Wikiversity:Colloquium

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"When the pupil is ready to learn, a teacher will appear." — Zen proverb (discuss)

Creating a New Course

Greetings,

Hope all is well. I am new to Wikiversity and am trying to understand the workings of it all. I am a student research assistant to a prof and will be posting his course published on the German Wikiversity onto the English one (in English of course).

I have 2 requests and would greatly appreciate your support:

When I tried to post the first page, it blocked me with the following messages: "This action has been automatically identified as potentially harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: New User Exceeded New Page Limit" "This action has been automatically identified as potentially harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: New User Created Page with External Link"

And my other question is on how the course can have full protection with my username and my professor's to be added as admin.

Thank you in advance for your support and guidance UniBambergIslamicStudies (discuss • contribs) 08:15, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Welcome. As you can probably surmise from the message, we have filters in place to keep new users from posting a raft of pages. Typically, when someone is a very new user and posts a lot of pages all at once, those pages are either spam or low quality, so it's best to focus on making a few higher-quality pages and build those up than post a ton of smaller or lower-quality pages all at once. As far as making any one user an admin over a single page or handful of pages, that's not how things work here. In principle, basically every user can edit basically every page and we generally consider that a strength, so if you really want to have some version of a page that no one else can edit, then this is not really a good place to post your material. That said, there are a couple of facts that may be relevant: in practice, individual modules are generally passion projects that one or a few users work on and they generally don't get edits from many users. Additionally, you could also wait until pages are at what you want to be a stable version and export that as a PDF and upload it to our sister project Commons and then have a version on a page here, so you can point users to whatever learning module version 1.0. Maybe not ideal for what you have in mind, but those are the closest I can think of to what you want to accomplish on this site. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:25, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikibooks draft genAI policy

"The Wikibooks community is developing a policy on the use of generative AI. Please review the draft policy and provide feedback on its talk page." (from their sitenotice). Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:02, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I wrote a decent amount of an early draft of that and I recommend that we adopt the final language as a policy here as well, especially considering the open-ended nature of this site. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:08, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

That's interesting to know @Koavf:. I read it over and generally like and am generally supportive. Although I am a little more liberal about what I think could be allowed. I'll post more re Wikiversity below. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:41, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikiversity draft genAI policy

We could wait for Wikibooks and then consider adopting their artificial intelligence policy. Or we could have a crack ourselves and see what we come up with.

I'm curious to try the latter and see where we get.

I am motivated partly because I'll have ~160 students editing here in a few weeks time on the Motivation and emotion/Book/2024 and I'm allowing them to use genAI with acknowledgement, fact checking, rewriting etc. Here is the current policy for this project: Motivation and emotion/Assessment/Using generative AI.

For Wikiversity, let's contribute and discuss: Wikiversity:Artificial intelligence (draft policy)

Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:41, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Seeking to Explain Basic Physics With a Bouncy Ball Video Game

Hello there,

For the past month, I've been building a non-conventional course about algebra-based mechanical physics as explained through Bonk.io, a multiplayer physics browser game that runs on the BOX2D engine. To note, I have a limited background on the subject as I've only taken high school leveled physics and AP Physics C: Mechanics, and I'm still in high school currently.

The current existing content for the course is called the "Physics, Explained Through Bonk.io" project and is on the Bonk.io Wiki, which is on Fandom. Although I cannot link to Fandom-based sites, I encourage for you to search for it if you're interested. At this time, I've added content for kinematics, constructing Unit 1 of the course. Currently, I'm adding dynamics content for Unit 2.

My motivations for writing these pages are to offer physics content that is more approachable and engaging, taking advantage of the game's medium. To accomplish this, I've been using video clips representing a variety of different physical scenarios to break down and explain real-world topics. More specifically, my aim has been to carefully build up concepts within the course and to incorporate skill practice alongside it regularly, seeking to have the course content also be rigorous and thorough. In particular, this can be seen with Topic 1.5 - Motion in Two Dimensions.

To clarify my interest here, I'm seeking to replicate my existing work from the Bonk.io Wiki onto Wikiversity and then continue my project here. This is for multiple reasons including difficulties with the Fandom website, including a poor user experience for those without an ad-blocker or an account on the platform. In addition, there may be opportunities for a larger audience for the course if it's not constrained to a niche video game community.

Although I understand that the Wikiversity community is specifically supportive of non-conventional courseware, I'm unsure if this course would be helpful to the existing work on this site. To note, I'm new to contributing to Wikiversity and Wikimedia in general. As such, I have a handful of questions below to get a better idea of whether this project would be practical and feasible here.

• Are there other projects in this community that have attempted similar tasks, as in explaining real-world content through a video game? Especially if this isn't the case, would this project's topicality be somehow against this community's content policy or standards?
• The content on the Bonk.io Wiki is published under a CC-BY-SA license. To my understanding, this would require referencing Fandom for any content that is transferred onto this site. On Wikiversity, is it okay to copy content from outside of the community, provided that the authors of the content are the same? Or would this either be considered as self-plagiarism or otherwise be against this community's policies?
• I'm uncertain whether there are significant differences between the capabilities of Wikimedia and Fandom for custom text colors, video players, and other features. With the content that I've made so far in the project, would it likely be transferable to Wikiversity without extensive changes?

