Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/September 2015

Extension request

mw:Extension:Education Program has been requested via the Mailing list. Thoughts? - CQ (discuss • contribs) 15:56, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• Support - It looks like an extension that could help Wikiversity. I think it's worth a try. --I8086 (discuss • contribs) 16:03, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
• Support - Yes, this extension should be enabled. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:15, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
• Support - see comment below. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 23:39, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
• Support I have used it in Wikipedia: it's good. Leutha (discuss • contribs) 20:41, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Comments and questions

I looked at the description for Wikipedia and must confess it makes no sense to me. Having said that, as long as it is voluntary and does not conflict with our usual openness, I'm in favor of it. I've been spending a lot of time on Wikipedia lately and have seen no signs of any Wikipedia Education Program, other than the usual. Is it for off-site use to bring in more editors? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:45, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I think what gets added by the extension can be seen at Wikipedia:Special:SpecialPages#Education. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:11, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

w:Special:Institutions shows the top level. The extension creates a number of Special pages. - CQ (discuss • contribs) 00:48, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I found it by searching for "Wikipedia Education Program" on Wikipedia. Generally, it seems to be a program usually from off-site educational centers to help potential editors to learn about Wikipedia, use Wikipedia, and with guidance editing designated entries to improve them. It can and does include research focused on Wikipedia projects like medicine. The number of such programs and off-site courses is large. It's an interesting idea perhaps motivated by the steady decline in new, successful editors for Wikipedia. Ultimately, it may turn out to be far more successful with the Wikiversities. Let's do it! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:47, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

This looks really exciting. Colleges and universities moving towards the w:Flipped classroom, and the wiki sisters should get involved, even though Wikipedia seems to be tripping over the jargon used to describe this trend (see LMS). At the moment the successful ventures seem to be commercial (see w:Category:Learning_management_systems, but this might change someday: The wikis never go bankrupt or get sold and have only improved (albeit at a slow rate). I am concerned that I can't seem to search into the middle of the alphabet in the long list of w:Special:Institutions, but that will eventually be fixed I'm sure. One advantage the wikisisters have over the commercial ventures is that we can so easily link in and out of Wikipedia.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 23:38, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

• Support - I think this extension, although there would be a lot of UI design to do, may get us forward to have "collaborative learning communities", such as free and open online courses (compare to MOOCS). --Teemu (discuss • contribs) 16:05, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Dear All,

I just noticed this topic in the TOC when I saved my last edit. How fortuitous. I am the Education Program Extension's defacto spokesperson on the education program team at the Wikimedia Foundation. This page might be useful to your discussion: Outreach:Education/Extension. I hope you don't mind that I've added English Wikiversity under Possible Installations. :) If there is consensus to enable the extension on your project, please follow the steps listed here to request installation on Phabricator and please CC me in the task so that I can follow its progress and help out if needed. If I can answer any questions about the extension or be of further assistance to you in this discussion, please don't hesitate to ping me.

All the best, AKoval (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 22:54, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I have requested the extension and started Wikiversity:Education extension. This discussion has been added to the talk page. Leutha (discuss • contribs) 10:15, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Involvement in the Wikipedia Eduction Program

Is Wikiversity involved in the Wikipedia Eduction program (https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education)? If not, should we be involved? According to me, the Wikiversity is a more logical platform to support education than Wikipedia. Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 09:50, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I added a question on the discuss-page of Wikipedia Education Program: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Education#Involvement_of_Wikiversities Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 10:16, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

@Timboliu: A discussion started Here --Grind24 (discuss • contribs) 17:07, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

@Grind24:, thanks for starting this discussion on Village Pump. Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 09:38, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Dear Timboliu,

Thank you for initiating this conversation in the Wikiversity:Colloquium and at Outreach:Talk:Education. And thanks to Koavf and Grind24 for noting this on the Outreach:Village pump and for pinging me there. I'll reply here first and then note that in those other threads. It'd be helpful to centralize the discussion.

These are great questions that you ask. Thank you for asking them.

1) Should the Wikiversity Community be involved with the Wikipedia Education Program? The answer is YES! It is officially called the *Wikipedia* Education Program, but in reality, it is the *Wikimedia* Education Program. All 12 of the sister projects are being utilized in one or more WEPs worldwide.

2) Is Wikiversity already involved in the Wikipedia Education Program? The answer is also YES! There are a number of examples of Wikiversitarians and educators who have been involved with the Wikipedia Education Program through Wikiversity. For example:

Sweden:

"The Department of Computer and Systems Science at Stockholm University is running an advanced international training program, called ICT and Pedagogical Development, supported by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), where Wikimedia Sverige is invited to introduce the Wikimedia projects, including how Wikiversity can be used as a platform for the shared knowledge and resources in this global project." More information at: Outreach:Education/Newsletter/May 2014/Wikimedia Sverige: Meeting the educators

"In order to encourage more teachers to learn from the project and to use Wikipedia with their students, we now have a learning resource available on Swedish Wikiversity focusing on developing the students' intercultural communication skills, as well as media and inforamtion literacies. Currently, it's made up of six consecutive exercises." More information at: Outreach:Education/Newsletter/April 2014/Wikimedia Sverige: New resource for Swedish teachers on Wikiversity

"Some students at secondary school Katedralskolan in Skara, Sweden, have been nominated for a national prize celebrating the use of web publication in education, called "the Web star". They have produced an MOOC, Massive open online course, on Swedish Wikiversity including articles, podcasts, quizes, badges and resources they have authored and collected as part of their coursework." More information at: Outreach:Education/Newsletter/April 2015/Students nominated for their MOOC on Swedish Wikiversity

Finland:

In 2007, User:Teemu created a course on English Wikiversity called "Composing free and open online educational resources." More information at: Outreach:Education/Countries/Finland#Wikiversity Course

France:

ICT course curriculum on French Wikiversity (in French). More information at: fr.wikiversity:Projet:Atelier « Enrichir Wikipédia M1 CRDM Nanterre 2014»

Australia:

La Trobe University piloted open education practices using Wikiversity. And Wikiversity was discussed at the 2013 Wikimedia in Higher Education Symposium at the University of Sydney. More information at: Outreach:Education/Countries/Australia

Austria:

At the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, has taught courses on German Wikipedia since 2011. More information at: Outreach:Education/Countries/Austria

@Guy vandegrift: and @Marshallsumter: seem to be veteran educators on this project. I wanted to include them in this conversation.

If there are other examples, I do hope that you will point them out to me. Very soon (this month approximately) I will begin systematically collecting historical data about Wikimedia Education Programs worldwide. And I want to be certain that Wikiversity is accurately counted.

There are so many teaching resources available to educators here on Wikiversity, for example, Portal:Learning Materials. There is also a smaller collection of materials at Outreach:Other_Wikimedia_Projects#Wikiversity. I'm sure that these pages are only the tip of the iceberg. It'd ben helpful to have a map of Wikiversity and a tour guide! :)

Lastly, Tim, I am very glad to know that you have been talking with Floor Koudijs about this as well. Her advice about education programs partnering with the existing Wikiversity community in their language is crucial to an education program’s success. We're looking forward to following your progress and supporting you along the way. All the best, AKoval (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 22:32, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi AKoval, it is great to read your message. Sometimes I feel like a voice in the wilderness when I'm talking about Wikiversity. The Dutch Wikiversity is still in beta and in the last four years I only convinced a few people to join me in learning projects :-) But, I'm still a believer. I will keep you posted on the developments. Cheers, Tim Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 09:46, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Hive Learning Networks

Hi,

Is anyone familiar with Mozilla's Hive Learning Networks (https://hivelearningnetworks.org/about/)? I think these networks could be very interesting for Wikiversity? Does anyone know how these learning networks share learning material? I think the wikiversity could be the perfect platform for these learning networks.

Regards,

Tim, Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 08:42, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I did some research. Wikimedia Germany is/ was involved in Hive Berlin. Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 15:18, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Interesting! Leutha (discuss • contribs) 08:32, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

This is a very nice programs --103.1.92.93 (discuss) 03:18, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

In my namespace I started to collect some information. See https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Timboliu/Hive_Learning_Networks. Suggestions are welcome. Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 10:07, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikiversity policy/guideline change process

Extended content

There has long been a practice of working on policy pages to improve them, even after they have been approved as policy. It's been done many ways, but this is my understanding of the norm. These pages are open to editing, they are not protected, which they would be if we wanted no changes to them. Users have routinely edited these pages. Sometimes they made major changes, and sometimes these were allowed to stand, sometimes disagreement arose. (Policy pages do not actually control the community; rather, the authority here is consensus, and the procedure is ad hoc. Policies tell people what to expect, reflect general consensus on that, so policies should reflect actual practice. Sometimes the community tells custodians what it wants to see, though, through approving a policy.) What has been normal: if an edit to a policy page stands without objection, it is generally considered to represent consensus. That's rebuttable, one might go back even years and object to a change. If there is disagreement, it's discussed on the Talk page. It has always been assumed, as well, that if a change is discussed, and there is no objection, the change may be made. Usually the process starts by making an edit and then someone objects by reverting it. It's started to happen that changes are being reverted, not because of any objection to the change, but on the idea that any change to policy must be announced to and reviewed by the community. That could be the case if there is disagreement, among the group of users who follow these pages, but what if there is no disagreement? I am coming here to request the advice of the community on procedure, not on a specific change. I then expect to follow that advice as to making changes. So the example I bring up is only an example. Wikiversity:Deletions was proposed as a policy, but ratified as a "guideline" by this discussion, in January 2012. There was opposition, resolved by going for "guideline" (weaker) rather than "policy" (stronger). There was no detailed discussion of the changes that were made to the long-standing policy. It was understood that the page still needed work. There were occasional changes after that. In March 2014, I proposed, on the Talk page, a removal of the speedy deletion criterion for files moved to Commons.[1] I wrote that if there was no objection, I would make the change. A month later, a user objected to me making the change, but not based on disagreement with it, but only because it had not been discussed. No objection to the change itself appeared. With [2], 17 August 2015, I removed the criterion. This was reverted by Dave,[3] with summary (Undo unilateral change). Dave started this discussion (apparently unaware of the old one). There was no mention at first of going to the Colloquium. Rather, Dave wrote, there, Please discuss and provide support or opposition before changes are made. So there was discussion. There was support and no opposition. So, today, I stated my intention to make the change. Dave wrote: "I oppose this, and any other policy/procedure changes until an announcement is posted in the colloquium making all users aware of the proposed change and giving them an opportunity to respond. The proposal isn't controversial. The attempt to change procedure without notice to all is the controversy." We have continually been making changes to actual policy pages, and a guideline page is even more open to change. So Dave is proposing, in fact, new policy about policies and "procedures," one that will create substantial hindrance to improvements, that discards long-standing wiki traditions about how changes are made, and that will needlessly increase Colloquium traffic. Does the community want all changes to policy/guideline pages to be announced to the Colloquium? What has been announced to the Colloquium are major changes or issues (such as the poll attempting to declare a draft "policy.") As well, when there is conflict over a change, it may be brought here (or a formal Community Review may be created). But when there is no conflict about the change itself? Please discuss the issue of change process here. (If you want to discuss the change itself, please do so on Wikiversity talk:Deletions). Please do not start a poll until we have some discussion, some possible sense of consensus or the question to be asked. Questions? Thanks. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 03:54, 2 September 2015 (UTC) Don't all talk at once! If there is no response here, that's fine, I'll propose my own questions after 10 days from the original request. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:23, 5 September 2015 (UTC)note added Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:05, 12 September 2015 (UTC) Consultation of the community before changes to policies and guidelines We have commonly edited policy and guideline ("PG") pages without explicit consultation of the community on the Colloquium. Many changes are minor, which is a subjective judgment. (For example, an edit which improves a guideline's description of actual practice is not an actual major change, even if it might seem so.) Any user may revert a change to a policy or guideline page. If a change is discussed, and no opposition appears, it is routinely accepted; our P/Gs are not rigid rules, but rather guides to what will commonly be accepted and perhaps what will not. Any user may also bring a dispute to the Colloquium. We are now seeing objection to unopposed changes to WV:Deletions, a guideline that was explicitly defined such with the understanding that it still needed work, merely on the basis that the Colloquium has not been consulted. This is not policy. It's new. Taking an issue to the Colloquium is an "escalation," a broadening of discussion, which can often waste a lot of time in unnecessary debate. The person who believes that this is necessary should take responsibility for that cost by making the request for review here. Allowing continued reversion of changes of discussed changes, when the reversion does not express opposition to the actual change, creates an obstacle to improving policies and guidelines such that they more fully express consensus. Normally, discussion of changes to a P/G takes place on the attached Talk page. Most changes are accepted without discussion. So I'm requesting guidance to confirm/disconfirm my understanding of actual practice. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:05, 12 September 2015 (UTC) To make this clear: what is proposed here are statements of what has been actual practice on this wiki since it was founded. The clarification is requested because Dave Braunschweig is reverting changes that have not been brought to the Colloquium, merely because they have not been brought, and one of these changes was discussed over a year ago with no opposition, and has now been discussed again with no opposition. Many changes to policy and guideline pages have been made with no discussion at all! To have a defacto policy requiring consultation of the community requires asking a group of people for an opinion who may not have studied the issue, so it reduces the wiki to "mob rule," sometimes. It should not be done unless there is a discussed disagreement that cannot be resolved locally. Nevertheless, any user may bring an issue here. Dave did not do that. Instead of bringing the small issue here -- I'll be happy to do that if the community wants consultation on small issues where no disagreement has been expressed -- I've brought the big one: our process for efficient ("wiki") improvement of policy and guideline pages. The same thing is done on en.wiki. Dave is, without asking the community, introducing a major change. If we cannot find consensus here, I'd intend to start a WV:Community Review on this, because, if such things as basic as this are not clear, it's time to make them clear, using the most careful and broad process we have, WV:CR. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 04:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Poll on consultation Proposed: The community need not be consulted on the Colloquium before changes are made to Policy/Guideline pages, where there is no opposition to the actual change, or local consensus is shown in discussion on the attached Talk page. Comments I like this better: The community need not be consulted on the Colloquium before changes are made to Policy/Guideline pages , where there is no opposition to the actual change, or local consensus is shown in discussion on the attached Talk page. if all parties agree to continue talking unless there is no time to talk -- Small print was added but not needed because everybody knows you can break the rules if there is an emergency.Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:28, 14 September 2015 (UTC) I must say I don't understand the proposed amendment. This is a poll. It is not about any kind of emergency, this kind of work is never an emergency. However, if it's not efficient, it tends to not get done. It is possible that it would lead to a policy statement somewhere, and that process would include seeking consensus on wording or details. The question here was consultation on something that has actually been common practice, that suddenly was strongly opposed. The common practice, routine everywhere, had never been formally expressed, that's all. I was aware that one user was demanding community consultation on all changes, and if the community actually wants that, I'll be happy to do it. Be aware that it will create quite a bit of noise, without actually improving quality, since anyone can later object, and we do have knowledgeable users with guideline and policy pages on their watchlists. Then, just because a page is changed, and stands for a while, does not get it written in stone. Anyone can also bring an issue here. But what is being demanded is that others bring issues here, merely to make an uncontroversial change. And it may takes quiet a few edits to settle on consensus (and that process can take months). So do we bring each edit here? What? There is an alternate solution, having an alternate page. The main policy/guideline page would be protected, if we really don't want it changed. It would contain a link to a "current draft page," and then anyone could work on improving that page, and when enough changes have been made to be worth consulting the community on, this is done. However, do we need that? So far, I don't think so, but it's not a bad idea. However, let's see how this poll goes before presenting a moving target. People should be aware of consultation burnout. Ask users to review too many issues, they stop reviewing any. An issue should be ready for consultation, and generally that means that there is controversy that needs resolution, some meat. In the case that led to this poll, there was no controversy over the change, but the change was blocked anyway based on lack of consultation. -Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:52, 14 September 2015 (UTC) I have been reading the comments about this suggested process and would like to add my two cents. When Sidelight12 began changing the Wikiversity:Research ethics guidelines back in 2013, nobody but me made any objections. I moved the changes to the talk page, return the guidelines to their earlier form, and we began our discussion. Ultimately, I had to bring the matter here to the Colloquium because Sidelight12 had zealously demanded the changes. Consensus here was to keep the more recent but older form before the changes. I would say that process worked. The other cent: I'm seeing here that changers who are on crusades don't ask permission here. They only make the changes and don't care if anyone else notices them, they aren't interested in who objects, they will edit war, and to win they'll bring in their army (Wikipedia works that way), and they don't bring the community's attention to them at all unless their gang waits in the wings. If by voting we're saying changers must bring their proposed changes here we are asking for civility. What we really need is an exhaustive list of all policy and guidelines so that whenever anyone attempts changes all of us find out about them at the same time, a kind of mandatory watchlist. Otherwise, requiring suggested changes be brought here beforehand only works with civil people. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 19:28, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Voting Support as proposer. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:05, 12 September 2015 (UTC) Support. The problem I often have occurring to me is that I'm blissfully and perhaps naively creating or adding to resources as part of my research. Suddenly, to me, from out of the blue, as it were, a policy change hits me like a cold tomato. This seldom or never happens here. But, caught unaware I scramble for what action to take. Will I lose all that research? Calm slowly returns. I read the changes. Sometimes I can make a connection, sometimes not. So if the tomato strikes I'll probably bring it to the Colloquium or the talk page. The changes I've read so far seem positive and helpful. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:26, 13 September 2015 (UTC) Oppose - Wikiversity needs more engagement of participants, not less. This is, in effect, a proposal to allow changes to anything that someone can get away with until others notice, months or years later. There's been too much of that at Wikiversity already. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:35, 13 September 2015 (UTC) Oppose - tentatively, pending a brief statement explaining why immediate action is needed.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:49, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Oppose as per above. Leutha (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Poll on opposition to change Proposed: Any user who believes that wider consultation is needed may bring the issue to the Colloquium, but this shall not prevent change if there is no opposition; the community may reverse the local consensus if consulted. Comments Both of these proposals will lead to trouble unless we can find a way to appoint a group of people charged to act -- that's how committees work in Robert's Rules of Order. As these rules stand, a group of two can declare themselves "in charge" and do anything. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:46, 14 September 2015 (UTC) No. That's not how a wiki works. I know Robert's Rules very well, I've been a parliamentarian, and we could create officers to facilitate procedure, it could be a great idea. but this would be entirely experimental here. There is an experiment set up with Wikiversity:Assembly that would use facilitated discussions. Dormant at this time. We need leaders. Any volunteers? I think there is a misconception of what guidelines and policies are. They are not controlling. They are protective: supposedly, if one follows guidelines and policies, one will not be sanctioned for it, even if consensus later reverses a decision. Realize that what is asked here is what is simply natural on a wiki. Any user may make a change on an unprotected page, and it stands unless opposed. What is asked about here is change that is opposed, not in itself, but because there has not been wider consultation (which can be what I've called "disruptive," like WV:RFD is "disruptive" because it requires user time to discuss, close, archive, etc. So we avoid it unless it is necessary.) The template on, say, WV:Deletions says, "Please propose and discuss before making significant changes to ensure your revisions reflect consensus." That has never been interpreted -- before now -- to require Colloquium notification, it has been taken as referring to discussion on the attached Talk page. Further, it was common to make relatively minor changes ad hoc, without discussion even on the Talk page. Major changes, a massive revision, has generally led to an invitation to the community to participate, that happened with that guideline in 2012. And any user can bring the matter here, if they believe that consultation is needed. There is no danger. If anyone thinks that a change is harmful, they may oppose it! And then dispute resolution process starts. Which can then involve consulting the community, all the way up to WV:Community Review which has the power to make policy, remove sysop privileges, restrict or ban users, and which will normally be site-messaged. But we don't do that unless simpler process cannot find agreement. The proposal doesn't work. Look at the change to wv:Requests for Deletion, a page that in theory everyone who cares monitors. It took five months for us to recognize a change had been made, and then everyone opposed the change, ultimately including the user who initially made it. Being able to change policy or procedure without explicit inclusion of the community in that process is not in the community's best interest. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC) (edit conflict with below) Zero harm was done. Dave did not link to the diff showing the edit, so: [4]. The change I made to text represented actual practice, not some new idea. This practice is required on en.wikipedia, and it has been routine here. Yes, many users may be watching that page, and, I assume, most thought of it as harmless. However, a probationary custodian was upset by being asked about a page he deleted. So, that custodian reverted the change.[5] At this point, if I wanted to restore the change, it would be up to me to propose it on Talk. However, the custodian went to Talk and started a way-premature poll on whether or not we wanted this, with three votes before I even saw it. Normally, a poll is not started until there has been some discussion, and, especially, some manifest disagreement! (Or we are creating a policy, have consensus, but want wide ratification.) I find that many Wikiversity users, including custodians, are unfamiliar with large-wiki practice, and with normal dispute resolution procedures covering disagreements. So it's not surprising that some might think there is something wrong with that edit, and express that before knowing the background. Read the discussion![6]. At the end of that discussion, there is a review of en.wiki policy on undeletion requests. Above, Dave seems to think that my edit was made because I wanted that to be some sort of policy. No, I was merely expressing what had been the norm here, as on en.wiki. It avoids wider discussion when it is unnecessary, compared to the standing undeletion process, a request on WV:RFD. Basically, I support the effective change (not consulting with the deleting custodian) because we can do better, as I wrote. Read the arguments of the four who commented. We do not agree with each other. I am developing and will be proposing an undeletion template, for "speedy undeletion," which will mirror our speedy and proposed deletion templates, which avoid WV:RFD. It is going to be fascinating how the other three respond to that, if they do. It will avoid any need for consultation with the deleting custodian. (Who will, however, know about the proposal, from watchlist behavior.) It will make some undeletions routine and easy. I had two routine undeletions to request, and I used WV:RFD. Neither should have been controversial. Both were actioned, and no harm was done. Out of one, we now have a resource with content. Out of the other, we have some now-visible site history and a process under way to create a usable undeletion template. There is at this point another nearly-ready-to-move-to-archive undeletion request on WV:RFD. All three requests would have been unnecessary if we had an undeletion template. Some have though this would be "automatic undeletion." Not any more than Template:Delete is automatic deletion. My goal is always consensus, because consensus is powerful. When people believe that consensus always requires wide discussion, organizations fail. I have long experience, many decades, with consensus organizations. Long story. Genuine consensus famously requires much discussion, but much of that discussion can be one-on-one, between consenting adults, so to speak. Later, anyone not satisfied may still speak up! Now, Dave is referring to that incident as if it were relevant to this discussion, which is only about changes to policies and guidelines. (He then includes it with the vague "procedures," which are just what people do. Process page boilerplate has never been formally ratified. People just write it. What he points to actually demonstrates how the wiki process works, and is he saying that this should have been brought to the Colloquium? That would have been crazy, and it simply is not going to happen, unless the Community writes policy covering it. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 04:09, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Just to clarify, I am not suggesting that we go parlimentarian on this wiki -- I was making an analogy to show how a different system deals with such matters. Every organization has to delegate authority, somehow. Dave knows a lot more than me about how it's done here.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 03:26, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Dave knows almost nothing about dispute resolution procedures on a wiki. I've been astonished to find that, but it's not terribly surprising, given his history. His high activity in site maintenance would not teach him this. Wikiversity mostly avoids conflict, so one may not gain much experience in this here. Dave started enwiki and Wikiversity activity when the wiki was relatively dead, he started editing in 2012. His enwiki activity remains very thin. Many users there never see ANI, or read ArbCom cases. Consider how Dave became a permanent custodian, who made that happen? (If you don't know, ask!) I work outside the rules, but in line with anticipation of community consensus, which is the real rule. Someone constrained by "the rules" would not have been able to do what I did. Wikis delegate, not authority, but power. Campus cops may have guns. What authority do they have? -- only ad hoc authority, that is, the power to govern their own actions, (which can include arrest), subject to review by the real authorities. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 05:03, 14 September 2015 (UTC) This is all very confusing. If somebody is reverting changes to the proposed policy, that implies that there is opposition, and if there is opposition, the parties talk, and if they can't agree it goes to the next step. I am inexperienced with conflict resolution on wikis. What is the next step if there is opposition (or disagreement over reverts). Exactly where does it go? I am probably not the only person who is wondering.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 05:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Wikipedia has this Wikipedia:Ignore all rules "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." Rules that work are only kept if people are vigilant. OSHA is a good example inside the USA. Some companies view enriching only the higher-ups. These break OSHA rules all the time. Eventually they get caught and someone loses their job. But, what do we do here, rule by gang? We need what works even if a hundred come here to destroy. Almost everyone has the Colloquium on their watchlist. Each of us puts what we consider valuable on our watchlists. When a gang arrives, the gang loses if we bring it here, if they are vandals. We have at least eight active stewards and two active bureaucrats that edit here and probably have this Colloquium on their watchlist. Unless the gang has a good idea, their unlikely to win. The key is opposition with involvement. That's probably the best in civility we can hope for. So, what are we doing here? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:09, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Voting Support as proposer. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:05, 12 September 2015 (UTC) Support. Seems okay but I'm watching out for tomatoes. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:29, 13 September 2015 (UTC) Oppose - The pair of proposals is designed to avoid participation in the decision process and remove responsibility for consensus-building from those seeking changes. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:01, 14 September 2015 (UTC) This is truly odd. First of all, "designed" is mind-reading. But setting that aside, we are talking about a situation where there is no opposition to the edit. Under those conditions, the edit is consensus, especially if there has been discussion, and pending the appearance of opposition. What is happening here is that Dave is, himself, avoiding participation in decision process, by requiring that another consult the community first, without expressing any opposition to the revision, thus "avoiding responsibility" for opposition, while, at the same time, avoiding personal responsibility for the likely waste of user time. As this particular poll suggests, he could bring the issue here himself. And he could stop the revision by actually opposing it (there would then be "opposition," and it would not be local consensus.) --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:30, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Oppose - tentatively, pending a brief statement explaining why immediate action is needed.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC) I don't understand. There is no immediate action requested here. The questions are asked, however, because of a present situation where the opposite, of what the poll proposes, is being demanded, creating a stumbling block for normal evolution of policy/guideline pages, an obstacle that did not exist before. Do you want a "brief explanation" of that? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:30, 14 September 2015 (UTC) If there is no rush to resolve an issue, then we should just go through regular channels, I suppose. Will remove "tentative" status of opposition. Thanks for clarifying.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 03:30, 14 September 2015 (UTC) "Regular channels" would be the normal wiki editing process, proposed for clarification here. So you are actually expressing opposition to "regular channels." Your privilege. Just understand that if we don't find consensus here, you get to watch a WV:Community Review. We haven't had one since 2011! No rush. Could be fun, though it distracts from "content creation." If we find consensus here, I simply follow it. This is important, the change that Dave has introduced could cause substantial damage in terms of retarding improvement of policy and guideline pages, as well as creating disruption. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 05:14, 14 September 2015 (UTC) Oppose This does not help build consensus. Leutha (discuss • contribs) 16:48, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikiversity at Wikipedia Science Conference

