Robert Scott Horning wrote:
My reply is: What are the specific issues that need
to be addressed?
I think the problems are more social than technical. In other words,
it is not the technical difficulty of trying to turn on a wiki portal
for a particular project but rather the social aspect of trying to get
people organized to help support the projects. Some of these
projects, like Wikibooks or Wiktionary are still tyring to recruit
people to join the project and get a critical mass necessary to get
the project running smoothly. In terms of what is needed to get some
technically inclined people to help write the necessary specialized
software needed for each project, that will come in time.
I agree that the problem is more social than technical. That being
said, it seems pointless to have technical people running around
developing software when you aren't sure what you want that software to do.
I'm not saying that there are any organized
efforts on the part of
developers, but when people are saying that we need to "wait a year"
(I've seen that repeated over and over again elsewhere) before
starting any new project, I would like to know what kind of technical
issue is a problem. In the case of Wikiversity, is 125 people a
sufficient kernel of support to get it going? Is that not enough
people that would be able to form a good stable community? From the
stand point of those who are objecting to new projects being started,
I don't thing 1000 people supporting a new project is going to be
sufficient in terms of people willing to do the heavy lifting to get
the new project started.
It's not a question of the number of supporters.
Of course, this is up to the board to decide on their
own, and the
polling is just a way to attempt to guage general community sentiment.
They are free to do whatever they want (the board), but there
certainly are a bunch of people who are shooting down every proposal,
no matter how well thought out and how much support it may have. When
objections describe technical issues may be a problem, they seem to be
speaking on behalf of the developers even if that may not be the case.
One thing that would help to convince me that this is a well thought out
proposal would be to see a single course in ANY subject, with the
equivalent of one semester's duration, presented and brought to its
logical conclusions. With that experience to guide us we would be in a
much better position to evaluate what we need to take the idea further.
Without it the entire project is nothing more than an adventure in
wishful thinking.
.
Ec