Talk:Minerals/Ices/Black ices

Please stop

[1]. Please stop adding material like this until there is some consensus supporting it. We need to discuss what you have been doing, this is mainspace and many, many articles, and not your original research. Thanks.

(You found a stub, and added some good material, but the subject of the article is probably not top-level mainspace worthy. If it is, it doesn't need to carry that huge volume of your standard boilerplate.) I have edited the article, just tentatively, it needs work. I left the conflicting resource level boxes, as an example. An image is now sized poorly, etc.) I see that the other forms of ice linked have the same issues. Please, discuss this. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:59, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

As one thought, at this point, I could see a resource on Water with a subpage Water/Ice which has a subpage Water/Ice/Black or ... maybe .. Water/Ice/Black ice. At this point, I notice that the Black ice article doesn't mention the most common usage of the word, it's in common winter use where I live, and it can be a fatal phenomenon. See w:Black ice. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:14, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments! At the moment it reads like you would like to put something about my style of improvement on the colloquium page so that a consensus may be reached. I'm okay with that. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:13, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Probably putting a variety of these resources under Water may not be a good idea. What I'm looking at is called brittle ice. It is a subject of glaciology. As you noticed on wikipedia there are several things designated black ice. The hazard on roadways being one of them, although it is actually clear ice on asphalt or concrete pavements. It appears black because not enough reflection occurs from the pavement below to make it visible or colorful. The black ice I've chosen to write about may also be clear ice that appears black or blue due to the lake bottom or type of ice crystal growth. I don't know yet. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:25, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd rather not take this to the Colloquium yet. I'd rather have a conversation with you about what you are doing. If we develop a consensus, we can simply work with that, assuming that someone else doesn't have a problem with it. I do expect that others will have a problem with what you have been doing, if it was just me, I'd probably just set this aside, my opinion doesn't really matter that much. But, as you may know, my goal is Wikiversity as a community project, not as an individual one.

So I removed a lot of material from the page. Did that material belong there? What value does it bring? Those are real questions.

I assume you would have some value in mind. Yet can you recognize the problem with it being added as it was? Can you see this from the other side?

As to putting resources under others, there is an issue of the hierarchy of knowledge. You have largely used, as far as I recall, the flat Wikipedia model. We have been moving toward a hierarchical structure. Now, this may not always work. Is the focus on glaciology or on a form of water? We move to subpages where there is a reasonable correlation between subjects (as forms of ice would be reasonably subpages of Ice and of Water). When the top-level page is a large enough subject to form, perhaps, a major study, we leave it there, and then organize through topic and/or school or maybe portal. (I really have no good idea about what portal is for, yet.) We also organize through categories, but subpage organization is very direct.

We can use multiple methods of organization, but one of the important goals is that Wikiversity not only *is* organized, but also *looks* organized. We have a long way to go, there were years of undisciplined page creation. What happens when the project looks "messy" is that some people start to think of deletion. It's fairly clear that, even recently, many come here, follow random page, see a mess, and conclude that Wikiversity is useless. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I stumbled across Black ice using Random. My initial impulse was to delete it as abandoned with no purpose. When I looked on Wikipedia, including the Swedish Wikipedia, I noticed the reference to the Alaskan website that showed the vertical cross section with columnar grains. The actual research project is on brittle ice which is an effort to determine the physical conditions that produce it in ice cores. It seems to be a bit depth independent which was counter intuitive. The weight of overburden of ice and snow should be a major factor but temperature appears to be even more important. Since black ice was abandoned and likely to be deleted I decided to add it as a lecture to the inquiry into brittle ice. I still can transfer what I've put in here over to the brittle ice lecture/article and let this be deleted if you think that may be better.

I use the boilerplate to stimulate ideas for additional literature searches, in this case about black ice, hopefully to find more thin sections and glacial-type, or glacial-like information.

Coming back to random for a moment, I've sampled about 450 resources, 11 of which are lectures, problem sets, and laboratories I've created. Eight of these are part of the principles of radiation astronomy course and are fully developed.

