Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/February 2019

What you can change and what you cannot

Hello guys, I just deleted a translated version of this at zhwikiversity. This is a clear copyvio of source 1, and it claims that the author has given permission. However, I didn't see any OTRS verification nor CC-SY-BA on the bottom of the source but a copyright warning. Can someone advice me if OTRS is contacted in this. Best Regards,--Cohaf (discuss • contribs) 10:53, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Cohaf: The author of the source is also the author of the Wikiversity resource. An author is free to copyright their work and also license it elsewhere as CC-BY-SA. No violation, as you can't violate your own copyright. Thanks for checking! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:43, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig:Is there OTRS verification for this as I checked with OTRS agents on permission queue there isn't. I don't know how the policies here work but without OTRS we cannot keep an article at Chinese Wikiversity. I'm asking as I deleted a derivative of this and I determined that it's a copyvio. --Cohaf (discuss • contribs) 13:48, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Cohaf: I don't know whether there is OTRS verification, but you are welcome to contact the author directly to find out. There is no copyright violation. An author cannot violate their own copyright. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:51, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig:Sorry, are there any verified links that the author of that article is the Wikiversity user? If not how can you be sure that your last sentence is true? And no OTRS, copyright on the page and this article is not in violation of Copyvio? I don't get your point, pardon me. Best Regards,--Cohaf (discuss • contribs) 13:58, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Cohaf: Please refer to User:Lbeaumont. They are the same author. There is no copyright violation. Thanks for checking. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:10, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig:Thanks for your input, I understood. Thanks for your time. --Cohaf (discuss • contribs) 14:14, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig:, Thanks for resolving this. Sorry for the trouble. I plan to update the original source at Emotional Competency to place each page I transfer into the public domain. Note that I include a notice on each page I am transferring that links to the original and states I have given myself the rights. Is there more I should do to avoid this sort of turmoil in the future? Thanks! (By way of background, I created the Emotional competency pages from about 2004-2008, before I was aware of Wikiversity. The EC site is very popular, and I am translating the most uniquely useful pages to Wikiversity to provide broader access over the long term. I hope this is useful ) --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 14:52, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Lbeaumont:Thanks for authorization, I'll restore the page at zh for the editor to work on translating. Sorry to put you through this.--Cohaf (discuss • contribs) 15:06, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Lbeaumont: Can you edit the website to replace "All rights reserved." with appropriate CC-BY or CC-BY-SA licensing? That would be the most effective solution. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Done. Thanks! --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 22:01, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

what means to be a Draft and a Project?

Pros and Contras? Thanks --Cloud forest (discuss • contribs) 20:57, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Event documentation

I'm starting to document notable events on Wikiversity, typically a video with a transcript with a disclaimer something like the following:

This essay is on Wikiversity to encourage a wide discussion of the issues it raises moderated by the Wikimedia rules that invite contributors to “be bold but not reckless,” contributing revisions written from a neutral point of view, citing credible sources, while treating others with respect -- and raising questions and concerns for which you do not have credible sources on the associated '“Discuss”' page.

I assume you agree this is appropriate as long as the event is either class notes or otherwise notable AND I have appropriate copyright permission. I'd like to create (a) a category and (b) instructions for how to do this.

QUESTIONS:

1. Do you agree this is appropriate? It seems that at least some people associated with Wikiversity do, because I've received some encouragement for what I've done of this nature so far.

2. If yes, what do you suggest I call this? I'm thinking of "Event documentation" being the title of both an instruction sheet and a category for events documented in this way. I ask, because titles are important: A great title can make it easier for others to find and remember it.

Examples:

