On 30/08/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian(a)djini.de> wrote: An excellent analysis with good ideas. However, I sense a general feeling of apathy about these matters, so I expect to see little done. The situation is quite bizarre - there are probably around a dozen different sites or pages of sites giving information about Wikimedia and the MediaWiki software. Some have been abandoned and some haven't. It's practically impossible to tell which is correct and up-to-date, and which is fossil. Part of this is of course down to the fact that if anyone did try and change anything, someone else would revert straight away. It's a bit like instruction creep: people have added their own little sites and ideas on how things should be over time, and now we have the sprawling network outlined above. Possibly the only group with enough clout to resolve this issue is the board. Dan

Anthere napisału: I fully support elian's idea. -- Ausir Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia http://pl.wikipedia.org

On 9/7/05, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: Sorry, I strongly disagree. IMHO the most important problems with the foundation wiki are * the lack of navigation * outdated pages * the issue that it is a wiki The foundation wiki is a mess, and I don't see how it would help to put it together with a website that's more messy. We need a place on the web where people, who are not (yet) wiki experts can find reliable (I don't mean "reliable" in the wiki sense which actually means "sometimes reliable, sometimes not") information about us. Let's think about how to achieve this, and not how to replace a mess with another one (bigger or smaller). Some ideas that could help: * Look out for a content management system (a wiki is not a cms). In the best case one that is able to handle multilingual content (switching to default language if translation is not up to date) * Think about which pages we really need (a real concept would help) * Think about reducing the number of languages (which would be less important if we find a cms that can handle multilingual content as described above) * Looking for people who take the responsibility for the website. -- Arne (akl)

--- Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: In theory I'm with you all the way, but in practice meta is an ever bigger mess than the foundation wiki. So at the very least this will require a great deal of prep-work. There is also the issue that meta largely does not contain official items, while the foundation wiki does. On top of this is a *major* security concern; the foundation wiki needs to parse full HTML, while allowing that on a generally editable wiki would be dangerous. But yeah - the separation is very annoying and wastes a lot of time. Perhaps what is needed is a new MediaWiki feature that I'll call 'Publish this page.' There would be no separate foundation wiki and all foundation webpages would be maintained on meta yet also displayed on a separate static website. A new user group would be needed, but those in the group could click 'Publish this page' and presto! A static version of that page - in full HTML - would then exist at wikimediafoundation.org under a page name selected for that page (different names would be needed between the foundation website and meta due to the extensive use of subpages on meta for development purposes; alternatively, only the name after the last / could be used for the static page name - I like the second option better). 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 imagine that this will be a killer feature for many websites that are currently static and built the bad old way. Using this feature they could have an internal MediaWiki wiki to for multiple purposes and simply publish a sub-set of that content to their external static website. The current situation really is not good at all. I also agree that it is time for the MediaWiki help pages to move. A wiki just for MediaWiki should be set-up at mediawiki.org. The test junk should also be moved to one or more test wikis (test.mediawiki.org could be used to test developing MediaWiki features, while test.wikimedia.org could be used for the test wiki junk currently on meta). -- mav __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

Robert Scott Horning wrote: 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

Ray Saintonge wrote: There are several problems right now with Wikiversity, and I would have to agree that leadership is one of them. There are, however, several people that seem to be very comitted to the idea, and really want to push it forward, regardless. I, for one, don't think we need to wait for more software tools. They may be useful and have other applications in other Wikimedia projects as well, but they are not strictly necessary in order to get the project started. What it needs is somebody that is willing to say "damn the torpedos, we are going to get this accomplished!" Preferably, I would like to see somebody with a background in Instructional Technology or similar educational technology background to get something like this put together. I have been trying to work with the interested parties that are active on Wikibooks to get their input on the idea, and to scale back the idea, at least for now. I've been pushing strongly for now to get a sort of community adult education center-type project going for now... in part because there is no way we can even begin accrediation processes going the usual wiki-way. There have been other on-line adult education communities that have come together largely through volunteers, and I think there is some merit behind this general proposal. On my own part, I would prefer to partner with some of these other on-line educational communities rather than try to try and go it alone like some of the active people contributing to Wikiversity seem to be pushing for right now. It also seems like from some viewpoints that some of the participants want to create right from the beginning a fully accredited multi-college research university, and I just don't see how that can happen right away. I got involved early on with http://www.wgu.edu/ when it was just starting up, and I knew some of the early organizers for that project. It has been like pulling teeth trying to get it going, and that had the full support of several state legislatures, governors, and state boards of regents (particularly from the state of Utah), and enough PhDs involved from the start that you knew something was going to happen. It will be years before Wikiversity could ever get to this level or performance, if it ever will happen. Another group that is much more modest, and the one I would like to use as a model for Wikiversity, is http://www.vu.org/, Virtual University. This project started out as an education-based dial-up BBS in the San Francisco bay area where people would get together and share ideas and hold on-line classes. When wide-spread internet connectivity started to come around, they moved to internet servers and continued to teach classes. Most of their classes were completely free in the beginning, and a very controvercial decision was made to start charging students for "attending classes". It is a modest fee, and mainly to help support the server farm including IRC servers. The instructors are still largely volunteers, and rarely do they even use textbooks. In this regard Wikiversity is already ahead of VU with the Wikibooks project. In many ways I would like to see Wikiversity be more like the way VU was before the "corporate takeover" of the project. What I'm trying to say is that there are models to use on how to organize the project, and ways to do it much better than some of these other volunteer groups. We also have an existing charitable organization to help out with Wikiversity (the Wikimedia Foundation) that can help smooth out some of the big problems that happen when you move from a germ of a neat idea into something that may get popular to the point that the resources of a single person can't pay for the server farm with his/her pizza money. All other on-line educational communities usually get very bogged down on this one point at trying to find out how to start raising money to pay for everything with new organizational structures...and something I don't see being a huge problem for Wikiversity. That organization is already in place. -- Robert Scott Horning

Fred Bauder wrote: As I said, the decision to start charging money was controvercial. The main reason for the money is for keeping a full-time registrar as they are now issuing Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for the courses. That was a few year ago, and it still is a good organization. I'm not trying to slight them at all. There is a general attempt to move toward formal accrediation to issue college credits, but that is a much harder leap to do. -- Robert Scott Horning

On 10/09/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: I wonder if I think that could be quite confusing - the people who I imagine look for Wikimedia Foundation info probably don't understand the concept of "namespaces". Personally, I think a seperate WMF website is vital. The WMF is the legal entity that owns and effectively controls everything else Wikimedia - we need a high-quality presentation of what the WMF is and what it does, and also provides a professional-quality point of contact, especially for members of the media . The WMF wiki provides this, in my opinion. Dan