Andy Mabbett at the Wikipedia Science Conference, London, 2 September, 2015

Thanks to Andy for his introduction to Wikiversity to the 80 odd people attending the Wikipedia Science Conference today. Leutha (discuss • contribs) 16:10, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Introducing the Wikimedia public policy site

Hi all,

We are excited to introduce a new Wikimedia Public Policy site. The site includes resources and position statements on access, copyright, censorship, intermediary liability, and privacy. The site explains how good public policy supports the Wikimedia projects, editors, and mission.

Visit the public policy portal: https://policy.wikimedia.org/

Please help translate the statements on Meta Wiki. You can read more on the Wikimedia blog.

Thanks,

Yana and Stephen (Talk) 18:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

(Sent with the Global message delivery system)

Templates to keep your user talk page clean

If you want your user talk page to be as clean as mine, use Template:Moveon top and Template:Moveon bottom to help you "move on" after the topic no longer interests you. To play with it, copy/paste this wikitext into your sandbox:

{{Moveon top|write a statement or summary here}}
First statement
:Second statement
::Third statement
{{Moveon bottom}}

(The preceding unsigned comment was added by Guy vandegrift (talk • contribs) )

Just to note: it is not common to quickly archive or collapse discussions until there is plenty of time for responses to appear. "Clean" is not as valuable as "Complete." On the other hand, fast closing of discussions can be done when the discussion is considered harmful. We used to have a discussion archive bot running. (the bot was controlled by a page parameter that would set the archiving period, usually so many days after the last signed edit to a section.) That could be done again. I have been doing manual archiving of various process pages. Bot archiving is often less transparent, it depends on details. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:29, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I didn't know about archiving bots, but they sound interesting. My intent was to use the Moveon templates on user talk pages, not resource talk pages. Having said that, at Template_talk:Moveon_top I illustrated how the reopening of a closed discussion could be proposed/requested.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 04:56, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Topic specific discussion forum

Is there a way to create a discussion forum for a specific content? Me and several other educators are collaboratively creating content for Localization. It'd be great to have a discussion forum specific to this topic. --Jangrode (discuss • contribs) 19:14, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I just realized, there's a discussion tab to every topic. This will probably fit the purpose. (The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jangrode (talk • contribs) )

Right. You may also create seminar subpages, with discussion, then, being in mainspace. (With talk being about the page process.) On discussion pages, such as seminars, comments should be signed. It is also possible to later refactor discussions, in ways that can summarize them. This can be a powerful technique for creating deep content that, I've seen, can have real-world impact. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:32, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Open call for Individual Engagement Grants

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals from August 31st to September 29th to fund new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental ideas that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), Individual Engagement Grants can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

• Submit a grant request
• Get help with your proposal in IdeaLabor an upcoming Hangout session
• Learn from examples of completed Individual Engagement Grants

I JethroBT (WMF), 09:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

There is less than one week left to submit Individual Engagement Grant (IEG) proposals before the September 29th deadline. If you have ideas for new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental projects that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers, start your proposal today! Please encourage others who have great ideas to apply as well. Support is available if you want help turning your idea into a grant request. I JethroBT (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 15:30, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Programming Resource in scope?

