Using 'publish this page' to develop WMF website content on Meta (was Re: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...)

Sat Sep 10 05:09:49 UTC 2005

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> This feature could also be used for WikiJunior ; development of 
>> WikiJunior
>> books would still happen on Wikibooks, but we could also have a 
>> static version
>> of published WikiJunior books at wikijunior.org. Parents and teachers 
>> would
>> feel much more comfortable sending kids to a static, yet often 
>> updated, website
>> instead of wiki that may have been vandalized a few seconds before 
>> the kids get
>> there.
>
> I would imagine that this would also be a useful feature for 
> Wikiversity (publishing a sylibus from a "teacher"), Wikibooks (making 
> a 1.0 "version" of the book as a static version), and even Wikipedia 
> (for "vetted" articles that have been through the wringer, have 
> citations, and are of a more professional caliber that the typical 
> Wikipedia article).  In short, a very useful feature for just about 
> any current project.
>
> I'm not sure if this should become a new user group permission or 
> simply something new for admins to play with.  Certainly if there was 
> anything that was brought up by community concensus that should be 
> "published", it could be then done technically by an admin.  The 
> question would then become if the existing admins on most projects are 
> overwhelmed with other issues and a new group of users with slightly 
> more privileges than a regular registered user should get this power 
> or if this should simply be with a community member that has the trust 
> to become an admin anyway. In some ways it would be nice to add 
> another "level" to the heirarchy of super-user privileges, so the jump 
> from registered user to admin isn't quite as drastic, or could be done 
> in a couple of steps rather than one.
>
> The answer to this question would discuss both the technical issues 
> having to impliment this sort of feature and the social issues 
> creating a new class of users.  Both I think are rather trivial, but 
> I'm not totally sure.

As much as I may be attracted by the idea  of a Wikiversity, the above 
exchange only succeeds in telling me that it is still very, very far away.

It must start with a VISION, and that is still lacking./

A Wikiversity will not be the result of writing a lot of tired textbooks 
that just happen to be in electronic form.  It will not result from 
tinkering with models of administrative structure.  Wikijunior, viewed 
as a Wikiversity for the very young, will fare no better.  The 
discussion only shows a determination to reinvent the square wheel of 
existing structures.  Nevertheless, it may create a Nuversity, and if we 
are lucky it, like Nupedia, may point in the right direction..

If one of our overarching goals is to make the richness of the world's 
knowledge available in the poorest corners of the world, should we not 
also do this in contexts that will be meaningful to those people?  
Remember that when the OECD trots out its evaluations of various 
educational systems these places don't show up on the radar.

There is no discussion about how people learn.  There is no mention of 
the purpose and value of education.  There is no recourse to the 
philosophers of education.  There are only proposals for how what we 
don't have will be administered.

Ec