Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/June 2013

IQ image

I'm concerned about the very existence of the image at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/File:Bell_curve_and_IQ.jpg

To me, it make numerous, perhaps spurious claims about driving, SAT scores, poverty, years in school etc and should be referenced at best or deleted. If such claims are made, they should be backed up by reliable sources. I have no experience in editing wikiversity articles, so am not sure on the protocol for removal of such an image. I only know that it shows up on the first page of google image search for 'IQ bell curve". Ho wdo we go about deleting it? (The preceding unsigned comment was added by 101.175.45.28 (talk • contribs) .)

See Wikiversity:Deletions#Discussion. You have just begun the first step by initiating discussion where it is used. -- dark lama 15:01, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

While I personally view IQ and its testing and use as an invasion of privacy, the book: "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life" By Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray seems to support the statistical results in the graph. On p. 127, for example, is "Even in these more complicated analysis, low IQ continues to be a much stronger precursor of poverty than the socioeconomic circumstances in which people grow up." The key here is that IQ may be improved a lot by appropriate training and exposure to dynamic education geared to improving IQ scores. And, we can provide that here at Wikiversity. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:19, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Trademark discussion

Hi, apologies for posting this in English, but I wanted to alert your community to a discussion on Meta about potential changes to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy. Please translate this statement if you can. We hope that you will all participate in the discussion; we also welcome translations of the legal team’s statement into as many languages as possible and encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please see the Trademark practices discussion (on Meta-Wiki) for more information. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk)

This Month in GLAM

The original research project searching for early telescopes is a Special Story for This month in GLAM --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:48, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for help with starting to learn EDI Ansi X12

Hey guys, the Subject line says it all. I recently took an interest in this, and would like to learn about it and try it out a little without having to pay a regular university. Any place to find out information and start?

--Spinka975 (discuss • contribs) 18:35, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing I see on Wikiversity is Ansi x12 standard format. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:22, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

technical writing job skills

Hi, 
    I would want to know whether you provide any training for technical writers.

--Agastya 75 (discuss • contribs) 07:13, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Technical writing is a do it yourself learning course. Sidelight12 ^Talk 06:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in Education: June 2013

This Month in Education – Volume 2, Issue 6, June 2013
Headlines>
Growing contributions from wikiArS initiative German Wikiversity continues its relaunch English Wikipedia program seeks Ambassadors Italian nursing students and Wikipedia Articles of Interest in other publications
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription · Distributed via Global message delivery, 14:18, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Additional News Outlets

Hi!

I'm hoping that others may inform me about additional news outlets such as This Month in Education and This Month in GLAM. While there are additional contributions that can be made to these and the Wikiversity Main Page/News, perhaps there are others that may help to inform potential students about Wikiversity.

All suggestions are welcome. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:27, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Become a Theoretical Physicist

Become a Theoretical Physicist Created by Gerard 't Hooft, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. He claims on the site it contains links to all necessary information required to become a theoretical physicist. I have perused the site some and their is an abundance of links to a wealth of information.70.120.214.27 (discuss) 17:48, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A couple bugs?

I was developing the spanish verbs dictionary a little ( https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Spanish/Verbs ), and I might have run into a couple bugs.

1. When I copy the template code {{Template:Spanish/Verbpage}} from the main page (linked above), and post it in a new verbs page, it doesn't display the template, instead it says "Template:Spanish/Verbpage" as a broken red colored link; eg https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Pensar&oldid=1040811 But if I copy the same exact code from somewhere else, like a simple text editor, it works. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I wraped the instruction in < pre>< /pre> tags; I did this so that I could write out the wiki code without losing it's formatting.

2. Sometimes when I create a new page with the template, the definition section is already filled out by default with a different words definition.

What do you make of this?

EDIT: Notice how the definition for all the words in the "A" category were changed to "to have", but nobody made those changes. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Spanish/Verbs/A --Simplex (discuss • contribs) 18:36, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE

I fixed the first problem, I just copied code from working pages; I also found the <nowiki> tags which I used instead of <pre> tags. The second problem I mentioned is still ongoing; Now all the words that haven't been assigned a definition (like all the words in the "A" category) are set to "to walk", that's the last definition I created (which was for the word "caminar").

