As there is only one editor for this page (and hence little chance of editor disagreement), this material will be incorporated directly into a new page, Wikiology. Wikiology is what it sounds like, the Science of wikis, and a request will be made to redirect this page to that one.

The Wikiversity in it's uniqueness will have to be described, and perhaps debated, specifically, but as a subset of the greater Wikiology.

This article
.. is meant to build an understanding of the Wikiversity as a unique component of the mw sphere, and also the more general wiki-sphere. It is also a category and seeks to provide an index to documents about the Wikiversity (on the Wikiversity) that can help wv-ers:
 * Build better courses
 * Understand how information can interrelate within the Wikiversity
 * Help form Wikiversity policy
 * Help development of wiki page authoring style that benefits the Wikiversity
 * Document names (is this a page, document, article, or course?)

I initiated this page, and so far I am the only contributor. I have not promoted the page to invite other editors, but when I do I will be moving this explanatory text to the talk page.--JohnBessatalk

Policy discussion
I am trying to form this page with material gathered from policy debate, which I find fascinating, and rich in ideas. I will be able here to "throw" ideas, especially those that may controversial, where others can edit and discuss the ideas. I hope it will focus principles while directly creating text for policy, and I hope it will test ideas of parallel opposing idea development, as part of wv information development.

Test cases can be developed as courses to experiment with policy to assure that wv can grow quickly, and flexibly enough to prevent internal conflict, such as experienced on the wp by Piotrus.

'''Who are the Wikiverisans? Is this a valid word?''' Who are the people most active in policy making?

Building a page
Pages can be built in two ways; they can be started from scratch, or material can be imported, but not duplicated. Since the wv is in huge need of material, then importing material makes sense, but the material has to be deconstructed and reassembled to make it unique.

I have writing that I wish to import, but more important to me is helping wv organize its principles. I recently got involved in a policy debate, "what wv is not," and I got a lot of insight to the meaning of wv, and learned about the opinions of other wikiversians. So I want to initiate this page by importing material from the debate to create an article about what wv is not, and also to aggregate some of the ideas of what wv-ians expressed that have higher reaching meaning.

Idea Incubator
A good way to describe one of my goals for this article is as an incubator. An article can start here, and then move to its own page, and then a synopsis of the page, or an annotation, can augment an index of successfully incubated wv study articles.

My way of writing a wiki article is to paste in all the material I can find, and then disassemble the writing into key words, and then move the key words to the top of the document until nothing but chafe is left below in the original text. Then I tend to create headings followed by text followed by lists of attributes as bullets followed by descriptions. I developed this technique as a tech writer. If the text needs to be further developed, then normal prose can be constructed from the text.

Raw editing
As it happens it is not practical to build a page right here from raw material because the rendering does funny things; it can only be done in a text editor. In the very-ancient text browsers, text areas were enacted as text editors by actually calling up a text editor, such as notepad on Windows, or VI (or Emacs) on GNU/Linux. (This was a great feature, I thought, and might be helpful here.) For now I am editing the text on google docs (which irritates some wv-ers), but I want to edit it in a place where other wv-ers can look over my shoulder if they want to.

Sidelining
I call this sidelining and I do it when text is inappropriate for wv, but is relevant. An example is when there are copyright issues being resolved, but still creating a liability. This is why I bring up the text browser editor technique; I think we need a "sidelining" facility as a [server-type service].

Other Ideas
Primary discussion can be:
 * Policy documents and the debate surrounding them
 * Potential new policy documents
 * The meanings of the components of these policy principles and how they form the philosophy, or "personality," of the Wikiversity. Does the wv have a wv agenda?
 * The types of educational and research techniques that we want to implement
 * WikiMedia technology that benefits the Wikiverstiy
 * Creation of wikimedia technology specifically to benefit the Wikiversity

Suggested components:
 * Annotated bibliographies -- rather than point directly to citations, relevant phrases can be cited in a seperate artcile, and then critical analysis can enhance the phrase, followed by a link to the work and the phrase's location.
 * Scientific Method, Augmenting it as a guideline, or even policy, for wv courses and research
 * Levels of support in the reference material sense:
 * Reasonably supported
 * Protected pages
 * Personal experiences
 * Hypotheses-level reference material
 * Well supported
 * Peer review
 * Documented events
 * WP-level support material
 * Main page vs. talk page
 * Level of support
 * Editing styles

Raw Material
Raw material is a collection of text that is stripped to create lists of ideas as terms, nearly as tags to create new agregatted material, such as for this wv study.

I am collecting the material from policy debates as they happen, because many parallel concepts are introduced, and the emotional nature of the debate ensures collaboration (though it may not seem that way), then an aggregated picture of what wv-ers think is constructed. That is part of the wiki phenomena as I have experienced it.

This material will be cut and place above in specific categories to create documentation that goes above policy documents as a guide to the principles of wv.

What wv is not: discussion
This came from the debate and versions of the policy article

Participants are all considered equals

No: Diplomas Certificates Titles

Professor Doctor

Creating, or linking to, useful learning resources

Beneficial to learning and research

For all age groups

Unbiased

Reasonably supported information

Promote learning

Research

benefit the project

isolated thinking resistant to new information

Exploring potential learning resources

differing or opposing approaches

reasonable criticism

no agenda

differences of opinion

accommodate

protect

personal experiences

off the wall

psychosis

truthing

parallel opposing research threads

knowledge and experiences

unbiased and informative

bias

biased or unsupported information

mental isolation bad information dominate

bias biased people feel justified different species

No duplication

Projects maintain focus

Overlapping

Consolidate Sharing

research freedom

develop new information

free of the harassment

Scholarship
 * Teachers
 * Researchers
 * Lifelong learners

Advertising platform
 * Products
 * Services
 * Commercial products
 * unwelcome advertisements

Self-promotion:
 * Causes or advocacy
 * Personal agenda

Policy abuse instruction creep

Disruption

grow and evolve rapidly

policies, guidelines, practices, and services

not prematurely limit future options

mono-diet

everything is an article

lack the discussion threads

Science: one set of phenomena

New information

wiki pages structure information create knowledge

unexpected meanings

much information is simply wrong

Scientific Method

lifelong learning

Learning to learn

Ideal learner

Transnational

Multilingual

Localized support

Trans-cultural

Multicultural

isolated places

multilingual community barriers

Research

Attract collaborators

knowledge construction

construction techniques

scientific method

social science

research freedom

Developed knowledge

Policy

Purpose

Support

Technology

Connections to educational institutions

Support research in schools

applicable knowledge

protected mode

peer review

validate

all approaches are protected

parallel projects

individuals develop their own ideas

individual focus Protect individual learning project indivdual's scope

community knowledge

consensus

aggregation of ideas

opinions respected

protection

protected mode gives "ownership"

owner

contributors

inherit the validation

recognized for the accomplishment

GFDL: given credit when the article is duplicated