Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/June 2010

War and Iran

While removing vandalism, I saw that page. I don't know who thought that it deserved to be its own page or why. We don't spin off help desk or any discussion pages into an "article". If it is part of a discussion it stays on the discussion page or a subpage of the discussion. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:55, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Why not? Spinning off a discussion as a way to pursue some learning objectives sounds reasonable to me. Could be that someone wants to turn a discussion into a lecture, a seminar, an analyses, or research. -- darklama  20:18, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

That isn't what article space is for, and discussions stay with discussions. That is how all wikis work, which is why we have "discussion" pages. There is no real learning there at all. We are not an internet BB or Message Board system. If someone wants to "turn" it into something, they don't need that discussion at all. Regardless, it belongs back where it came from. The discussion itself has provided nothing of value and is a source of both racial hate and IP vandalism. That is not what Wikiversity is about. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:24, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Lectures, seminars, analyses, and research does belong in the article space, and some learning resources include discussions embedded in them, but sounds like you have already made up your mind. Why bother mentioning this here than, with your mind already made up? -- darklama  00:17, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

As an academic, a page started by a known troll of another project asking which country could kill another, that had little participation, was on the held desk, and served as a place for vandals to make racial attacks is not appropriate in any educational setting. Darklama, your recent contribs have shown very little over the past year and a half in doing the work that is needed to be done every day. The fact that you would opine on something that is really obviously wrong as the above while doing very little to help out is frustrating to say the least. The note above was to tell people that such a thing was not acceptable. Over the past three months I've had to delete a lot of pages that were blatantly inappropriate and filled with racial attacks. This should have been cleaned up a long time ago and I am disgusted that it was ignored. I can't be the only one who bothers to use the mop and it should probably be put forth that those who haven't used a set amount of admin actions in the past 6 months like other projects, because there are a lot of people not doing their jobs. I have my own projects I could be working on but I don't have the time because I have to clean up blatantly inappropriate stuff like the above. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Your original comment did not read like a note to me, but like a solicitation for feedback. There are no jobs here, everyone is volunteering their time. If people rather volunteer there time to work on projects than mop the floor that is there prerogative. -- darklama  00:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

"We don't" That is in the original language. There was no solicitation for feedback. It was clearly wrong and people need to know what to avoid in the future. And if people aren't going to use their custodian tools then they don't deserve them. It is that simple. The ops are not a special award. They are a job. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:46, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Ottava, Darklama's response was appropriate, if superficial. We get to make superficial comments. I.e., his response was correct as to general principles, but not, I'd say, as to implied conclusion here. Please don't make it personal by raking up his contribution record. That was inappropriate, and implies that one volunteer gains superior rights by volunteering more time recently, and another loses the right to comment by not. In fact, I'm glad to see recently inactive editors and administrators comment, it shows they still care. Ideally, over the years, we will build up a large reserve of "extended participants" who will provide gravitas from their experience. So thank you, Darklama, for commenting, and thank you, Ottava, for your work cleaning up the project, it is visible and appreciated. Okay? --Abd 14:24, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Note, I moved the page back to the archive at the Help desk where it was moved from. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:04, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with this move. In fact, I might go further. The whole discussion was outside the mission of Wikiversity, from the beginning. While it's possible that the material that resulted could be framed in a way that would make it relevant here, no attempt had been made to do so for three years. An argument could have been made for deleting the page, though it may be better to just blank it from the archive (do we want those IPs popping in and continuing the argument? -- lots of it was very provocative, inviting angry response). If someone objects, then it could be moved to their user space with a NOINDEX tag until they make it into an actual learning resource. It is possible that any piece of junk could become a learning project, and, in fact, academic studies have been made of literal garbage. But that doesn't mean that we have an open garbage dump in the middle of the campus. Studies of racism don't run racist activities on-campus, they study what is said and done elsewhere. (But a discussion in a seminar may reveal and expose racist attitudes among students, that would be part of its function, but the goal is not to confirm or condemn the attitudes, but to enlighten them.) If it's necessary to preserve a racist document, published or obtained elsewhere, it is done within a context that clearly turns the document into an object of study and avoids all appearance of advocacy. Wikiversity, on the other hand, by having this as a resource page, is the legal publisher.

