Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/June 2024

Putting a box inside of a mathematical expression (MathJax question)

I am trying to put a box around some mathematical expressions inside of a MathJax environment.

You can see here how it is often recommended to do so: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference/22395#22395

I believe, however, that this requires configuring MathJax at the server level. When I try to implement that in my course, with the code

Failed to parse (unknown function "\bbox"): {\displaystyle \bbox[yellow,5px,border:2px solid red]{\alpha,\beta} \vdash \gamma}

it renders an error that \bbox is not recognized.

So a few questions.

1. Is there any other way to put a box around mathematical expressions, when the box is supposed to go only around some of the expression and not others (therefore I don't think I can just box the entire math environment with some kind of HTML solution)?
2. If not, is there a large down-side to configuring the server to accept these kinds of MathJax commands?
3. If not, can I pretty please request that it be configured? :) Addemf (discuss • contribs) 17:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

These are good questions and logically laid out, so pardon me for answering them in an inelegant way, but unless I am misreading this, mw:Extension:Math supports MathML directly, so an alternative is to try to use that to render it. That would also have the advantage of adding styling via CSS. As someone who doesn't tool around with math code, that may be a solution? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:46, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

That could be a work-around. It certainly does seem hard to use MathML. The code is complex for simple expressions, and if I understand it correctly, you usually edit in some kind of MathML editor and export it to source code and copy-paste source into the page. Much more cumbersome than, say, $ax^{2}+bx+c$. But perhaps I shouldn't be a choosy beggar!

But if it is easy and relatively costless to enable the MathJax that would permit extensions, I would be grateful. Addemf (discuss • contribs) 19:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

RfC - Admins/sysops issuing a block should be required to cite the offending diff(s) and the specific (official) rule/policy violated in the block log message

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.

Result

I was asked to close the discussion as an uninvolved custodian, so here it is: it seems pretty clear that there isn't support for this. --DannyS712 (discuss • contribs) 16:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Announcing the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

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Hello,

The scrutineers have finished reviewing the vote results. We are following up with the results of the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election.

We are pleased to announce the following individuals as regional members of the U4C, who will fulfill a two-year term:

• North America (USA and Canada)
  • –
• Northern and Western Europe
  • Ghilt
• Latin America and Caribbean
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• Central and East Europe (CEE)
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• Sub-Saharan Africa
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• Middle East and North Africa
  • Ibrahim.ID
• East, South East Asia and Pacific (ESEAP)
  • 0xDeadbeef
• South Asia
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The following individuals are elected to be community-at-large members of the U4C, fulfilling a one-year term:

• Barkeep49
• Superpes15
• Civvì
• Luke081515
• –
• –
• –
• –

Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.

Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. Follow their work on Meta-wiki.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 08:15, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Adding a learning project 'Work-Smart Ecosystem'

The business world has changed and is evolving more and more each day. The way we work, how we work, workplace culture, the next generation of workers, are some of the ways we are shifting from traditional business landscapes and entering a new era.

How can I start a learning project on 'smarter working'? Who wants to join me on this learning adventure? And what best practices would you describe?

I am new to using this space so bear with me, but I am excited to be here and contribute my knowledge, resources or ideas, to an inter-connected community and the world at large. Sierra Seven (discuss • contribs) 12:49, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Sierra Seven Welcome. A great thing about wikis is that you can just jump in and get started e.g,. edit Work smarter. But it can also be a bit lonely because people have such different interests, only some of which intersect. So, if you want to connect/collaborate with others, be prepared to also edit contribute outside of your specific interests to related pages and projects. And keep doing what you've done here, to share and flag with the community. I think also of us would like to learn how to work smarter, so I think its a relevant and interesting topic. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:58, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Programming Fundamental course restructure suggestion

At first, I strongly appreciate the dedicated work of Professor Dave Braunschweig for your knowledgeable courses, not only with the Programming fundamental, but for all others on Wikiversity. However, for the Programming fundamental course, I think there are a few things to be addressed to make it a better course for students and programmers.

