Wikiversity talk:Colloquium/Archive 1

Vandalism
Someone needs to keep track of vandalism on this page. Someone had completely deleated the page and replaced it with obscine remarks. I reverted to the previous version, but this may occur again in the future. 216.175.114.81 00:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * We are watching this page very carefully. I'll have to see who did it, and we are going to be soon instituting more stringent controls and doing some blocking of known abusive IP addresses.  It just takes time and effort.  Thanks for the cleanup, as we can use all of the help we can get.  BTW, this is (unfortunately) something common to Wiki websites and fortunately we can clean them up (usually) faster than they can be damanged, and do more than simply reverting damange.--Robert Horning 05:17, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Bringing order to the Colloquium
(Moved from Colloquim page) 23 August 2006

This page is getting to a rather big! I think maybe we should start grouping issues as they arise and creating links to separate pages to disscuss them. I've decided to start this up below (feel free to tidy this up and create more links to other issues that need discussion). m_dentonNZ 09:28, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I rather think we should archive stale discussions, maybe anything older than 5 days. -- sebmol ? 09:29, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Can be we do both? Group the conversations that need to be disscused and archive the ones that have been delt with? m_dentonNZ 09:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If there are topics that need further discussion, I would suggest you make a specific proposal and invite people to the talk page (you can write the invitation here). So, for example, if you want to talk about a guided tour, write up the ideas you have at Guided tour and post here asking people to contribute at Wikiversity talk:Guided tour. If you did that, this page wouldn't get cluttered too. :) -- sebmol ? 09:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds good. Maybe a brief explanation of that at the top of this page might be a good way to get people doing that. Also I think listing all the links together in one place would be better than scattered all over the page. m_dentonNZ 10:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

To summarise it seems like some of the old comments should probably be archived after a few days to stop the page getting too massive, and I also reckon there should be a list of links to discuss active topics on separate pages. m_dentonNZ 04:11, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I would try try to attempt cleaning up the colloquium page except I'm still learning some basic wiki stuff so i don't want to stuff it up!

I would urge some caution to turn this into something akin to the Village Pump on Wikipedia with topical areas of discussion. I will say, however, that my experience with Wikibooks is not going to help here as this page seems to be considerably more active than the Staff Lounge ever got, or even the b:Talk:Wikiversity page when it was most busy. I certainly never expected this project to be this active!

My #1 concern about "archiving" discussions is that this project is so new that very little really ought to be archived yet. Perhaps some of the very, very early discussions that happened on day one and two, but the rest are all ongoing issues and are things that new participants to Wikiversity perhaps ought to read to see where the community is going right now. I mean, barely a week has gone by for crying out loud! I will admit that if the current level of participation continues, that some changes need to happen compared to discussion areas on other Wikimedia projects (excluding Wikipedia). This should be considered a very good move.

Comparing this to Wikibooks, the typical discussion there lasts about 2-3 months before it is archived. I'm not kidding here either. And surprisingly some of those discussions get additional substnatial comments even after a couple of weeks of being up. I know that Wikiversity is going to be a different kind of project and develop its own flavor, but I don't want to get the Wikipedia attitude of assuming community concensus on an issue after only one week of discussion. Five days of discussion is far too short for many issues, and assuming that they are archivable at that point is really missing the point that these are serious and substantial issues. --Robert Horning 22:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, but we'll need to start archiving this page soon. 2-3 months of discussion is great, but it would be unmanageable for this page, I think - maybe a period of roughly 2-3 weeks is enough for this page? Then, if something is hotly debated, we could make its own page (like Science_teaching_materials_for_creationism), which could be the seed of a policy document, for example. I fully agree that we shouldn't make the mistake of cutting short a debate, but neither should we scare people off with the size of the page. Cormaggio 17:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Mechanical Engineering
I'm studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cairo. I've got a lot of courses, lectures, notes, materials....etc. Anyone else here is intersted in Mechanical Engineering? I want to add these courses to the School of Mech. Engineering in Wikiversity. --Moo7a 01:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)κ

Colloquium image
While I actually kinda like the image that we have for the Colloquium, doesn't it reflect a kind of stuffy, patriarchal attitude to education (that Doug/Reswik also pointed out on the the old banner for the main page)? If anyone could find an image that reflects the diversity and dynamism of Wikiversity (whether it is a "classical" image or not), I think that would be a better replacement. Cormaggio 11:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * What I like most is that it depicts a discussion of different people together rather than one lecturing the others. If we can find that theme in a more diversified illustration, we should replace it of course. sebmol ? 11:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I happen to like it. I mean, the name "Colloquium" itself is not exactly "new age", if you know what I mean.  The Jade Knight 16:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I do know what you mean, Michael, which is why I originally liked it as a representation of the word "Colloquium". But it still depicts a room of, exclusively, (white) men, wearing the caps of academia. I'm thinking, since one female contributor to Wikiversity has already spoken of her alienation here, that we do our utmost to make this a truly inclusive space - and we do this (or the opposite) through the kinds of language and images we use. Surely we can find something that is about "discussion" (as Sebmol points out), which is more inclusive than the image we currently present? (Incidentally, another image, which I think is good in its own way, but that this also applies to, is on What is Wikiversity?.) Cormaggio 17:07, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't aim to be exclusive, certainly. At the same time, I don't think we should feel like we need to be PC, either.  I'm not going to oppose an equally evocative more "representative" image, but I think one can really go overboard with trying to make sure no one gets offended.  One way or the other, someone is bound to be offended.  The Jade Knight 18:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

What are we looking for?

 * workshop 1
 * discussion 1
 * workshop 2
 * discussion 2
 * discussion 3
 * discussion 4--JWSchmidt 17:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally, I'd rather we not use a photograph. I like stylized art for this sort of thing.  The Jade Knight 18:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Something like this, maybe: . The Jade Knight 18:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Guillom has an image which appears to include both men and women on his profile which I think is nice. The Jade Knight 18:22, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Sections
Hillgentleman 16:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC): Will Colloquium continue to have one section every seven days? I ask this because sometimes I want to refer and link to certain Colloquium discussions.--Hillgentleman 16:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The convention thus far has been to make a section for each week, but we will also have to archive the discussions at a certain point - once a month or so has been the norm. But to link to a section (ie a header), you can always just click on the header's link in the table of contents and then use the text from the url (from after "../wiki/") to link to it - eg. Colloquium. Cormaggio 17:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Interest Group
I'd like to propose a Category:Internal Medicine Interest Group. I'm not sure if this is the place to propose this, but it would be helpful so that people of similar interests can find each other. Any suggestions?PalMD 17:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Assistance please
Something went wrong with my references in my STD article. Anyone wanna help find the problem?--PalMD 20:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sometimes reference lists can be fixed by typing ?action=purge after the article name in the small window of your web browser that shows the page URL....then hit return. If this does not work for the problem you are having, let me know. --JWSchmidt 20:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Worked like a charm.PalMD 20:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Archival a little more frequently?
Just wondering whether we need to archive the colloquium a little more frequently. Every 14 days perhaps? Page seems a little long. --HappyCamper 21:44, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The "Wikiversity is dead" thread is rather unusual and could be moved to its own special page. --JWSchmidt 21:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

FYI, on the details of bot edits. See this edit by ArchiveBot which moved the mulilingual interwiki links to an archive page. The links were reinserted a very short time later by Crochet.david.bot.