On the other hand, we should avoid censorship, and for this example, blanking with, perhaps, a reference to history, so that anyone who cares can read the material, seems to be a middle way. I hate it when I see some controversial page mentioned, and I can't read it because I'm not an admin; I've been an advocate of WP:Pure wiki deletion, though allowing all registered editors to read deleted material would also be adequate, thus actual deletion would be reserved for legal necessity or protection from danger or pure garbage amounting to vandalism. --Abd 14:13, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

A little cleaning ?

This category could receive a cleanup ? Crochet.david 18:18, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Done. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:29, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

RevisionDelete

(pasting talk page content for community discussion - originally from User talk:Jtneill) I want to ask you: When should I use RevisionDelete and when not? :p --Diego Grez 18:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Let me answer, subject to review by Jtneill, of course. Normally, not. It reduces transparency. However, there are occasions where transparency should be reduced! The most common is to remove from public visibility an edit that can cause harm, such "outing" an editor, revealing real-life identity and, worse, things like location and telephone number, employment, etc., and other kinds of harm may be possible as well. Theoretically, copyright violation could be a possible reason, but I've never seen it done on Wikipedia. Because anyone can link to a Wiki history, if the wiki is being used to host seriously problematic material, such as codes to crack copyright protection, through a link to page history, it could be quite appropriate to revision-delete it.

Normally, even gross incivility remains in the history, as well as vandalism etc. Serious libel could be another exception that might be possible. It's better if edit history is there, usually, so that the problematic contributions of an IP or registered editor can be reviewed if needed. Revision deletion is more work than mere reversion or whole-page deletion, and can make a mess of the logs. There should be a good reason for it. If you think someone is being immediately harmed, in real life, then you might be obligated to act in advance of review, but if a matter is serious enough to warrant deleting revisions, I'd recommend discussing it with others, openly (without directly revealing problem content, of course, but pointing to the location so any admin can read it.)

Users may ask you to revision-delete edits that reveal their IP address, due to autologout, as an example. Generally, this should be honored, and promptly, but I'd say there should be a record of it, say on the user Talk page, so that admins can notice if it's needed later. (The tool allows simply hiding the identity of the editor.) If there is seriously problematic information revealed, it may be appropriate to ask for oversight, and how to do this without creating a big red flag in the meantime is beyond the scope of this answer....

Was there some specific situation you had in mind, Diego? --Abd 19:13, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking of serious libel or highly offensive material. Thanks for the explanation Abd :) --Diego Grez 23:22, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

This is an excellent question and excellent advice I think from Abd . But I note that Special:RevisionDelete is not enabled on WV (more info mw:RevisionDelete. So, for en.WV we would still use a request to stewards on meta for oversight to deal with unwanted edit history comments. It is, as Abd notes, a rare occurrence, but is needed for the several situations Abd describes. I'm wondering about the status of RevisionDelete on other sister projects, but perhaps we should be making a bugzilla request to enable RevisionDelete on WV? Please discuss and indicate your view. My read of the meta pages about this is that meta oversight is being gradually phased out to locally enabling RevisionDelete? This seems administratively simpler, but it puts even more power and potential for mis-use in the hands of custodians and would also warrant development of guideline/policy. Views? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Jtneill, it is enabled. I have tested it on my userpage :) It's a great idea to create our own policy for RevDel. --Diego Grez 23:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks, silly me ;) - RevisionDelete is enabled and accessed via the "Show/hide selected revisions" button on a page history for custodians! I guess that shows how often I've used it. Nevertheless we could do with guidelines/policy along the lines of Abd's advice - there is currently nothing in WV:D - e.g., in there or separately e.g., perhaps WV:RevisionDelete? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Per the idea of WP:DENY, I've been deleting histories and restoring all but the bad contribs from frequent/repeat harassers. That way, they do not have a public record of when they did their action so they can't gloat about it. As a side note, the show/hide feature works on block logs along with other logs in case anything needs to be hidden (bad names being created or problems in general). Ottava Rima (talk) 00:02, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