While going through the whole Programming Fundamental course, I find that most of the lessons which involves the specific language implementation like C/Function, Python/Function,... just simply include a source code, while it's better for those source code to be a part of a specific course, e.g C, Python.

As a course in second-semester college-level targeting for fundamental concepts, I personally think "Programming fundamental" should only be limited to provide knowledge of programming terms like variable, functions,... and not to involve code snippets for all languages, just like what other famous textbooks of the same type do:

• "Computer Science: An Overview" by J. Glenn Brookshear and Dennis Brylow, no code snippet is provided, the textbook focuses on explaining in details all important computer science terms which is best for all students, programmers to use as a reference.
• "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein: Provides pseudocode for various algorithms, which students and programmers can implement in their preferred language. This is the format I think our "Programming fundamental course" should be like.
• "Computer networking: a top-down approach featuring the Internet" by Jim Kurose and Keith W. Ross, starting from basic principles and moving up to the complex ones to approach the protocol stack of the Internet based on the OSI model. Only Python source code is provided. There are details explanation in this book for students, programmer to implement in their preferred language. E.g: With the idea of HTTP request implemented from TCP socket implemented by Python in this book, you can implement that same program in C/C++ or other language by yourself.
• Almost every "Programming introduction course" at college and highschool starts with a single language, e.g C/C++, Python,...
• All micro-controller course for beginner at the college starts with C and assembly. Micro-processor course (i.e single board computer like Raspberry, Beagle Bone), which is a little more advanced but still targets for "newcomer" in college with little experience, starts with C for kernel driver - userspace application development and scripting like Bash, C++ and Python for userspace application development e.g peripheral control, data analytics, machine learning,...
• Networking for beginner courses at college start with script: Bash, Powershell

Back to Wikiversity, students from a specific course can refer to those Programming Fundamentals lectures to check for their concerned programming term, along with what is provided in their current course. E.g any beginner students, without any knowledge of function and is learning C can read the Programming Fundamentals/Functions for function definition then back to their C course at the current Function lecture. In case they first end up with Programming Fundamentals/Functions then continue with Programming Fundamentals/function/C, they just simply get a few knowledge of C function from this code snippet and still don't get enough knowledge for other function term as there isn't any code snippet to demonstrate for them, such as function pointer, callback function, variadic function, variable length argument, inner function,... (especially with function pointer, the term doesn't have their corresponds in many other languages). More on the Programming Fundamentals/function and Programming Fundamentals/function/C, the latter involves only 3 examples with function return float (float get_fahrenheit()), function return float with 2 params (float calculate_celsius(float fahrenheit)) and void return function (void display_result), while the lecture involves more to be covered, which is missing in code snippet, like scope (might need to expand for local variable, global variable and static scoping), styles (need more for naming convention, coding standard), parameters (function prototype, void as function argument, stuff like __FUNCTION__, __func__ and __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, command line arguments),... But generally, I strongly agree with the current structure of the [Programming_Fundamentals Functions structure]() and just simply expected to move all the snippet example, e.g Programming Fundamentals/Functions/C, into their programming language course, i.e merging Programming Fundamentals/Functions/C into C/function as a function introduction example.

Some article in Programming Fundamentals are also stub, e.g the IDE ones, which include only a list of IDE, while putting them all into the specific programming course like C, Python are better for the students to get those knowledge right inside those articles.

Searching for every programming language course on Wikiversity now results in at least 2 courses, this language course and the Programming fundamental one while, as what I explained earlier, Programming fundamental is better to be limited to the fundamental concepts like other textbooks in college. With only one course for one programming language, the Wikiversity community can spend more time contributing, patrolling on that course, instead of scattering on several and might finally end up with not a single ones to be ready for teaching.

And again, my restructure solution is simply merging the code snippets and some stub articles from the Programming fundamental to the specific programming language course. For those who concern about the comparison when implementing those programming term in multiple languages, they can read book of the same name of Prof Dave. All current code snippet in Programming fundamental seem to copy all the src code from that book.

