Wikiversity:Portal reform

Introduction

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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

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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

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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]


questions

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merging and version history

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  • 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

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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

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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]

See also

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