That's great info, Ottava and Abd. I hope you we can synthesise some of this experience and wisdom into some guidelines at Wikiversity:Revision deletion. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Aerospace Engineering

--Aditya Cholan 04:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)hi every one. I'm Arun Shankar from India . I would like to know about Aerospace engineering and the type of jobs available for it. Also, people say that there is very less job opportunity in India . Please give me details and help me.I'll need this information for joining a college. Thanks in advance.

Where to host graphical content?

It seems to me like there is MASSIVE overlap in some projects (wikiversity, wikipedia, wikibooks, wikieducator, etc). It seems to me, particularly for graphics/animations/etc that we should "share" between these projects. I suppose since it is all open, we can just take graphics from one and paste them in another, but I see something more like wikigraphics.com (yay, another project!) that people use to create graphical content that should be linked to from all other wikiXYZ projects. Thoughts? -- Daviddoria 12:12, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons should be able to serve that purpose. It accepts freely licensed media content which can then be used on Wikiversity, Wikibooks, or any of the other WMF projects without having to upload it locally there. As far as I understand, it would be possible for WikiEducator to use content hosted on Commons in the same way subject to setting the Wiki up in a particular way. Adambro 12:18, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Why don't all of the wikimedia projects just not allow files to be uploaded to the individual wikis and force everything to be hosted at wikicommons? Daviddoria 18:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wiktionary, to name a few) can all use files that have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as if they were uploaded locally using the same method e.g [[File:Foobar.jpg]]. Wikieducator isn't a Wikimedia project, but recent versions of the mediawiki software allow local repositories to be build transparently by importing uploaded files from external repositories, which Wikieducator could use if they wanted to make use of files from Wikimedia Commons. -- darklama  12:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Wiki commons is for all (permitted) file types, not just graphics. In general, users should be encouraged to upload to commons, but it is also helpful to have the capability for local uploads to specific sister projects. This does, however, create some double-handling. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:28, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

WikiEducator vs WikiVersity

I came across this: http://wikieducator.org/ It seems like they have almost the same goals as the WikiVersity project? I understand the difference between WikiPedia and WikiVersity, but what is the difference between WikiVersity and WikiEducator? Daviddoria 13:40, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

These two are very similar projects. As you can see on the WikiEducator page, there are some links between them, but only a tiny-tiny proportion of cooperation potential is used so far. --Gbaor 15:20, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Some quick thoughts - Possibly the main difference is that Wikiversity is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation whereas WikiEducator is supported by the Commonwealth of Learning. This means that WV is integrated with the sister projects more so than with WE. By all means try out WE and see what you think - most regular users of Wikiversity have. Personally, I find the governance structure of WE of some concern - at the end of the day Wayne Mackintosh calls the shots for better or worse. There is a more organised, transparent governance structure for WV, with its own problems, including that at the end of the day the WMF board or its representatives such as Jimmy Wales may call the shots. WE has some more freedom in its structure and use of mediawiki add-ons - this can be an advantage or disadvantage (e.g., the use of liquid threads on talk pages on WE annoys some people). -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:20, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Reproducible Graphics

One thing that I believe would really help with technical content is requiring that all graphics that are available also point to the files or code necessary to produce them. For example, consider that someone creates a nice vector graphic in Illustrator or Inkscape, exports it to a jpg, and uploads it to WikiCommons. While that is certainly appreciated, if someone notices an error in the image, or suggests an improvement to it, it has to be produced from scratch all over again! Another case is that someone writes some Matlab or similar code to produce a plot and then uploads the plot to WikiCommons. This code must also be available so, again, if someone wants to change it, it is a simple incremental change instead of having to start from scratch.

Any thoughts on how to suggest that people do this/start enforcing this?

Daviddoria 14:59, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Suggesting or supporting are one thing, enforcing another. Enforcing is utterly impractical. It's demanding that volunteers jump through hoops. But, hey, setting up suggested guidelines and procedures, making it easy, all that, is just fine. And requesting such files from users is, again, just fine. As long as it's nice, and supportive! --Abd 16:58, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

It should be easy to request and receive these things. As you say, we don't want people to have to jump through hoops. When they go to upload an image, it should very clearly state that it is TREMENDOUSLY more useful/helpful if they also at this point attach/submit the producing materials. I think these kinds of changes need to be made on the backend, right? Daviddoria 18:17, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed that this is desirable, but also that for many, this may be too much effort. svg image formats are preferred because they can be edited, however, you're right that the code and data used to produce such images should also be uploaded. The code can be added to the image's page. The data could be uploaded separately. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:12, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

New guy

Hi friends. I made an account here as soon as the site was started, but ended up never coming here. I think what I'm looking for is a teacher(s)— someone who would be happy and available to answer my questions as I go through learning what would consist of a physics degree, the courses at School:Physics_and_Astronomy, and my found learning materials and projects. I don't know my way around Wikiversity, or the people or culture. Any help? Thanks! I've been active on Wikipedia for many years. Mac Davis 22:10, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

User:Mu301 is a physicist. Hillgentleman | //\\ |Talk 22:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Go to a library. WAS 4.250 10:36, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Read The Feynman Lectures on Physics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physics). - WAS 4.250 10:49, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Or ask a user here who was there, then. I sat in the room when those lectures were filmed and made into a book. At least most days. I also had other interests and never graduated, but recently I've been putting what I learned to use and have considered Feynman one of my most important teachers. So, while I'm not a "physicist," I might be able to help on occasion, or at least to encourage you. Welcome. As you study, indeed, ask questions and let them and the answers we find become resources. Learn by teaching, teach by learning. --Abd 11:51, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

About Renewable/Sustainable Energy

--204.154.137.252 14:46, 16 June 2010 (UTC) I would like to know about recommended text books, web pages or online tools to learn more on the subject. The focus would also include energy efficiency. I am looking for information regarding all of these subjects, but with an easy and understandable learning curve. It would also be helpful to have an engineering point of view in the text.

Animated growth of Wikiversity projects

You may be curious to play around with this. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 08:47, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

İnvite to History of Ottoman Empire Course

I opened History of Ottoman Empire Course. You may come to this course. You may ask the questions, answer the quizzes and learn History of Ottoman Empire. I will start tell lessons 20 June 2010. First lesson: "Establishment of Ottoman Empire". Good works... --Bermanya 16:03, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

• Sounds cool. I believe I see an error, though (200 should be 2010 ?):

Week XXVI: 1982-200 age of Modern Turkey

• Also, I see many English errors. Would you mind some help with your English ?

• Finally, looking at your first lesson, it looks like it might be better in outline form, with bullets. StuRat 22:56, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there are errors on page. I corrected some errors. You may help me for english. And thank you for your criticism. Good works... --Berm@nya^Talk 23:12, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I will try to correct any English errors. Also, some links to Wikipedia pages would really help. For example, in the first line "Osman Gazi, founded Ottoman Empire in Bilecik, Anatolia", I don't know who Gazi is, what Anatolia is, or where Bilecik is. If instead it said "Osman Gazi, founded the Ottoman Empire in Bilecik, Anatolia", then I could follow the links if I had any questions like those. (Of course, links to Wikversity articles would be even better, if we have any.) StuRat 23:21, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

OK. I will do. Thanks... --Berm@nya^Talk 23:23, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Capchaa inaccessible via screenreader

I would like to creat a WikiUniversity account, but there is no audible Capcha. The graphic capchas are inaccessible to screenreader-users, such as myself (I use JAWS). There are easy-to-implement audio capchas available, and I would like to see WikiUniversity implement one to make this site accessible to the blind.