While a course on glaciology would be a ways away, black ice could be a valuable lecture once fully developed.

I have created a separate authorship file which I now use for composing lectures/articles so to some extent it is no longer necessary to include the boilerplate.

As to what to put this under, I'm not sure. As an independent lecture/article it can be used in several potential courses. Sidelight12 mentioned that I guess some number of contributors here formed a consensus on grouping individual resources under more general resources like water as you were suggesting. I don't recall seeing or knowing or participating in this. As a couple others have demonstrated, independent lectures, quizzes, problem sets, and laboratories can be used by several courses in addition to specific lectures directly applicable to the course as titled.

Most of my lectures contain some original research so they are quite a ways from Wikipedia.

To some specifics: the control group section was there to help me formulate analyses of whatever black ice literature I find on Google scholar. The proof of concept is required for what really is black ice. Is it really black or is this an optical effect or a matter of inclusions? I was quite surprised to see the columnar growth. That usually occurs only under special conditions.

I'm a bit concerned that some of the wikiversitians want a polished look like wikipedia. Original research is seldom polished until the answers are known. I'll think more about some of your comments and add more later. If you could direct me to the archive where this consensus on organizing was reached I would like to read it. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:58, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

First, your concern about "some ... Wikiversitans." Wikipedia is variable as to look. Highly developed pages may look polished. Many pages don't. My view on original research, without becoming rigid, is that it should generally be pushed to subspace where the topic might be an open one. I.e., the top level would neutrally introduce the topic. We need not have sources, etc., but top level material should be relatively solid. Often I'll link to the Wikipedia article on the top level. This establishes neutrality, because, in theory, all content on Wikipedia is neutral. Then I'll put original research on a linked subpage. Expression of opinon and research notes are allowable on Wikiversity, but harm starts to arise when they are at the top level in mainspace. It is remediable harm. We do not need to delete, usually.

As to consensus, there have been some discussions, but we have no expressed consensus, no policy. What we have is an operational consensus. My developing concept of organizing Wikiversity arose out of, first, handling and discussing deletions. We used to have lots of deletion discussions. The most prominent founder of Wikiversity, JWSchmidt basically became enraged by deletionism, and wouldn't let go, becoming blaming. My path was, instead of "fighting deletionists," to find ways to avoid deletion, by developing structure and organization. The same concepts tend to avoid revert warring. What few revert wars we have had, over the last few years, have been over policy pages. Maybe that's why we avoid them!

(I did find that when I described actual practice on policy pages, as policy, it triggered disruption. Actual practice mostly did not change, and those who revert warred over this (at least those who revert warred with me!) mostly went inactive. Basically, what I've been standing for is what works.)

Now, what see from reviewing your work is that you are engaged in learning. You use a certain process and structure to do that, including considering your concept of "dominant group." However, this process is not transparent to others. If pages become too complex, it may discourage participation.

This is where we stand with Wikiversity: it has become a relatively safe place to create educational content and to explore learning, including learning-by-doing, and the collection of notes, the creation of stubs as invitations to further creation, is all part of that. However, I suggest you look at the work of Timboliu, and especially on betawikiversity, because Timboliu has done most of his work in Dutch. Timboliu represents an extreme, where what we allow here was carried to an extreme. He worked for three years on Beta, with no apparent problems, maybe two questions, nothing serious, until, apparently WikeMedia Nederland decided it wanted to create educational resources, and took a look at the Dutch Wikiversity, i.e., the Beta project that was very largely Timboliu's creation, and freaked out. An experienced Dutch cross-wiki administrator came to Beta and requested custodian tools, and Timboliu was thrilled! At last, someone to learn with! They had a different idea, however. The custodian set up a deletion process that was entirely in Dutch, on new pages, which would not show on general Beta watchlists, and over 5000 pages were deleted in a few weeks, almost the entire content of the Dutch Wikiversity. I'm working on that situation, slowly and carefully, because there are cross-wiki political issues involved.