• "Improving schools/Pre-K for All in Kansas City, Missouri": An initiative will appear on the ballot for a local election in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, to fund universal preschool. I already recorded a video from one major event organized by supporters of this issue, and I plan to create and post a similar video from people opposing this issue, both with transcripts. I then plan to add a few comments of my own, more in the way of questions to avoid making statements I cannot support with citation(s). I further plan to extract audio from both videos to produce a broadcast on KKFI community radio in Kansas City.
• "Inclusivity and Diversity: What Can We Learn from Israel and Palestine?" is the transcript of a presentation 2017-10-16 by Hanan Ashrawi, with a link to an audio file of part of that event on another web site. It was recently the target of an edit war by an anonymous user, who replaced "Palestinian" everywhere by "stateless Arab". This edit war was ended with help from User:Marshallsumter and User:Dave Braunschweig. This incident reminds me of the comment by Peter Binkley in an invited 2006 article for the Canadian Library Association magazine Feliciter that on controversial topics "the two sides actually engaged each other and negotiated a version of the [Wikipedia] article that both can more or less live with. This is a rare sight indeed in today’s polarized political atmosphere, where most online forums are echo chambers for one side or the other.”<ref name='Binkley'>{{cite web | title=Wikipedia Grows Up | author=Peter Binkley | publisher=Feliciter 52 (2006), no. 2, 59–61 | year=2006 | url= https://www.wallandbinkley.com/quaedam/2006/04_30_wikipedia-grows-up.html | accessdate = 2018-03-09}}</ref> In this case I doubt if we convinced the aforementioned anonymous user that people who claim to be Palestinian should be treated with respect, but we prevented this one article from becoming another vehicle for their propaganda. However if we can get a critical mass of the international body politic coming to Wikimedia projects to check their facts on things like this, we may be able to make a substantive contribution to resolving some of the world's most intractable conflicts. It may not be as difficult as one might think to get such a critical mass given the research behind Chenoweth's 3.5 percent rule: Of the 323 major governmental change efforts of the twentieth century identified by Chenoweth and Stephan, every one that got the active support of at least 3.5 percent of the population was successful -- and all of those were nonviolent.<ref>{{Citation | last = Chenoweth | first = Erica | date = November 4, 2013 | title = My Talk at TEDxBoulder: Civil Resistance and the “3.5% Rule” | publisher = The Rational Insurgent | url = https://rationalinsurgent.com/2013/11/04/my-talk-at-tedxboulder-civil-resistance-and-the-3-5-rule/ | accessdate = 2017-03-21}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | last = Chenoweth | first = Erica | date = 2017-02-01 | title = It may only take 3.5% of the population to topple a dictator – with civil resistance | publisher = The Guardian | url = https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/01/worried-american-democracy-study-activist-techniques | accessdate = 2017-03-21}}</ref> (Another user added this article to Category:Learning from conflict and incivility, seemingly supporting this assertion.)
• Communication’s Challenge to Democracy provides a transcript of a videoconference with a leading scholar of journalism, inviting the entire world to a discussion of the issues raised in that presentation. Articles like this could become important foci for discussions, similar to "discussion papers" in refereed academic journals, where leading experts publish their reactions to an important article. This hasn't happened (yet) in this case, but the potential is there. And the standard Wikimedia rules with software and a culture to support them make Wikiversity ideal for this kind of thing.
• Within the next couple of days, I plan to post a video of a presentation by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink discussing her take on the conflict between Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United States and Israel, with a transcript.

However, before I create an article on this recent presentation by Medea Benjamin, I want to document the process of creating such articles. That requires an appropriate title, and I'd prefer to have feedback from others on what to call this before I create a title that might not be as good as one that you might think of.

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 00:23, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

• Title suggestion: The Conflict between Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:40, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

• Title suggestion2: The peaceful co-existence between Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States, since 1946, my personal favorite! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:11, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

• Wikiversity doesn't generally have a notability requirement. It has an educational objectives requirement. This proposal would certainly seem to qualify as having educational objectives.

Copyright permissions aren't required for links. Link to the content you wish to discuss rather than copying it, and that should cover usage rights for content others have created. Of course, you are welcome to post content and videos you have created yourself and already own rights to.

"Event documentation", to me, doesn't invite discussion or interaction. Documentation, at least in my field, has a different connotation, such as Read The (Friendly) Manual. What I hear and see in the description above and how the Inclusivity and Diversity issue was handled is "moderated discussion". In many ways, it may be similar in concept (but not approach) to what User:Sophivorus has done with a variety of controversial discussion questions. Perhaps another term would be Wikidebates, unless that is specifically reserved for pages using the dialectic algorithm. Wikidebate or moderated discussion make sense to me.

Marshallsumter's suggestion above is fine for the immediate issue. Perhaps Wikidebate or moderated discussion are category or overall learning project options. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:00, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

A Wikiversity article and a category already exists for Wikidebate; I see that User:Dave Braunschweig has contributed to that article.

A search for "Wikiverity moderated discussion" produced links to the article on the Torah and several of my articles under "Category:Freedom and abundance", which begin with a more or less standard opening that "This essay is on Wikiversity to encourage a wide discussion of the issues it raises moderated by the Wikimedia rules ...", mentioned above.

