Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/February 2024

Suggestion for Color Boxes

I am editing a course page, and I am trying to design it so that exercises are "inside the text" so to speak. The intent is that the reader should never just be reading but always participating.

But because of that structure, I feel like it's often visually unclear where the exercise ends and the exposition picks back up. Therefore I'd like to put the exercises into some kind of a delimited box -- like a color box -- very similar to how definitions can be put into a color box with the "Definition" template. However, as far as I can tell there are no templates for exercises.

So I have two questions.

(1) How can I make color boxes? I've googled around for this but most color boxes seem intended for single-line and inline uses, whereas most exercises are multi-line. (I apologize if this is a dumb question, I'm not super handy with the technical aspects of Wikis.)

(2) Would it make sense to make an official exercise template like there is a template for definitions? It seems like that would be a common enough thing that we might want it semi-standardized across Wikiversity. Or perhaps specifically a template for math exercises, if there is a reason for those to be distinctly styled?

Thanks for any help! Addemf (discuss • contribs) 18:38, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest something like Template:inputcolorvariantexercise, with he colors and the design one can play. I would also use the same template for showing exercises. If you then want to change the design, you can do it on the template. The following is the command when you want to include the exercise Functions/R/Strongly increasing/Injective/Exercise. It is best when the exercises are written somewhere else on neutral ground, so everybody can use them by inserting them with different styles.

{{ inputcolorvariantexercise |Functions/R/Strongly increasing/Injective/Exercise|m| }} gives

Exercise

Prove that a strictly increasing function

f\colon \mathbb {R} \longrightarrow \mathbb {R}

is injective.

One can also do so that you can write the exercise text directly in your main text. It is also possible to make a variant with a solution (to expand, say). Many things are possible. But I would not strive for an offical how to present exercises, as people like different styles. Also note that the style of the exercise itself is different from the style presented by inserting the exercise. Bocardodarapti (discuss • contribs) 18:55, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A reply

The {{robelbox}} template can be used to put content in colored boxes, like this reply is. However, be aware that it prevents the visual editor from being used normally on your page, and can make text harder to read; I'd recommend that you avoid using it for large stretches of content.

Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 20:02, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the unprotection of making a blog post

Sign Hi folks, i noticed that making a blog post is protected. I understand why but i must request for it to be lifted cause young bloggers like me need the opportunity to get ratings on our work. Yellow Mellow Madie (discuss • contribs) 15:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How's that? Where are you trying to make a blog post? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Informing you about the Mental Health Resource Center and inviting any comments you may have

Hello all! I work in the Community Resilience and Sustainability team of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Mental Health Resource Center is a group of pages on Meta-wiki aimed at supporting the mental wellbeing of users in our community.

The Mental Health Resource Center launched in August 2023. The goal is to review the comments and suggestions to improve the Mental Health Resource Center each quarter. As there have not been many comments yet, I’d like to invite you to provide comments and resource suggestions as you are able to do so on the Mental Health Resource Center talk page. The hope is this resource expands over time to cover more languages and cultures. Thank you! Best, JKoerner (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 21:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this needs community attention rather than custodian action, should this be moved to Wikiversity:Colloquium? MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 07:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Doing it now. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the move. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 07:36, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Vote on the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

I am reaching out to you today to announce that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter is now open. Community members may cast their vote and provide comments about the charter via SecurePoll now through 2 February 2024. Those of you who voiced your opinions during the development of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines will find this process familiar.

The current version of the U4C Charter is on Meta-wiki with translations available.

Read the charter, go vote and share this note with others in your community. I can confidently say the U4C Building Committee looks forward to your participation.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 18:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Test tools?

~~<span data-templatescript="WikiSign.js" class="sign-button mw-ui-button mw-ui-progressive">{{{1|Sign}}}</span>~~

Does Wikiversity have test tools such as true/false questions, multiple choice, matching, sorting, quizzes, etc.? These are tools that are used in Moodle, for example. Where can I find them and how can I integrate them into Wikiversity? Thanks for help. Matutinho (discuss • contribs) 13:04, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A good place to start is Help:Quiz. There is a link at the top of that page to Help:Quiz-Simple, which is a great entry point. I spent a great deal of time making quizzes for physics and astronomy a few years ago. My effort is at Quizbank. I eventually migrated the project to www.myopenmath.com. If you are going to seriously do quizzes, myopenmath.com is superior. I finally settled in on a method whereby the quizzes are on Myopenmath, but the hints and ancillary materials were on Wikiversity's Quizbank (or another Wikiversity page.) To this day I get enough pageviews on some of my Quizbank pages to know that my questions are being used. I don't know how and by whom.Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 14:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Last days to vote on the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

I am reaching out to you today to remind you that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) charter will close on 2 February 2024. Community members may cast their vote and provide comments about the charter via SecurePoll. Those of you who voiced your opinions during the development of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines will find this process familiar.

The current version of the U4C charter is on Meta-wiki with translations available.

Read the charter, go vote and share this note with others in your community. I can confidently say the U4C Building Committee looks forward to your participation.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 17:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata for Beginners

Hey, I am hosting a Wikidata for Beginners workshop on Wednesday, 14 February 2024, as a part of Love Data Week 2024 (LDW), so you are welcome to attend. I would like to ask you to keep an eye on that landing page to prevent any vandalism, as it's linked to the LDW page, too. Thx. Juandev (discuss • contribs) 09:19, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protection

Done by special:redirect/logid/3387071. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 09:48, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Announcing the results of the UCoC Coordinating Committee Charter ratification vote

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Dear all,

Thank you everyone for following the progress of the Universal Code of Conduct. I am writing to you today to announce the outcome of the ratification vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter. 1746 contributors voted in this ratification vote with 1249 voters supporting the Charter and 420 voters not. The ratification vote process allowed for voters to provide comments about the Charter.

A report of voting statistics and a summary of voter comments will be published on Meta-wiki in the coming weeks.

Please look forward to hearing about the next steps soon.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 18:24, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How to handle very-low-value pages AKA deletion and move to userspace convention

I am starting this discussion based on a prelude:

Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion#Wikiversity:Deletion Convention 2024

I and Guy vandegrift differ at times about what belongs to mainspace. Guy has been doing a lot of tireless deletion/move-to-userspace work, often based on my proposals; thank you! Some of the deletion proposals resulted in RFD discussions at Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion. An example of where we see things differently is Student Projects/PhotoTalks, which I find not good enough for mainspace. The relevant guideline (not policy) is Wikiversity:Deletions; the key phrase is "learning outcomes are scarce".

I will let Guy pick the questions he wants to put forward for discussion. Reposts from the linked discussion are perhaps not amiss. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:22, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let me violate the above a bit, and put one item for me into the discussion. As a point of contrast: I find the page Historical Introduction to Philosophy/Truth, Objectivity, and Relativism to be of rather low quality: there are too many dubious statements and there is a conspicuous lack of good further reading specific to the subject of the subpage. But it is not the kind of page that I would send for deletion as part of the current cleanup effort. The kind of page that I am sending for deletion is Student Projects/PhotoTalks, which is not a "project" in a meaningful sense and from which the reader can hardly learn anything. And I have no qualms with "PhotoTalks" being moved to user space, although I find it too kind anyway; but I have no fundamental problem with this kind of arguably great-than-expected kindness. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:31, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I was pinged because I made some comments etc. about deleting media files. Mostly those deletions were suggested because of copyright issues.

I understand that Wikiversity is a place to learn and study and in all levels. And sometimes you can learn by other peoples mistakes. But it raises 2 problems:

If a page is of low quality and it contains mistakes should it at least be flagged as low quality and with mistakes? Otherwise someone may learn something wrong. But who check all the pages and make sure the quality is okay? An when should this happen? If I make a page for a school project then it would not give a fair impression of my skills if other users starts to correct my errors. So it should not happen untill after the project is over and my skills have been evaluated.
Just because we can learn from eachothers mistakes does that mean we should keep everything? On Commons Scope page it says: "For example, the fact that an unused blurred photograph could theoretically be used to illustrate an article on "Common mistakes in photography" does not mean that we should keep all blurred photographs." I think the same could apply here.