However, en.wikiversity is not immune to this. This community is small. We do have some strong traditions, now, that involve academic freedom and personal freedom: users may choose how to learn here, they are not forced into a single model. However, central process is not widely watched, and in the past, it was often influenced by Wikipedians who would drop in, sometimes canvassed. That is a vastly larger community. In addition, as you know, Wikiversity has served as a refuge for banned Wikipedians, something I'm proud of, but some of these come here with very Wikipedian concepts of what is proper content and behavior. And some that are not banned, the same.

I see the answer to all this as organization. But there is more, and that brings me to what I see in your pages, some of them. Content here should serve one of our two main goals: it should be usable as educational material, for learning as-is, or to create handouts for classes, etc., or it should facilitate learning-by-doing (which includes original research). These are actually distinct goals. What I've often gone for is a top-level resource that perhaps links to Wikipedia -- we supposedly don't host "articles" as such, on the principle that those should go on Wikipedia, but we then exempt what may not be adequately notable for Wikipedia, or for the creation of alternate drafts of Wikipedia articles, typically in subspace (and as totally allowable in user space) -- and then original research on subpages that specify that they are OR, and that identify a responsible scholar. Subpages may be "owned" (because anyone may create a parallel subpage). Again, this isn't policy, you won't find it on a policy page, but it's what we are actually doing where necessary, and it works. It avoids conflict, so that user time is devoted to learning and writing instead of struggling to make work satisfy the demands of others.

However, Marshall, you have created learning structures that seem to be your own, and have applied them to many mainspace pages. Absolutely, I do not want to hinder your learning process, but I'm asking you to consider the impact on Wikiversity and other users.

Just today, I noticed a spelling error, the page Web Science/Enrole. Okay, fix it. "What links here" Urk! The Web Science project is a vast array of pages, with complex templates that are broadly used. Somebody else noticed the spelling error, I found after I moved the page.[2]. The response worries me a bit. The resource is not, the indication is, an independent Wikiversity resource, but is connected with an external project. The creator has a "we" in mind that is not the Wikiversity community. Now, why didn't that editor just fix the name? Well, the resource isn't welcoming that way. (I did move the page, and found two templates with links and fixed them. You can now see what I first saw at [3].)

Templates allow complex content to be repeated across pages. However, they also make pages far more complex to edit. I can see a page and see a spelling error, say, or some text I'd want to edit, and open up an edit window, and the text isn't there. It was templated or transcluded. When many templates or transclusions are used, the complexity swings way out of hand. It makes creating apparently complex pages easier, but it, then, inhibits participation.

I'm not claiming to have a simple answer, I'm opening up the topic with you, as a user who has used much templating.

If it were only you involved, or perhaps you and I, fine. You do your pages and I do mine. But ... Wikiversity might not survive. There are enemies of Wikiversity, people who believe that this site is dangerous, there have been multiple attempts to shut it down. There are legitimate concerns expressed by some of these. If we don't address them, they will. The situation on Beta is a clear demonstration of what could happen. I'm working there, as I have time, and cautiously, to show how to fix it, to move beyond the limitations imposed and show how both freedom and organization are compatible. And I'm calling on English Wikiversitans to pioneer this, to create en.wikiversity as a demonstration project. Not all Wikiversities have gone our way.

I'm proud of what we have accomplished, and you and your work is part of that pride, but we have much left to do. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:32, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Empty sections

I'd like to address some of your concerns one at a time. This one is for the "boilerplate" approach. I looked at some 28 mainspace resources using Random and found that

1. 17 of them have one or more sections, but no empty sections.
2. 4 have no sections at all.
3. 6 have empty sections: Summary of child psychology 17/4, 17 sections, 4 are empty, Wikiversity Distributed Virtual Supercomputer 15/2, Reefkeeping 170/169, before I added text, also using this as an extreme control. Proximal promoter 26/17 one of mine, Web testing 8/5, Mad Max - Creating the sound of joy with GarageBand with symphony orchestra 9/1, and Urban Regimes 6/1 round out the survey.

