Robert Scott Horning wrote:
John Pozniak wrote:
I have for a long time espoused the idea that once a book reaches a certain size, it should be given more and more autonomy. This includes creating its own policies, its own manual of style, its own naming conventions, and even overall control on its own content.
John (gentgeen)
I generally agree with this sentiment, and have been particularly annoyed when a VfD was posted about a particular module, such as recipes from the Cookbook or the "What is gravity" module of Wikijunior Solar System. I have never seen these modules properly resolved in the VfD forum, and instead is mainly is a place to roll the fight out and aire dirty laundry. More akin to a barroom brawl that runs onto the street and into neighboring businesses. It is never pretty, and the feelings are usually so charged and divided by the time it gets to the VfD page that the issue doesn't really get resolved. A plea for a neutral moderator to come into the discussion might be in order from time to time, but in that case a direct plea to an admin would be more reasonable, or a quick note on the Staff Lounge.
As an outsider with a limited exposure and understanding of the community and what it needs to successfully create numerous (every subject known to man) and high quality (best presentation possible in all of the myriad layouts and forms such that a parallel information economy is trending towards superior not inferior to previous methods of production such as socialism, communism, capitalism, divine inspiration, cave painting, etc.) this reminds me of the early debate at Wikipedia over dribbles of information and excellent articles only.
The excellent articles only crowd viewed a good inspiring public presentation as the only possible way to gain adequate participation to succeed with continued high quality generation of articles.
The stubs are valuable framework and encourage people to start participating by leaving a tiny improvements or questions on the discussion page of some kind crowd insisted that these dribbles and stubs not be routinely and automatically reverted by roving bands of vandalism fighters or automated reversion tools.
Personally I see Wikiversity as a valuable workspace for all the other projects where sloppy messy creative unfinished stuff can be stashed and the tweakers can be encouraged to polish their skills or information content. When lightening strikes; a group product or a group is ready for the bigtime; it can be relocated or merged with great fanfare and celebration over to the other projects which have shifted slightly in focus; a little more towards stewardship of excellent product and higher level producers of excellent product; a little less required attention towards upgrading or integrating dribbles of less than perfect information product created by beginners.
Notice that I do not advocate any project (that wishes to survive longterm) screaming at its neophytes and customers that this place is for high quality producers only, go get some useful skills at Wikiversity before wasting our time at WikiX.
Also, I do not agree with any project being able to inform Wikiversity student groups or organizations enough is enough you are killing us with these superior products that belong on WikiX. I think an effective project leadership or participant should be able to show our successful Wikiversity producers (any who wish to continue thriving inside the effective zones carved out in the midst of the hordes of undisciplined free participants rather than relocate to a outside project percieved as hostile and a failure prone place of over zealous disciplinarians) how they can derive benefits to their microproject or task from the proposed new location with just adequate conformance with necessary project X policy and procedures.
If nobody can agree then the materials can be forked and the random chaotic Wikiversity people can continue to apple polish while helping newcomer's study; while the better focused more mature projects can support serving to the huge internet accessible (and possible published CD) crowds looking for specific high quality work. Periodic cross integration of tiny evolving improvements can be an excellent beginner's task for both environments.
We really should not be attempting to avoid duplication of effort, rather encouraging sufficient participation that the production of free knowledge is percieved by our entire species as a useful beneficial thing to do for individuals and for all of posterity.
regards, lazyquasar