Id like to mirror some of the content here : https://bb4w.wikispaces.com/

on Wikiversity as a resource.

I'd like to know if it's OK to do that ( the license on the source site is CC-Attribution).

Sfan00 IMG (discuss • contribs) 12:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Assuming details are handled properly, yes, this can be done. Since that site is on a single topic, it should be all subpages of a single page. Programming/BB4W could be the top-level page. I've noticed before that we have scattered programming pages, and that Programming is redirected to a topic. Moving the specific language pages to subpages of Programming will give fully descriptive page names. This classification of resources by page hierarchy has been going on for some years, with little opposition. But some may have different opinions. I do not suggest Programming languages/BB4W, Programming/Languages/BB4W or the usage of the full name of the language, "BBC BASIC for Windows." However, since there are many BASIC implementations, I'd prefer Programming/BASIC/BB4W. See w:BASIC and w:BBC BASIC.

It should be possible to export all the pages from that wiki. A custodian may then import them. The import should show sufficient information to allow identification of the pages as imported from that wiki, as of a certain time, which, as long as that wiki is up, will then allow author attributions. The export and import could be full, i.e., with edit history, which can create some problems with user names. Those could be resolved by using a User name prefix. If that is done, attribution is full, stand-alone. User:Dave Braunschweig has done these imports, I think he's used a bot. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

There isn't a direct export option available to normal users on Wikispace as far as I can tell (it's using it's own software not Mediawiki) The site is also "conveniently" excluded from Wayback. I don't think wikiversity has mirroring specilaists.

The concern I had was scope, given that the underlying language tool it's not exactly 'free' software, even though the wiki content is nominally CC-BY-SA 2.5. Is there someone that can give a definitive answer?

Sfan00 IMG (discuss • contribs) 16:34, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

How to use non-free software is in scope here. See Windows. There is nobody that can give a definitive answer, but I'll assert that my answer is as likely to be representative of consensus here as any. There is no copyright issue, because of that license, if it attributed. It's not NC restricted, for example. Export is not going to work, perhaps. I attempted to Join. It's broken. Long story. I did manage to create a new account, and then the wiki asked me for information so the management of the wiki could approve the account. So, maybe I'll get a response. I've watched many wikis die because of overcontrol, or undercontrol.... It's an active wiki, though.

Don't start until there is a response from, at least, a custodian, and I hope Dave will respond, that's why I pinged him with his user name. Definitely don't start creating random pages based only on the source wiki pagenames, but if you create a master page, then all pages can be copied with their original wiki pagenames. I cannot see a way to display the original wikitext with my unapproved account. This is all SNAFU. Wikipedia allows any user (including IP) to copy the wikitext, and to export the page as XML, with or without full history. The BB4w wiki does allow export of history as a .csv file, but it's only useful as a list of contributors, it does not include content information or links to revisions.

There will be specific issues to be addressed, and they should be addressed before there are many pages to deal with. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:58, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikispaces wikitext is not 100% compatible with MediaWiki wikitext. There will be either conversion or reformatting required to transfer content. Also, Wikispaces does not support exporting as far as I know, and I have management rights on a Wikispaces wiki. It may be just as effective to copy formatted text using a browser window and then paste the text into the VisualEditor, but I haven't tried that yet. It will be a page-by-page effort either way.

Wikispaces doesn't seem to be going away. My recommendation would be to develop resources here that link to the existing content rather than trying to mirror it at this point, unless everyone maintaining the Wikispace wiki is ready to move on for some reason. Otherwise, you'll end up with two different sources to maintain and ultimately a lack of consistency between them.

Regarding naming pages here, there is no advantage to putting this project under Programming, and no consensus that such a naming approach is appropriate. My suggestion would be to create a main project page for either BBC BASIC or BBC BASIC for Windows, and then create subpages below that. But, again, I would use the pages here to link to Wikispaces, unless everyone is ready to abandon the Wikispaces project and move the content here.

Let us know what additional assistance you need. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:02, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It's not my wiki, I just thought the content might be useful here. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 22:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

My comment about pagenames is part of a long-term organizational strategy, which has been going on for a long time, supported by many users and only recently questioned. It has never been formally established as consaensus. It is also never urgent.

It is not crucial -- at all -- that a particular pagename be chosen for the highest level resource used for such a set of pages. It could easily be BB4W, which is unique, and the entire structure can later be moved with a single command. What would be a problem would be many different pagenames, not subpages of BB4W.

I agree with Dave that there may not be much necessity, at least not immediately, to copy that content here. I was able to join, and look at the wikitext. Major project, moving it here, unless a translator is written. Creating an index to that wiki, here, could be useful, and far simpler. Later, if desired, the index could be turned into a fork or copy.

I looked into w:wikispaces. Ugh. According to one source, wikispaces supports "raw export." Not XML export. Not sure what "raw export" means. However, "Organizers" appear to have the export option.

Looks to me like any previous wiki that was hosted by wikispaces, other than wikis used for "Pre-K, K-12, or Higher Education," is in danger of disappearing. See the bestsoftware wiki. The owner of that wiki bailed when fees were set up (she wrote about it elsewhere). Sometimes a wiki under conditions like this will struggle on for a time. Wikispaces requires an "organizer" to handle payments, etc. Some wiki organizers, as seen on the comments on the Wikispaces announcement, are "no longer with us." I've seen a vibrant mailing list go south when the owner died or just disappeared, and had never designated co-owners. Can't even get the subscription list. Sometimes one can reconstruct at least those who sent email to the list.... If a MediaWiki installation is up, anyone can, anonymously, export the content as XML, with or without history. I used to use other wiki software. It all became unmanageable. So, "free license," but, in practice, restricted access. And then they shut that down. Users will not necessarily know it's coming, until they see that screen that shows on the bestsoftware wiki. Only the organizer will know, if the organizer is still active. The content is on archive.org, at this point, will likely stay there, but sometimes site owners request it be taken down. Archive.org stopped archiving the bestsoftware wiki in 2013.

Wikispaces appear to have actively excluded their site from Wayback ( in effect ransoming some sites). Sfan00 IMG (discuss • contribs) 08:13, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

It occurred to me that we could copy content here, then protect the pages, to avoid forking as long as the wikispaces wiki is functioning. One command, cascaded protection, of the top level page. Removable at any time by an admin if someone wants to update the pages. So if an importer is written, the importer could overwrite the existing content, but all of it would be in page history. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Sfan00 IMG: I'd like to echo the above that reproducing the pages would possibly have the issue of having content that is not synchronized but that may not be a big deal. Maybe you want to have some basic documentation and you just want to reproduce it here to organize some contests or experiments, so you don't need every bleeding-edge edit to every page. It could definitely be useful. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:25, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

What I was wanting to mirror was more to do with some of the techniques (and the assmbler routines menntioned) then specifcally BB4W.Sfan00 IMG (discuss • contribs) 08:12, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Undeletion of user page of SolVelasco09265

I deleted this user page because it fit the following profile: a new user creates a user page and then creates an apparent resource that is actually solicitation for their business. Usually the user puts apparently harmless information on their user page such as "I'm Cristine and I live in London.
I'm interested in Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, Disc golf and Russian art. I like to travel and reading fantasy." This is from this former visible user page. The page the user created "Straightforward Solutions In Toe Pain In The UK" contains good information on foot health wrapped into a solicitation. The user is apparently female. I believe her account is globally locked so that she cannot receive email. But, WMF is seriously concerned about the low numbers of female contributors to WMF projects primarily Wikipedia. Should we undelete the user page and attempt email to ask the user to contribute learning resources here on foot health, without soliciting for her business, or leave the user page deleted. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:02, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

The presumption that the user is female is not supported by the evidence. Bots don't have gender, and there's nothing about the edit to suggest that there is a person behind it. The deletion is appropriate, and no additional contact should be pursued. This is another example where we should accept that stewards have more information than we do, and a global lock as a spam-only account should be recognized as such. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:22, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 09:34, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I have occasionally considered attempting to engage with a user like this. Then, when I realized that the user information was almost certainly false (inconsistencies in it), I abandoned that idea. Once in a while I've attempted to engage a spammer. It has never worked. But it might work if someone merely looks like a spammer. And, definitely, stewards make mistakes. Just not many. When I see a global lock, I often look at account contributions. It's rare to see even a possibility of an error. However, I've come across errors from other means. There are about 20,000 accounts locked per year, last I looked it's a huge flow. There are stewards of whom I would have said they never make a mistake. Then I found one, a usage of the lock tool well outside of original intention (give a man a hammer, he finds nails to hit).

Marshall, consider leaving the user page be for a bit, when you see one of these that has a remote possibility of being sincere. Realize that the user page does not help the user get away with creating spam. I do not welcome users from these user page creations, I welcome from any edit that looks like it might be sincere. So I look at discussion page red links, not the user page redlink. Then I look at new page creations. Then at resource edits.

Dave is correct. It is unlikely that the user is "female," Consider a female user named "Cristine" who creates a user name like SolVelasco09265, an apparently male name. It makes no sense. Again, that page follows a formula, I saw it many times doing Recent Changes patrol here. "I am [A], I live in [B], I'm interested in [C], [D], and [E]. I like [F] and [G]." That this was followed quickly by a spam page creation, has gone beyond a reasonable doubt: Spammer. Was the edit related to "Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, Disc golf and Russian art"? No.

Was the solicitation related to podiatry? If a podiatrist wanted to announce their practice here, in good faith, they could actually do it. But they would not start with this BS user page. They would start with something like, "Hi, I'm Donald Gregory, and I'm a podiatrist in private practice in the U.K. I'd like to help create educational resources on podiatry here." Maybe they would put a link to their web site on their user page. We might remove that link and tell them that if they do create some podiatry resources, we may consider allowing a relevant personal link. And we do allow that.