Anyway I think it is a very good idea to agree on some guide/policy etc. because I think it will make it much easier for everyone. But I do not think I can contribute very much to that because I'm not really active outside the file namespace. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 08:47, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My answer to all this can be found on Wikiversity:Deletion Convention 2024--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 13:21, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a lot to respond to in Wikiversity:Deletion Convention 2024. I will make it brief, to save the attention of everyone, but I can post more if wished and answer any questions anyone has for me.

1) The quote "Too many bad articles and we don't have the time to remove them, too few bad articles, and there is no need delete them" provides a recipe to keep a growing number of very-low-value pages in the mainspace, which cannot be a good thing.

2) Very-low-value pages should IMHO ideally either be moved to user space or deleted; they should not stay in the mainspace.

3) Page "Finding and using free content" should be deleted; two of the three links do not show valuable content (are quasi-broken) and the 3rd link is an internal one.

4) No admin should feel compelled to do most of the deletion work alone. One option is to do the deletion work only on, say, Tuesdays and only delete, say, at most 7 pages per Tuesday, to give other admins plenty of time to join the effort.

--Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:51, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Dan Polansky: I woke up this morning with an idea that is directly related to your point 1) directly above. I believe that idea will render the other points (2-4) moot: Simply move the page to draftspace and leave a redirect. Also, I strongly oppose not leaving a redirect in case the student wants to come back and read or edit the page. (rewritten)-Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 17:43, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with the Draft namespace is this (per Wikiversity:Drafts): "Resources which remain in the draft space for over 180 days (6 months) without being substantially edited may be deleted." And thus, the deletion is only deferred anyway (or does "may" mean deletion is just an option taken on a whim?), but not very much, but the process then takes more work/more steps.

Students can easily find their pages in their contribution list (e.g. Special:Contributions/Dan Polansky), which should be easy to overview unless the student was very prolific. Therefore, keeping redirects seems inessential. And if the moving is to userspace, finding the contribution is also easy, using a template that lists userspace subpages. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:04, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Three items:

What about moving to userspace with a redirect, and with template at the top of the page identifying that page as being in the person's userspace?
Also, I just got a thank you from a person whose article I moved to userspace instead of deleting.
No consensus is being formed here, and if nothing happens I will no choice but to use my authority as a Custodian and impose something. What I do will be based largely on previous practice, because as you know, our stated policy guidelines were never taken seriously.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 13:19, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since I'm really not active here I would hate to make things more complicated. But I just saw Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Student_Projects/PhotoTalks and in my opinion this should be deleted as a speedy per Wikiversity:Deletions#Criteria #1. I see no reason to even discuss it.

If it was a new page and the user was still working on it then I would not judge it too hard. But it has not been edited for many years.

According to Wikiversity:What is Wikiversity? Wikiversity is a learning community for learning, teaching, researching, serving and sharing materials and ideas. Can anyone explain why the page meets any of that? Who will learn anything from the page. What would they learn from it? Is there any research in this? Etc.

I do not agree that we gain (almost) nothing by deleting low quality pages. If anyone searches then junk will also show up. If users see too much junk it will give the impression that this project is a low quality project. Personally I would not use a project if I know that there are no minimum/quality requirements.

I fully understand that it is a huge task to clean up and I know there are cases where someone might disagree. But it should be possible for those that disagree to provide some good arguments why the page should not be deleted. So perhaps modify {{Prod}} a bit so that if anyone wants to remove the template they should at least add a reason on the talk page.

