Talk:No to Wikiversity

Are you serious?

You think books and classes are the same thing? --68.210.146.54 20:39, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

As I understand it, a "book" on a wiki is not different from a "class" on the wiki. They are both texts for teaching and learning, no? --Kernigh 21:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

This page, No to Wikiversity, attempts to claim that everything that would be at Wikiversity is already at Wikibooks, except for (1) discussion forums and (2) original or non-NPOV work. This seems to be much narrow than the current Wikiversity proposal.

To learn what Wikiversity is, one has to read several pages (Wikibooks:Wikiversity:About, Wikiversity, Moving Wikiversity forward, and possibly both Wikicities:c:Education:Wikiversity and Wikicities:c:Collaboration:Wikiversity). Maybe someone needs to write Yes to Wikiversity and give a better reason to support Wikiversity as a separate wiki. --Kernigh 21:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't (1) a huge difference? And you're forgetting that lectures are just one portion of a wikiversity course. There is also a lot of outside reading (as in the case of real courses). The overlap of Wikiversity and Wikibooks is no greater than the Overlap of Wikipedia and Wikinews, probably less so.

And a wikicourse would happen in more of an ongoing setting. A book can be read any time, but a course has to be taken at the same time that others are taking it, and at the same time that the instructor is giving it. You don't look at a wikicourse after it's all done (you can if you want, but that's not the point). --MateoP 20:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The users who work on Wikibooks:Wikiversity are trying to do something good, even though I do not want their lectures and external links to be moved from Wikibooks to a new wiki. As for forums, I might be wrong, but I see almost no forums in the current Wikibooks:Wikiversity, for example not in Wikibooks:Wikiversity:School of Philosophy. That school seems to provide mostly textbook content which should stay at Wikibooks.

But what if instructors and students want to meet? What if they want to do oustide reading together? What if they want to discuss what they are learning? I have trouble trying to imagine the use of Wikibooks talk pages for these purposes. Maybe we want something like "forum.wikimedia.org", where users come together to teach, learn, and participate in "Wikiversity Core Courses Initiative". This "forum.wikimedia.org" might be a very significant place outside of Wikibooks.

I might then claim that "forum.wikimedia.org" (or wherever) is "part of Wikiversity". But I would not move Wikiversity lectures and external links from Wikibooks and make Wikiversity into a separate project. --Kernigh 02:01, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I fail to see how talk pages can not be used to discuss the topic. Talk pages are already used to discuss articles, although always in context of whether or not the information is factually correct. Nonetheless discussion of the articles does take place. There is no need for other, more standard, types of forums.

For example, in a course I am currently developing, which can be found here, that is where I intend to have discussion. The lectures is to be a very small portion of what the course is like. There is much more overlap between Wikinews and Wikipedia, and even Wikipedia and Wikibooks, than between a proposed Wikiversity and Wikibooks. Wikiversity is not learning material that people can go to at any time to self learn, as in the case with textbooks, it is something that you participate in as the course is being "written".

I feel that your objections is that you feel that this might detract from content on wikibooks. Quite the contrary. I and others plan to use Wikipedia and Wikibooks as assignments to help the learning process (for example, improving wikipedia articles as a student learns from outside authoritative sources and creating a Wikibooks as a final project).

Some of the wikiversity "courses" do in fact look like wikibooks, I'll admit. These are not the projects I am defending. --MateoP 02:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the problem right now is that no one really knows what wikiversity should be, or how to go about creating a course. From what I have seen, the high quality "courses" that exist at wikiversity are too few and far between. Lectures are the ONLY thing that really exist at the wikiversity at this moment, which I feel are not part of the "vision". I feel that lecture material should remain on wikibooks. What we need is an active community, something for some sort of anchor to evolve. In its current form, wikiversity has no real goal, and its appearance does not help at all.

We need a clear mission statement, something that is obviously outside the relm of wikibooks and at the same time working as that "e-learning" platform we all want. What Kernigh posted is true for the majority of wikiversity, something that MateoP seems to understand.

In my opinion, I feel that wikiversity should stay at wikibooks till it matures. In its current form, wikiversity is within the scope of wikibooks. Additionally, I feel that wikiversity should follow the growth of wikijunior, 2 or 3 courses that are very focused, that way the community doesn't spread itself too thinly. I get the feeling that people don't want to spend as much time teaching as making lectures, and lectures can be stored at wikibooks, and to counter that, --68.33.164.12 03:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Ick, btw, I'm dragontamer... They really gotta make 1 login for all mediawiki sites. --68.33.164.12 04:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Why there is some dispute over what content to move

Since I am quoted in this essay, I might as well add some clarification over what I said. Because there has not been a distinction between Wikibooks and Wikiversity content in the past, I am suggesting that there will be some considerable overlap of material... even on the very same page. A textbook might have a suggested course syllibi as part of its makeup, and even some built-in testing materials. This is just like much of the recent events pages that existed on Wikipedia prior to the creation of Wikinews (but Wikinews does so much better now). Even now there is some dispute over where some certain pages of original materials should go, between Wikibooks and Wikisource. From a certain point of view you could say that Wikibooks and Wikisource should be combined (I'm not advocating that point of view).

This would be no different than if all Wikimedia content was hosted on Wikipedia and then suddenly somebody came along and decided to seperate something out onto a seperate server (like Wiktionary). In this case Wikiversity has been developed in a haphazard fashion, with some people trying for a totally seperate project, and others trying to integrate Wikiversity deep into Wikibooks. Since you can't find two opinions that are in 100% agreement over what exactly Wikiversity really is, trying to decide on what content really belongs on Wikiversity and not Wikibooks is going to seem very arbitrary, at least during the initial move. Once Wikiversity is established as a seperate project (assuming that happens), I believe a much stronger distinction between the projects will become much more pronounced with Wikiversity experimenting and pushing the envelope of MediaWiki technology that would not be generally accepted on Wikibooks simply because the approach would be too much "unbook-like" or be somewhat similar to other Wikimedia projects. Wikibooks may lose some of the academic leanings and become more like a book publishing/distribution service as well (that is already happening to some extent).

There is also no doubt that there will be some considerable cross-polination between Wikibooks and Wikiversity anyway, but there are two very distinctive groups of users between the two "projects" already, and I would anticipate some very hard-core Wikiversity only users that would appear not too long after a launch of Wikiversity. --Roberth 05:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)