Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/June 2021

The right perspective for approaching a wikidebate

@Sophivorus: and others:

Dialectic "a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned methods of argumentation"

Eristic "argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument, rather than searching for truth"

To encourage productive discourse in Wikidebates and at large, I'd like to add these definitions to the Wikidebate guidelines, and recommend that contributors use dialectic rather than eristic. In many other venues, political discussion usually takes the form of eristic, and I believe this a very bad cultural habit. Additionally, I don't think contributors should necessarily have to contribute in favor of both (or all) sides of a debate, though it may be useful at times to do so. Thoughts? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 17:01, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Also, I wasn't sure whether to put this suggestion on the Wikidebate talk, the Wikidebate guidelines talk, or somewhere else. Please let me know, and I will move it if this is not the right place, though it might attract more commenters here. It may be more useful to have the discussion here, and then move it to the relevant talk page if a consensus is reached, just because there seems to be very little traffic on Wikiversity talk pages at present. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 17:07, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Of course, I'm taking for granted that the objective of a debate should be to establish truth when the issue at hand is a matter of fact, or reach fair compromise where there are conflicting interests, and not merely to practice rhetoric. In grade school we were occasionally assigned to hold a debate and construct arguments. I found this a thoroughly useless exercise, because at no point did our instructors set forward any particular objective or goal aside from "disputing another's argument." We were just arguing for the sake of arguing and accomplished nothing. Did we earn credit for lateral thinking or reaching any particular objective? No, we earned credit for regurgitating all the common talking points. It was an exercise in compliance and mimicry. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Does Wikiversity support labs and practical activities?

I am looking for a wiki for Labs, Workshop, DIY and Factory, that is, for all the practical activities and procedures. I have layed out a draft at WikiSpore:Works Spore. Its scope is all the physical making activities and the purpose to provide "a free platform for makers, DIY, and Open-Source Hardware and Manufacturing enthusiasts to collaboratively design and develop open manufacturing solutions for the humanity; to share knowledge and instructions about Manufacturing." It needs to even provide support Massive open online Labs (MOOL), start task projects to solve human issues, as well as to act as a repository for designs and plans for 3D printing, manufacturing, etc. These all seem to complement the present Wikiversity:Services, but I could not find any procedure or experiment related content on Wikiversity. So, are these allowed in Wikiversity? Thank you! Vis M (discuss • contribs) 11:14, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@Vis M: See Wikiversity:Mission. Yes, I believe the things you mentioned would be appropriate for Wikiversity. For one example / approach to lab activities, see IT Fundamentals. For a MOOC approach, see Web Science. I do have two cautions, though.

1. You may have problems uploading 3D printing plans or other binary files. I'm not sure what the file format is, but we're fairly limited in those options. You might want to try one first and see how it goes.
2. We're careful to only link to other free communities and/or resources. Links to sites that use extensive advertising or other profit approaches for content hosting are best left out.

Go ahead and start creating what you have in mind and let us know how it goes. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:07, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thank you! Vis M (discuss • contribs) 08:47, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 1, June 2021Read the full newsletter

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Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.

You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated.

• Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
• 2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
• Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
• Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
• Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)

22:07, 10 June 2021‎

Please provide input here or on Meta and during an upcoming Global Conversation on 26-27 June 2021 about the Movement Charter drafting committee

Hello, I'm one of the Movement Strategy and Governance facilitators working on community engagement for the Movement Charter initiative.

We're inviting input widely from users of many projects about the upcoming formation of the Movement Charter drafting committee. You can provide feedback here, at the central discussion on Meta, at other ongoing local conversations, and during a Global Conversation upcoming on 26 and 27 June 2021.

“ The Movement Charter drafting committee is expected to work as a diverse and skilled team of about 15 members for several months. They should receive regular support from experts, regular community reviews, and opportunities for training and an allowance to offset costs. When the draft is completed, the committee will oversee a wide community ratification process. ” — Creating the drafting committee

Further details and context about these questions is on Meta along with a recently-updated overview of the Movement Charter initiative. Feel free to ask questions, and add additional sub-sections as needed for other areas of interest about this topic.

If contributors are interested in participating in a call about these topics ahead of the Global Conversation on 26 and 27 June, please let me know. Xeno (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 17:06, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

The three questions are:

1. What composition should the committee have in terms of movement roles, gender, regions, affiliations and other diversity factors?

2. What is the best process to select the committee members to form a competent and diverse team?

3. How much dedication is it reasonable to expect from committee members, in terms of hours per week and months of work?

Server switch

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The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 29 June 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday 30 June).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the week of June 28. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:19, 27 June 2021 (UTC)