No, this was a spammer, perhaps an illegitimate SEO optimizer, possibly paid by incoming traffic driven by placed links. I found a page, googling the same name on a Korean web site. (UK on a Korean web site? hello?). However, that page did not seem to have any link. Did the page here mention bathing in the Dead Sea? The page is a dead link, or the site is down, but I could read it with google translate. The page was weird. Paragraphs put together as good English, more or less, but the presentation very choppy, as if pieces were put together by a bot. Hmm... !!!

In this case, the steward locked a series of accounts at the same time. Stewards identify these accounts with checkuser, typically (and at least one steward uses checkuser on log-in wiki, and they block suspected spammer sock accounts with no edits, based on registration data. Here is the lock log showing that series of account locks: [7]. The first locked account was the one that only edited here, 2 edits, as you reported. No other edits globally. The pattern of what might seem to be a possibly decent article with an embedded spam link is common. They can get through many recent changes patrollers with that. If the user appeared to be good faith, I'd just remove the link. The resource, however, was inappropriate for here anyway, at least under that name! I looked at some of the other accounts. All were 2 edits on one wiki, different wikis, one of the pair to the user page. I could look at account creation times and see more of the story, but I didn't.

Then, bottom line: the users behind these accounts have very little invested in them. If they did happen to be good faith, they would simply register another account, and if they show a good contribution, certainly if they do that here, we could protect them. Global locks are not global bans. These accounts were almost certainly detected because of many registrations in a short period from the same IP, or similar. (A steward once globally locked maybe twenty accounts, they were students signing up to do a school project, all from the same IP. The steward quickly recognized his error and unlocked.) --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:13, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The steward actions, I'm quite sure, significantly reduce the flow of spam from spambots. When I see what looks like spam here, I will look at global contributions. If I see a spam pattern, I then go to m:Steward requests/global and request global block (for IP) or global lock (for registered accounts). Should this happen to hit a rare sincere user, the damage is small. In this case, if it were worthwhile, I could probably verify the spamminess beyond a reasonable doubt, even without being able to see the pages. This particular spammer seems to have been using many accounts each making two edits to a local wiki, thus making it more difficult to detect. I would not be able to tell that the account was part of a puppet network. But for a steward with checkuser, it would be fairly easy.

Dave is right, in general. There can be exceptions. They are rare, and this is not one. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:13, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Technological singularity

A user uploaded several self-created logos and abstract images to Commons, and they were then nominated for deletion because they were thoroughly out of the project's scope. Taking advantage of the Commons provision that all images in good-faith use by other WMF projects, someone created Technological singularity here and added all of this user's images to it. Is this a reasonable page hhere, something that is accepted as a proper page here? Nyttend (discuss • contribs) 00:17, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I've looked at one of the logo images. It's copyright is "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license." so that's not a problem, if they are all that way. The one peculiarity so far is the request for a link to url=http://singularity-2045.org/ to use the image with the words "please include the words: "Singularity Utopia".". It's a .org rather than a .com which may mean it's not monetary solicitation. The logo artist is talking about an ideal gift economy which could make any resource the artist makes with these images fall under the School:Economics. The further comment "Unhappiness and discontent will be vanquished." is disturbing if a militaristic demand, that might put it under the School:Philosophy depending on intent, but not if a simple prediction. Many gift economies are contented. If the images have been uploaded here I believe they will remain if deleted at commons. Let me know if this is not the case and I'll change their names so they can remain. They do have educational value here immediately as another gift economy and could be put as a subpage to Gift economy if the artist does not begin to create a resource. The same can be said of Technological singularity itself. As a resource it can stay as is to see if the artist wants to develop it further. If not right away it can also become a subpage to Gift economy or to the artist's user page if there is one. I would say at first glance Technological singularity is a reasonable page here and as such is acceptable as a proper page. We often organize these under the user's page or another as I mentioned such as Gift economy. I hope this information is helpful. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:41, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I would add that the page itself could be reasonable as an example of an artist's work, but at this point shows no connection to technological singularity. It could be an artist's vision of the concept, but to me would be better created as a subpage of something, either examples of art related to technological singularity, or simply as examples of art of the creator, or examples of art of the given style.

But what User:Nyttend is really asking is related to Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_Ps2045. The observation that a page was created here simply to block the deletion request without any other educational value is a valid assessment at this point. If the artist had created a page and explained and exemplified the concept, this would absolutely be a valid project of educational value. If someone else had likewise created a page and explained and exemplified the artistic concept, that would absolutely be a valid project of educational value. As it stands right now, it appears to be just an attempt to block deletion. More work needs to be done on this project to make the educational value apparent.

It does not appear that the images have been uploaded to Wikiversity. They are on Commons only. I wouldn't have any problem with the artist uploading them here and creating a learning project about this art if Commons doesn't want the files. I am concerned about others jumping in here just to prevent the deletion of these images at Commons. Let's teach others how to create valid educational content rather than just rescuing the content from other WikiMedia projects, which otherwise has no educational value.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:52, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I did a quick concept search on Google Advanced Scholar and came up with about 1,480 references. From this I could develop the resource enough to remove the prod but I was hoping user Ps2045 would be interested in doing that. Unfortunately, this user appears to have given up and left because of an inability to upload files. There may be a time delay before new users are autoconfirmed to upload files. I left a message how to use "Upload file" but no response has occurred. In using our search engine I noticed we do not even have a resource entitled Futurism. This I can also create. But regarding the user, I was unaware of the problems until 15 September. So what would the community like? Although Abd apparently has email exchanges with this user I've received no word of response on file uploads. I uploaded one of the user's files here that might make a good image either for Futurism or Technological singularity which the references I've found describe well. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:00, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

If I receive no negative responses I'll go ahead and create or expand both Futurism and Technological singularity. I don't know why the user was having trouble uploading files other than perhaps a lack of familiarity. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:21, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Brand new users can't upload files. They have to wait until they are auto-confirmed. It's a combination of days and/or edits. I don't have a problem with anyone working on this resource if it interests them. But I am concerned about doing more work for a resource than the user whose content we're trying to assist with. I'd much rather see the user engaged in that process. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:09, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree on the participation of the user whose artwork I am using. The curious thing about Technological singularity is what I've been presenting so far in the lecture/article. This idea has been around since the sixties and now the prediction is 2045. That may become another 18 more years from a full century. I'm not saying it won't happen. But having lived through this entire period, I am adding notes in the text I've written so far that may serve a far greater educational purpose than originally intended. That is "the future isn't written yet. So make it a good one." a paraphrase of Doc Brown in Back to the Future, part III.

Thanks for the info on the autoconfirmation. This is proving to be more fun (as a learning experience) than expected. I'll create Post scarcity and Futurism using the artwork. If the artist is still out there, we'll be reading from it. If not, we'll have some educationally good, hopefully, resources on futurism, gift economy, and realism. Comments, criticisms, questions, suggestions, and insightful additions are most welcome and can be presented for discussion on the Discuss pages. I'm tentatively uploading the artwork as Fair Use since the outcome on Commons is up in the air but moving in a positive direction. If they decide to keep all of it, or some of it, someone can change the licensing if they want. Alternate versions of each of these resources, and there are lots of alternate titles, are also most welcome. I'm just presenting one or two points of view at the moment. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:39, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Extension:Variables

This is a proposal to add the mw:Extension:Variables extension to Wikiversity. Having variables available on the page would allow us to set up more complex numbering and counting sequences, such as being able to pass item numbers to templates and modules. If there is support, I will create a phabricator request to have the extension added. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:27, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

@Marshallsumter: There's a template I use frequently in my lessons that requires a unique number for each instance that it is called. It sets up the review questions I use and allows the user to toggle each one individually and see the answer. So far I've been numbering them manually, but always wanted to find a way to automate that. I tried today using Lua to solve the problem, but found that each #invoke generates a new environment. But in the process of searching for MediaWiki variables, I came across this extension. I thought it would already be turned on, since we have Parser Functions turned on, but that's not the case. So, I thought I'd see if we can enable it. My understanding is that we have to have a conversation we can point to that shows the community supports the extension, and then we can get it added. As for additional extensions, start with mw:Manual:Extensions. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:35, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Vote

Support - Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:27, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Support - with the caveat that I have no immediate need for this extension and won't object if it is not installed (too many pots on the stove already) --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 19:59, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Support - having as much flexibility as possible is great even if I don't know how to use it yet. But, I was wondering how you learned about it. Perhaps there are more such mediawiki features that would help us. My request at phabricator to have the PlanetPhysics additional variables turned on only received a curiously vague response. Is there some sort of catalogue of special features at mw that we can peruse? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:05, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Support --SB_Johnny ^talk 08:35, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Support - this looks like a useful extension. If it proves to be un-useful, it can always be deactivated. Green Giant (talk) 11:36, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Support - Leutha (discuss • contribs) 10:18, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Status

The request has been created as T113859. The quick response is that the Variables extension conflicts with VisualEditor and is unlikely to be added. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:31, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

PlanetPhysics functions

Apparently there is a custom I was not aware of that to, for example, turn on variables in our math, wikimath, or LaTex, we need to show a Colloquium consensus. I already have a request at phabricator number T104698 to turn on variables or functions so that PlanetPhysics resources are fully functional. Please indicate your support or not for turning these on, or perhaps all that are available on, so we can use them and PlanetPhysics is fully operational. I will start to list them as I find them just in case we have to ask for each one. As soon as we have say at least three supports I'll add a comment to T104698 with a link here.

