Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/July 2015

Dependency tree to represent requirements for courses

Hello everyone,

I have this idea in mind now for a long time. We could try to connect the different courses by drawing a tree of dependencies. The basic use case would be that you need for instance a good understanding of probability distributions and linear algebra to understand the concepts of machine learning. This would then be represented by a dependency tree connecting probability and linear algebra separately to machine learning. A student could then take machine learning as a goal, then mark the courses s/he has already taken and then take the remaining dependencies until s/he can take machine learning. As an example, I have a good understanding of linear algebra, but want to retake probability. So I mark linear algebra which leaves me probability as a last dependency before I can/should take machine learning.

How does this sound? Could this be an improvement for wikiversity?

--Underworldguardian (discuss • contribs) 14:05, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Benelot (underworldguy), We have Extension:CategoryTree installed. If you wish to do the work, you can use tight categorization that mirrors and tracks the structure you want. You can also use a subpage structure to hold a dependency or prerequisite chart together. Wikiversity is fairly free-form, self-service and brutally open. If you wish to tackle it, I suggest writing it out in brainstorm fashion on Talk:Machine learning or perhaps on Machine learning as a sub-page, Machine learning/concepts or similar. You can get really personal about it by creating User:Benelot/machine learning. Cheers! - CQ (discuss • contribs) 16:36, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Chemistry Lesson Plans

I have an idea for creating a resource for new high school teachers that would provide one way to teach an entire year of a class like Chemistry using Lesson Plans developed via best practices. I am new to Wikiversity and have not yet found an area where this type of resource is being developed.

Is this a new idea or is there an appropriate section that is already doing this that I should be looking at?

Is this an appropriate use of Wikiversity or should I go elsewhere?

Thanks Exothermic101 (discuss • contribs) 19:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Have a look at School:Chemistry and Category:Chemistry to get a sense for existing users, methods and resources. I see that you're already active at Topic:High School Chemistry. Carry on! - CQ (discuss • contribs) 21:00, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this is definitely an appropriate use of Wikiversity. I've moved the Topic page to High School Chemistry. Topics are intended as department discussion pages rather than content pages. As you are developing this as a content learning project, it should be named appropriately. The primary difference is that Topic pages do not appear in default searches. If you are going to develop content, we want people to be able to find it. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:23, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to create PNG thumbnails of static GIF images

The thumbnail of this gif is of really bad quality.

How a PNG thumb of this GIF would look like

There is a proposal at the Commons Village Pump requesting feedback about the thumbnails of static GIF images: It states that static GIF files should have their thumbnails created in PNG. The advantages of PNG over GIF would be visible especially with GIF images using an alpha channel. (compare the thumbnails on the side)

This change would affect all wikis, so if you support/oppose or want to give general feedback/concerns, please post them to the proposal page. Thank you. --McZusatz (talk) & MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 05:07, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata

Why Wikiversity is not yet a Wikidata supported project? — Green Zero обг 15:21, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure one way or the other on this. How do you know Wikiversity is not a Wikidata supported project? Further, what would we do if we wanted to be supported by Wikidata if we are not? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:48, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I also looked at Wikidata and can't figure out what it's all about. People that smart wouldn't work that hard on something and accomplish nothing. But what is it? How can Wikiversity use it?--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 02:37, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Like all the sisters, Wikidata is a tool whose purpose is somewhat dependent on who you ask. It's an entity-relationship database, seeking to embody all knowledge about... well, about the world and about the sister projects. It's in some ways similar to Wikipedia and in others a wanna-be replacement for all the other sisters. They imagine (in a sadly not-well-thought-out way) that they can embody information in a language-/sister-independent way so that stuff for other languages/sisters can be generated automatically instead of being entered separately for each project. Unfortunately,  (1) Wikidata's stance toward information is fundamentally encylopedic, so that attempting to use it on non-Wikipedian sisters tends to undermine the infrastructure of non-Wikipedian sisters, magnifying the destructive imposition of Wikipedian tactics where they aren't appropriate;  (2) centralizing the data maximizes the impact of any act of vandalism, or for that matter of any mistake, by spreading it over many projects, while minimizing the ablity of local project communities to fix or even notice the problem;  (3) by reducing local control by individual projects over their own content, it subtly and pervasively undermines the morale of all the local project communities. The particular application Wikidata is first put to on any given sister is the automatic generation of interwikis, a purpose for which, alas, it is mildly unsuited on Wikipedia and becomes progressively more unsuited as the structure of the sister project gets more un-Wikipedia-like. The two sisters most unlike Wikipedia are, in my experience, Wikiversity and Wikinews. Wikinews is now "supported" by Wikidata, and it's been a quietly bad thing for Wikinews — which I don't expect you'd ever get the folks responsible to admit, as they're too busy crowing about what a huge success Wikidata is.

In the particular case of interwikis, consider their purpose: they exist to aid the reader, when looking at a page, to find that page's analog in other languages. The way Wikidata is used to generate interwikis is not driven by aiding the reader, though. Each page on a supported sister project can be linked from one, and only one, item on Wikidata. Two pages on different-language editions of a given sister are then automatically interwiki'd to each other if and only if they are linked from the same Wikidata item. But Wikidata is an ontology; if two concepts are slightly different, they should have separate items — which minimizes the occasions on which two pages get automatically interwiki'd to each other. In theory, projects can still manually add interwikis on individual pages than override the automatic interwiki linking by Wikidata; but of course as things are atm that cannot happen in practice. It goes against human nature. Once Wikidata supports interwikis for a given sister, people go around systematically removing all the manual interwikis on pages all over each project, on the assumption that anything centralized and automated must be better; and there is now no systematic way to make up for the systematic failings of Wikidata's interwikis. The only other at-all systematic mechanism for managing interwikis was the interwiki bots that are now being dismantled on the assumption that with Wikidata they are no longer needed. (Could this be fixed? Yes, but it would require significant improvements to wiki infrastructure. One could have manual interwikis on each sister page, and then also for each sister page a prioritized list of Wikidata items on which to look for appropriate interwiki links; when any of the relevant Wikidata items is modified in a way that affects the choice of interwikis, the sister page would flag itself out for attention by a human user on the sister project, who could then consider whether to change the local interwikis, change the Wikidata item, or what.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:48, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

22 July in the Wikidata I tried to add Colloquium to the other Village pumps. But I was told that this is impossible. (d:Talk:Q16503#Wikiversity Village pumps) — Green Zero обг 17:58, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

A possible example of how Wikiversity could use Wikidata is in Dutch learning project Nature. In this learning project we want to be able to determine flowers using their colour. On the English Wiversity you have learning project Bloom Clock that does something similar. See for example a list of pink flowers: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Bloom_Clock/Keys/Global/Late_Fall/Pink_Flowers. I started a discussion on the Project chat of Wikidata project, see https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Adding_property_colour.28s.29_for_flowers Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 11:57, 29 July 2015 (UTC)