Wikiversity talk:Introduction Overhaul Taskforce

Name
I plucked this project's name more or less out of thin air - what do people think of it? Inspiring? Ghastly? Satisfactory? Any suggestions? (How about a catchy acronym?) Cormaggio talk 19:55, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikiversity organisation proposal
Sorry for the late response. I am new to wikis and have spent some time researching on my local copy. I planned posting a complete proposal to colloquium, but things are moving faster here than I can keep up. So I'll do my best to sell the idea with what I know. This has the side-effect of revamping the Main Page and Community Portal.

The Problem
(My reference is Wikipedia, I know little about the other projects, so my conclusions may be off.)

Wikiversity combines all administration, educational, support, and website management across all the namespaces. This complicates creating contribution areas and educational areas, that is, there is no distinction made between those who come to study and those who want to contribute. There is no clear separation between regulations that apply to contributors and those that apply to students. Finally, the content structure presented to students emulates the school's structure.

Operation
Wikiversity has three main operational goals:
 * Attract contributors to produce quality material.
 * Attract students to consume the material.
 * Facilitate student and contributor collaboration.

The words 'student' and 'contributor' is defined by the editing they do. A student never, or only, edits articles, while a contributor edits more than one namespace.

Proposal
The proposal redefines the available namespaces and how they used. It restructures Wikiversity similar to an enterprise: Products (education), management (administration), and customer relations (student council). Unlike the traditional enterprise, Wikiversity designates roles, rather than people, so people can switch between roles.

Namespace definition

 * Educational - The school namespace is rooted in Category School. The school itself is divided into two areas: the school namespace provides contributor navigation and content acccess, and, the subcategory school discusses the school's policies, content evaluation, templates, and similar.


 * Administration - The Project namespace rooted in Category Project. Administration is divided into two areas: school administration and real world issues. The project namespace deals with template control, content assement, and school structure. The category projects, however, deal with format, copyright, vandalism and similar administration issues.


 * Student - The Article namespace is reserved for educational material and tools. The article structure is independent from the school structure. This enables contributors to view the material their way and present it the student way . Students should never bee accidently exposed to other namespaces (except maybe Topic).

Student School and Inter-School schools
Two dummy schools complete the proposal. The Student school is structured for student access and provides navigation to materials and tools. It is not a school, but is in the school namespace. The student subcategory is the student council which discusses how well the student navigation works, how well they can get help from contributors, and anything that they think will improve Wikiversity. Students may edit the student school structure to better reflect their needs. This will not affect any other school, nor change the way contributors provide the material. (A student namespace might be safer than a school)

Initially, the school structure can follow all the other schools (except the interdisciplinary), and then students can restructure material as they choose. This should be no more than relinking topics to articles and creating/deleting student topics. Note, that students who edit articles will edit the same article a school contributed. Thus, students approach articles from the student school, while contributors do so from another school.

The student school structure contains content specifically targeted toward studying, while other schools content target education and material organisation.

The second inter-school school handles inter-disciplinary content. Any material that affects both social science and philosophy, for example, is provided here. Schools provide links to the inter-school, rather than duplicate effort, or interlink schools. The inter-school is responsible for negotiating between schools, avoid ownership claims, on the one hand, and neglect on the other. The subcategory interschool deals with inder-disciplinary education and multiple presentation without content duplication (Social science views content one way, philosophy another).

The Root Pages
The main Page links to the student school. It provides the motto, slogan, and a brief history of Wikiversity. It is student orientated and designed to encourage study. A topical list of courses allows direct access for power students. The subcategory student directs students to the council for advice and feedback.

The Category:School page lists all the schools, including student and interschool. It describes Wikiversity's educational goals, methods, and content recommendations. Each school's category describes how the school implements the above. Thus, every category that refers to the school namespace deals directly with education, in theory, practice, or both.

The Category:Project page lists all the school projects. This deals with administration issues, such as school structure, template, and content management. Each project subcategory (i.e. Project:Arts), describes how the school administers itself. At the lowest level, external tools and material projects focus on access, availability, and usefulness. Note: student projects (that belong to the student school) are reserved for students to conduct projects with mentors. So, projects can still be used as originally intented.

The Community Page is reserved for contributors, both students (for the student school) and others. It provides a cross-over for students wanting to expand Wikiversity and links to sister projects (like wikipedia, etc.) It also provides news, current events, and available tasks (what needs to be done).

Requirements
All the structures are based on the subpage feature. This means schools can use the same name within the school namespace without conflict. The art school can have 'fine' and 'applied' departments, which will be identified as 'School:Art/Fine' and 'School:Art/Applied'. To cleanup the page's title, should work if it is properly enabled. (It works on my wiki, but not on Wikiversity) The science school may also have an 'applied' department, but identified as 'School:Science/Applied' and distinct from the art's applied department. This approach avoids polluting the Topic namespace with school departments.

The Topic namespace servers as an entry point to articles. Each topic lists the articles it manages (toc) and describes it's objective. A topic defines an atomic unit, or module of articles. It may contain a related (student) project link that describes prerequiste units and/or external materials and tools. Each article should have back, forward, and up links to related articles and the root topic. This can be discussed on the Topic's talk page.

Summary
In summary, create a student school and interschool. Create the category:student as the student council to discuss the student school structure. Move regulatory material into projects and separate between school regulations (project namespace), and general (category project). Link the community portal to Category:School, and add each school to the school category. Move department topics back into the school namespace using subpages. Link school departments to Topics and topics to articles. The student school can organise topics as they see fit. Student school projects function as student collaborations, while contributory schools use them for format, copyright, robots, and similar. School navigation provides education content, category navigation provides school admin content, project navigation provides external admin content (formats, access, copyright). The Topic category provides material navigation (courses). PeterMG 04:42, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Translation
A copy of the above "Wikiversity organisation proposal" has been made and will be edited in an attempt to match the proposal to the terminology used at Namespaces. See Wikiversity talk:Introduction Overhaul Taskforce/copy. --JWSchmidt 04:45, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I wonder if this could be done on a new page Structuring Wikiversity, which would address the scope of the above post, going beyond a description of individual namespaces? Cormaggio talk 09:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I think Web architecture for Wikis is also trying to get at these "wiki structure" issues. --JWSchmidt 12:42, 21 May 2007 (UTC)