
anthere9 at yahoo
Aug 11, 2005, 1:59 PM
Post #7 of 9
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Robert Scott Horning wrote: > Erik Moeller wrote: > >> Robert Scott Horning: >> >>> Please, if you are suggesting to expand the scope of Wikiversity >>> beyond what it current is, either get the project onto its own server >>> (with its own support community), or start discussing this proposal >>> on the Wikibooks staff lounge. >> >> >> >> I wasn't talking about the Wikiversity that currently exists on >> Wikibooks. I agree that experiments with original research certainly >> have no place within the Wikibooks project and completely understand >> your concerns. It's generally problematic to experiment with new >> project ideas within existing projects; perhaps Meta would have been a >> better place to put the Wikiversity pages. > > > I think that should be general policy, that either a new project idea is > tested on Meta or tried out on Wikicities... or perhaps a private server > first. The problem with a private server is that it is much harder to > move "back" to the Wikimedia Foundation, and seems perpetually in beta > status. > > BTW, there already has been some minor effort to try and kill > Wikiversity from Wikibooks, but it did get some resistance from Angela > and Anthere when that was done. This does not reflect reality. It met resistance from Angela. I only refused that a "new language version" be created, simply because the project is not yet recognise. Aya wanted to just plain delete the wikibooks wikiversity content, upon the motive it did not belong here. Whatever the final decision on what should be done on this content, just plain deleting it is vandalism and should simply not occur. Move it on meta if you feel it does not belong to wikibooks and if most editors suppport this, but just do not delete content. There is also a small group of editors > who are working on Wikiversity but are not aware of the issues on Meta > (or even aware that meta even exists). It is those users that I would > be most conerned with, as they are also the ones who are likely to be > helping out if Wikiversity moved into its own domain and seperate wiki. > Pinning a number on how many that would be is hard to come up with, > however. > > I do think that Wikiversity could get started without massive funding, > as I've seen incredible waste from "educational" research projects in > the past, and cool things started without too much up front money but a > lot of volunteer effort (like Wikipedia itself). The reason I feel that > Wikiversity is not moving too quickly on the English side (as opposed to > de.wikiversity) is because there already are several alternatives that > more or less do the job rather well in terms of on-line education that > is similar in nature to what Wikiversity is proposing to accomplish. > There might be some interesting unique features that an on-line > education could gain from using content from using Wikimedia projects, > but it isn't as pressing of a need or as unique as Wikipedia was > compared to any "competitors" offering the same service. > > I remember I created a minor firestorm on http://open-site.org/ when I > suggested that much of what they were trying to accomplish was already > being done on Wikipedia, and done better. That was just weeks after > they started the project, and I was not then an editor on Wikipedia but > rather a participant on ODP. In this case they are trying to create > encyclopedic entries using the open directory project software, with > category "ownership" and other features more from the mindset of ODP > users. If you want to talk about a real competitor to Wikipedia, I > guess this is it. > > In the same vein, Wikiversity needs to offer something very unique in > order to "compete" against the other on-line educational learning > environments, and so far the attitude is more along the lines of "if we > build it they will come". Even most of the new project proposals here > on this mailing list as well as on the New Projects page have this > attitude, and feel that a multitude of people will come to help edit a > new project once it has been "turned on". While that seems to work with > many of the more successful Wikimedia projects, I don't see that > happening with Wikiversity. Certainly I don't see the leadership from a > very driven individual or group of individuals who want to see it > through to completion and make it happen. *THAT* is the real key to a > successful Wikimedia project, at least in the early stages of > development, or any endeavor in life for that matter. Currently, there is simply too much of a mixture of different goals of this project, which makes me doubt everything could just belong to ONE project only. Anthere _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l[at]wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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