[Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

[Erik Moeller]

Delphine-

> There is something I am not entirely understanding there. I have, for
> one, no real clue as to what Wikiversity is all about

That is the main problem with the project, and has been from the start. 
The current English Wikiversity subproject is organized in a 
pseudo-namespace on Wikibooks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity

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.

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.

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.

To be sure, there is quite a bit of text that we can use, but the 
current (English) Wikibooks-Wikiversity effort lacks the sort of 
coherence and structure required to make meaningful progress. As I 
noted, until the point I refactored the page, [[m:Wikiversity]] itself 
was a very long, very chaotic discussion about the definition of the 
project without any real conclusion. The English Wikiversity page 
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Some_ideas_about_Wikiversity is a bit more 
useful, but a long way from setting out any clear structure for 
organizing the project.

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.

> Why suddenly go through all these proposals and changes without
> consulting the people who actually have been developping the project
> in their own corner and own time

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.

> to find together a solution and
> actually address the right community before launching any grand
> community vote?

Ambi was the one who called for a vote on the name. Nobody is talking 
about a general community vote on the project yet.

Erik