However, the Wikidebate examples I reviewed all followed a standard "* Argument", "(( Objection" format. That seems more formal than I think is needed AND seems NOT to start with the documentation of an event. It may be appropriate in some cases to structure the discussion using "* Argument", "(( Objection", but I'm not convinced that should be required or pushed very hard. ???

I'm thinking more of something like "Documentation with discussion" -- and the "moderated" part of the discussion should be implied by the standard Wikimedia rules, as I outlined above.

Comments? Thanks for your comments on this, DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 14:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Example of a good article

Could someone give me some links to some good articles so I can understand what an article here should look like? I'd be interested in contributing to this wiki. Thanks. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 01:46, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: Nice to see you here from en.voy (and elsewhere!) A distinction between this project and Wikipedia is that here we have a module versus an article: a learning resource would be something dynamic that can involve instruction, outward links, original research, collaboration, and media. E.g. see the Bloom Clock: this has original research that a bunch of individual users have submitted. See Category:Featured resources for more resources that are high quality around here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:06, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

That's useful to know, it looks like each article is like a project of its own. However, I'm wondering in the case of an article like US States/California. What kind of improvements would make that article better by Wikiversity (WV seems a little ambiguous here!) standards? SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 02:45, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

If I'm being 100% honest, I'm not sure that there are a lot of learning resources about California. One nice thing that we can do here is provide direction, commentary, and discussion. So something that would work here but not at most other WMF projects would be something like a forum where users can discuss the relative merits of books on California history or provide a directory of links, which is something Wikipedia explicitly can't do. This project grew out of b: and like that project, most individual resources are effectively run by one person (but everyone can edit anything here): so the California resource can be what you think it should be. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:55, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I see. I think I'm getting the idea. Spanish 1 looks like a good example of what an article can be, but as I can tell, there's no specific format like you'd find at other wikis, in particular Wikivoyage. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 02:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

The way that I put it is that this project is the Wild West: there is really not much in the way of structure or precedent here. That is both an asset and a liability. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:01, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Wow, sounds interesting. I'll get to this project when I can, perhaps tomorrow, I'll see how the time goes. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 04:08, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

You can go crazy. See some things I am kinda/sorta working on: User:Koavf/The Perfect Cup of Tea and Learning bass guitar with Joseph Patrick Moore. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:35, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

That's funny. People on a lot of wiki sites would go nuts. I'm definitely warming to the idea. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 14:42, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

1. First, sign up your group here.
2. Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
3. Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
   1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
   2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
   3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
   4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
   5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
4. Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:01, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Geography

Over the last few days, I have rewritten this article and added it to the course category by adding the template that says, "Type classification: this resource is a course." This adds the page to the course category.

But is there anything else that needs to be done to make a page into a course? Or is even a course the best category for this page?

Thanks for any input.

SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 01:06, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: Good work! Just a couple of ideas to consider. First, avoid the use of "here" links. They aren't descriptive for users with screen readers. See WebAIM: Links and Hypertext for more information. Second, think about "chunking" this resource into an overview and separate lesson subpages. There's too much content on the page at this point. See Wikipedia: Chunking (psychology) for more information. The separation would also provide an opportunity for appropriate maps or other graphics on each subpage, and help enhance the learning experience for visual learners. After that, it would certainly appear to be a course from my perspective. If you review some of the Category:Featured resources, you'll see different options for how to implement navigation for lessons within a course. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 04:12, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Sure, I'll do that in the near future. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 04:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Never mind, you beat me to it! I'll get to work on the chunking part soon. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 04:33, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dave Braunschweig: How do you like it now? Or do you want me to break it down some more? Thanks for your thoughts so far. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 03:10, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

@SelfieCity: Like beauty, good course design is often in the eye of beholder. If you're asking me, I would say to structure it more like Lua. That's a course I updated just for Wikiversity, not as a real-world course, and was based first on existing content. The idea is that each lesson stands alone, and the collection of lessons builds the course.

But whatever you choose, what I would recommend is that you go for consistency across course sections. If it makes sense to do it one way for part of the course, it should make sense to do it the same way throughout. The current Geography design gives the impression that later sections aren't as important or aren't as complete as the first two sections. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:50, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I’ll work on those ideas. Thanks for the inspiration and recommendation! SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 02:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

I've now done most of it, as you can see. I'll probably split up the continents into individual articles eventually, but for now I'll focus on getting the quizzes done. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 01:16, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I have now split up the continent articles to five: the Americas, Eurasia, Asia, Oceania, and Australia. SelfieCity (discuss • contribs) 19:10, 9 March 2019 (UTC)