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