Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/April 2009

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MIcroprocessor learning project

Hello. Any one interested in this learning project? or if anyone has completed this project contact me ASAP by sending me a mail on jigsaw.18june@gmail.com or post it here

thanks

Below is the project statement :

Design a microprocessor based EPROM programmer to program 2716.The EPROM can be programmed by applying 25V at VPP and 5V at OE pin. Initially all data of EPROM will be 1's and the user should make the bits zero selectively. The bit parallel data is applied to the data output pins (D0-D7). The address for the EPROM is provided through the address pins. To program the address of each location to be programmed should be stable for 55ms.When address and data are stable, a 50ms active high pulse is applied to CE input.

Interesting idea - if you can start a project microprocessor programming(?) for it, so that anyone who is interested can follow it step by step, that would be great. Hillgentleman | //\\ |Talk 17:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category problem

In the categories there are both Schools and Wikiversity_schools. Should these not be combined, or was the 1st meant to be [Academic Institutions]? Also I would like to make a school that is called an Academy rather than a school.--Dchmelik 21:08, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure the current consensus thinking on this, but we are a wiki and there is no one "right way" to do everything. We do have some issues of capitalization with Categories, and it isn't always clear which one you should put things in (although there is a convention, once people start using a category it can catch on for quite a while).

As for as naming goes, be bold and go forth. School or Academy or Topics are just organization pieces, if that greases the wheel for the underlying content that is all the better. If a majority then don't like it, we can chat about it and see where it fits -- it is a wiki, after all. Historybuff 13:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I guess one is accepted academic subjects and the other is any sort of school anyone wants to make up... but I also see many of the latter on one of the main pages--mixed in....--Dchmelik 10:25, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimania 2009: Scholarships

Wikimania 2009, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is now accepting applications for scholarships to the conference. This year's conference will be handled from August 26-28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The scholarship can be used to help offset the costs of travel and registration. For more information, check the official information page. Please remember that the Call for Participation is still open, please submit your papers! Without submissions, Wikimania would not be nearly as fun! - Rjd0060 02:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Culture insights from project GLOBE

--Puttykatlee009 21:20, 2 April 2009 (UTC) I am taking a class in Management and I need information on Asia and Europe. I need to do a comparison and contrast on culture and business climate from the perspective of a Multinational Corporation (MNC)seeking to expand into a new market. From Kathy Shorty[reply]

This isn't the right place to post this Q, as this is for questions and comments about Wikiversity itself. I will copy this Q to the Wikiversity:Help desk, and try to answer it there. Here it is: Wikiversity:Help_desk#Culture_insights_from_project_GLOBE. StuRat 13:34, 4 April 2009 (UTC)?[reply]

~~Why you are run off people from here StuRat? Why we should look on thousands of pages differing by topic?~~--Juan de Vojníkov 20:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Find a way they are two pages.--Juan de Vojníkov 20:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Poster Presentation - affiliation with Wikiversity?

Question moved here from the Help Desk: Wikiversity:Help_desk#Poster_Presentation_-_affiliation_with_Wikiversity.3F. StuRat 13:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have edited Wikipedia for a while but am new to Wikiversity. I recently had an abstract of original research accepted to be presented at a poster session at a local university. I am doing this research unfunded and with free licencsed software and plan to create a Wikiversity page and publish the research here.

First, is it possible, appropriate and/or sane to have my affiliation for the poster be with Wikiversity?

Second, has anyone done that before?

The session is very informal, though the poster has the option (up to the authors) of having the poster published on their website. If I chose to allow them to publish the poster on the site, is it still fair to publish the project in Wikiversity (I am assuming yes as it is developing research) but is it possible/appropriate to use the Wikiversity logo/affiliation if I say yes to publishing the poster on their website? This question was added on 02:30, 9 April 2009 by User:Enviropearson.

I dont understand your first two questions. So I will just respond to the last one. If they will publish the poster on their website without uniq ("uniq" means, that work can be used just there and reused just after their agreement) license, you can publish it here. Or better here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, which is a central store of media for WMF projects. You can also publish it with Wikiversity logo, but you must inform about it the Wikimedia Foundation, who is the owner of this logo. Than you cant choose a license for the poster. It must be copyrighted. But it doesnt limit you in this case.--Juan de Vojníkov 20:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Philosophers

Hello, if anyone is willing to participate in this discussion, please write your entry based on the instructions. List your favorite philosopher and a quote or excerpt from a work of theirs. --DSAVO 05:36, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

philosophy is indeed a well established subject but it's issues are so riddle with controversy that there is hardly a single question to which there can be said to have an established answer.discuss? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.220.4.158 (talk • contribs) 11:41, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Licensing update

"The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation invites the Wikimedia community to vote on this proposal to license Wikimedia material so it is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA), while retaining dual licensing with the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)." See meta:Licensing update for more info. --mikeu ^talk 16:23, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Organization of Wikiversity

I feel that the courses aren't really organized in a user-friendly manner. For example, if there were a real university website, they'd have a course catalog, list of schools, current projects etc. but they'd be so much easier to navigate than Wikiversity currently is. I myself was having trouble identifying projects from topics from classes because their content is more ambiguous than their category suggests. Is there a way to change the main page of Wikiversity so people can navigate through them better? Maybe add a list of courses, that would include ALL courses not just main projects (I was trying to find an English Literature course and navigating from the homepage is a bit annoying since there is no Literature 'Project'. I'm not saying I was doing everything right, I just mean if I can't do it efficiently enough, a lot of other people probably can't). It would be great if we could match it to the typical format used by most colleges and universities online, because that's the format people are accustomed to.

I'd be happy to help with that in any way I can.

This question was added on 13:53, 9 April 2009 by User:Wrtrntrnng.

Yes, we know about this problem. But there is now personel for this. It was done by the user McCormack, who left the project about one year ago and I think he stay behind most of the organisation around the Main Page. So if you would like to help us, you are welcomed. It is also possible to change a Main page, but you should propose it somewhere.--Juan de Vojníkov 20:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an administrator or anyone I can contact about this? I can definitely help with the organization and stuff but I want to make sure I'm going through the appropriate channel. Does anyone need to be notified or do I just put a note on the main page and start editing? --User:Wrtrntrnng

Well, you can do it without notification. But in it will be better to prepare something and then present it to community via this channel. For the Main Page the same, make a new page e.g. here: Wikiversity:Main Page/proposal 2009 and than, leave here a link that community can agree your system. The Main Page is normally closed to edit - so you cant change it. So go ahead. If you need and admin help, go here: Wikiversity:Request custodian action or ping me. I am the member of support stuff in here:-) You might find usefull a real time communication via IRC chat at freenode.net #wikiversity-en.--Juan de Vojníkov 21:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Wrtrntrnng. Here at wikiversity decisions about organization are made by the community, not by administrators. As Juan said, feel free to create a draft on how you think pages could be better organized and post a note here for everyone to comment on. The only thing you will need a custodian (admin) for is changes to the main page since that is protected to prevent vandalism. You mentioned "if there were a real university website" above. Keep in mind that wikiversity is not just for university education. The name wikiversity can be a bit misleading. This site is for educational materials for all ages and people of all learning backgrounds. Something to keep in mind as you think about organizational structure. Take a look at Wikiversity:Browse to see some of the different schemes to organize content that are currently in use. Feel free to mention some ideas here to see what others think. --mikeu ^talk 12:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't we import the French template ? JackPotte 02:07, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If we do import the French Department template we'll need to have the coding translated into English. DarkObsidian 19:07, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the "Template:Department" and "Template:Lesson" are already used, but as a French programmer I can translate whatever we need where it would be decided from the French Wikiversity:

JackPotte 01:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately we can't import those as import from other languages hasn't been enabled.--Juan de Vojníkov 06:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to the cafeteria?

I am pretty sure that there was a page called cafeteria in Wikiversity...Was it renamed to Colloquium?? Ricardoramalho 21:43, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to this the original name was Community portal, which was moved to Colloquium in 2006. Am I right? --Gbaor 10:44, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The German language version of this page is de:Wikiversity:Cafeteria. --mikeu ^talk 17:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New demonstration in arithmetic on fr wikiversity

Well Karim Ghariani have put a new demonstration about Bernoulli nombers. If you speak french let's see: [1] This demonstration is more simple for studiants and posted under free licence. If someone could translate in english... fr:Karimation_et_formule_explicite_des_nombres_de_Bernoulli/Article Regards, Otourly 20:01, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New Wikiversity Funding announced

After years of being overshadowed in the trails of other bigger wikis, the WMF has been pledged a large and substantial gift from tbe w:Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of $4.1 Million dollars. One of the conditions attached to the pledge is that the bulk of the donation be directed at educational activities, and specifically mentions Wikiversity as one of the vehicles for this to be realized.

Now, of course, the question is: Where is the best place to direct these funds to, and how should the parcelling out be handled? Should a formal committee be struck, or should we write up proposals and forward them to the board for approval? Historybuff 06:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. We need more people to get Wikiversity off the ground. And people love $$$. We have had some Wikiversity based courses (e.g. Teemu in Finish Wikiversity, Robert Elliott in film. Ciprian et. co. in computer courses in Romanian, Estonian e-learning teams,...,) and may be we can use their experience to do a good one. May be a full package using the entire spectrum of wiki-tools, from wiki-lessons to wiki-notes, wiki-homeworks, wikiquizzes, irc sessions, video conferencing with SKYPE, wiki-exams etc. In the end, maybe wiki-grades and a wiki-certificate. Hillgentleman | //\\ |Talk 08:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For comparison, what's the current Wikiversity budget (amount, sources of income, and how it's spent) ? StuRat 14:11, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is this an April Fools joke? Countrymike 22:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I got busy later in the week and didn't see Countrymike's comment until now. River from the toolserver almost got me (since his post was before April 1 in my timezone), so I thought I'd spread the love. :)

On a serious note, to respond to sturat, we don't have a formal budget that I'm aware of. We can propose things, but it's hard to get funding of any sort if it's not somehow tied to Wikimedia wikis directly.

I think we probably need more content promotion, because some of the above mentioned resources are golden. Historybuff 13:37, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I thin Foundation will come up with some ideas too, or not?--Juan de Vojníkov 20:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What about to get free acces to scientific databases? Such as Web of Science or JSTOR?--Juan de Vojníkov 20:54, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea Juan. I don't have an idea for what uses the rest of the money can be reserved. It would be best to use the money to get some courses from the ground.--Daanschr 20:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This must be an April fools joke nothing is mentioned on the w:Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website about wikiversity - in fact they don't have references concerning this site, if something major happened and they did provide funding wouldn't Wikimedia mention it. DarkObsidian 18:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Contacting other teachers

I am overhauling someone's page and I wanted to send them a little note. Is there any sort of email message sending device or do I just edit their my talk page? Thanks.--Fapril 17:01, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New topics should be at the bottpm of the page :) To answer your question: You can use the talk page (a message pops up to remind him/her that s/he has a new message) or use the template {{email}} which sends an email to user to the previously set address. --Gbaor 17:50, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you--Fapril 18:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pandemic prevention.

Wikipedia is used by both mainstream institutuional researchers and researchers of a...more independent variety. And thus is uniquely situated for data sharing in situations such as pandemic prevention where everyones interest in seeing to it that SOMEBODY succeed is greater than their fear of that person not being them.

With that in mind I made a page on Influenza cure research (titled "Influenza cure research" ;-P ) so that those of us with an interest in solving the problem can share data and not waste time on the same dead ends.

If anyone wishes to improve the layout of the page, make it availible in more languages or otherwise raise interest in it please do so!! if ordinary quarentine and hygine measures are ineffective this could possibly be of vital importance.

And even if they are effective and the problem fizzles into nothing, any progress made towards curing Influenza will be a good thing. --NoahGraham 02:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean Wikiversity (here), or are you telling us about something you did over at Wikipedia ? StuRat 11:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity. Wikipedia has a strong policy against original research, since the goal of this page is to allow the sharing of original research this seemed a more appropriate forum.— Preceding unsigned comment added by NoahGraham (talk • contribs)

--117.201.68.69 06:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)hy actully i joind the phylosphy communteis but yet i dont much know about phylosphy so can u tell me about it please?117.201.68.69 06:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Way to limit edit to just students in a class

Hi, long time not on site. Working on the Ph.D., so I'm still quite busy, but I hope to get back here more. Anyway, was talking to a professor in my university, and they were talking about buying a $1000 site for students to, build and edit a wiki. I told them about this site, but they said after checking it out that they wanted it to only be editable by the students. I remember that we use to have a restriction that let only the professor edit it- is there anyway we can lock page to be editable only by a group of students specified by an particular author?--Rayc 21:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, a mechanical/physical implantation of Template:Protected course--Rayc 21:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

People have asked this question often on the mediawiki irc channel and the usual response by developers is that mediawiki is not a CMS (content management system) and that even if there was such an extension there is no guarantee it would completely prevent unwanted editing, because mediawiki wasn't designed for that. -- dark lama 13:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think there is not the tecnical problem (e.g. you may have a extra ns for this), but more like political. If you limit some users from editing some pages, you will limit the Wikiversity idea that everyone can edit it, that it is "an open project".--Juan de Vojníkov 05:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Other solution could be to place a message to the top of each page + check the history 2-3 times/day and revert edits from people outside the desired group (+ kindly inform these people why were their edits reverted - one could create a template for this as well). --Gbaor 18:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keeping areas on userspace tends to keep out stray users from editing. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, many people have the preconceived notion that it would be better to limit write access to page to only small, pre-selected group of people. The success of Wikipedia show that this is an unnecessary and counter-productive restriction.

If they still insist that this restriction is absolutely necessary, perhaps you could use the wiki choice wizard to help you build and edit a wiki that includes that restriction (i.e., a wiki with either "Page Permissions" or "ACL" or both). When I pick "page history" and "I would like my Wiki to be hosted by someone else", I get about 25 sites that will host a wiki with such restrictions. That list includes EditMe ($5/month hosted), Confluence ($49/month hosted), Wagn (free for academics and nonprofits), Wetpaint (free for education), PBwiki ($4/user/month hosted), and others.

Perhaps you could simultaneously try out more than one site and see which ones work better with your students. --DavidCary 01:05, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or they can build their own wiki.--Juan de Vojníkov 05:32, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

While I understand and support the general feeling (that pages must be editable by all), there are a few options. First, a course is hard to run if the underlying content is constantly in flux, but that can be solved by some sort of "stable version" extension or explicit versioning URLs. Second, the group might want to have a discussion or a collaboration that is part of a class effort, which will be for actual grades. In that case, they might be accommodated in sub-pages, or something that is outside the content page scope.

Wikis, like anything, are tools. The tools should suit the purpose, not the other way around. While it is against the philosophy of Wikimedia to have a closed system, we have to show why an open system is superior. There is no technological reason Mediawiki (or WV, for that matter) can't do exactly what is being asked. Historybuff 17:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, do not argue with me, but with Wikimedia Foundation. I am just following the Wikiversity proposal.--Juan de Vojníkov 21:19, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]