Based on this for appearance sake, empty sections probably should be removed. But, I find those sections present to be suggestions of subjects that can be added, sometimes with section title changes, that visiting editors or guests might find a plus. This happened with reefkeeping. You also like meteorology as a section title in black ice rather than meteors.

My other two controls were Teeth 40/32, modified from Tooth which just had a sentence and Submillimeter astronomy 107/41 which I considered completed at over 100 kb.

Unless you and others object, I will start reducing empty sections at least in my own or created resources.

As to the "boilerplate" section titles, I find them useful. Some have been abridged for the specific resource, others have been changed to a new "boilerplate". So far I have not objected to any changes to section titles that anyone else has made, and probably won't if they're not vandalism. More later on the original research in mainspace as a teaching tool on conducting original research here at wikiversity. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:09, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Boilerplates

Well, here's a boilerplate that sent shivers down my spine, Template:Original Learning project boilerplate.

Algeria is a page creation template, not a resource about Algeria. It is 16/14. That's disappointing!

There are the following categories: Category:Original School boilerplate, Category:Original Learning project boilerplate, and Category:Page creation templates.

I'm guessing from these and their lack of success that they are not conducive to page/resource creation or contribution. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:47, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at this. We do need to look at what actually encourages resource usage. A true study would be difficult, probably would use automated data collection. Armed with data, we might then make some experiments. Tricky to do that without introducing bias. But possible. I've been working based on my own reactions, which are limited.

Templates save time and to some extent, disk space. However, they also create complexity and can make editing more difficult. Wikiversity has effectively encouraged individual activity, and individuals have had widely-varying ideas of what is desirable. There has been little guidance, and the result is fairly predictable: slow, chaotic growth.

Wikiversity could, in theory, be far larger than an encyclopedia, and be highly useful, a place to actually and widely foster study, not merely a shallow "learning by reading a page." That is not going to happen if it is chaotically organized and difficult to approach. A few have learned how to use Wikiversity for this purpose. We have not documented it. There is much work to be done. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 11:02, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Algeria was a stub created as part of Comparative law and justice project, and was missed in the cleanup that moved all those pages to that project subspace. I've fixed that, and also created a Stub subsection for the project to link to it. Substituted templates are very useful for that kind of coordinated page creation. Looking at What links here for Algeria led me to a set of messes.... ah, "opportunities for organization," ... for another day ....

Template:Original Learning project boilerplate (Categories need to be poked out, templates don't need that, a link to a template doesn't transclude) is a very nice find. That should be a Wikiversity space page, perhaps linked with a template, never transcluded. It's another example of how the early Wikiversitans thought. They had some great ideas with little experience as to how to combine this with organization and structure. I'd very much like to get JWSchmidt back on board. What prevented his being unblocked before was that he insisted on continually bringing up the Wikiversity Wars, with very personal complaints. You could imagine what I'd be like if I did this. Don't get me started! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 11:30, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Above, you found Mad Max - Creating the sound of joy with GarageBand with symphony orchestra, leading to a colossal mess. With great educational content. It may have started with Mad Max's Course in Film Scoring for Motion Pictures, part of a set of resources created by Special:Contributions/Robert Elliot in May - June, 2008. That original course was "Closed." Why? We now know how to handle these, to encourage the work and organize it and keep mainspace clean and simple. In 2008, the concept of organizing mainspace does not appear to have existed. From Wikibooks, where subpages were used for book chapters, we had subpages in mainspace. The idea of having a broad course, with, then, specific seminars or projects or essays or whatever underneath that does not seem to have occurred much, and because Wikiversitans were all Wikipedians, originally, with Wikipedia's flat structure, it seemed perfectly normal to have a resource on How to make a pycrete bong or whatever it was called. Resources designed as courses often had pagenames beginning with Lesson 1, etc. Mainspace is shared. Using subpages has many, many advantages, and I can't think of many disadvantages....

