(Cross-posted on [[m:Talk:Wikiversity]] and briefly summarized on
de.wikiversity.org)
During and after our visit to the free software conference in South
Africa, Angela and I talked a lot about the Wikiversity project, and the
potential Wikimedia has to develop a truly global, free institution of
learning as a new project.
As you probably know, these discussions are currently focused on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity
and the talk page.
Don't panic: We're still a long way from launching anything. I'm not
going to push this until we have the server situation under control and
the existing projects have stabilized a bit. Nevertheless, there's one
issue that I'd like to resolve now, which is the naming of the project.
Angela, Jimbo, Daniel Mayer and I agree that the name Wikiversity is
problematic in that it ties the project very strongly to the idea of
traditional universities. This may lead to certain expectations as to
its structure and the services it will provide (e.g. faculties,
degrees), but also limit the project in other ways, e.g., by being
perceived primarily or only as an institution of teritary learning.
I'd like us to look at ideas for primary and secondary education as
well, and I don't want to run into a wall because the established people
of the Wikiversity community will say "It's an electronic university,
this doesn't belong here."
Angela suggested the name Wikisophia.org/.com, which is currently owned
by Peter Danenberg (WikiTeX). I loved the idea immediately: the Greek
sophia means "wisdom", but also has many other meanings in the area of
learning. It is specific enough to be useful and vague enough to not
limit the project very early in its nature or scope.
Peter is willing to give us the name if we push WikiTeX a little to get
it security-reviewed and installed on our servers, which seems like a
fair deal to us.
So, after discussing this in a small circle, I'd like to announce my
intention to move the relevant pages on Meta and edit the summary to
reflect the name change. This does not affect the existing efforts under
the Wikibooks domain which use the "Wikiversity" label, but only any
potential future eLearning/eTeaching project we intend to pursue.
de.wikiversity.org could be renamed and moved to the new domain once it
is owned by Wikimedia.
Thoughts and comments are welcome. Hopefully, we can find a consensus on
this without needing a vote.
All best,
Erik