Sincerely, Jewel Shuping herekittykat2@gmail.com

Someone can create an account for you, if there are any with experience in doing so who read this, could you help? Ottava Rima (talk) 18:42, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for posting about this. I've added your comment to this bugzilla issue: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4845 and voted for it. I'd encourage others to do the same, to improve accessibility. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 11:48, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Query

shafaq mohsin

hi wikiversity i am related from pakistan i have not completed my a-level shall complete soon.so can i be the member of this web page relating to any subjects and how will i study from you as a regular student and after completing it shall i get any certificate?your reply will be my great pleasure. --115.186.48.18 18:12, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

You are welcome to join in! However, Wikiversity itself does not grant certificates or degrees. See What is Wikiversity and What Wikiversity is not. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 11:29, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

School spam

We've probably deleted tons of pages of outright spam over the years, but there are always more and more schools that just drop some links and the rest as a page. We need to come up with a guideline or policy on how to deal with this. Now, two things that need to be determined:

• Do we allow universities to have a promotional page here?
• What about pages that are just copied from Wikipedia on schools?

- Ottava Rima (talk) 19:16, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to say yes within reason to your first question. No to your second question. -- darklama  23:02, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

• Once upon time there was collaboration to make policies that were needed for the Wikiversity project. Then, after the hostile takeover, Wikipedia's rules were enforced here and policy development was derailed. We've had two years of sysops and other interlopers from outside who do whatever they want to do, even in violation of policy. Does policy development matter any more? --JWSchmidt 23:51, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

• I don't see a promotional page on a school as belonging here. It's not a learning resource. The page, that is. The school might be a resource, of course. There may be some way to have listings of schools that offer courses and degrees in certain subjects, but I'm not comfortable with the concept that a diploma mill might effectively advertise here. On the other hand, if a learning resource here was developed by someone at a school, and is offered as a class there, used with permission, and with some kind of disclaimer, I don't see a problem with the course being credited to the school. We are not an accrediting agency, nor should we become one; but we can list and possibly review accrediting agencies or link to sites which do this. To me, the question should be what we can do, not what we prohibit. Just copying pages from Wikipedia is useless, that should be discouraged. Critical commentary on Wikipedia articles (i.e., on some particular version) is a possibility. If it could be done in a college seminar it could be done here. If it's on Wikipedia and there is some reason to mention it, and as with other pages on other sites, we would just link to it, possibly with a very brief summary in some cases.

• I recommend that we be pro-active and put up what we *can* do, at least with some examples. Then, when someone puts up a school page like that, instead of just coming down negatively, we can point to something positive that we will allow. And we can write a policy, and "eff" the history of hostile takeover here. Whatever happened then, this is now. Besides, there is netknowledge.org. Universities in the real world cooperate with each other, it should be no different here. But each is independent and autonomous, they are not centrally controlled. Full disclosure and free sharing of information, yes, but uniformity of approach and curriculum, no. --Abd 01:03, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

• An example for consideration: School of Extended Studies at Portland State University. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:43, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

• That reads like spam! --Diego Grez 00:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

• People tend to get upset when what they write is called "spam," we should avoid that term, unless it truly and clearly is spam. I'll agree, the article reads like promotion, but unless it is spewed all over the place, "spam" it isn't. Anyway, I've tagged it for speedy deletion and both warned the author about this and suggested that the author might read this Colloquium discussion, inviting him or her to, perhaps, help set up appropriate resources here. That page isn't going to be read by anyone here, it's useless. But suppose there is some course offered by the School of Extended Studies, which appears to be a fully legitimate, accredited activity, and there is a learning resource on that topic here. It could be quite appropriate to have, with resources here, some listing of schools, according to standards we set, where courses for credit are offered. That's helping our readers and students. --Abd 01:28, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

