[Textbook-l] Wikiversity

Wed Jun 21 13:58:47 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:

>The tricky question for me is what to do with how-tos. I think they do
>have a place in Wikimedia, and a separate project for them might be a
>good idea.  This could include gaming walkthroughs -- instructional
>materials of any kind. But my biggest hope is for documents from the
>open source community to be migrated into the wiki context. There are
>thousands of FAQs, HOWTOs and man pages which are still maintained by
>single individuals. I made a small effort to change this with
>OpenFacts, but this was in 2002, when many of the relevant people were
>still convinced that the future was in using a strict workflow
>approach within a CMS.
>
>Erik
>  
>
If the WMF board was more inclined to approve new projects (not any old 
thing, but at least allow some new projects), I might be more encouraged 
to move the How-to guides to a new project.  The problem as I see it is 
that as a practical matter, starting a new sister project is an 
impossible task unless it is a pet project of a board member, or for the 
development team.  Just look at how the incubator project and 
de.wikiversity were started, and that shows a seeming contempt toward 
the user community, especially when compared to this attempt to start 
en.wikiversity.  One was done by "those in power" and the other by 
ordinary Wikimedia users through supposed "proper channels".  Guess 
which one was started without question?

I have noted on several occasions that I feel it would be more honest if 
the WMF board would simply state, for the record, that no new Wikimedia 
sister project proposals will be accepted in the near or distant future. 
 Projects like Wikistandards (which has passed the user vote as well, 
and supposedly was submitted to the board for approval) don't even have 
a prayer of ever getting accepted.  From my viewpoint, the only reason 
why Wikiversity is even being considered is because the noise from 
ordinary Wikimedia users is enough that the board can't ignore the 
request, even if the proposal has been languishing for some time.  And 
that there has been a demonstration project running on Wikibooks for 
over two years.  Since Wikibooks current policy is to stop such projects 
from ever being developed in the future and the current incubator 
project is Wikipedia-only, I don't see that any such future project 
could ever be started even on a demonstration basis with current 
Wikimedia projects.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning