[Foundation-l] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote

[Robert Scott Horning]

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/11/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>>In any case, I think the project should stay within Wikibooks.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>There is certainly no urgency for moving it out of Wikibooks
>>
>>Ec
>>    
>>
>
>There's enough urgency in the minds of some people that it has been
>listed on their VFD page.
>
>Anthony
>  
>
The main point of the VfD on Wikibooks is to establish for once and all 
that Wikibooks is not a project incubator Wiki for new Wikimedia Sister 
projects.  Or is it?  That was the whole point of the VfD to debate and 
discuss that whole issue, which is an issue that can and ought to be 
discussed on a larger basis with the whole of the Wikimedia users as 
well.  Most VfD discussions on Wikibooks at least are dealing with 
people pushing the boundaries for what is acceptable and what is not on 
Wikibooks, and to get a larger community opinion on killing a Wikibook 
project.  Some very substantive policy changes have resulted from the 
VfD discussions on Wikibooks, for good or ill.

It has been discussed many times on this list as well, and the general 
concensus I got from contributors to this mailing list as well as on 
Meta was that Wikibooks is not intended to become that Wiki incubator 
like Wikicities.  If that is the case, projects like Wikiversity and 
eventually Wikijunior need to go.  This also allows Wikibooks to focus 
its mission to dealing with non-fiction books (a general community 
concensus was reached on that point as well) having a general NPOV 
format and developed through a collaborative Wiki process.  How does 
Wikiversity fit into that role?  Wikiversity can and ought to be much 
more than what Wikibooks is generally restricted to in terms of just 
writing books about learning.  There is also a fairly healthy user 
community working on Wikiversity that is for the most part independent 
of the rest of the Wikibooks community.  Yes, there are users involved 
with both, as there are participants from Wikipedia that help write 
Wikibooks.  That is a good thing as well.

You have your opinion on the matter, and a general Wikimedia community 
poll was taken on the subject with the additional ability to offer 
comments on the topic and voice opinions.  The whole point of this 
thread is that the poll has happened and now it is time for the 
Wikimedia Foundation board to decide based on this very large body of 
opinion on the topic covering almost every permutation on the issue.  If 
anything, the problem is that many of these written opinions have been 
scattered across many places including the Wikiversity page on both Meta 
as well as Wikibooks, the voting pages, and the VfD discussion on 
Wikibooks, not to mention this mailing list as well.  If you printed all 
of this stuff out, you could end up with a book by itself with over 100 
pages of just opinions on Wikiversity.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning