[Foundation-l] Please implement the [[Wikiversity:Main_Page]]

[Cormac Lawler]

On 7/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> In the past few days, I have been considering the three levels, data,
> information and knowledge. Most of our projects are actually providing
> "information". Wiktionary is rather providing "data". Wikibooks is
> sometimes providing "information" but it is sometimes wandering in
> "knowledge". Wikiversity will definitly entering the field of knowledge
> and this is what worried editors the most (the teaching part). Still, if
> I look well, the Foundation is claiming bringing knowledge. I see no
> reason why this project should not be started.
>
> Ant
>


Thanks Anthere,

that's a really good way of putting it. The way I've always seen
Wikiversity is that we are not simply providing information, but
generating knowledge. That, after all, is what learning is all about.
I would argue (and have done) that generating knowledge and learning
is an incidental part of what we do as participants on any Wikimedia
project - it's just that we make this an explicit aspect of
Wikiversity.

To backtrack slightly, when we got going on the modified Wikiversity
proposal, in the wake of the community vote and the board
non-approval, we were at a loss to tie together the interests/needs of
several in the community who wanted to teach courses, and the board's
recommendation that we "exclude online courses". Our solution is to
primarily host content, while also providing for learning
communities/study groups around this content - networks/spaces for
asking and answering questions, or posing and solving problems.
However, I think in order to be sustainable, Wikiversity will need to
put a primacy on its content, as was suggested by Daniel (Mav). We
simply do not know how communities will work - this is an experimental
side to Wikiversity, which could fail, though I anticipate it to be
its central success :-)

However, to address your point, the bylaws
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws>
state that we develop and maintain "collections of documents,
information, and other informational databases in all the languages of
the world". I wonder if this should not be changed to include
"educational resources" (since this is what we do) - "information"
just seems too narrow. It doesn't really (for me) encompass our better
known ideal of "a world in which every single person is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge".

What say ye?

Cormac