So my suggestion is delete vandalism etc. at once. If there could be any doubt add {{Prod}}, wait 30 days (or whatever) then delete. If someone disagree they should be required to provice a realistic argument why it is not a deletion. If nominator does still not agree the page should be kept then start a formal deletion and hope there is anyone else that would like to comment. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 17:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following comment preceded the previous one, but was placed under the wrong section by the author Guy vandegrift: Why are we talking about Student Projects/Geography??? It's a student project and nobody is going there to look for ideas about teaching. Pageviews count the times an editor looks at the page, but if you look at the pageviews after the page was completed this is what you get.. Also look at Student_Projects#Student_Pages. I think it's almost 300 pages. In the experimental sciences we learn to make estimates. I estimate that it will take 100 person hours to get the references right on all these pages. I don't want to waste one more hour of my time on this. In 2020 a Bureaucrat Dave Braunschweig allowed the page to be at its current location. Why am I being asked to revert that decision? I repeat: Nobody cares about Student_Projects/Geography. It does no harm, except that talking about it wastes time and space on the Colloquium.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 14:05, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For clarification, I did not nominate User:PURNA BISWAS2/Student Projects/Geography for deletion (when it was at Student Projects/Geography), although it indeed does not belong to mainspace, IMHO. I am focusing on top-level mainspace pages with arguably unacceptable quality/implemented scope. To give an idea for what I mean, I just used "Random page" wiki function to find the following pages arguably worthy of deletion/moving to userspace: The Distribution of Addition and Subtraction over Multiplication in Elementary Algebra, The iam conjecture, Web Design:Useful Books, Internet Abuse, and Wikitext 101. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, the "vote" is 2 for deletion, with only me wanting to keep the page. It looks like Wikiversity is now refereeing the quality of student efforts. As per the old (informal) policy, I will move it to the author's userspace. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:42, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you know that Student_Projects/PhotoTalks was created as a Student Project? But even if it was there is no rule saying that it has to be kept online forever? Student Projects could be deleted after some time - one year for example. As you said nobody is going there to look. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 06:53, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I support deleting as little as possible that is not blatant spam. I think deleting user creations discourages users from actively using the wiki. Deleting any content that is not blatant spam that may have been created in good faith may actually be a form of punishment effectively (from a behavioral psychology point of view). If something is not actual spam, then IMO it should not ever be deleted. It should either be moved to draft namespace or user namespace... or like a "Recycle bin" so others could access and reuse/repurpose the content or utilize it later - even if it is just a bare bones minimal page (like a stub). Deleting content I think will continue to hinder this wiki from growing and reaching its potential. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in a few months? And this wiki has existed for how long and has how many users? This wiki has so much potential but I often stop myself from editing here and tell myself it is not a good use of time because something I may create in good faith may be deleted (thereby wasting my time and efforts). Limitless peace. Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 15:55, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The key question of this thread is not when things should be outright deleted but rather when can they be moved out of mainspace. And if I read the above correctly, it opposes the former (deletion) but not the latter (move to userspace); correct me if I am wrong. (A wiki is nothing like a chatbot; not much point comparing the two.) --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 16:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In section #Expanding WV:Deletions with provision for moving to user space, I proposed to codify moving to userspace as common. Even stronger language could be used than I used, in favor of moving to user space. This could lead people to think that even if their creation gets removed from mainspace, it will at least end up in their user space. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 16:05, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then I shall clarify. If pages are kept in main namespace, OK. If they are moved to userspace or draft namespace then those pages should be organized and linked to in such a way that they are not effectively impossible or extremely difficult to find or notice (if one's intention is to see less developed content and stubs for possible development). I oppose outright deletion for reasons I noted. Bless up. 06:17, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

What should people do with a page like Humane Quality? It's just a random nonsense page I found in the essay category. The history does not suggest that it's going anywhere. What should I tag this with? delete? prod? dr? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:09, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is a good question precisely because we don't seem to have a unique "correct" answer. The simplest choice is to put a prod on it. Be sure to write it as {{subst:prod}} so as to establish a deletion date. We could also move it to Student Projects. Finally, Special:Diff/2532632/42264 informs us that the sole author is User:CQ, who is semi active. If we move it to User:CQ/Humane Quality, we should leave the author a note on their talk page using {{subst:Pagemove announcement}}. Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 04:35, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I tagged the page with delete (speedy), where one possible outcome is moving it to User:CQ/Humane Quality. If there is opposition to speedy, I would go to rfd, but speedy seems okay to me, given the established practice of using the low-overhead speedy for very low quality material. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:37, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What to do about WV:Verifiability

My edits to the page have been challenged elsewhere, but a proper venue seems to be Colloquium. We should figure out what to do about them.

1) Revert to the state before my edits. I find this suboptimal since I find these edits to be an improvement, but I am no dictator here.

2) Keep in the state in which I left the page. Still far from ideal, but at least some defects have been addressed.