1. \vcenter{}
2. \begin{definition}
3. \newcommand{}
4. \documentclass{}

Discussion

@Marshallsumter: Have we confirmed that these are legitimate Latex Math commands, and not just PlanetPhysics extensions? I know the PlanetPhysics editors defined a number of things themselves. I never researched whether they were legitimate extensions or their own creations. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:11, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried searching for number one above on the full web with Google and found this "For fancy math stuff with LaTeX see the AMS documentation." at [homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/compnotes/latex.html Latex Notes]. If WMF has available to it the AMS documentation and thereby all LaTex functions then as many as possible should turn on. We can also add this to the request, just in case.--Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I checked (\med) and this is a function that can be defined using the new number three above. Depending on what WMF has they may have to load amsmath and amssymb packages of LaTex. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:35, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

On Wikibooks there is url=https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Command_Glossary. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:42, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I never understood why our Latex needs to be different from Wikipedia's. I say this not because I advocate importing/exporting between these wikis, but because it seems like it would be easier to simply mirror Wikipedia and let them make the decisions. The decision to differ from Wikipedia was made long before I arrived, and perhaps there were considerations I don't know about. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 00:52, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

This is interesting because PlanetPhysics has 72 resources for which Failed to parse (Conversion error. Server ("https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_") reported: "Cannot get mml. TeX parse error: Undefined control sequence \emph"): {\displaystyle {\emph {emph}}} is not working. It may mean that the math brackets are missing for these. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:32, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Here's another problem, \mathbf is supposed to bold what's in between but instead does this: $\mathbf {AnalyticalTheoryof[[../Heat/|heat]]chapter1}$. Apparently the expressional form is different. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:40, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

The new number four doesn't work here or on Wikipedia. Whether math brackets are present or not. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:56, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

<:math>\left\{

   \vcenter{\advance\hsize-1em \abovedisplayskip0pt \belowdisplayskip0pt
      \begin{align}
         a^{b+1}b^2&=a,\\
         b^2-1&=b.
      \end{align}}
\right</math>. This is another example of LaTex not working. If you remove the second : from after the < before math, these equations do not parse nor are they numbered. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:38, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Vote

• Support as proposer --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:00, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
• Support If these are missing math library items. Otherwise, it may be that we need a different <latex> tag and corresponding library.-- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:11, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
• Support with reservations noted above. Also, we currently have the Failed to parse (Conversion error. Server ("https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_") reported: "Cannot get mml. TeX parse error: Undefined control sequence \emph"): {\displaystyle {\emph {emph}}} item installed.

Wikipedia copies

Dave Braunschweig has apparently suggested that we put a soft redirect such as the soft redirect on Sport/Volleyball/2015 U20 FIVB World Championships on Wikipedia copies as we find them. The category Wikipedia copies currently has 38 such resources. There was an ongoing effort sometime back to convert these to usable educational resources. What would the community like to do, or has a consensus been reached on this matter that I'm forgetting? I can start tagging each in the category with a soft redirect, including any more I find, unless there is a consensus against the soft redirects. Comments, questions, criticisms, suggestions are most welcome. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 18:17, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

• One additional point: putting a soft redirect on these resources changes their status from a content page to a non-content page and reduces our total number of content pages that are shown on the Main Page.
• Rocks/Glaciers is currently included in the category even though I have converted more than 95% to a Wikiversity resource. If the consensus is to replace these content pages with soft redirects I will remove any from the category that are more than 50% converted or are spoken for. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 19:04, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I have removed Rocks/Glaciers from the category. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 19:45, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

• Sport/Volleyball/2015 U20 FIVB World Championships, just FYI: I reinserted this page to see "What links here" but no other resource does even though subpages here are included in templates. So the page is being developed at least in this way. There are also links to Japan and Brazil that trigger the page being counted as a content page. The easiest thing to do is to insert references to the Wikipedia page for text copied from Wikipedia as I have done on quite a few resources and see what happens with the rest. I've temporarily put the page back to the soft redirect. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:23, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I've inserted references to the Wikipedia page and restored the page that was being developed. Please, let me know if there are disagreements with my actions. Unfortunately, the developer does not seem to communicate readily so for me it's a wait and see. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:39, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Sport/Volleyball/2015 U20 FIVB World Championships needs to be imported properly if it is to be kept with original content. Use Special:Import if this project is something you wish to support and encourage. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:47, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Sport/Volleyball/2015 U20 FIVB World Championships was being converted to non-Wikipedia text before my involvement and with my additions and replacements is now about 10-15% converted. As such I am speaking for this resource. There is no need for additional blanking, import, or use of soft redirects. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 12:26, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Sport/Volleyball/2015 U20 FIVB World Championships is currently a violation of CC-BY-SA license. The original Wikipedia article must be imported so that the original authors receive credit for their work before derivatives are created and shared alike. As a custodian, you have the ability to import the source page and merge histories so that proper licensing is maintained. If more work is to be done on the volleyball project, the other subpages also need to be reviewed and perhaps imported to ensure that their edit histories properly credit the original authors. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:40, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

• Plant physiology is a good example. It was C&P'd 07:33, 12 October 2008‎ by Emesee, added to by Jade Knight 21:49, 2 September 2009 with more C&P, then abandoned. There is way too much text here for an easy conversion to a Wikiversity resource. To me this is a prime candidate for a soft redirect. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:31, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps importing wasn't an option back in 2008. But Plant physiology is certainly a resource that should be redirected for now, and imported correctly if someone wants to extend it later. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:47, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Plant physiology has now been blanked and soft redirected. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:52, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

From my perspective, it goes back to Wikiversity:What is Wikiversity? and Wikiversity:What Wikiversity is not. Content copies that don't extend learning beyond what is already available elsewhere aren't adding value, and aren't as well maintained here as they are at the original source. To me, the choice is whether to delete and remove from search, or to use softredirect to point back to the original source. Users who are convinced Wikiversity needs this content seem to be more accepting of the softredirect than having no page at all.

If a user wants to correctly Wikiversity:Import content and develop it into a learning project, either for themselves or others, that's a different situation entirely than just straight copies without modification or learning value added. Perhaps a notice regarding Wikiversity Copy or a link back to the original source could go on the talk page of pages that have been kept and further developed.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:47, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

All proposals are acceptable to me, but I vote for the soft redirect after blanking the page with a comment identifying this as a copy from Wikipedia. I see one disadvantage and the following three advantages to the soft redirect:

1. Many Wikipedia articles suffer from too much irrelevant content and could be improved by making drastic cuts (see w:Timeline of quantum mechanics and it's derivative v:How_things_work_college_course/Quantum_mechanics_timeline)
2. Blanking with a soft redirect decentralizes power because it is reversible by any editor. Undeletions can only be reversed by Custodians/Bureaucrats.
3. I personally find it less tedious and less stressful to automatically blank with a redirect than to read through the page and its history and try to make a judgement of a page.

The disadvantage against which we must weigh the advantages is that the redirect page will be a "Google-trap" for people searching for useful pages (this currently occurs with Google and the key words Wikiversity and Undelete.) Perhaps we could establish a category for soft-redirects so that some bot of the future could clean up the mess if this becomes a problem? Also, there might be other unforeseen consequences to these soft redirects. Does anybody know of any?--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:42, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I mentioned one in the upper section: a soft redirect removes the page from the list of content pages and lowers the total on Main Page. We are still missing about 8,000 such pages. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:33, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

A softredirect category is unnecessary. A bot can look at the {{softredirect}} template itself to see what pages use the template. I'm not too concerned about page counts. I'd rather have 10,000 high quality pages than 25,000 pages that are 60% stubs and other low-value offerings. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:45, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

A second disadvantage can be seen by comparing the history of Plant physiology with Sport/Volleyball/2015 U20 FIVB World Championships. Plant physiology was abandoned over six years ago and contained only C&P content. The latter was actively being converted away from Wikipedia content within the last 24 hours by the resource creator before blanking. A soft redirect was then applied. Does the community want me to be blanking actively edited Wikipedia copies, that are being converted away from the original Wikipedia content, followed by applying a soft redirect? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 11:56, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Content should not be blanked if it is being developed in good faith, but we must ensure that licensed content is being used for the development. If you find content copied from Wikipedia, you must import the underlying source to preserve edit history, or delete or blank the page as a license violation. Sport/Volleyball/2015 U20 FIVB World Championships was blanked and replaced with a softedirect because it was a license violation. The Volleyball user has been informed on multiple occasions on multiple accounts that content from Wikipedia must be imported rather than copied in order to maintain CC-BY-SA licensing. Their work no longer constitutes a good-faith effort. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:58, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Dave that we should be looking at things in terms of how "we" want WV to develop. So, taking Marshall's example, w:Timeline of quantum mechanics is no problem because it is inclusive, that is the role of an encyclopedia, but when creating an online learning environment we require more focus, thus works as a derivative, and in other circumatnces another derivative list may be produced to serve a different pedagogical purpose. I also agree that having a smaller number of effective pages is better than gaining a false sense of importance by counting substandard pages. Leutha (discuss • contribs) 14:12, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed that Dave provided me with a solid reason to delete pages that are nearly empty of content. If someone wants to import a Wikipedia article to Wikiversity, and the original page Wikiversity is not deleted, the process is very complicated.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:53, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Here's a good example of a properly imported resource from Wikipedia Ancient Innovations. It has the imported tag Imported. The problem is that it has apparently had little or nothing done to it since it was imported in 2008. It was even prodded for deletion. With the exception of some small edits it is essentially unchanged. Should this be soft redirected? Wikipedia content isn't Wikiversity. It turns out this resource was moved here from Wikipedia before being deleted there. It is counted as a content page, but almost all the material has no citations. It would take a lot of work to bring this up to Wikiversity level as a learning resource. I'm tempted to prod it again. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:33, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Nothing but vandalism that is corrected and minor copy edits since 2008. I say "delete".--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 00:19, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Also, whatever edit history may have been with Ancient Innovations, it was not imported when the resource was imported here. The only edits in its history here are those made here. Perhaps when they began this importing process it did not include the edit history while the entry was still in Wikipedia.