Back up, imagine a library filled with "books" that are really book chapters. Or course sections that are really just sections with a different teaching assistant. One course in the university catalog. Basically, that's my working concept of Wikiversity mainspace: a university catalog for a very eclectic university, designed for learning by doing as well as for "teaching." And that "original template" you found shows how important the "learning by doing" concept was originally.

To see what happens when this is not understood, look at Beta, the Dutch Wikiversity flap, showing what happens when Wikipedians, with no concept of "learning by doing," stumble over a disorganized Wikiversity and decide to fix it. Over 5000 pages deleted in two weeks or so. It's covered here, which rapidly became a train wreck. The smoke has been clearing, all those Dutch users, except the original one -- who is also active here --, have vanished, discovering that creating their concept of a Wikiversity page -- a finished course -- was not so easy. They actually said that, one of them pointed out that creating a finished course was much more difficult than creating an encyclopedia article. And it is, if you demand "finished" to keep a page! Reviewing 5000 deleted pages is not a simple task, either, I intend to do it on a separate wiki. Most of the pages can probably be kept deleted, but I know that there are exceptions.

That also shows what happens when Dutch Wikipedians encounter a Wikiversity Abd.... I have some work to do on my communications skills, eh? Learning by doing. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 11:57, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Completion designations

By using Random I found 21 successive pages with an odd collection or lack of a collection of completion designations. Of the 21, seven are designated as stubs. The rest have no designation at all. I guess the original creators and subsequent contributors felt they didn't need any. This has me concerned that if the original creator did not add one or the template to improve the page as the one I put in at the top of this section, then I should not add one either. Black ice had only the Category:Water ice, Category:Resource stubs, and the above template when Random pulled it up. The page water ice is actually a part of minerals. What do you think? Or, is this one of those trivial topics that is better at the arbitrary level? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:49, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

What I find confusing is multiple completion and level templates. As with many issues, we have developed no community standards, so, no surprise, we have practice all over the map, which makes designations much less useful than they might otherwise be.

Do we need to call a "stub" a "stub," i.e., isn't it obvious? What purpose does that serve? If a stub is very short and is not part of a structure, it might get deleted, with or without the "stub" designation. "Very short" means that there isn't any significant work invested in it. And my opinion on stubs as subpages is "don't." A redlink at a higher level is more useful than a blue link that doesn't tell you it's a stub! There should be *some payoff* in following a link!

Personally, I have not bothered with completion templates, anywhere. Then again, I tend to start things and rarely completely finish them. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:27, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Hierarchies

We have quite a few hierarchies already set up. The templates for example are in one. The course principles of radiation astronomy is in the courses hierarchy and the Astronomy department hierarchy. One of the reasons I had the template Geological resources on black ice is that it is for me a geology subject. Putting black ice under road hazard/black ice might work, might not. Or, black ice could be under minerals/black ice, or water ice/black ice. Or, it could remain for now as an independent resource. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 12:19, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

One nice thing about subpages is that your black ice resource can be completely different from one on road hazard black ice. The pages can both be named "black ice," but the position in the subpage hierarchy specifies the field to which the resource belongs.

I'm really wanting, at this point, to look at overall Wikiversity structure. Consider this: in theory, there could be several Wikiversity pages per Wikipedia page. Are we ready for that? At this point, there are relatively few Wikiversity users. What will happen if there are millions? I'm not suggesting we solve all large-wiki problems, but I am suggesting we look at a structure that will scale well, providing access to learning by doing and learning resources.