--Simplex (discuss • contribs) 22:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

'to walk' has been hard coded into the template. All references to the template are likely to include those words. Based on page history, it appears that you were editing the template itself today rather than the pages that use the template. I recommend using undo to restore the template to the last version prior to your edits and then review the word pages you've added after that. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Where's the template?--Simplex (discuss • contribs) 10:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The first problem was caused by using lowercase "p" instead of uppercase "P" in {{Spanish/VerbPage}}. The template is named Template:Spanish/VerbPage and I went ahead with removing "to walk" for you. I think the template's purpose is unclear as it adds section headings with edit links to subpages and provides no means for learners to see material added to the subpages. -- dark lama 12:04, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I see now, by clicking an edit link for one of the headers on a verbs page you're editing the template, not that specific page. How could we make the subpage display?--Simplex (discuss • contribs) 13:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I used #ifexist as a possible solution. Now if the page exists it includes the page. If the page doesn't exist, it gives you an edit link. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:39, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nice, but shouldn't there be an edit link even if there is a definition? That way it's easier to make adjustments. Would this work? (I'm not to keen on the advanced wiki formatting)

{{#ifexist: {{Editlink|{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Definition}} | {{:{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Definition}} | {{Editlink|{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Definition}}}}--Simplex (discuss • contribs) 19:39, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Now added. The first parameter of #ifexist needs to point to the page you're looking for, not the link to it. The second parameter is what you want to display if it exists. The third parameter is what it should display if it doesn't exist. I just took the third parameter out and moved it to the end so that the edit link is always displayed. Feel free to adjust as desired. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:33, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! Muchas gracias a todo :D --Simplex (discuss • contribs) 01:08, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity in Korean

Please add wikiversity in korean to "In other languages". Here's the link: (wikiversity - korean)

It may also need to be added here https://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Main_Page I would do it but I don't have a global account yet. Also, if it lets you without an account (you posted with an ip address) remember to sign you name with "--~~~~" ;) --Simplex (discuss • contribs) 13:19, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

X!'s Edit Counter

(Sorry for writing in English. You can translate the proposal.)

Should X!'s edit counter retain the opt-in requirement? Your input is strongly encouraged. Voice your input here.—cyberpower ^Chat_Automation 04:22, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

Why don't Pretty boxes round corners in Firefox?

The html code used to generate Pretty boxes: (I'm not putting this into a wiki editing box, this is what the server gives me and I'm using Firebug to try adjustments)

<td colspan="1" style="background-color: #ffFcF1; border: 1px solid #E39C79; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 8px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 8px; -moz-border-radius-topright: 8px; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 8px;">

That code looks either outdated, or just messy:

There's a missing hyphen between the last two words of each selector (I.e. "topleft" should be "top-left")
The word order in the selectors are mixed up, according to the Mozilla Developer Network the longhand version should be:

border-<top or bottom>-<left or right>-radius:

But I got:

border-radius-<top or bottom><left or right>:

After correcting those problems and removing the -moz- tags (Are we not past the browser specific styling stage for border radius? I thought that it was pretty universally standard now.) so that I'm left with:

background-color: #ffFcF1; border: 1px solid #E39C79; border-top-left-radius: 8px; 
border-bottom-left-radius: 8px; border-top-right-radius: 8px; border-bottom-right-radius: 8px;

It works fine, but unless you're inheriting values, or someone specifies different values, why not use shorthand?

background-color: #ffFcF1; border: 1px solid #E39C79; border-radius: 8px;

The help page for pretty boxes says that "Some browsers will not see rounded corners.", but is this really a browser compatibility issue if it's specified for -moz- and it's not working for me on Firefox 21.0 - Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu canonical - 1.0? And it works if I clean up the websites code? If this was a browser compatibility issue, I shouldn't be able to get it working at all without making changes to the browser. --Simplex (discuss • contribs) 02:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just got the update for Firefox 22.0 this morning, same issue.--Simplex (discuss • contribs) 09:47, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see rounded corners in any browser I tried at Pretty boxes from either Mac or PC, but if you want to clean up the HTML/CSS, be bold! Just also be careful, as there are many pages using those templates, and a good number of templates that work with each other that will all need to be tested. You can always roll back if it doesn't work. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You can also use a sandbox or a userspace page to test. That way you can make mistakes without breaking the structure of what may depend on it. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 06:27, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic Archiving Broken

It appears that the automatic archiving bot for the Colloquium is broken. I've manually archived April and May, but is anyone familiar with the bot that should be doing the archiving? I'm not sure where to start troubleshooting this one. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:20, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

From the edit history it is user:ArchiveBot. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 19:21, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to be an external process run through a no-longer-active user's account. We'll need to archive manually until it's fixed or replaced. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:43, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]