Portal talk:Humanities/Participate/Participants

Hey people

Did you get to hear or see what the vandals did on the main Wikiversity page? If not, check the page history, it was terrible. User:Lawman was the first to witness the effect. The admins should better consult him for the investigation. How dishonorable the act is? I appeal to all noble people who are beyond such barbaric acts to be vigilant throughout Wikiversity. User:Humble Guy

Is this necessary?

Is this list really necessary? All the participants can be seen in the page history. And some people wouldn't sign here, so the list is pointless. Users who do some course can be listed on that course's page itself, not in some "active participants'" lists. There are no "active" and "inactive" participants. All users are equal (this is a wiki after all), and all are welcomed to edit. No matter how minor an edit could be, after all it did help the project. If there were no minor edits and participants, we wouldn't get to where we are now, and in the future we wouldn't advance any further, either. --George D. Bozovic ^talk 13:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

History. At Wikibooks people created lists of participants that included self-appointments to positions such as "Head of School", "Dean" and "Acting Director". Wikiversity does not have such positions and Wikiversity participants do not give themselves titles. There is a distinction that can be made between active participants and more casual participants. Wikiversity needs active participants who are interested in creating Wikiversity content. It can be useful for these people to form communities and communicate efficiently. Participant lists are a fairly common feature of wikis. Some wiki participants use them and some do not. It is an optional method for building communities. Such lists allow people to give a brief statement of their interests. If you feel comfortable using page histories then you do not need to concern yourself with lists of participants. A key policy of Wikiversity is Assume Good Faith. You cannot assume that people who create and use participant lists do not welcome minor edits. The utility of such lists is that someone who is on an active participants list might be worth contacting for help and collaboration. This kind if community interaction happens all the time at wikis and should not be discouraged at Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 14:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

But yet, users who are interested in teaching and learning German can be listed at German page, and those interested in French at French page. Otherwise, those who wish to find and contact them have to find this page first. --George D. Bozovic ^talk 17:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The situation we are dealing with is that people have in the past created very general "topic pages" and then tried to indicate an interest in that broad topic area. Many such people have never then gotten around to doing anything else. I agree that if someone actually created a specific learning project, they might want to only indicate that they participate in that specific project, and maybe not remain on the list for the entire general topic area. If someone showed interest in a topic two years ago at Wikibooks and has not been back since, can we take their name off of the "active participants" list? These are issues that the community is going to have to decide on. --JWSchmidt 00:50, 18 September 2006 (UTC)