High inclusiveness is essential to the Wikiversity project. How can high inclusiveness be reconciled with neutrality policy? (The way I've done it is to create owned subpages, with attributed opinion.) What if two dozen people want to teach a course on a topic? Do we demand that they agree on everything on a single course page? That will take us down the Wikipedia road, and will make learning-by-doing on Wikiversity into a nightmare, as it is on Wikipedia. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 12:45, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Templates

Random found black ice. The creator located it only in the Category:Nature and the above template put it into stubs in 2008. For someone interested in any aspect of black ice, they would have to have thought of and checked that category. It's not easy to get from the main page to black ice through the category system if they don't know the term black ice, but they are interested in some forms of ice that may occur in ice cores. The next contributor put black ice under Category:Water ice in 2009. It sat there until Random found it in 2014! One of the few things I did like about wikipedia was the templates at the bottom of each page. I could find many related pages and read them. Ditto here. Now black ice is in the template Geology resources. So unless you strongly object I'd like to return that template. I think it will increase the probability that others will find black ice and maybe other pages of interest. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:16, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I had actually meant to put this section in before you commented on hierarchies so I'll copy your comments on templates to here.

Templates are not hierarchies, though they may show them. Both templates and categories are ways to organize pages in a flat structure, that's what Wikipedia does. Templates create substantial complexities that can be difficult to manage. Templates are also often a vandalism target, if a template is used on many pages.... And often the template is not being watched. If I create a page using a template, I get an email for any changes to any page on my watchlist, but that doesn't include changes to the template, those notices will only go to those who edited the template. (or otherwise added the page to their watchlist). --Abd (discuss • contribs) 12:45, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I have been thinking about your comments on templates and subpages. Actually, I'd like to put black ice under ice cores for now as Ice cores/Black ice. I also have clear ice which could be Ice cores/Clear ice and ultimately Brittle ice which could become Ice cores/Brittle ice. As you pointed out some one else can create Roads/Black ice if they want to. I'd still like to put the lecture/article black ice even as Ice cores/Black ice in the Geology resources template (where it is now as Black ice) and the template for now on the black ice page. The number one reason is to help any reader or editor find related geology/earth sciences resources. It still seems like the best way to help a reader/editor find related resources. All the templates I've created are on my watch list. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:34, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Perfect. As a subpage, it is related to the page above, so it can be specific, as "black ice" is used in the field, and Ice cores itself is a bit specific for a top-level resource. But hey, one stap at a time!

At first I thought you were misnaming categories as templates, but you are, instead, referring to navigation templates, used on some Wikipedia articles, and which some have created here. Those are nightmares to maintain. They contain explicit page references, so as resources are organized, what could be simple becomes quite complex and time-consuming.

Rather, we need to think about maximizing access to knowledge. First of all, if someone has some very specific interest, they can use Search. So one device we might want to generally employ is to set up key words, with alternate formulations that people might be searching for. They use disambiguation pages on Wikipedia, plus redirects for some common terms. That's one approach.

We have school, topic, and portal namespaces. Topic, especially, will contain links to pages on a topic. The issue is how deep this goes. Let's look, first, at categories. Categories are page-wise edited. Categories themselves are categorized, and a general principle, to improve practical accessibility, is to list a page only once in a category structure. (A page may be categorized in more than one category structure.) That is, black ice would not be categorized in both Category:Geology and Category:Glaciology, because Glaciology should be a subcategory of Geology.

We will not have, I suspect, a category for Ice cores so both Ice cores and Black ice will be in the glaciology category.

This is what I've found when looking at these topic navigation templates: being broadly transcluded, they create severe cleanup and maintenance difficulties. They further clutter pages that could otherwise be simple. They are difficult to read and edit, and a mistake editing them will display on many pages. They serve a purpose on Wikipedia, they have less function here, and Wikipedia itself has created a maintenance nightmare, Wikipedia never valued editor labor, since it was "free." (Administrators do value administrator labor, part of the Wikipedia Problem, the idea that adminship is "no big deal" is a myth that Wikipedians tell themselves to avoid facing the real situation. Don't misunderstand me: the problem I'm pointing to is not that admins are Bad or whatever, but that editor labor isn't adequately valued, and the entire Wikipedia structure is flawed, at root, over this. You might notice how rarely we run into serious conflict here and how common it is on Wikipedia. That conflict wastes time, that much is understood, so the attempt is made to blame it on "disruptive editors" instead of looking at the structural causes underneath the problems. Much easier to block somebody than address a structure built by thousands of users over more than a decade.)

