[Foundation-l] Wikiversity=>Wikisophia

[Rebecca]

On 5/11/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> 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.

This is all it's ever going to become as long as it sits in template
mode in Wikibooks. Give it wings and it will fly.

> 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.

A broad scope? The site Erik is advocating has no defined purpose
apart from "learning", and no model of how this could be achieved. Our
current model sets out a potential site design. Furthermore, I've
argued in the past of how this could work - taking some of the basic
ideas behind the structure of a university, and adapting them to
create our own e-learning project following wiki principles. There is
the potential for courses in all sorts of areas - not just your
standard tertiary fare - and the potential to boost Wikibooks, because
it would create the need to design workable textbooks and
supplementary materials.

> 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.

It does need to be more clearly defined before being taken live - that
is true. I've had it in mind to write up a Wikinews-style proposal
since you began the process with that project, but haven't had the
time nor motivation to do so as of yet. This is why I'm *not* arguing
to move the current model to its own domain name at this very moment -
although I believe it would be a very good idea to do so in the
future.

> 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.

Precisely. The way to do this, however, is not to throw the entire
idea out the window and insist on some amorphous mass that would not
even try to be a coherent project, but to finetune what's already been
proposed by the interested parties.


> 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.

That's not what you advocated in your first post, but whatever - at
least it's a step away from mutilating the proposal immediately.

-- ambi