  People can also get upset when what they write is called promotional. Just having a view point can seem promotional. My thought is we should put up with works that might seem promotional in nature if learning can happen from the presentation including enough details and common questions that people are likely to have are answered. I think this may be along similar lines as defining what can be done. I think Extended Studies fails that because it fails to answer important questions like what courses are offered and is devoid of details. -- darklama  01:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

  Heck even when it mentions that its award-winning it doesn't mention what award its won, doesn't mention what businesses it meets the needs of, doesn't mention what kind of students its orientated towards, etc. Nothing to learn there. -- darklama  02:02, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's why I tagged it for deletion! But I also want to show the user that there might be some legitimate contribution that the user can make that will help students. I don't think that articles on schools, generally, are appropriate here, but perhaps some example could convince me otherwise. However, listing schools -- with links -- where the information would support learning and be useful for that, makes sense to me, but does raise the specter of standards. Definitely we'd not want to end up, in effect, promoting some scam or diploma mill. In addition, whatever we do must be efficient. The person who put the page here also put it, apparently, on Wikipedia, it was promptly deleted, and w:Portland State University there was edited to place the School of Extended Studies in the list of major academic schools. The intro says seven schools, which matches the university catalog. SES would make it eight. It is actually a separate section in the catalog. It's really a kind of program access, perhaps providing its own courses in some cases, it appears, but also perhaps distance learning access to other courses. I edited that article to place the SES in context. I'm hoping to solicit this new user's support and participation in setting up the policy! This wasn't a spammer, but someone not clear on policies at Wikipedia, I'd guess (notability, sourcing, etc.) and not clear about the mission of Wikiversity. I think there is a way to connect Wikiversity with the SES, there would be appropriate mentions and cross-connections. The SES is fully legitimate and recognized. And looks damn useful! They offer courses to people outside of Oregon as well as to Oregon residents, at the same tuition as for locals. So someone with the catalog could go through it and add links to appropriate resources here. But that should first be considered globally.... and I'm sure not interested in slogging through that stuff. But maybe some other volunteers can do it, including someone with a special interest in SES. And we could end up with a policy that works and is easy to apply. My hope. --Abd 02:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

  Abd, that's an encouraging message you've left on User talk:Tncarey. Maybe DM the user if no response soon. In general, I'd suggest we want to encourage schools etc. to engage with WV and listing themselves can be a first step. But if its just a description of the institution with no obvious connection to WV, this should go on a user page or Wikipedia. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 09:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

• Spam, or not spam, it is out of the project's scope. Wikiversity is a learning resource, not a place to put promotional information. There are legitimate uses of school's pages, but Ottava's example clearly doesn't adheres to the policy. --Diego Grez 02:36, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

By way perhaps of another example of an educational institution page on WV, feel free to visit, improve and critique, University of Canberra. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 09:15, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

University of Canberra is an example of what "school" pages should be in my view; a portal with a brief description of the school, links to relevant Wikipedia articles, relevant external links, and most importantly, links to learning resources related to that school. As has been suggested, I would agree that School of Extended Studies at Portland State University is beyond what is probably appropriate here. Encyclopaedic style lengthy descriptions of schools should be on Wikipedia. Adverts for schools shouldn't be anywhere on WMF projects. Users should come here and find educational resources, not adverts. They way that educational institutions can benefit from Wikiversity is by creating useful learning resources that may prompt users to look at what courses they offer. Adambro 10:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Possible template for use

In the title, I use "template" as in form and not as a Wiki template. I think that we should come up with a set standard for how pages for schools and universities should look like. Perhaps the basic information at top (type of school, size, etc) then allow them, say, a two paragraph summary on their institution/program. Then, after that, have a link to pages (learning resources, teacher's/professor's user pages, etc) related to their institution. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:04, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal

There is a proposal at Wikiversity:Real world schools that has been around since 2007. Does that proposal have what is needed? Should there be discussion to establish it as a policy, or does it need work more first? What do people think? -- darklama  14:15, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Current Student Volunteer Campaign

Hi all,

It seems to me that the best way to improve (and add to) the content on WikiVersity is to have a few students currently enrolled in "real life" versions of the courses we are offering work under a mentor as they go along. It is incredibly time consuming to produce/improve content in parallel with a post-college life. However, during an "in-college" life, this exercise is mutually beneficial - generating material is one of the best ways to help the student really learn the material (if you can't explain it, you don't know it!), prepare for exams, etc. At the same time, they could let WikiVersity know which topics were explained unsatisfactorily, which topics could have benefited from additional images, etc.

My suggestion would be for WikiVersity to reach out to universities calling for this type of volunteer. It seems to me that it would only take one or two iterations (less than a year!) to produce some incredible material.

Daviddoria 15:54, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Students enrolled in brick and mortar universities are already contributing here, and people are already reaching out to brick and mortar universities. The mentor concept already exists, just needs people to do it. Take a look at my user page for an example. -- darklama  16:07, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I guess I'm saying it should be formalized more than it is. I'd like to see a page that says "A, B, and C are currently students taking Physics I and contributing to the content of this page. Click here if you are also taking Physics I and would like to help (maybe 1-4 hours /week). Click here to mentor a student.". Darklama - I see on your user page that you are a "C Progamming Mentor", but is there a list of your students? Which pages are the working on? Which classes are they currently taking? Daviddoria 16:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Some pages already include a list of participants that wish to study the subject and wish to help contribute to works on the subject. My main goal with the mentor system is to clearly identify people willing to answer questions about a subject and than to list them on related pages so students can find them. Right now it is somewhat common for people to turn to custodians for help for site-related issues, and this is sort of an extension of that where people can know who they might be able to turn to find answers for their other questions. -- darklama  23:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Although the issue is not new and contributions from "real" schools occasionally appear on the site, it would be good to know how many people (i.e. teachers/students) contributed to WV as a part of a "real" class. Page listing these, maybe with some description and put it to a prominent place (main page?) would help to advertise the possibility and WV in general. --Gbaor 10:18, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

We have long had this page: Wikiversity:School and university projects. We have also long had a problem with the main page: rather than address the critical needs facing Wikiversity the main page is a silly "let's pretend we are Wikipedia" page. --JWSchmidt 14:08, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Campus ambassadors and the Public Policy Initiative

The PPI is a Foundation-sponsored project (supported by a dedicated grant) to organize knowledge about public policy topics, from university courses around the world. It is organizing campus ambassadors who can help profs learn how to effectively integrate their classes into Wikimedia projects and vice-versa.

This is one good place to start building a body of student volunteers. Most of the ambassadors will be students... it may be worth combining these ideas with a discussion with Annie and Pete who are organizing that part of the PPI - and with the initial ambassadors that are so discovered. –SJ+> 02:22, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Just so you know, I already talked to various people on WMF staff who were approved as part of that process and they said they want to devote all efforts to Wikipedia and wont be putting any effort towards other projects for now. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Counseling

This counseling page is effectively the syllabus for the masters program I hope to be enrolled in this fall. As time goes on, I will be (hopefully) fleshing it out with my notes in the sparse wiki format that I like so much. The curricula is didactic and meant to deal with specific problems: societal stress, immigration, school, community and workplace issues.--JohnBessa^talk 15:54, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

(!!) I am enrolling today for the online counseling masters. I have a great deal of experience in the topic, having taught the autistic and cared for homeless teenagers, so I think my work here will linking the courses, which I see as definitions, with supporting experiences.--JohnBessa^talk 12:49, 13 August 2010 (UTC)