[Foundation-l] Wikiversity

Tue Aug 15 13:28:16 UTC 2006

Anthere wrote:

>It came to my mind that we probably did not clearly announced here that 
>we approved the creation of Wikiversity :-)
>
>Here is the resolution : 
>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Wikiversity
>
>A couple of important points
>
>1) there will be a domain at beta.wikiversity.org, where all new 
>languages may contribute and start working on translation of guidelines 
>etc...
>
>2) those languages with at least 10 active participants can request a 
>separate domain name. As of today, I presume the english language has at 
>least 10 people interested, so you guys may bug Brion to ask for 
>en.wikiversity.org. I am not sure if it is the case for any other language.
>
So, I'm also presuming that de.wikiversity is going to remain?  There 
are also other active Wikiversities that exist on the other language 
Wikibooks project besides en.wikibooks, so I presume this beta 
wikiversity is to transfer the content from those other project (like 
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversidad%3APortada or 
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversidad%3APortada).  I would imagine 
that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French would be very early 
adopters and could likely get the 10 minimum active participants that 
you are suggesting.  So much so that if Brion is busy creating new 
languages I would strongly recommend that those be created as well, with 
formal activation being mainly a formality.  Other languages that might 
be useful for the formal vote but would be likely early Wikiversity 
languages as well would be Finnish, Japanese, Polish, and Serbian, who 
seem to have an active Wikibooks community that would likly support 
Wikiversity as well.

I'm guessing that these request should be made on meta?  aka 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages

>
>3) All sites will be flagged "beta" in the same way that wikinews has 
>been for at least 6 months.
>
>4) During these 6 months, guidelines should be developped, *in 
>particular* with regards to collaborative research. We would hope that 
>these guidelines are as much as possible developped on the beta site (in 
>particular collaborative research), so that all languages share a common 
>goal and a few common non negociable rules.
>
>5) At the end of these 6 months period, the project will be reviewed, in 
>particular so that the issue of collaborative research is qualified, and 
>if possible to define whether the beta stage is over. Reviewal will be 
>done by Spc.
>
>I hope that's clear... ;-)
>
>We wish good luck to this project.
>
>Ant
>  
>
The research guidelines are certainly one of the weaker aspects of the 
Wikiversity proposal, in part because such research was officially 
discouraged on Wikibooks and there was considerable debate for if it 
should even exist at all.  The above guidelines for how original 
research would be carried out on Wikiversity is reasonable, and 
something that really does need to be dealt with by the participants as 
one of the early tasks to be dealt with in terms of policies.  This 
won't be the only activity on Wikiversity, however, and it looks like 
there are a couple of participants who are pushing head first for some 
sort of degree granting program already.  I suspect that will also be a 
major topic of discussion given what has happened already on my own talk 
page on the topic.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning