Wikiversity:Topics

This Wikiversity page is inactive and is of historical interest. You may discuss this page on the talk page, copy all or part of this page to another page for further editing or start a new discussion about this page at the Wikiversity:Colloquium.

The Wikiversity namespace hierarchy. Wikiversity School pages go in the *School:* namespace, and the names of such pages start with the *School:* prefix (e.g. The School of Psychology). Each Wikiversity school is devoted to studying several academic topics within the field. School pages link to pages in the *Topic:* namespace, which contain divisions and departments (e.g. The Department of Nanotechnology). Departments can then link to learning materials, projects, and educational resources. All learning resources belong in the main namespace. The main namespace does not use any prefix (i.e. Topic:).

A Wikiversity page in the topic namespace helps Wikiversity participants organize learning resources related to a single academic topic area. In contrast, Wikiversity schools are used to help organize several related topic areas. Pages in the Topic: namespace can be called divisions, departments, centers, programs or any other descriptive term. If you want to create a new Wikiversity department or other Wikiversity content development project, please read the naming conventions.

Topic: namespaces are the equivalent to Wikipedia's community oriented Wikiprojects or taskforces.

Major Wikiversity Divisions and Departments

Templates

There are templates that can be used to quickly start pages in the "Topic:" namespace. Use {{subst:Department boilerplate}} and {{subst:Division boilerplate}}.

At Wikiversity, we have a Topic namespace. Articles in it have the prefix Topic:. This resource is to help gain an understanding of the Topic namespace and of Topic:Topics in general.

Topic namespace

To see what's in the Topic: namespace, click Special pages to your left. Scroll down to Prefix index and click that. Then, where it says Namespace:, click the drop-down box and select Topic. You will then see a page – All pages (Topic namespace) which gives you an alphabetized list something like Abenaki through XML. These are your basic Topics at Wikiversity.

The difference between topics, disambiguation pages and portals

On Wikipedia, a disambiguation page is for topics whose names overlap or have multiple meanings (eg "reflection") - on Wikiversity the scope for overlapping is much greater, encompassing also different learner levels, different audiences, and different perspectives. A topic page is meant to serve all those functions, as well as allowing for links between related subjects, which wouldn't be fully covered under "disambiguation". Also, a topic page is meant to be easily editable so as to facilitate development of new content in a given area - a portal page is meant to be user-friendly to the person looking for content, but it is not so easy for people to edit such template/code-heavy pages in order to develop their own content. Cormaggio ^talk 09:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Finding or creating a topic

If you are disappointed to find that your favorite Topic isn't covered there, try it with no prefix (Topic) or as a School ( School:Topic) or a Portal (Portal:Topic).

Topics at Wikiversity are usually pages for other Wikiversity participants who have already organized a Learning group, Learning materials and Learning resources around that Topic.

If you are an expert, or even have a lot of interest in a topic, you can start an article in the Topic: namespace if you desire to. A "high-level" general topic perhaps thought of as a "subject" in the Topic: namespace is usually considered a Division. In that case you can use {{subst:division}} to create a somewhat standard Division page.

Likewise, A "lower-level" specific topic perhaps thought of as a "field" in the Topic: namespace is usually considered a Department. In that case you can use {{subst:department}} to create a somewhat standard Department page.

Divisions can be parts of Schools and Departments can be parts of Divisions. As Wikiversity grows, it is importqant to interlink related content development groups, schools, portals and learning resources. Don't be discouraged if pages you create appear "lonely" or forgotten. Someone else may pull your topic into a broader context by including it on navigational templates or in other relevant categories or portals.

If you don't want to create a page yourself, just open the page and type or paste {{Topic|<some topic>}} into it. Someone else will either delete the page or start the new topic. The template renders something like:

topic (wiktionary | wikipedia | wikibooks)

Note: See Wikiversity:Naming conventions for more information. You may also want to look over Introduction to Wiki and Wiki 101 if you are uncomfortable creating and editing pages.

Classifying topics

Main article Classifying educational resources