Wikiversity:Portal reform

Introduction

If you try to list Wikiversity portals like this, it isn't very helpful. The following is a list of current portals on Wikiversity, together with comments and reform proposals. (Date: 12th May 2008).

Reform proposals

Name	Notes	Reform proposal
Portal:Advanced General Studies		Implement old proposal to merge with School:Advanced General Studies (leave a redirect here)
Portal:Applied sciences	Needs finishing.
Portal:Art and design	Needs portal-izing.
Portal:Arts	Needs finishing.
Portal:Asteroid Surveys	Redirects to mainspace article.	Delete the redirect.
Portal:Biology
Portal:Browse	Redirects to Wikiversity:Major portals.	Redirect to Wikiversity:Browse.
Portal:Chemistry
Portal:Christianity	Mainly a list of links; not portal-ized.	Move to Topic or main namespace, leaving a redirect.
Portal:Communities	Redirects to Portal:Learning Projects.
Portal:Community	Almost no content; an idea which never took off.	Redirect to Portal:Learning Projects.
Portal:Computer Science
Portal:Construction		Implement existing proposal to merge with School:Construction; replace with a redirect when done.
Portal:Cultural studies	Underdeveloped; needs portal-izing.	Perhaps move to another namespace?
Portal:Education
Portal:Engineering and Technology
Portal:English
Portal:FLOSS4Science	Includes a very large number of subpages with real content.	The entire project needs moving to the main namespace.
Portal:Fine Arts	Not portal-ized, but well-developed.	Merge with Portal:Arts leaving redirect.
Portal:First Year Medical School Program	Very new. Left message with sole author offering to move to main namespace.
Portal:French	Redirects to Topic:French.
Portal:Game design	Underdeveloped.	Merge with School:Game Design and leave redirect here.
Portal:Geography
Portal:German		Merge with Topic:German and leave redirect here.
Portal:History
Portal:Humanities	Well developed.	Could do with a facelift.
Portal:Information sciences	Needs finishing.
Portal:Interdisciplinary Studies
Portal:Languages
Portal:Law	Very underdeveloped. Needs portal-izing.
Portal:Learning Materials
Portal:Learning projects
Portal:Life Sciences
Portal:Linguistics	Already tagged for cleanup.	Merge with School:Linguistics and leave redirect here.
Portal:Mathematics		The problem here is that this subject is massively important at pre-tertiary level, but the portal is very tertiary-orientated. Suggestion: move current portal to Portal:Mathematical sciences and then re-create Portal:Mathematics as a pre-tertiary portal. Coordinate between the two.
Portal:Media
Portal:Medical School Program	Freshly created. Could be a speedy delete, but need to ask User:Pnstarr first.
Portal:Music	Originally this had a lot of real content, but most of it was moved to the main namespace. This is still quite a mess.	Move the remaining real content to the main namespace (watch especially for subpages). Then redesign the portal.
Portal:Non-formal Education
Portal:Participants
Portal:Physical Sciences
Portal:Physics	(redirects to Physics and Astronomy)
Portal:Physics and Astronomy
Portal:Plant Sciences	OK, but a redesign wouldn't hurt.
Portal:Portals	A guide to all portals. Not portal-ized. Could be redesigned and improved.	Merge with Wikiversity:Portals?
Portal:Practical Arts and Sciences		This is a poorly named miscellany of subject areas. It is suggested that the individual subject areas should be moved out to different and more conventional portals (e.g. vocational studies; applied sciences), and that the portal should then be deleted.
Portal:Pre-school Education
Portal:Primary Education
Portal:Professional and vocational studies	Needs finishing.
Portal:Professions		Merge with Portal:Professional and vocational studies. Some of the areas covered are either already in more suitably named portals, or would deserve their own portal (e.g. Portal:medicine).
Portal:Psychology	Needs finishing.	see also: here
Portal:Public Engagement	Only content is a link to Portal:Public Engagement and Civic Innovation.	Proposed for deletion.
Portal:Public Engagement and Civic Innovation	Skeleton only.	Proposed for deletion.
Portal:Reading clubs	Redirects to Portal:Reading groups
Portal:Reading groups
Portal:Research
Portal:School of History	Redirects to School:history.
Portal:Science		"Science" is far too wide ranging for this to be helpful. Replace with a "disambiguation portal" which quickly and clearly guides users to more useful and slight narrower portals such as Bioloy, Physics, Chemistry, Applied Sciences, Life Sciences, Information Sciences, etc.
Portal:Secondary Education
~~Portal:Slavistics~~	Was empty. Already moved to School:Slavic studies.
Portal:Social Entrepreneurship Network	Redirects to Portal:Social entrepreneurship.	Delete the redirect.
Portal:Social Research	Underdeveloped and forgotten. Was created together with Portal:Social Theory.	Move to main namespace.
Portal:Social Sciences
Portal:Social Theory	Underdeveloped and forgotten. Was created together with Portal:Social Research.	Move to main namespace and merge with Portal:Social Research.
Portal:Social entrepreneurship	Loads of real content here.	Move the entire project to the main namespace.
Portal:Sociology	Redirects to School:Sociology.
Portal:Tertiary Education
Portal:Test		Delete. We don't need this any more.
~~Portal:TestPortal~~	A one-time experiment, now deleted.
Portal:Test preparation	Underdeveloped.	Move to main namespace.
Portal:Theology and philosophy	Needs separation. Two different schools.
Portal:Thought	Redirects to Topic:thought.
Portal:Wiki		Merge with Portal:Wikimedia Studies and leave redirect here.
Portal:Wikimedia Studies	Unfinished.
Portal:Wikiversity		Is its purpose justified? Or is this what the main page should be doing? The lack of activity here suggests it hasn't really worked. Redirect to the main page.
Portal:Writing Center	One of the most active portals.	Move to the Topic namespace. Clear up the double redirects. Note: loads of redirects are built up around the various English language pages - lots of tidying needed here.

Voting and comment

Merge Portal:Plant Sciences with School:Plant sciences --Gbaor 12:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Move Portal:Life Sciences to Portal:Life sciences - naming conventions. The existing redirect should be deleted first. --Gbaor 12:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Pages linking to Portal:Sociology and Portal:Thought have been tidied up, thus these redirects could be deleted. -- Jtneill - Talk 05:24, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note that Portal:Social entrepreneurship has a rather subterranean subpage structure which follows... -- Jtneill - Talk 14:24, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes - I'm aware. But I reckon it will have to be moved - its main namespace stuff. --McCormack 17:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
merge Portal:Advanced General Studies into School:Advanced General Studies: support, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 16:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just noting that on the talk page, Kim Tucker, who is mainly (solely?) responsible for Portal:FLOSS4Science and Portal:Social Entrepreneurship, has expressed his opposition to a move of these portals to the main namespace on the grounds that they contain primarily organisational material rather than "real content". I will therefore suggest to him that the Topic namespace might also be a good alternative for his purposes. --McCormack 17:10, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Agree re moving to Topic namespace; content appears to largely consist of links to external resources, with several subpages. -- Jtneill - Talk 14:04, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Mind you, if the links are mainly external, it ought really to be main namespace stuff. Organisational namespaces like Portal and Topic are for organising wikiversity material. --McCormack 15:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Not convinced: Ktucker 12:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC) [Note: reasons given just below.][reply]
  - I thought the purpose of the "Portal" namespace was to identify/cluster areas of wikiversity which serve as "portals". The definition of "portal" has been contentious. But to me in this context, a portal is a site which
    - helps people find out what educational initiatives related to a topic are out there (including those on already on Wikiversity),
    - facilitates/catalyses collaboration among parties to co-create learning resources - preferably on Wikiversity - the challenge for the broader community is towards interoperability (see for example OER Interoperability meeting and OER Interoperability Sprint)
    - serves as a venue for showcasing learning resources, educators, student projects, etc.
    - The actual learning resources developed should be in the general default name space. Kim 10:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Re: 'Topic:' name space:
    - Social Entrepreneurship is an example of a growing number of multidisciplinary fields which do not fit naturally in traditional hierarchies (e.g. Social Science? Business Science? Humanities?). In the Social entrepreneurship portal we have a "Topics" box which is really just links to some of the top level categories we have created - a custom hierarchy for the Social Entrepreneurship portal. The pages found when browsing categories includes pages in various name spaces (as required :-). The categories do not correspond to the Wikiversity concept of "Topics" (traditional university hierarchies - "divisions", "departments", "centers", "programs").
    - FLOSS4Science is intended as a portal for any user of Wikiversity from any field of science to be able to find FLOSS to use, find people to share experiences and co-create learning resources for their field which use the software, and network with (or among) developers of FLOSS for science. So, the portal itself does not fit in the standard "topic" hierarchies, though the learning resources which appear on Wikiversity and linked to from this portal probably will (though they should be in the default main name space and structured in Wikiversity via Categories). Kim 10:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - So, I am still not convinced that these portals should be moved to the Topics name space. Kim 10:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Portal:Portals could be merged somehow with: Wikiversity:Portal, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 17:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Portal:Science. I do not understand the idea that "'Science' is far too wide ranging for this to be helpful." I believe that, "Portals can be created to serve the needs of specific topic areas, whether large or small". --JWSchmidt 01:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wikiversity:Major portals - another portal related page in the Wikiversity namespace. It seems to be useful, but I think it a little bit out of date. Shouldn't be also "reformed"? --Gbaor 12:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has a short list of links to major portals at the upper right corner of the main page. In addition to links to portals for different educational levels (primary, secondary, etc) I think Wikiversity should return to the practice of including a group of links from our main page to our most important major subject portals. --JWSchmidt 16:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- - To the unsigned editor (above): the main page does include links to the main subject portals in a tree form; at the current time not all of these links are in the portal namespace (some are schools and some are categories or topics) because things need overhauling. Once the portal reform is implemented, the explorer tree can be updated to link more coherently to the major portals. Don't forget that the main page needs to have a certain aesthetic coherence - one should perhaps avoid throwing in a non-matching template. There is already an alternative template to the one you gave which coordinates aesthetically. --McCormack 15:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This particular template "Main Page navigation" is just one that was available as an example. The key point is that many people who come to Wikiversity are familiar with navigating Wikipedia. Wikiversity can help itself by not abandoning the idea of providing new visitors with navigation aids that are familiar to them. --JWSchmidt 16:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

School:Law is really portal-type content and should be merged into the undeveloped Portal:Law page. -- Jtneill - Talk 11:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

questions

merging and version history

What should we do when merging pages and both have talk pages with their version history ? ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 16:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Edit manually. ;-) --McCormack 17:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Well, both version histories can be kept with moving one talk page (e.g. talk page2) as subpage of the talk page1 (e.g. talk page1/Archive) and then make a link on talk page1 to it. But I was asking because there is a merge log available - I wonder if there is also a tool available which allows merge of pages ? I will digg later into this, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 17:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Many of these pages don't have much of a history. On the other hand, you raise a good point in the context of some mergers. For example, to keep the history, Portal:Fine Arts should probably be moved to Portal:Arts before the integration is started. --McCormack 17:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is an important point for us in the work we are doing. We are supporting content development by incentivising and rewarding people (students and educators) who edit pages. If we lose the history of the page, this approach and the research around uptake and usage among learners and educators will become really difficult. Kim 10:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like boilerplates

At some of the portals (e.g. Portal:History) I have seen that it is possible to create pages with boilerplates. I like this idea (e.g. because it helps newcomers easily to understand the syntax). About how to improve the boilerplate we can talk later.

Unfortunately this is used only at about 6 portals :-( Which is the best place to note this and more important to use this in the portal reforms ? I thought about here Portal talk:Portals, but well seems there is not so much action :-) ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 17:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

probably somewhere at Wikiversity:Portal, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 17:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - I had been intending to expand the use of these boilerplate page creation facilities. It's all a matter of time availability! One suggestion: most of these portals already have a related project box, and the boilerplate could include a project box. --McCormack 04:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Odd portal names

On hitting random portal, I got some weird ones: Portal:Learning_Materialsnew and Portal:Researchnew. What are these? -- Jtneill - Talk 14:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Things I deliberately left out because they were once work in progress. They can be deleted - just be careful (well, perhaps not - just zap 'em)! --McCormack 15:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or at least made into subpages, and perhaps changed to "/Concept" - which I think would make it uniform with the mainpage. But... --Remi 01:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- - The biggest problem with all these "concept" pages in the portal namespace is that they confuse the listings for anyone trying to analyse the namespace - there are perhaps 100 or so such pages. And currently they contain nothing other than copies of the portals they are supposed to belong to. It would be helpful in future if portal "concept" pages (or draft revisions) were created for the short time they were needed and then deleted afterwards. It's just basic housekeeping. --McCormack 04:01, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Perhaps encourage users to do this sort of thing in a "Sandbox" [[User:JBloggs/MySandBox]] Kim 10:31, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]