So if navigation templates are to be used at all, they should be high-level, not go into details readily found under pages that are found in the template. To the point, not every page related to Geology in some way should be listed on the Geology template. Rather, those not listed would be found as (1) a subpage of a listed page as a readily understood subtopic, (2) in a category similarly, or a subcategory, but not both, and/or (3) linked from a readily accessible resource.

So, no, Ice cores/Black ice should not be listed in the Geology navigation template. That is far to large a leap from general to specific. I suggest creating a Glaciology resource and category and placing related pages in that category, and removing them from the Geology category, which would have category:Glaciology as a subcategory, and Glaciology would be categorized in Geology. The Glaciology category would not contain Glaciology, but the Category page would link to the article in the category page text. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 14:13, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I was tempted to create the Glaciology page. So I looked at Wikipedia. Glaciology is classified as an "interdisciplinary Earth science," which is sound.

w:Category:Glaciology is categorized as w:Category:Earth science and also in other categories. They do have the Glaciology category on the article, that's an overall structural decision we should make. There is a reason for it that just occurred to me. One can export pages based on category, it's one of the functions of category. For this reason, the category should include a main page on the category, as they do. So I revise what I wrote above. A page should be in its own category, if the category exists.

Looking at w:Glaciology, there are the templates at the bottom. I have these thoughts:

• We need not duplicate what is on Wikipedia. Wikipedia, with a vast army of editors, maintains those templates, more or less.
• Those templates are in collapse, but a browser must still download all that content, so they can greatly increase page size, harming mobile users.
• The template navigation structure requires, to be practical, stable page names. Wikiversity has quite unstable page names, and until we have a clear standard and process for approving resource names (or quickly moving them to approved names), the templates make Wikiversity organization much more complicated than necessary. I've been stopped many times in an organization effort by finding that there is heavy usage of templates, so, not wishing to damage it, I did not complete the work, putting it off until later, and later often never comes.
• I see the "Wikiversity community task," as distinct from what we do here individually, as setting up an organization of knowledge and study, an organization that facilitates study without controlling it. There are always decisions to be made in organization, the identification of "dominant groups" is your own research project along those lines. We can have alternate systems of organization, but some things must be common. The ability to move subpages as a unit (currently a custodian right) simplifies linking resources and moving entire families of resources together. Categories can be moved by bot, if we have some massive change to make.
• Using templates as distinct from simpler organizational technology gives added power to super-users, and, then, we see, custodians elected because they have "technical expertise." That's fine, but ... also dangerous, we end up with a technocracy, and at least one of the language Wikiversities has suffered major damage from this, and I could argue that we have had difficulties as well. Keeping normal page structure and organizational structure simple and easy to understand and improve should be a basic value we uphold.
• We have alternate means of organizing content (as does Wikipedia).

I have not gone around changing what you have done, this was a toe in the water. I want to recognize the great value of your work, and consider you a major Wikiversity success story, but, as well, we need to move toward engaging far larger numbers of users. We have inherited much of high value, and much that is poorly organized. And I have a vision for Wikiversity that, if realized, will make Wikiversity ultimately larger and more active than Wikipedia. The work we do now must create efficiency, or this will fail. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:36, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I have been reducing the distribution of my navigational templates, in part as a response to the points you have been making and to reduce the size of these templates. Astronomy resources, e.g., is just getting too big. One small problem with some new contributors is that they create a page, like Chemical Reaction but may not know how to put anything on it that communicates its existence to anyone else. So far we have Search and Random to find these. A page default category (bot) which automatically puts in the page when created, then removes it when a category or some other organizational unit is applied might be helpful. Although I shudder at how many untied pages are sitting out there. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:47, 18 September 2014 (UTC)