On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 4:54 AM, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, I would like to clear up a few of what I see as misunderstandings in this thread (and absolutely not necessarily in the mail I'm replying to :-))...

There is a perception that Wikiversity is more oriented around the developed than the developing world. This is completely untrue. The fact that a majority of the people in Wikiversity right now are from developed countries is because it does not have the same exposure, connections, and organisational background that Wikieducator has. It is true that Wikieducator is in large part oriented towards the developing world - but that does not mean that Wikiversity is somehow the opposite. On the contrary - a large (and core) part of the Wikimedia community have spent years actively searching for ways to service the developing world, and to increase participation from the developing world (for one example see <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikipedia_Academies>).

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is *not* a US-centric organisation - in its goals, in its operation (though it is based in the US), nor in its funding - what Brent pointed out is that *Wikieducator* has had funding from a US body (as well as the CoL), and so there is, again, no clear distinction on a US/developed/ing world level. *Both* organisations have a variety of modes of funding - though Wikimedia is predominantly reliant on public donations, meaning that it is in a continual struggle for funds. I would say this is much more the reason behind the WMF not appearing to some people (including Brent) to do a lot for Wikiversity - it is absolutely not the case that the WMF doesn't "give a toss" - again, quite the opposite. That things don't get done very quickly is quite simply because the WMF is still evolving into a structured organisation, and having inevitable teething problems along the way (as Brent points out). But the fact that Wikieducator has had funding from UNESCO does not mean that it is somehow more international - it is down to it having a better evolved organisational context (even if that is simply "Wayne" :-) - in other words, I don't know exactly how Wikieducator is organised). And more organisational (as opposed to community) oversight of the technology is also why Wikieducator has been more free to experiment with the technical extrensions than Wikiversity has (though this is something I wonder about from a WMF perspective, I must admit).

Oh yes - Wikiversity is for content too! I know some people have argued against this (for various reasons), but Wikiversity is absolutely set up to develop a repository of educational content - as well as trying to develop a wiki-based learning space. This latter agenda much more reflects the interests of a few core Wikiversity people - including myself, Brent, JWSchmidt, and others - than the whole Wikiversity/Wikimedia community.

That's more or less the parts of this discussion that I was worried about. I think Leigh asked good questions, but I fear that some of the responses have tended to polarise some of the issues more than needs doing. I'm also frustrated and perplexed by some of the same things that Leigh mentions - mainly, for me, more than anything else, the lack of sharing *experiences*. I think we should be doing this much more but aren't - for example, this thread started between both mailing lists, but has now been channelled into just one, leaving out the Wikiversity community who haven't joined this list :-( (ie the vast majority) - which is why I'm replying to both lists.

Just on one more technical extension, James asked if there was a way of adding commons images into other wikis - yes, there's a proposed feature called InstantCommons <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/InstantCommons>, which will work on all mediawiki wikis, though I don't know how close to implementation it is. In fact, it strikes me that this is another really great thing to be working on as *joint projects* - develop technical wishlists and write proposals to fund their development. (This is what has happened with the PediaPress initiative, btw.)

So, that's about it for the moment. Maybe my clarifications went beyond what was actually said in this thread, but I felt it might be useful to say them anyway. :-)

Cheers,

Cormac

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 11:47 PM, James Neill <lists@wilderdom.com> wrote:

thanks for these thoughts everyone (brent, leigh, etc.) - i remain open
and persuadable

perhaps the answer for me is to use/try both

can i (automatically) use wiki commons stuff in wikieducator - that was
one of my main considerations - if i go under a bus tomorrow i would
like to have left my material is the most readily accessible and
re-usable location

will wiki commons ALLOW non-WM foundation wikis to be able to
automatically use content? i.e., is this just a matter of wikieducator
setting up to do so - or is it a matter of wiki commons being set up to
do so? easy inter-wiki sharing/use from an author's POV is most attractive

in teaching a university course, i can see a basic structure which i
could replicate and teach colleagues to use:
- open textbook on wikibooks
- course-related structure and learning activities on wikiversity
(again, the inter-wikiness here is attractive)

i haven't yet quite been able to visualise such a separation of
materials on wikieducator

maybe i can get over my allergic sense of post-colonialism in
wikieducator - since other's i respect suggest its a non-issue (and
correctly brent points out the potential for WM's US-centric funding) -
it's just that i kind of thought the commonwealth was dead in the new
world order - e.g. is there a wikieducator type model being pursued at a
UN level?

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