Wikiversity talk:Main page learning project/QOTD/Archive

Anti-educational quotes
Some quotes were suggested which degrade the value of education. I know they are very witty and memorable, and I hate to spoil the fun, but I think the Wikiversity QOTD unfortunately needs to be boringly responsible and pro-education. I'm criticising proposals such as "I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas" and "Never let your schooling interfere with your education." --McCormack 07:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * They're not anti-education, they're anti-school... but I take your point. We should be able to find some more positive quotes. Countrymike 07:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry - I didn't realise one of them was your suggestion. Anyway, I think we agree. --McCormack 07:45, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * That's ok. Perhaps I can track down a good one from Illich thats pro education. I quite like this one from Benkler, "For the gains in autonomy, democracy, justice, and a critical culture to materialize, the practices of nonmarket information production, individually free creation, and cooperative peer production must become more than fringe practices. They must become part of life for substantial portions of the networked population." - Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks, and even though its not strictly about education, it would seem to apply quite nicely to Wikiversity. Countrymike 08:20, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It's a wee bit long. It might take 4 lines on the main page and expand the top bar too much. --McCormack 09:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I selected the other quote based on the "have things arranged for them... unable to produce their own ideas" part which suggested to me that at wv we do not have things arranged and there is more freedom to explore ideas. But, I agree that it is better to choose quotes with an "anti-negativity" bias and struck out that quote.  Personally, I like "Knowledge grows when shared." and "When the pupil is ready to learn, a teacher will appear."  --mikeu 16:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

suggestion
I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but I'll toss it out anyway. Currently there is a link on the name of the quoted person that goes to wikipedia. How about we make a link to this learning project instead? Perhaps something like (discuss} --mikeu 17:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * There is already a place for discussion on the page (maybe added after your suggestion). We should use signature there, right? --Gbaor 14:28, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry I wasn't clear. On the Main Page the quote appears below an image.  At the end of the quote there is the name of the person, which is a link to wikipedia.  My suggestion is to place a (discuss) link after the name to encourage new visitors to come to this page (or perhaps another) to discuss the quotes.  --mikeu 16:46, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * There is now a (discuss) link next to the Victor Hugo quote. I'll add more new pages as time allows.  --mikeu talk 03:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

changing quotes on main page
I'm going to be bold and start changing the quotes that are live on the main page. The Thoreau quote is not accurate (see comment at Thoreau) and the correct wording of the quote looks to be too long to fit in the main page banner. "Knowledge grows when shared." seems to have some support, so I'll edit that one into the slot. --mikeu talk 12:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I replaced the "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." quote because of uncertain source attribution. The new quote is "Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." -John Dewey.  (I tried to pick the new quotes based on feedback from this page.)  I won't be making any more changes until we get more comments from the community.  --mikeu talk 14:45, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll wait a few days for comment, but if there's no reliable source for the Einstein quote that is the next one to get replaced. --mikeu talk 15:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I modified the Einstein quote.  --mikeu talk 17:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Ayn Rand quote on the main page
(begin text copied from Colloquium archive)

The Ayn Rand quote on the main page is a bit distasteful to my opinion. I see love as a normal condition of the body as it has been evolved. It is not a second hand emotion, while creation is something better. I prefer to be part of a moderate Wikiversity, not something radical extremistic.--Daanschr 15:45, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest that we start a learning project for discussion and selection of quotes to be used at Template:QOTD. Also, what bothers me most about the current quote of the day ("The second handers offer substitutes for competence such as love, charm, kindness - easy substitutes - and there is no substitute for creation." -Ayn Rand) is the fact that it links directly to Wikipedia. I think it would be good for Wikiversity to have pages about all the people who we quote on the main page. We already have Quote of the Day, but I would like to see a related page in the main namespace where people could discuss the quotes, what they mean and if using particular quotes are suited to Wikiversity. I started a new page for dealing with QOTD as a subpage of the main page learning project; see Main page learning project/QOTD. --JWSchmidt 16:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't knew it was the quote of the day. Perhaps, that could be notified and that has been derived from Wikipedia as a solution?--Daanschr 16:52, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry I was not clear. The choice of these quotes is made by the Wikiversity community. When I said, "it links directly to Wikipedia," I just meant that the name "Ayn Rand" is a link to Wikipedia. I think we should change that so the link is to a Wikiversity page. --JWSchmidt 17:01, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Isn't the general avoidance of WP links a little isolationist? After all, one of the great things about WV as a learning resource is the ease with which it can link into other Wikimedia projects for reference? Learning resources can do with encyclopedic references, and sometimes an encyclopedic reference is better for a learning resource than a circular link into another learning resource? McCormack 17:08, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've never advocated "general avoidance of WP links".....I use them widely in my Wikiversity editing. In this case, my thinking was as follows: if we like a quote so much that we put it on our main page, we can use that as a starting point for involving visitors in a Wikiversity learning project. To do otherwise would just be to miss an opportunity to enhance participation at Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 17:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

(end text copied from Colloquium, continue discussion below...)


 * Dear Daanschr,
 * She's not saying that love is a "second-hand emotion." Another term Rand used for "second hander" was "social metaphysician."  Here's another quote of hers that will hopefully make her meaning less unclear:"A social metaphysician is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a social metaphysician that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic.  The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan’s moral sanction.  It is only a social metaphysician who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting:  'But people won’t like you!'"What she's saying in the original quote is that those who cannot gain self-respect through the difficult task of actually producing value for society (e.g., a new motor that doesn't pollute and that produces energy so efficiently that it costs nearly nothing to power the entire world, thus raising billions out of poverty the world over) can always fall back on seeking self-esteem through others, through convincing others that he or she deserves their love, or by saying something like, "Well, I haven't produced anything of value for anyone, but I'm a loving person, and that's all that matters."  Seeking self-esteem through the latter methods is obviously easier than obtaining it through the former.
 * I think it's worth adding, the former is not incompatible with love, nor with charm, nor with kindness. Thus, she's not saying these things are worthless; only that intelligence, competence, or creativity is needed if you wish to produce anything of manifest value for society—hardly an extremist sentiment.  (Mao, e.g., may have really cared about his people, but his policies still left them starving.  He didn't create anything worthwhile for them, and his lacked the wisdom to see why his policies could only produce greater poverty.)
 * Sincerely yours, allixpeeke (discuss • contribs) 03:49, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * (P.S. If you want an extremist Ayn Rand quote, here's one:  "For a woman to seek or desire the presidency is, in fact, so terrible a prospect of spiritual self-immolation that the woman who would seek it is psychologically unworthy of the job."  If she had said that nobody who desires the presidency is worthy of the job, I doubt I'd have any disagreement with that sentence; but to single women out is inane.  That is an extremist quote, not the second hander one.)

Use Wikiquote
Hi all, a reminder that we have a sister project devoted to quotations - Wikiquote. There is a page on Education and a Category for Educators. I suggest we go digging. :-) (I'll add some suggestions now.) Cormaggio talk 09:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)