I have applied the usual prod to Ancient Innovations. It's really unfortunate that no citations to the contained statements were added to verify the claims made. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 14:44, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Applied ethics would normally get a soft redirect, but one of our bureaucrats (now perhaps considered inactive) left the following comment after removing a copyright violation tag, "00:23, 27 January 2008‎ Mu301 (discuss | contribs | block)‎ . . (2,869 bytes) (-183)‎ . . (copying from WP is not copyright violation)". This is odd. I've been using citations for text taken directly from WP, but Mu301 may be right. If so or something has changed since he became inactive it may not be a license violation to copy text with or without proper import. Referring to "If you find content copied from Wikipedia, you must import the underlying source to preserve edit history, or delete or blank the page as a license violation." Can you cite for me where you read this? For example, on each edit page we have "By clicking the “Save Page” button, you are agreeing to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." The hyperlink or URL back to Wikipedia is the only bit missing. While a soft redirect to the Wikipedia can be added to the resource once we realize where it's from, simply putting each in the Category:Wikipedia copies meets this requirement. Ironically, those copies we have not yet found wouldn't require deletion or blanking but just adding the category link is sufficient from a copyright violation point of view. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:47, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

The agreement to accept a link as sufficient attribution seems to be a decision of practicality by WikiMedia rather than a true application of CC-BY-SA licensing. According to Creative Commons, the author is to be credited if that information is available. Since we have the ability to import the article and credit the original authors, we should do so. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:22, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the practicality of the WMF as practicality in this instance is the essence of the licensing you've cited. When I can find one or more authors for specific text from any of the WMF projects as well as outside such as NASA, I include them in the "author" line for the citation. For the article about the World Cup for women's volleyball as an example, the original text has been changed many times from the creator's work so that the citation I'm using is the practical and reasonable answer but unfortunately contains no "author" line. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 14:12, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

If you import and then merge history, all authors are credited and the current content remains. I see import and merge as a benefit to all, so I'm not understanding the dilemma here. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:36, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I've attempted to use Special:MergeHistory to merge the histories each of four ways:

1. stating the source page as w:2015 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Cup,
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIVB_Volleyball_Women%27s_World_Cup,
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIVB_Volleyball_Women%27s_World_Cup 2015 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Cup, or
4. 2015 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Cup,

but the feature does not allow merge to occur or even a presentation of possible merging to occur. Suggestions? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:03, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

It won't allow a merge across projects. Import the source page to Wikiversity. Then merge histories from the imported page to the page you want to merge history into. Finally, view the history and make sure the edit version you want displayed is the current version. You can try it on a sandbox page first if you want, then delete as test when you're done. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:04, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried using Special:Import with and without templates and received the message: "Import failed: Could not open import file". I was attempting "Import as subpages of the following page: Volleyball." Maybe it doesn't allow the sub page option. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 18:02, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Importing with templates probably won't work, particularly pages with as many templates as these use. I was able to import the page to a subpage of the Wikiversity:Sandbox with history, so it's not an issue of history or subpages. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:13, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! The resource 2015 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Cup actually ended up in Mainspace instead of a sandbox subpage. No problem. I've merged the histories and put the import up for speedy deletion. This process is quite tedious yet I'm reluctant to put Special:Import under tools outside special pages. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 18:42, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the question. Special:Import is a restricted tool. It's only available to custodians. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:13, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Now that's interesting! The write up on the page for the tool mentions that any user can import with this tool, not just custodians. I'll check the page history. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:23, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Found it on the page Wikiversity:Import, "Most of the work related to migrating imported pages does not require that you be a custodian." This suggests but does not confirm that only custodians can import. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:29, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

The softredirects that I have been applying to Wikipedia copies are showing up in Category:Wikiversity soft redirects. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:20, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Tell about Wikiversity in mentorship program

Hi all,

I posted a suggestion on the co-op page about Wikiversity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Co-op#Sisterprojects

Cheers,

Tim, Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 07:46, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm also wondering, do we have a mentorship program for Wikiversity? Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 07:51, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that our mentoring program is informal. Perhaps we could improve in two ways:

1. Work with Wikipedia to encourage qualified editor/authors to create parallel content pages on Wikiversity. As Leutha just pointed out, we want pages with more focus. And, we can tolerate many parallel pages on one subject. Up to this point, every would-be editor I met on Wikipedia turned out to be neither qualified nor motivated (or of course, not interested).
2. Encourage newbies to post someplace, for now it could be the Colloquium. I hope we someday grow to the point where a special page for such posts becomes necessary, but for now the Colloquium seems as good a place as any.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 21:46, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
3. In order to increase trans-wiki activity I offered to become a mentor at w:Wikipedia:Co-op/Guy_vandegrift, a decision I hope I don't regret.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 19:36, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Grant submission

Hi, here is a message to inform the Wikiversity community about my grant submission on Meta-Wiki. You are welcome to correct mistake, give opinion or endorse it. A nice end of the day for every one. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{(French native speaker)} 22:52, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of templates

Three or four templates appeared recently in the Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion on the basis of license violations. At least one of these was copied from Wikipedia and an import request apparently was not made. I suspect almost all templates used here on Wikiversity were copied at one time from Wikipedia or one of the other WMF projects such as Wikibooks and probably lack a category or merged history with its origin. One of our perhaps no longer active bureaucrats has pointed out that copying from Wikipedia is not a copyright violation and he may be right. In any case, if anyone believes that a template is a copy from Wikipedia they can always add the category Category:Wikipedia copies to it. Further, they can always make a request for import of the template to preserve author history if they wish to for custodial import of the template. But what would the community like to do about all our templates that have been copied from Wikipedia? Personally, while we are free to add any of these to the category mentioned or to a similar one for say wikibooks, I do not believe it serves the community to delete almost all of our templates that are not in one of these category types or lacks a merged history with its origin. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:27, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

If a template was imported for no reason, I see no reason to keep it. Templates get updated, and we risk having out-of-date templates. Do we have a reliable method for determining whether a template is being used? --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:53, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Some of the templates are linked to resources. This is available using Special:Whatlinkshere. There is a template "Template:Dontblockusername" the purpose of which may not be in the communities best interest, but I'm not sure about this. It links to no resource and is the only contribution of blocked User:Agahama. As always any user can put any resource here up for speedy deletion or use a prod. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:51, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Adding a category identifies the problem, but does not address the underlying issue. Copied resources would either need to be imported to credit the original authors, or somehow linked to the original source to support the license agreement. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:26, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Deletion of Sport/Volleyball

On Wikiversity:Requests for deletion there is a request that all of the content and project it is under Sport/Volleyball or Volleyball be deleted for license violations. License violations as discussed above in the Section on Wikipedia copies consists of two parts:

1. copyright violation and
2. failure to cite authors such as those on Wikipedia.

At the bottom of each page we are about to save is "You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." This applies to our resources and those copied from Wikipedia; hence, MikeU in the Wikipedia copies section above is correct that copying from Wikipedia is not a copyright violation. Further adding any resource we believe is copied from Wikipedia to the Category:Wikipedia copies complies with the quote included so that anyone wishing to check author history need only type in the resource title or some portion thereof, check the article history to view and if needed attribute authorship. Wikipedia recommends that anyone citing a Wikipedia article cite the author as "Wikipedia". So what would the community like to do? If MikeU is correct and the quote at the bottom of the page is appropriate and authorship per Wikipedia is only supposed to be "Wikipedia", then none of these resources have violated our license. What do you think? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:21, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

The special page for citing any Wikipedia page is Special:CiteThisPage. Type in any page title and the authors are suggested as "Wikipedia contributors" or depending on style chosen "Wikipedia". --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:39, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree that copyvio is not a valid reason for deleting these pages (although I am no expert!). But they seem to be empty of content. If they are mere copies of Wikipedia articles, copy-pasting them was a good activity for the students. But that doesn't mean the articles should be saved. Have any of the individuals who pasted the articles requested that the articles been kept? --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 02:47, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Usually a C&P say from Wikipedia undergoes development here as some of the resources under Sport/Volleyball have, others like Plant physiology underwent none, so after say three years of nothing can be soft redirected or prodded, which I did. Those resources that refer to the ongoing World Cup for volleyball were actively being updated as events indicated until recently. All of the remaining articles in the Wikipedia copies category do not have requests that the articles be kept. I updated Glaciers and Ice cores out of the Wikipedia copies category. Others have done the same with some of the remaining ones. User Erkan Yilmaz was conducting a course or class on how to convert a Wikipedia copy to a Wikiversity resource in the past but I don't know the status of this now. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:03, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion between copyright violation and license violation. Copying content from Wikipedia would not be a copyright violation. Copying it without either referencing the original authors (CC-BY-SA requirement) or proving a hyperlink or URL (WikiMedia alternative) is violating the license under which the original content was published. The only legitimate choices I see are to reference the original source or delete the content.

In the case of the Volleyball resources, we have a user (or multiple users who appear to edit as the same user using multiple accounts) who refuses to either import or reference sources, despite repeated attempts to encourage them to do so. The quantity of resources the user has created and continues to create makes custodial assistance in proper licensing of these resources untenable.

Note that continued development after the fact isn't relevant to the discussion. CC-BY-SA allows derivative works through the Share-Alike part of the license. But sharing alike would require a reference to the original source first.

I'm sorry, but I really don't see any way we can simply ignore the issue. CC-BY-SA is the basis for everything we do.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:23, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Consider FIVB World U21 Women's Championships for the moment. It has no resource on Wikipedia from which it has been directly copied. The information being inputted is actually more accurate regarding its topic than the closest Wikipedia article. I estimate about 50-60% of the content may be from one or more Wikipedia sources formerly without attribution. If the resource creator continues this will drop below 50%. When it does by preponderance it can no longer be claimed to be attributable to Wikipedia.

While Sidelight12, for example, did import Ice cores and properly attribute it to Wikipedia, had I not stumbled across it. It probably would have been prodded for deletion just as Ancient Innovations has been.

I agree that these resource creators may not properly attributing Wikipedia as their source but some are linked to the Wikipedia source. I found 38 such resources here not properly attributed to Wikipedia. The number that actually are is unknown but probably much larger.

As I wrote above, anyone can put either speedy deletion tags or prods on any resource here they want to. But, a custodian must decide if deletion is the proper course. Almost none of our templates here attribute their source but deleting them definitely is not in the best interests of the community and would probably constitute serious disruption.

