Wikiversity talk:Subpages

Clarifying policies
This page really needs fleshing out. It seems to me that it's only a list of things that you could potentially use subpages for, which is slightly redundant because the potential uses are almost limitless. Maybe the focus of this page should be what subpages are NOT used for, or perhaps the benefits of subpages (such as the automatic link to the main page). Trinity507 00:12, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good idea! Edit away!  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 06:25, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * But note also: Help:Subpages.  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 06:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Quite; this page purports to be a proposed policy, but doesn't actually spell out what the proposal is. Does anyone know if there's been any discussion about Wikiversity subpages anywhere else that might be of interest?  &mdash; Sam Wilson ( Talk &bull; Contribs ) &hellip; 07:28, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of any other discussions but I would agree that the page does not explicitly state what the policy is. It seems it hasn't been updated in a while. Devourer09  ( t · c ) 21:14, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Subpages looks not much different than wikibooks. It looks like there are subtle differences. How is the overlap distinguished? Sidelight12 Talk 13:08, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's use subpages to improve this resource
I have begun an essay Subpages/Forking and organizing which posits that we should rethink how we use subpages. Appropriately, I will use subpages to structure how this essay is viewed and edited. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 11:21, 3 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Actually, the first step would be to document how we actually use subpages. There are several purposes. One is content organization, creating a default navigational structure that is easy to understand and follow. It encourages the use of brief and clearly descriptive names. The other is that subpages allow great flexibility, not present at the top level in mainspace. This is how I have interpreted this, and, so far, it has worked spectacularly in the few cases where problems have arisen.


 * Wikiversity has a neutrality policy. While neutrality is not necessarily well-defined, there is a maximization measure of it: consensus. If there is 100% consensus, we may consider we have achieved neutrality, at least until someone else objects. What is not commonly understood by Wikipedians is that 100% consensus may be much easier to find than is commonly thought.


 * Wikipedia, with its flat mainspace, gives a topic a name. Only one page per name is allowed, by the software. Further, content forks are strongly discourages. So having a page like Objection to pipelines will generally not be allowed, even though that is an organizable topic, even though the page itself could be reliably sourced, verifiable. Rather, the article might be Pipeline and then objection is found within the article. I've seen more neutral titles also be taken down: "Controversy over ..." is often rejected.


 * There is a resource I created in 2011, Landmark Education, because I'd just taken the entry-level course they offer, and wanted to create a Glossary. So I created that summary page, which looked like this before my block in late 2011: . In 2013, a user appeared who is famous as being "anti-cult." He began editing the page to add extensive and highly critical material. As I recall, he's been sanctioned on en.wiki for this activity. If you look at the history of the subpage Landmark_Education/Abd, which was the original page, you can see the problem developing. So I forked it. This was experimental, though I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing. The present page shows three forks. Now, I probably wouldn't create the "neutral" fork. I just wanted to make this clear that we didn't have two owners for the full resource.


 * This worked, spectacularly. He developed his resource, I helped a little, I developed mine, and continue to use and expand it. He was allowed to express himself fully. I have not generally monitored his page for neutrality, and it doesn't have to be neutral. It's his opinion! If I saw anything positively deceptive there, though, I'd probably not allow it, it would be a violation of scholarly ethics, agreement to which is fundamental for our allowance of original research. Later, that user was involved in some disruption on Wikiquote. I intervened, and I'd say that was successful because the user trusted me, and that trust arose from our collaboration here.


 * In order to do this in a flat namespace, one could create a page, Landmark Education, with, then, links to other mainspace pages, but how would they be named? All mainspace pages, in a flat mainspace, are equal. And that can cause what is called, on en.wikipedia, undue weight. Is criticism of global warming equal to global warming? That's a bankrupt approach that does neither side a favor, everything is reduced to a debate, with no collaboration. It's like newspaper articles that report "both sides" with no neutral analysis. Lazy journalism. Fact checking? No, why bother? A says "Blap" and B says "Bleep." And that's the news, folks.


 * In this case, I defined the subpages by user names, making attribution very clear. Using subpages is far simpler, and someone looking for information on Landmark Education will find it, quickly, and quickly see both pages. They are neutrally described. I have not added to the top level page, "Abd has massive experience with Landmark training, Cirt has read some negative books and believes them." In fact, you can find criticism of Landmark in my resource, so this is not a division into "Pro" and "Con."


 * It's a "section," as in college courses with different teachers.


 * For an example of extensive development, this is very recent: Landmark_Education/Abd/Blaming the victim/Never going back. This is a detailed study and commentary of a blog I found. It was more than four full days of work. Someone reading the whole thing will get an intimate view into the most famously difficult of Landmark offerings, the Introduction Leader Program. The blog was about a woman who "escaped," having, it turns out completed that program (which is a huge amount of work) And she had stories to tell!


 * Once I completed the first pass -- it's still just a draft, really, practically a collection of notes, which for something to be more formally published, would be edited down, perhaps way down. -- I notified the blogger of its existence. Her first reaction was hostile (which I expected from what she had described of her personality). However, she then commented on the documents. I have not finished replying to her comments. But she also started up email corrspondence with me. The result was spectacular. Yes, there is some critique of Landmark, that may actually be communicated to Landmark corporate, but, more immediately, this allowed her to resolve and integrate and understand something that had been bothering her for 12 years. She now knows what she did, how she created the situation that she reacted to. And she was grateful for what I'd done.


 * Someone else, looking at this, could easily say tl;dr. But I was taking her intimate description of a piece of her life and paying close attention to it. She's tough, she's no pushover. Not any more!


 * None of this would have been possible in mainspace, I believe, and especially not with a highly skeptical critic watching every move. I learned, she learned, others might learn, and there might be some real-world changes falling out of this.


 * In subpages of Cold fusion there have been discussions and arguments that led to requests for scientists, and a paper was actually written out of this, by a skeptic, addressing an asserted possible artifact, and concluding that it was not possible. There have been other questions and responses to scientists in the field that came out of these discussions. And, of course, the work I've done on that resource -- which is relatively disorganized, a collection of brief discussions at the top level linked to many "seminars," or specific explorations -- led ultimately to my being invited to submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal, and it was published in February. We have an entire subpage structure devoted to papers in that special issue of Current Science, where anyone may comment, analyze, criticize, or praise papers. So far, no takers. But it will happen.


 * Now, there have been attempts to add sister wiki links to this resource on Wikipedia. They were always reverted on the claim that this was "self-published" (but it was not being linked as "reliable source," or that it was "Abd's private page." Which has never been true. However, none of the critics have ever come to Wikiversity to attempt to fix problematic content. I would very easily move anything controversial to attributed subpages.


 * We have another resource on a highly controversial topic: Parapsychology. You can see how that has been managed. An SPA (single purpose account) appeared here to attack the user mostly working on that resource, demanding he be blocked here as he was on Wikipedia. But he is not damaging our site neutrality. I set that up, in discussions that included scientists in the field and even a Nobel Prize winner. I have no clue how I'd do this without subpage structure. You can see the forking on Parapsychology/Sources


 * Deep learning and knowledge. That is what subpage structure makes possible.

Consider a future where every Wikipedia article has a sister wiki link on it, if a resource exists here, where people may learn more -- often much more -- about the topic, discuss it, criticize the Wikipedia article, study it in depth. In theory, see w:Wikipedia:Sister wiki this should already being done. Users on Wikipedia are warned not to discuss the topic on Wikipedia talk pages, and may be blocked if they do. Yet I have never seen them informed that they can do this on Wikiversity. There are plenty of links in existence, but I have not seen them be allowed where they would be most important: articles about controversies. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)