[Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

[Jean-Baptiste Soufron]

I agree with Tim.

The project looks very vague to me. Plus there are already many people 
working on such things. For example, I am currently working with 
researchers in France on something that could be part of it: a tool to 
allow to adress consistency problems and evolution within wikis.

> Addressing the list in general:
>
> Wikiversity is a vastly larger and more ambitious project than anything
> launched before by Wikimedia. You have no incentive scheme for teachers
> besides monetary. You're a bunch of 20-something year old dreamers who
> happened to be in the right place at the right time, and you expect
> large organisations to give you grants? Perhaps we have an advantage in
> that the rest of the world hasn't yet cottoned on to the fact that the
> people running Wikipedia were just lucky to discover a good idea early
> and enthusiastically jump on the bandwagon, and that the whole thing 
> has
> been pulled off with near-zero managerial expertise or effort. They 
> will
> cotton on, possibly after a failure or two.
>
> No-one here has experience with running a university. As far as I know,
> none of the people involved in this project have even taught at the
> tertiary level.
>
> It would be alright if this were a project like Wikipedia, where all we
> needed to do is write 2000 lines of code, strike a spark, and watch the
> whole thing roar into flame. But it's not. Wikipedia is mostly written
> by the huge pool of bored students with plenty of time on their hands.
> The vast bulk of them don't have the skills to teach at the tertiary
> level, and those that do are already paid for their time at an existing
> university.
>
> Of course there are people willing to teach for free, but they are
> greatly outnumbered by the people who want to learn for free. In short,
> there's no way to obtain an acceptable student-teacher ratio without
> paying teachers, and to pay teachers you need an administrative
> structure and managerial expertise.
>
> Sorry to be harsh, but it had to be said. I count myself in all
> statements about lack of collective skills.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>