On 5/11/05, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
There are various "School" pages, most of which are stubs, some of which are vague collections of links to Wikibooks and Wikipedia, and very few of which make real attempts to organize information in courses. Due to the nature of (pseudo-)namespaces, information is strewn about: some is in the article namespace, some is in the proper pseudo-namespace, and it is very difficult to search the content properly. Categories are missing almost entirely. The software needs of the project have never been properly evaluated -- all that is used are standard blank wiki pages.
This is all it's ever going to become as long as it sits in template mode in Wikibooks. Give it wings and it will fly.
With such a broad scope, people have no idea what to put on those blank pages, so everyone is putting something different there. And, as expected, the project follows very strongly the models of traditional universities, which is not necessarily what is appropriate to achieve the desired goals.
A broad scope? The site Erik is advocating has no defined purpose apart from "learning", and no model of how this could be achieved. Our current model sets out a potential site design. Furthermore, I've argued in the past of how this could work - taking some of the basic ideas behind the structure of a university, and adapting them to create our own e-learning project following wiki principles. There is the potential for courses in all sorts of areas - not just your standard tertiary fare - and the potential to boost Wikibooks, because it would create the need to design workable textbooks and supplementary materials.
Given this, it is quite bitterly ironic that Ambi refers to the possible outcome of (re-)organizing the project as "disastrous"; it can hardly get any worse than it is at the present time. Moving this mess of pages to its own domain name is a recipe for failure.
It does need to be more clearly defined before being taken live - that is true. I've had it in mind to write up a Wikinews-style proposal since you began the process with that project, but haven't had the time nor motivation to do so as of yet. This is why I'm *not* arguing to move the current model to its own domain name at this very moment - although I believe it would be a very good idea to do so in the future.
Many people are very excited about the idea, but very few people agree on what it actually means. The process of moving the project from a subspace on Wikibooks to its own domain name, as an official Wikimedia project, is the best possible opportunity to rethink Wikiversity, to evaluate and prioritize its technical needs, to get the existing eLearning community involved, to develop useful and consistent policies, to define and pursue long term goals, and so on.
Precisely. The way to do this, however, is not to throw the entire idea out the window and insist on some amorphous mass that would not even try to be a coherent project, but to finetune what's already been proposed by the interested parties.
There have been no "proposals and changes without consulting". I have suggested changing the name of the project, and I have cross-posted this suggestion to the relevant multi-language fora. This *is* a solicitation of feedback from the existing Wikiversity community on the proposed name change.
That's not what you advocated in your first post, but whatever - at least it's a step away from mutilating the proposal immediately.
-- ambi