[Foundation-l] What is de.wikiversity.org?

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ambi said on the mailing list last October that the domain name
> (<http://www.wikiversity.org>) had been registered (by mav) and that
> she thought there was a sufficient amount of support for the project
> to proceed. There were a few emails then where people appeared
> confused about the difference between this and Wikibooks, but no
> explicit objection to the project, and no suggestion a vote was
> needed. Around the same time, Eclecticology registered wikiversity.ca
> with no objections, and Sj suggested the same be done for
> wikiversity.fr.

Yep - I registered it. For a while I was toying with the idea of renaming
Wikibooks to Wikiversity and expanding that project’s focus. That idea,
however, wasn’t well supported in the Wikibooks community, so I dropped it. My
ideas are now focused on having Wikiversity be a super-project that uses
content (no forks!) created from the various Wikimedia projects (such as
textbooks from Wikibooks, encyclopedias from Wikipedia, source material from
Wikisource, etc) along with being a place for instructors to create lesson
plans and to serve as a discussion forum and workspace for students. 

Eventually we may even want to become accredited in one or more nations and
actually offer degree programs. But all these ideas are still in my head – I
haven’t had much time to write them down and run them by others. Some software
features I think are really needed for this to happen though ; inter-wiki
transclusion of pages from one wiki to another, talk page wikiforum software
(in development), and universal login. 
 
> However, now that Wikinews has gone through a proper creation process,
> and thinking of the problems caused by Wikispecies, which didn't, I
> think it would be a good idea to follow the policy at
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy>. This basically
> means that the project should be discussed, voted on and then a
> decision made by the board. I have spoken to Anthere this morning
> about this and she agrees that the project could be ready to start,
> but it shouldn't be being presented as a Wikimedia project before it
> is formally approved.

I agree. 

> The German language version has been created at <http://
> de.wikiversity.org/>, but I propose that this should left up as a demo
> site, since attempts to get funding for the project are already
> underway (<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversit%C3%A4tSkizze2>).

I didn’t even know it existed… Also agree. 

> Is anyone willing to organize a vote along the same lines as the
> Wikinews one? It would be a good idea for the current pages about
> Wikiversity on Meta and on Wikibooks to be refined into a clearer
> proposal before the voting begins, to ensure the confusion about the
> aims of the project are clarified before a decision is made.

I’ll help starting this weekend. 

-- mav



		
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