I'm sorry, everyone, for my broken English as I'm not a native speaker. I also apologize to Prof. Dave Braunschweig and anyone else on Wikiversity if my restructuring idea might have offended or annoyed you.

--Anonymous Agent (discuss • contribs) 07:56, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Best to pick a language and stick with it, if you ask me. Otherwise students will be very confused. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 08:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I think having examples in multiple languages is kind of cool. It reminds me of Rosetta Code website. The reader has the option to pick only one language and look only at that language if they so wish. Having the option to consider how the same concept is syntactically realized/implemented in multiple languages provides added value. Users/readers can be trusted to limit the number of languages considered if they so wish.

Moreover, I think the main author of Programming Fundamentals should have the right to approve or reject any structural changes to such a book/project. Wikiversity has too few decent materials. Editors can be encouraged to contribute decent material if they can maintain significant editorial control. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Probably better if Mr. Agent writes his own course from scratch. Having multiple languages not only complicates assignments/grading (if it were to be used for a "real" course), but it also complicates the presentation. For example, an array in C is quite a different thing from an "array" in python, and both are different from a list in LISP. Keep it simple and pick one. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for not being sure whether you say "yes" or "no" to my restructure proposal but to sum up everything, I suggest every programmer and student in Wikiversity to read the Programming Fundamentals only for their the programming fundamental concepts then start the journey with their preferred languages. For my own course from scratch as you mentioned, I'm currently working on the C programming for lessons at introduction level (that's why I come up with this programming fundamental course) and will later move to C++, then proceed with the advanced series with Linux system programming (Multithread and Linux IPC).

For "building anything from scratch", I hope to soon have a course with Linux distro from scratch in which everyone can learn to setup the whole Linux distro OS on Raspberry Pi from the lowest level at Bootloader - Uboot to the userspace application with C/C++. Anonymous Agent (discuss • contribs) 09:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@Anonymous Agent: Although I am retired, Programming Fundamentals is still in use in a real world course at my college. So, this is a flat "No". The course cannot be restructured. It is in use as is and cannot be modified without including people in the discussion that you have no access to and who aren't participating.

There is also no need to restructure the course. You are free to use the existing content to build whatever structure you want as a separate course. You can either include / transclude the existing pages as is, or you can copy the existing content and add it to your own pages as long as you indicate where the content came from, typically by linking to it. So, if you want to create a separate C Programming Fundamentals course, go for it.

However, since you have also questioned the pedagogy behind the course design, I want to expand on that. I taught this course for eight years, reaching something in the neighborhood of 1,000 students. I'd say around 80% of those students were non-majors who will never take another programming course in their life. 10% of those students have become software experts. Another 10% are in the industry but are not programmers themselves.

For the students who are non-majors, the only non-Python code they would see would be the Hello World program. Seeing the difference between Hello World in something like C++ vs. Python was enough to convince them to select Python as their chosen language and move on.

For the programming majors, having the opportunity to see and discuss different language implementations and to be able to choose a language that interested them enhanced the course for everyone. Because the forced discussion of basic programming concepts vs. how those concepts are implemented in different languages selected this semester for these programs by the students present in this classroom helps everyone understand programming better.

I understand there are very few people willing to teach a course this way, but it works for instructors who are prepared to moderate the discussion. And having additional content students don't need to click on if they aren't interested does not pose a distraction for those who don't want to see it.

Perhaps most importantly, this course approach works. When I took over the course and rewrote it in 2015, the course success rate was 33%. Most students failed. By 2019, the course was up to a 67% success rate. With the pandemic, success fell, but still remained above 60%. I don't know how things are going now, but because the course is being used by someone with a doctorate in education, I am confident that it is still meeting the needs of the department and the students it is serving.

So, in the spirit of open content, feel free to go forth and use the content however you wish, with references. However, in the spirit of Wikiversity, please leave the course itself alone so it can continue to be used as the author intended. Thanks!

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:11, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig Thanks for your quick reply. I've got your idea and will keep the course as it is. Anonymous Agent (discuss • contribs) 13:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig Just one more thing to discuss for the category Category:C_programming. I suggest to merge it into the active Category:C programming language or remove it. All C Programming fundamental might only need to have the Programming fundamental category. Anonymous Agent (discuss • contribs) 11:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Y Done I agree that it is (was) an unneeded duplicate. --mikeu ^talk 17:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig With the Programming Fundamentals with C src code. I suggest to keep their categories as Programming Fundamentals, not C programming language as they're 2 different course now, as we previously discussed.

CC @Dan Polansky Anonymous Agent (discuss • contribs) 04:32, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Are all the language-specific categories to be removed from pages in Programming Fundamentals? Thus, is e.g. Programming Fundamentals/Arrays/BASIC to be removed from e.g. Category:BASIC as well? (I don't find it good to change the categories for C but not for other languages.) Let me add that before the most recent intervention by AA, there were separate categories C Category:C programming and Category:C programming language, which separated the C-dedicated course from other material, and that was not too bad an arrangement. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 05:52, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

The final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now on Meta

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Hi everyone,

The final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now up on Meta in more than 20 languages for your reading.

What is the Wikimedia Movement Charter?

The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a proposed document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.

Join the Wikimedia Movement Charter “Launch Party”

Join the “Launch Party” on June 20, 2024 at 14.00-15.00 UTC (your local time). During this call, we will celebrate the release of the final Charter and present the content of the Charter. Join and learn about the Charter before casting your vote.

Movement Charter ratification vote

Voting will commence on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. You can read more about the voting process, eligibility criteria, and other details on Meta.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment on the Meta talk page or email the MCDC at mcdc@wikimedia.org.

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RamzyM (WMF) 08:45, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Car programming and car electronic engineering

i want to know and learn about this (The preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.113.16.234 (talk • contribs) )

That is a great topic, but also a pretty complex and specialized one. I don't know that anyone currently editing here will be able to provide much content on this topic. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model - possibly LLM-generated?

I looked at anon-created Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model and it looks very much like something LLM-generated. Elsewhere, I argue that LLMs probably engage in a (mild?) form of plagiarism by failing to attribute the content to sources; but this is probably debatable.

I think that LLM-generated content should be deleted, as argued e.g. in Should Wikiversity allow editors to post ChatGPT generated content?. If anyone else cares, perhaps action can be taken.

We could delete the content. Or we could start labeling such content via template (to be created) "probably LLM-generated" and categorize it; this would give us a means of control of the scope of the potential problem and would signal to page creators that there is a potential problem (even if unresolved one) whose later resolution can result in deletion. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:28, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging this, Dan. I imagine WMF projects, like other websites, are seeing and are going to see more and more genAI content. Ideally, such contributions should be acknowledged as such in the edit summary. For unacknowledged contributions, I think I'd prefer something like the template flagging approach you suggest rather than deletion per se because, as you suggest, whether its plagiarism is a grey area. And the content may well be useful. Thanks for creating the Wikidebates around this topic - I think they are helpful. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:53, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

We also have to worry about the fact that humans using AI will have the capacity to quickly generate megabytes of text. Perhaps we should think about establishing limits on the rate at which text is created. Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:34, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now open – cast your vote

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Hello everyone,

The voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now open. The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.

The final version of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is available on Meta in different languages and attached here in PDF format for your reading.

Voting commenced on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. Please read more on the voter information and eligibility details.

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Peer review invitation - Wikis provide a rich environment for collaborative open educational practices: Motivation and emotion case study

I've been working towards publishing about use of Wikiversity in higher education teaching and learning.

I've submitted this draft 2,000 word Wikiversity case study article: Wikis provide a rich environment for collaborative open educational practices: Motivation and emotion case study for publication in this open book: Open Education Down UndOER.

The draft is in peer review, but I also welcome feedback from the Wikiversity community on the article's talk page.

Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:42, 27 June 2024 (UTC)