3) Make amends to the state in which I left the page.

I will point out that even after the changes I made, the page is at odds with the actual widespread practice. One only has to look e.g. at Student Projects and its subpages to see that requirements of either reference-verifiable statements or original "scholarly research" are being largely ignored. To wit, e.g. Student Projects/Geography contains only one external link (to youtube) and surely is not "original scholarly research" by any standard; it is a rather unoriginal yet original in the sense of copyright law writeup, perhaps by a student. Student Projects has other such pages.

Ideally, we would figure out how to amend WV:Verifiability to match the intended tolerance for unreferenced texts in Wikiversity. In the meantime, it seems advisable not to pretend the page is a binding policy that is actually enforced. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 11:09, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am neutral on this. If you follow the rules, we should revert your changes because no census was reached. If we follow past policy, no action needs to be taken because much of what was written was never properly voted on. Wikiversity is a very small organization. We are so small in number that we can either improve the wiki or improve the rules, but not both, IMHO. I am getting caught up in all this because I am one of the few Custodians who is deleting pages, and I might stop doing that (I'm only a volunteer.) ... Also, it's OK to discuss things on the Colloquium, but decisions need to be done in Wikiversity space because: (1) That's the way we used to do it, and (2) these decisions take a long time (many months) and discussions get archived or lost before everybody votes.Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 20:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Expanding WV:Deletions with provision for moving to user space

I propose to add something like the following to WV:Deletions:

"==Moving to user space==

"A page that meets the criteria for deletion can be moved to user space instead, unless an overriding rationale for deletion prevails such as the page being offensive, copyright violation, etc. Rationale: The database storage is not saved by deletion and there is generally no harm in being kind to those who hone their writing and wiki editing skills in Wikiversity."

Thoughts? Any supports? Phrasing modification proposals? Should the rationale be omitted? --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:39, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The policy you proposed is better than what we have. But I keep coming back to the "calculation" of what is and is not possible. We need to move fast and efficiently because removing less than 10% of the low quality pages accomplish nothing. It is time consuming to go into the history and decide who the author(s) were. I propose Draft:Archive/Pagename for all such pages. This will allow people to search Draft:Archive to locate their work. I also propose that we give high priority to two distinctly different types of pages:

Old pages that have been dormant for 5 years or more.
Vast quantities of new pages that a hyperactive newbie creates. Half of them are doing real harm with nonsense pages, and need to be asked to leave (or at least work in userspace.) The other half need to be encouraged to work under one or two subpages.

--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:51, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are the pages in "Draft:Archives/..." exempt from "Resources which remain in the draft space for over 180 days (6 months) without being substantially edited may be deleted", which was voted on in Wikiversity talk:Drafts#Draft namespace resource retention in April 2019? If they are not exempt, why should a page creator prefer the Draft page over user space, in which the material can be left alone indefinitely? I for one would prefer my writings to end up in my user space and stay there "forever", publicly accessible.

Yes, you are right that figuring out the right user is more work and sometimes may be harder to do or impossible. For that scenario, the draft space seems to be a fine option.

Shouldn't we codify both options, as "can"? We would start by adding the user space option as proposed above, and I would propose another option for the Draft space in a separate thread? (Or you could do it if preferred.) --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 19:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the Draft:Archive would be exempt from removal. Putting the material in Draft:Archive has lots of advantages: (1) Virtually all pages have multiple authors (2) people can easily search this DraftArchive space using either Google or Wikiversity's search option. (3) Nobody in their right mind is going to judge Wikiversity by what they read in a space called "Draft:Archive". What distinguishes Wikiversity from the other wikis is the we "learn by doing", and we all learn from our mistakes. Before we propose this option to the community, I suggest we just do it for about ten pages, and see who complains.

Also, the page created used the singular: See Draft:Archive. Feel free to replace Lorem ipsum with proposed guidlines.Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 20:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since the proposed plan is to let very-low-quality material sit somewhere in the Draft:Archive/... indefinitely, I think the better plan is to let sit all pages in the Draft:... space indefinitely, which would require a formal abolishment of Wikiversity talk:Drafts#Draft namespace resource retention via new voting somewhere. But even if we want to have Draft:Archive/... exempt from expiry, it probably requires a process as formal as the linked vote, doesn't it? I struggle to find the significant difference between the kind of material that belongs to Draft/... and the kind that belongs to Draft/Archive/... --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 20:26, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a way out of any legal conundrums associated with Draft:Archive: Let's consider it my personal project, always under construction. That way I don't need anyone's permission to maintain the page, unless someone can make the argument that it hurts Wikiversity. I haven't read the Wikiversity policy, but I doubt there is a deletion date for drafts that are still being edited. I have certain rules for this project. The following items are not allowed, for example:

Bad attempts at humor, or commercial advertising (this eliminates most spam)
Excessive pages by a single editor
All hate speech, and any pseudoscience that is patently false

Also, any link, image, or template that interferes with Wikiversity can be "dewikified" using <nowiki>...</nowiki>

As I was looking for pages to place in this archive, I took a second look at Student Projects/PhotoTalks. Those who want to remove it from its subspace may outnumber me. But they are wrong. I spent several years at a University consulting with primary and secondary teachers on the teaching of math and science (my efforts were largely useless because at that level teaching is 99% babysitting and 1% content.) But assigning a young student to learn how to create a page on Wikiversity with images is an excellent thing to do. Even if the person who created the page was not a child.Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 23:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Returning to the original topic, do you have any objections to expanding the WV:Deletions page as proposed, to codify moving to user pages? The text says "can" (an option), captures actual recent practice and does not preclude using Draft namespace for a similar purpose. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 14:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I am a newbie and have been somewhat active, I wonder whether I am doing things the right way.

I don't want to bother anyone by asking them to review what is quite a lot of writing. But if I have been doing anything which has stood out as less than ideal, please feel free to let me know. Addemf (discuss • contribs) 19:41, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Addemf: Everything you wrote looks OK to me. Your topic is outside my field of expertise, though. If you need any help, click "discuss" after my username:Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 14:55, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! As long as none of the style or ways that I'm editing are upsetting to anyone, I'm pleased! :) Addemf (discuss • contribs) 17:56, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete pure junk

I think pure junk should be deleted rather than moved to userspace or draftspace.

For instance: Draft:Istanamshjs. The title is nonsense, the "content" is nonsense; not even sentences.

This kind of "contribution" is not worth anyone's time, not even the time to push the "move" button. The only button this deserves is "delete with extreme prejudice".

WV:Deletions does not disagree, or outright agreees.

--Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:29, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Dan Polansky: You are asking to delete this page approximately one day after it was created. It is perfectly acceptable to start a draft with an outline. There is a bit of justifiable prejudice against IP editors because they tend not to stay long. But perhaps the person is being cautious about registering with an unfamiliar organization. I still haven't made the decision to sign up for CNN. I admit that the draft looks incoherent, and give this project a 5% chance of going anywhere, and that probability will go down every day this draft is not edited. This leaves me with three questions: (1) What probability of success is the threshold for deleting a draft? (2) How do we obtain that probability? By one person's opinion, or do we need some sort of consensus? (3) At what point do we reach a point of diminishing return on our efforts? In other words, bringing this up on the Colloquium or RFD wastes our time. Just give it a {{subst:prod}} and move on.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 14:40, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy vandegrift: {{ping}} only works if you also sign a post. So if you go back and edit a comment to add a ping, you should also re-sign that post. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:07, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: I'm confused: I thought I did sign the post. Perhaps my numbered list confused people. I will re-edit, but not resign because that confuses the record.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:29, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I submit that Draft:Istanamshjs is not a draft of anything but a pure junk. To my mind, the page is not acceptable at all, and I don't care about whether the author was an IP in this instance.

I brought this to Colloquium so that we can agree that some pages are junk enough to be deleted outright rather than being "salvaged" in Draft space. If there is no such agreement, we can as well rename "Draft" space to "Dustbin".

I find this lenience toward pure junk very perplexing. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:39, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I quote this junk in full:

<small>

This page Istanamshjs Does not exist

This Page but,Always you can Make a new draft for                           

Review.


Did you mean Islam JTK?

Islam 1988 Monopoly

Islam 1991 User

Islam 1996 

Islam 1998

Islam 1999

Islam 2000 Event help

Islam 2021

Privacy Policy  Terms  Help of Service   Feedback  Advice  Settings 


Sign in  Sign Up

</small> This is not a draft. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:40, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion

I am planning to close a number of discussions at Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion. A few of them have unresolved issues, but the discussions are so contorted that we need to resolve those issues with fresh starts for each issue. I will collapse the discussions to leave room for you to list any items that need to be resolved.

Yours truly, Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 04:51, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Resolvable outcomes based on existing discussion and WV:Deletions guideline:

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Wikiversity:Deletion_Convention_2024: not a specific deletion proposal => no action taken.

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Thousands_of_unused_files: not clear

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Invalid_fair_use_by_User:Marshallsumter: not clear; something was already done

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Draft:Proof_for_NP_unequal_P_by_Thomas_Käfer: delete.

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#PhotoTalks: move out of mainspace (2:1)

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Wikisphere: move out of mainspace (already done, but redirect was kept)

Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Ukulele: delete (or move out of mainspace).

On a process/administration note, I do not find collapsing discussions useful at all, not even before archiving. The English Wiktionary does not collapse its RFD discussions. The English Wiktionary closes each discussion with a closure statement, e.g. "RFD-kept" or "RFD-deleted". It would be great to proceed in a similar fashion. From the archives of Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion, I see the English Wikiversity did not use to collapse discussions. For instance, Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion/Archives/16 uses boxed closures using {{archive top}} and {{archive bottom}} but no collapsed closures; and each boxed closure states the specific outcome. I think even these boxes with blue background are unnecessary and make the archived discussions harder to read. The phrasing of the closing statement is not that important; it can be "Deleted per consensus", "No consensus for deletion". One can emphasize closing if one wishes: "Closed: deleted per consensus", "Closed: no consensus for deletion", etc.

If discussions are to be collapsed, the collapsing should be on a per discussion level rather than multiple discussions being in a single collapsed section (perhaps that was just an editing error?)

On a time note: closing Ukulele is too early IMHO since not even one week elapsed. We should agree on a minimum period for keeping RFD discussions open and keep that period. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:35, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The confusion about Ukulele is my fault. I closed the discussion ("turned it blue") and collapsed it because there was a consensus to delete. I will not move the discussion into the archive ("hide it") until it is deleted. I need to prioritise my efforts, and deleting well designed stubs is not a high priority. I said this is my fault because I forgot to change the tag on Ukalele from "rfd" to "speedy". Now anybody who wants to delete will see it on Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion.Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:34, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Invalid_fair_use_by_User:Marshallsumter Can be closed. Someone just have to decide if the pages made by MS and/or Kizer should be deleted or not. If someone know the answer to the off topic question it would be Great but if not that page could be discussed in a new RFD.--MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 05:55, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The start of Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Invalid_fair_use_by_User:Marshallsumter mentions "out invalid fair use files"; are there still any files (not pages) by User:Marshallsumter that someone considers problematic? Either way, it is probably a good idea to close this old RFD thread, and open a new one if required, say, "Files by User:Marshallsumter with invalid fair use". --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 06:27, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I created a space for this discussion at Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion#Archiving_of_Invalid_fair_use_by_User:Marshallsumter --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 08:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good. The title is a bit ambiguous: are we talking files or pages? Anyway, let us see what discussion develops there. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:15, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Invalid fair use files are a copyright problem. My plan was to delete pages in user namespace. Once the pages were deleted many files would be orphan and easy to find and delete. Very simple plan - at least in my head :-D However the files have been found and deleted now. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 16:23, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem deleting user namespace pages that are causing trouble. In fact, I'm still a bit concerned about moving "dead" pages to either userspace or Draft:Archive for exactly that reason. If anybody ever runs into a problem caused by such pages, let me know.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing discussions in Requests for Deletion (RFD)

I register my opposition to the use of collapsing in Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion. Collapsing the discussions makes it harder to skim the RFD page just by scrolling down and see what is going on there. As a weak argument, collapsing RFD discussions is not common in the English Wiktionary. One does not need collapsing to move from one discussion to another: there is a table of contents for that. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]