Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/June 2016

Courses with no content

• There are many courses that have no or very little content. Some of these should be completed, deleted, or at least fleshed out. Its just dishonest to show a course that really does not exist. Who else feels this way? Is there any consensus on any action? [User:AgentCachet] (discuss • contribs) 04:02, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Yes, I think there is agreement that we have many pages with little or no content, some of which were intended to be courses. All of them should be completed or deleted. You are welcome to complete those that interest you. You can add {{subst:prod}} to propose deletion of any that show little interest by others and little activity. Use Wikiversity:Statistics/2016/05 or View history / Page Views to determine interest, and View history to determine activity. Note that there is already an effort in place to review topics (Wikiversity:Topic Review), categories (Wikiversity:Category Review), and schools (Wikiversity:School Review). Please help wherever you can. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:02, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
  • I very strongly disagree with this. Just a basic syllabus/course outline with little to no actual content can still be extremely useful to both educators and students. Removing incomplete courses will do more harm than good to Wikiversity. I should also add that inactivity should never be a factor, since volunteers will come and go, and courses can always be finished in the indefinite future, whereas a deletion will only ensure that the course will never be completed. Another factor to consider is that having incomplete courses actually encourages more volunteers to contribute to Wikiversity since there is a clear need for contributions. Nicole Sharp (discuss • contribs) 18:53, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

grading system

• I think what might be helpful would be a Wikibooks-style grading system for courses, so that users can easily find courses by their level of completion. The lowest tier for a course would be same as the start of any college course, i.e. just a syllabus/outline. A simple outline can then be expanded section by section, until the sections/lessons become large enough to be their own courses, and then the course becomes a department, and so on. Nicole Sharp (discuss • contribs) 19:31, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

See Category:Completed resources. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:33, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Just FYI but several of us use what we call dynamic courses or course structure. In short, it means the course is completed as found and is expanding as well as more resource material is added. Principles of radiation astronomy is a completed course but is not in the Category:Completed resources, for example. It is a complete semester style course for advanced undergraduates or graduate students, but undergoes changes with semesters. This fall has several lectures and laboratories replaced by newer ones. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:59, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

JavaScript

Hi. I can see that this project has old JavaScript that needs to be updated. I would happily make the required updates myself, but I would have to – at least temporarily – become an admin here to do that (because the relevant pages are in the MediaWiki namespace). I have already made these updates on a number of other projects, so it would be very easy for me to do this. If no one does anything, some JavaScript-related tools will break later this year. If you want me to make these updates, you can grant me admin rights and I will make the updates as soon as I can. Nirmos (discuss • contribs) 22:06, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Please point to what needs to be updated and the code you have on another project that is already working. That will be an easier approach here. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Community support/vote to create the "autopatrolled", "patroller" usergroup

While we certainly need some policies to go along with this, creating a new usergroup for what we've been calling "probationary custodians" would really be a good idea. The usergroup should be defined as having exactly the same permissions as custodians, but allowing for local removal. Let's get it done. This usergroup could be assigned by current "full" custodians, and taken away by current "full" custodians. In other words: a custodian who has been approved by the community can give and take away access to the "buttons" that we use to solve problems on the wiki:

"Group rights for autopatrolled"

autopatrol

"Group rights for patroller"

autopatrol

patrol

rollback

User rights. 188.32.98.235 (discuss) 03:16, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

See Wikiversity:Curators. Autopatrolled isn't included, but so far there hasn't been anyone willing to patrol. Also note that probationary custodianship is no longer an option. Per WMF Legal, users may not have Undelete rights unless approved by the community. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:34, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

@Dave Braunscheig: autopatrolled, patrolled user group rights not yets on user rights not created. 188.32.98.235 (discuss) 06:34, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Not created. 188.32.99.5 (discuss) 11:33, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Two new errors on the "Rodger's method" entry

I have just noticed two errors that were not previously present. Both begin with "Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.")"

To my knowledge, no changes were made to the text, and I need some help to figure out what is causing these errors and how to fix them. Thanks.

HamiltonRoberts (discuss • contribs) 20:23, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

On the More menu at the top of the page, there is an option to Purge. This forces the server to reprocess page rendering. That seems to resolve the issue. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:58, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Dave for your very quick and helpful response. I certainly wasn't expecting such an easy way to remove those two error messages! HamiltonRoberts (discuss • contribs) 02:04, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

coursera and courses...

I came to know the coursera is removing their online courses. I read it here. It'd be cool to have those courses running here on wikiversity. I am not a computer geek or somthing like that. Just that, if it's possible, then it'd be great if some people could work on this. Also, it'd be lot cooler if wikiversity could work more on moocs. I don't know but I had heard moocs are also released on creative commons license. Just saying that adding other courses from other places'd make wikiversity great.

Thanks, if you read it. Cheers from Nepal. :) :) --Learnerktm (discuss • contribs) 14:01, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. Some MOOCs are licensed through Creative Commons, but they have to be found somewhere other than Coursera. Their site has an explicit copyright with all rights reserved. One of the Coursera courses I took is available elsewhere through a CC-BY-SA license, and I'm currently using that one to develop Python Programming. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:36, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Academic works translations needed before wikimania

Hi,

I've finished a French academic work named Ethical drift with in Wikimedia movement and I will finish soon a other one named For a better economic justice with in the Wikimedia movement. I would like to translate this two works in English before Wikimania for sharing the contain with the whole community and maybe inspire discussion during the week. I didn't have time and competence to do it my self before Wikimania. Is that in this forum any person who can help me, starting translation or pointing a place where I can found this kind of help ? Thanks in advance Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{(French native speaker)} 15:21, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Google Translate does a surprisingly good job with both articles. Go with that and you probably don't need any additional assistance. Just read it through and make sure it still says what you intend. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:14, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

@Lionel Scheepmans: En Meta, avec Metawikie'ns francos: Category:Translators_fra-eng. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:03, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks,Dave Braunschweig and Justin I gone check this. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{(French native speaker)} 20:06, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Ok, never mine. I've found a trick system to present my works in english thanks to google : For a Fair Economy in the Wikimedia movement and Ethical Drifts in the Wikimedia movement. A nice day for every one. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{(French native speaker)} 21:16, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Compact Language Links enabled in this wiki today

Screenshot of Compact Language Links interlanguage list

Compact Language Links has been available as a beta-feature on all Wikimedia wikis since 2014. With compact language links enabled, users are shown a much shorter list of languages on the interlanguage link section of an article (see image). Based on several factors, this shorter list of languages is expected to be more relevant for them and valuable for finding similar content in a language known to them. More information about compact language links can be found in the documentation.

From today onwards, compact language links has been enabled as the default listing of interlanguage links on this wiki. However, using the button at the bottom, you will be able to see a longer list of all the languages the article has been written in. The setting for this compact list can be changed by using the checkbox under User Preferences -> Appearance -> Languages

The compact language links feature has been tested extensively by the Wikimedia Language team, which developed it. However, in case there are any problems or other feedback please let us know on the project talk page. It is to be noted that on some wikis the presence of an existing older gadget that was used for a similar purpose may cause an interference for compact language list. We would like to bring this to the attention of the admins of this wiki. Full details are on this phabricator ticket. Thank you. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team:--Runab WMF (discuss • contribs) 07:43, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Beta features Although it's nice to get new features and good that users have more options for display and such, it's not really that important when this project has the least interwiki options of any WMF project... —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:52, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

What interwiki options are there that we could have and do not have? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 23 June 2016 (UTC)