Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/July 2014

Non-existent page text needs change from admin

Wikivoyage If you check for a page that does not exist (e.g. asdlfkjo348fj0349jf), there are suggestions to search other WMF projects but Wikivoyage is absent. Can someone please add this? Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:05, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Y Done - If anyone needs to find this in the future, it's in MediaWiki:Newarticletext. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:52, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

learn software of computer

--117.239.47.178 (discuss) 09:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC) how to learn computer software?

It depends on whether by computer software you mean to learn computer applications or to learn computer programming. If you are looking for computer applications, try Computer Skills followed by Key Applications. If you are looking for computer programming, see Programming. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:55, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Sciences category

Just today a bot, specifically JackBot, changed 19 resources from being in the Category:Sciences to Category:Science. I've used both categories but do not consider them equivalent. It's a bit like the differences between languages and linguistics. Perhaps I have not been clearly differentiating between the two, but why has a bot decided to eliminate the former in preference for the latter? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:53, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Comment left for User:JackBot to reach consensus before continuing. According to bot rules, the bot must stop with a comment on its talk page. If it continues, post at Wikiversity:RCA so someone can block the bot until consensus is reached. I'll be offline most of the day today. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:39, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I was treating Special:UncategorizedPages when I noticed these two categories, not linked between themselves (the former one was linked to nothing actually). If it had been Category:Sciences names I wouldn't have touched it, but in this case it seemed too much confusing and stubby to me. Moreover I based my judgment on the interwiki architecture and the former category content (eg: Relational biology in Category:Sciences vs Biology in Category:Science), which you can see here. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 12:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I have looked at the Category:Science and noticed it has been placed immediately below the top Wikiversity category of Category:Contents. This top category contains only Category:Constructs‎, Category:Humanities‎, Category:Science, and Category:Engineering. The Category:Sciences would be better in this top category than Category:Science. The latter category also contains entities, sources, and objects of interest to science, as well as the sciences. May I suggest that the category within the top category be changed to Category:Sciences rather than Category:Science. I also have a resource Sciences which may be helpful in distinguishing between science and sciences. At present there is no science resource but I would like to create one to example the entities and things that are a focus for science as well as the scientific method. There is the resource What is science? that science redirects to. Engineering is often considered its own plural. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

There is some duplicate effort going on here. See Category:Categories which is described as the root category for Wikiversity, Category:Schools which is like a main category for all topics that are further organized into Category:Departments which are further organized into <subject> department categories, and there are also some School of <subject> categories as well. I would favor some simplification there, but am also inclined to create a Resources by topic category to go in Category:Resources to act as the main category for all resources organized by topic as well. -- darklama  13:18, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be a one or two step process to go from Category:Categories to Category:Contents. From a student's, teacher's, contributor's point of view what would be the best way to resolve this? Or, would a more diverse or all-encompassing structure that touches each be more helpful to newcomers and current contributors and participants alike? For example, Category:Categories could be in Category:Contents and vice versa, or would this create some kind of boom-loop? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:22, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Participants can click Wikiversity:Browse from the sidebar to start browsing Wikiversity. Category:Resources has been the main category for all main namespace contents up to this point, and its subcategories fill some of the lists for Wikiversity:Browse. I think Category:Contents should be renamed to describe its intended use more clearly, like resources by topic. I think topics could be connected through Category:Categories → Category:Resources → Category:Resources by topic → Category:<Topic>. Wikiversity:Browse could then list all resource topics as well while using a consistent category structure. -- darklama  22:46, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps Category:Contents could be renamed (moved) to Category:Resources by contents under Category:Resources. Category:Resources by topic may connote Category:Resources by department (or topic), which is also a good idea. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 01:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

{{BookCat}}?

BTW, speaking of uncategorized pages, the edits such as 1187784 should use {{BookCat}} (or {{BookCat|filing = deep}}, if necessary) instead of hard-coding the category name, if only to facilitate possible future renaming.

Similarly, I’d ask that the explicit categories of the Lua course subpages be replaced with the {{BookCat}} template invocations. (FWIW, I’d volunteer to perform this task myself, via my ISbot robot; see luxo:ISbot, for instance.) For one thing, this will make the members listed on the eponymous category page dispersed across different letters (‘B’ for Background, ‘S’ for Scribunto/Lua, etc.), instead of all being grouped together under ‘L’.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 13:13, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I like using this template on Wikibooks, but here I would rather deploy {{CourseCat}} instead. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 16:01, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, I’ve checked {{CourseCat}}, and it’s still a redirect to {{BookCat}}, – just as it was when I’ve created it a week ago. Personally, I have no strong preference for either name. — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 17:55, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Lua is done. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:35, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

All right, that's much better like that. I'll adopt it for the remaining Special:UncategorizedPages. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 11:31, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Fiction, popular culture

Are there any classes about fiction here? I mean fiction is not typical for a classroom, but Wikipedia outlandishly has articles about popular culture, so why don't we have lessons about Caillou or Teletubbies or Duckman or Mona the Vampire or etc.?

I mean it would be quite silly to see:

"Are you ready for the test on Teletubbies?"

But since Wikipedia has articles on everything don't you think we should have lessons on everything as well?LalalalaSta (discuss • contribs) 04:29, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Notability Wikipedia operates on guidelines of notability so not everything is supposed to have an article. Have you checked Wikiversity:FAQ? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:43, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I know about Wikipedia's notability. What I'm talking about here is Wikiversity's inclusion of popular culture. Why do we not have articles on many important subjects of popular culture, such as Teletubbies? LalalalaSta (discuss • contribs) 04:57, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is a real request or just a troll. If it's a real request, be bold! Start a course on television and film studies or children's television. But be careful to contextualize your lessons on the educational aspects of the topic. Previous efforts on this type of content have not had educational objectives and were either speedy deleted or proposed for slow deletion. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:01, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech writing community still active?

Hello everybody,

My name is Andrew Pfeiffer and I'm still one of those "emerging academics". I have many passions and I am very impressed by all the good work going on here, but I'm not quite sure how to get started. . . My immediate interest is technical writing (also, basic computer science and English writing). Your tech writing course looks serious and helpful, and also decently well-viewed, but it seems that no one has modified any pages in quite some time. If there are still people involved in teaching or taking that course, where would I find them and get in touch with them?

Thank you for your suggestions! —Andrew Pfeiffer (discuss • contribs) 16:12, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Welcome Andrew! You can try posting something on the talk page of pages you are interested in, or here in the Colloquium for a wider call. But you are correct that the technical writing course does not appear to have anyone currently maintaining it. That gives you the opportunity to be bold and contribute wherever you'd like. My personal recommendation would be to find a page or course that you know a little bit about, and when you look at the content already here you say to yourself, 'Someone should fix that.' You're that someone. Jump in and make it better. And ask questions whenever you have them. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:43, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks, Dave! Looking forward to talking with you all soon. Andrew Pfeiffer (discuss • contribs) 21:58, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Promote wikiversity

I would like to get some feedback on an experiment we started on the Dutch wikiversity. The Dutch wikiversity is still in beta. To promote the wikiversity we contact researchers and other people with the question if they want to help writing an article about their research, etc. on the wikiversity. On the Dutch wikiversity we get very good response on this approach. A lot of people we contact only know wikipedia and they are very happy when somebody is interested in their work. We now have a list of people that we can contact every 2 (?) years and ask them what's keeping them busy. See the following link (Dutch) for more info: https://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wie_is/overzicht_personen. Is it possible to start a similar initiative on the English wikiversitity? Did somebody already try something like this. I would like to hear their experiences. Regards, Tim Ruijters, Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 23:35, 30 July 2014 (UTC)