I'm not interested in ignoring the issue. I'm interested in handling the issues involved while resources are being developed. Each resource must be considered individually. Mass deletions are seriously frowned upon without consensus, large consensus, not just three or four of us.

Singling these World Cup oriented resource creations out for special attention while ignoring all the others here that are already here may be inappropriate. All of these unattributed pages here can best and only be handled individually. Regarding proper licensing these too can be easily handled on an individual basis. As I've demonstrated above importing isn't necessary to conform to our license. All that really is, involves testing the title on Wikipedia. If it's not there and nothing more than 50% similar is, it's not attributable to Wikipedia. Checking the time of likely C&P can demonstrate that the resource was copied in the past and from what. It takes a few minutes per resource. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:33, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure that Wikiversity has something resembling a charter, and somewhere is a rule stating that we must follow the licensing policy. We can't enforce it every time, and I'm sure I myself have forgotten to attribute material copied from Wikipedia. I think we could ignore this violation if the people who are downloading the files agreed to "work on the problem". But their silence on this is deafening. We don't have to go after every violation, but we can't ignore flagrant violations when they are brought to our attention. Am I right in saying that Abd tried hard to contact them? If so, I don't think we have time to fuss with this problem.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 04:53, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I definitely agree with "I don't think we have time to fuss with this problem." I'm tired of it and it's disrupting my resource development and my research. The answer is simple. If anyone wants to put either a prod or a speedy delete individually on any of these resources I'll be happy to check them out, delete where appropriate, add a category where appropriate, etc. A large number as a mass deletion may constitute disruption so please one or two at a time. I'll do my best. The Russians for example seem to have read and understood. Their actions speak well of them. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 05:06, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

We also need to seriously warn and/or block repeat offenders. The collection of subpages is so large I don't know where to begin. @Marshallsumter and Dave Braunschweig: You seem to be the "experts" on this problem. Is there a portion of it you can identify and hand over for me to handle? Also, is there a way to mass delete subpages? If so, we should encourage novices to do complex projects as subpages of a single page.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 12:09, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Marshallsumter asked at what point a derivative work no longer requires a reference. There is no such point. No matter what content remains, someone else's ideas led to the result. The only way attribution wouldn't be appropriate is if the entire page was blanked first, rather than building on what was provided.

The Volleyball resources have been singled out because they are an active work in progress. For more than a year now, we have been able to prevent new works from violating licensing requirements. Wikipedia copies were deleted. There are some who opposed that practice, so recently the pages were replaced with soft redirects. But the original content did not remain unlicensed. The primary exception is the Volleyball content. This is not only ongoing, but multiplying, and therefore needs to be resolved.

If we don't have time to fuss with the problem, we need to stop it. It is disruptive, and that, alone, is reason enough to block the users involved and eliminate the content. We also need to revert the whitelisting of the IP address that has led to the recurrence of this problem.

User:Guy vandegrift asked where to start on cleanup. I recommend using Special:NewPages and look first at the Template namespace. There are almost 100 templates created in the last week that need to be addressed.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:36, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm missing something here. Using Special:NewPages, there are no new templates and four new infoboxes, nine resources total by one user, since 17 September. That's about as many as I created. How do we find these remaining templates? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 13:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

At the top of Special:NewPages, change the Namespace to Template. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:13, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! That worked. I checked "Template:Country IOC alias GRE" which was at the bottom of the automated return. This template on Wikipedia was generated by a bot to fill in one of these Infoboxes apparently. It may be the case that the user here is doing the same. I don't know how to check for this. I'll check some more. These templates would not need a citation to Wikipedia if a bot here is generating them here based solely on IOC information. The only cite to IOC here is the same as on Wikipedia. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 14:50, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I checked another "Template:Vrt" to see if it was being generated on Wikipedia by a bot but this one appears to be unique to Wikiversity. This suggests but does not confirm that 50% of these new templates are unique to Wikiversity and the other 50% are bot generated on Wikipedia and maybe here. But these are only two data. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 14:59, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Here's a third "Template:Round4-with third". This is a Wikipedia copy generated initially by Wikipedia user Palffy in 2006 and links to two resources here and more than 500 on Wikipedia since created for a variety of sports. If we decide what to do with these as well as any others from Wikipedia, the easiest thing is to put all of them not bot generated into the category Wikipedia copies that are such. This third one suggests but does not confirm that 33% are Wikipedia copies generated by users, etc. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Great work Marshalsumter. Am I correct in surmising that the big question here is the appropriateness of posting soccer (football) statistics on Wikiversity?--(15:25, 28 September 2015) Or is it the need to get users to properly attribute what they are doing? --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:32, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Good question! Obviously user JESAAS11 is learning about how to make templates and generating resources here, some of which are unique to here, as part of a learning project, at least about the Volleyball World Cup competition and some other apparently unrelated topics. I don't understand the interlinking of these templates to create an apparently progressive series to follow the World Cup. If it is to get users to properly attribute what they are doing, this user is getting some of the message. We use to be able to use HotCat I believe it was to put categories automatically at the page bottom, but this seems to have disappeared. I was using it a lot. What happened? This appears to be the only remaining license confirming act. Suggestions? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I just spent a few minutes searching in vain for any effort by these people to communicate with us. That alone is justification for blocking. We need to give the blocked users clear instructions on how to appeal the block (or at least say something) on their user page after they are blocked.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

This is perhaps a common problem. We have or had a course hosted here on the history of North Carolina during World War I, I believe it was. I and others tried communicating with the course instructor about unlicensed images that were uploaded by students. She never responded to anyone as far as I know. Uncommunicativeness, per se, is not a reason for blocking anyone. The disruption of having to try to get communication and having to delete all or most of those images was, but it's part of the custodial responsibility. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:08, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I also tried communicating with one of her students. Same problem, nada. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:11, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Marshallsumter: You've mentioned several times that adding a category to these resources would resolve the problem. Can you help me understand how adding a category meets either the CC-BY-SA requirement to credit the creator or the Wikimedia alternative of providing a hyperlink or URL to the original source? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

See "Wikipedia copies" above and "The special page for citing any Wikipedia page is Special:CiteThisPage." These two facts indicate that adding the category is sufficient. Importing is not necessary. With respect to "necessary", the templates alone by precedence do not need to be added to the category, nor do the Wikipedia copies we have or haven't found yet, but I've started doing this for the non-template resources. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:49, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Just FYI, but Wiktionary defines hyperlink as "Some text or a graphic in an electronic document that can be activated to display another document or trigger an action." As I read this, putting these in the category succeeds. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 17:01, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Special:CiteThisPage does show how to properly cite a page with a link. Putting pages in a category does not do that. And unfortunately, precedence is not a justification for ignoring licensing requirements. Those of us who write code expect to be credited for our work, just as everyone else does. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:20, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

An obvious answer though perhaps not so easy to do is have an embedded link so that if someone wishes to see the Wikipedia entry, they click on the category and it takes them to the category or to a comparably titled wikipedia page if it exists. It's what I've been doing manually. Another way to do this is to use the Sisterprojectsearch template at the bottom. The latter may be faster. I'll try it on a couple. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 17:32, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried sisterprojectsearch and the search does not include "Template:" so the template was not found. The title "20th Asian Women's Volleyball Championship" in the template "sisterlinks|20th Asian Women's Volleyball Championship" produced no exact match on Wikipedia suggesting that the resource is partially already unique to Wikiversity. I'll try linking the templates directly. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 17:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried Template:Round4-with third. This provides an exact link to the template copied from Wikipedia. This may be the only way to provide a hyperlink to any other WMF project from which a template is copied. The solution to the templates is easy. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 17:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried Template:Vrt, which I already know is unique to Wikiversity, and the link takes me to Wikipedia, but there is no such Template there. Using this would have to be tested with each otherwise we'd be wasting our contributors' time. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 18:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Using Glaciers as a member of a control group: the template "sisterlinks|Glaciers" takes anyone to the Wikipedia page Glacier from which the Wikipedia copy was imported about a couple years ago. This type of hyperlink works for close-enough matches in titles and may be both necessary and sufficient here. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 18:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Guy vandegrift: My primary concern is one of attribution, followed by one of disruptive editing. Pages in a project can be managed. Pages not in a project can be moved, but it's more work. The Template namespace applies to all projects, and the creation of hundreds of templates without any coordination makes later cleanup much more difficult. Practically speaking, our only choices will be to delete the templates and start over, or write a bot to manage all of the templates and transclusions. Neither is possible while the problem grows exponentially with unlicensed content and unresponsive users (who are blocked from all other WikiMedia wikis because of their approach). -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

The unresponsive behavior of the users is quite a puzzle. Now I understand why they were site blocked. I suggest that we site block again, for a specific period of time. Then leave clear instructions on what to do when they are unblocked. Give them one last chance. Then we delete everything ... unless this was their N-th last chance already, in which case we block and delete everything. You can argue that posting sporting even scores is an educational experience for the users and within the scope of Wikiversity. But, having to repost them due to procedural violations is also a learning experience.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 18:32, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Mississippi28 was/is an unresponsive instructor for the course North Carolina World War I. Blocking was not done even once nor was any warning issued about such a block. These current users are generating content some of which is Wikiversity unique. Some is in Sport/Volleyball. Any mass deletion may result in desysop by a watching steward. My original suggestion still stands: anyone can apply either a speedy delete or prod to any of these and a custodian must decide what to do. The direct link mentioned above works for any template specifically copied from Wikipedia and the sisterlinks templates accomplish the rest. The good part about this is I no longer need to put any resource in the category Wikipedia copies, unless the conversion course is still in operation and wants to use the ones in the category. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 19:03, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Reimagining WMF grants report

Last month, we asked for community feedback on a proposal to change the structure of WMF grant programs. Thanks to the 200+ people who participated! A report on what we learned and changed based on this consultation is now available.

Come read about the findings and next steps as WMF’s Community Resources team begins to implement changes based on your feedback. Your questions and comments are welcome on the outcomes discussion page.

Take care, I JethroBT (WMF) 17:02, 28 September 2015 (UTC)