Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
This feature could also be used for WikiJunior ; development of WikiJunior books would still happen on Wikibooks, but we could also have a static version of published WikiJunior books at wikijunior.org. Parents and teachers would feel much more comfortable sending kids to a static, yet often updated, website instead of wiki that may have been vandalized a few seconds before the kids get there.
I would imagine that this would also be a useful feature for Wikiversity (publishing a sylibus from a "teacher"), Wikibooks (making a 1.0 "version" of the book as a static version), and even Wikipedia (for "vetted" articles that have been through the wringer, have citations, and are of a more professional caliber that the typical Wikipedia article). In short, a very useful feature for just about any current project.
I'm not sure if this should become a new user group permission or simply something new for admins to play with. Certainly if there was anything that was brought up by community concensus that should be "published", it could be then done technically by an admin. The question would then become if the existing admins on most projects are overwhelmed with other issues and a new group of users with slightly more privileges than a regular registered user should get this power or if this should simply be with a community member that has the trust to become an admin anyway. In some ways it would be nice to add another "level" to the heirarchy of super-user privileges, so the jump from registered user to admin isn't quite as drastic, or could be done in a couple of steps rather than one.
The answer to this question would discuss both the technical issues having to impliment this sort of feature and the social issues creating a new class of users. Both I think are rather trivial, but I'm not totally sure.
As much as I may be attracted by the idea of a Wikiversity, the above exchange only succeeds in telling me that it is still very, very far away.
It must start with a VISION, and that is still lacking./
A Wikiversity will not be the result of writing a lot of tired textbooks that just happen to be in electronic form. It will not result from tinkering with models of administrative structure. Wikijunior, viewed as a Wikiversity for the very young, will fare no better. The discussion only shows a determination to reinvent the square wheel of existing structures. Nevertheless, it may create a Nuversity, and if we are lucky it, like Nupedia, may point in the right direction..
If one of our overarching goals is to make the richness of the world's knowledge available in the poorest corners of the world, should we not also do this in contexts that will be meaningful to those people? Remember that when the OECD trots out its evaluations of various educational systems these places don't show up on the radar.
There is no discussion about how people learn. There is no mention of the purpose and value of education. There is no recourse to the philosophers of education. There are only proposals for how what we don't have will be administered.
Ec