Thank you in advance. TheMonkeyEatsBananas (discuss • contribs) 10:22, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

• I am not familiar with one and Wikiversity is a pretty small project, so you could probably find similar coursework pretty easily if it existed here. To the extent that I understand what you're trying to do, it is not against any standards here.
• You do need to provide attribution for any material that you copy here, yes. The best way to do that is to add a link in your edit summary and post to the talk page. Strictly speaking, CC BY can have some subtle requirements for how someone is credited, but you're not likely to encounter any problems if you do this. Additionally, you can export pages and import them into other wikis, but that is sometimes technically complicated and will require an admin (curator or custodian). And yes, this would be okay and consistent with our local licensing.
• You have substantially more options to customize things here versus Fandom. You would not be able to directly embed external videos, which is a feature there.

Let me know if you have any other questions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter is ending soon

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Hello everyone,

This is a kind reminder that the voting period to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter will be closed on July 9, 2024, at 23:59 UTC.

If you have not voted yet, please vote on SecurePoll.

On behalf of the Charter Electoral Commission,

RamzyM (WMF) 03:47, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

U4C Special Election - Call for Candidates

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Hello all,

A special election has been called to fill additional vacancies on the U4C. The call for candidates phase is open from now through July 19, 2024.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members are invited to submit their applications in the special election for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

In this special election, according to chapter 2 of the U4C charter, there are 9 seats available on the U4C: four community-at-large seats and five regional seats to ensure the U4C represents the diversity of the movement. No more than two members of the U4C can be elected from the same home wiki. Therefore, candidates must not have English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, or Italian Wikipedia as their home wiki.

Read more and submit your application on Meta-wiki.

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-- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting results

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Hello everyone,

After carefully tallying both individual and affiliate votes, the Charter Electoral Commission is pleased to announce the final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter voting.  

As communicated by the Charter Electoral Commission, we reached the quorum for both Affiliate and individual votes by the time the vote closed on July 9, 23:59 UTC. We thank all 2,451 individuals and 129 Affiliate representatives who voted in the ratification process. Your votes and comments are invaluable for the future steps in Movement Strategy.

The final results of the Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification voting held between 25 June and 9 July 2024 are as follows:

Individual vote:

Out of 2,451 individuals who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 2,446 have been accepted as valid votes. Among these, 1,710 voted “yes”; 623 voted “no”; and 113 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 73.30% voted to approve the Charter (1710/2333), while 26.70% voted to reject the Charter (623/2333).

Affiliates vote:

Out of 129 Affiliates designated voters who voted as of July 9 23:59 (UTC), 129 votes are confirmed as valid votes. Among these, 93 voted “yes”; 18 voted “no”; and 18 selected “–” (neutral). Because the neutral votes don’t count towards the total number of votes cast, 83.78% voted to approve the Charter (93/111), while 16.22% voted to reject the Charter (18/111).

Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation:

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted not to ratify the proposed Charter during their special Board meeting on July 8, 2024. The Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Nataliia Tymkiv, shared the result of the vote, the resolution, meeting minutes and proposed next steps.  

With this, the Wikimedia Movement Charter in its current revision is not ratified.

We thank you for your participation in this important moment in our movement’s governance.

The Charter Electoral Commission,

Abhinav619, Borschts, Iwuala Lucy, Tochiprecious, Der-Wir-Ing

MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 17:54, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

FYI: AWA Anglophone Bi-weekly Webinar : Creating Courses on Wikiversity

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/07/20/awa-anglophone-bi-weekly-webinar-creating-courses-on-wikiversity/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:12, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikiphilosophers

Hi! On Meta-Wiki I submitted a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project called Wikiphilosophers. Its goal is to explore, develop and exchange countless philosophical ideas posted and discussed by users. Now I have been advised to first run the project on another Wikimedia project. I tried to start the project on Wikibooks (see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiphilosophers), but it's not allowed there because it contains individual thoughts/original research. A user on Wikibooks advised me to ask on Wikiversity whether it would be allowed to start the project here. For more information about the project, see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiphilosophers. I think Wikiversity would be a good place to start the project because people can exchange ideas on philosophical topics and learn from each other. I would love to hear from someone! Kind regards, S. Perquin (discuss • contribs) 16:40, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

@S. Perquin: Thanks for sharing the idea. I think the Wikiphilosophers project is very suitable to Wikiversity. An example of a project running here on Wikiversity which is aiming to one day have its own WMF sister project is WikiJournals. Indeed, Wikiversity was once a project on Wikibooks until it become its own sister project. Feel free to check out Philosophy and start a subpage or maybe you could use Portal:Philosophy or you could start a main space page for the project. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 09:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

What great news! I will immediately start the project within Wikiversity! Kind regards, S. Perquin (discuss • contribs) 17:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I have been writing philosophical articles for some time in the mainspace. Thus, there is e.g. An analysis of truth, An analysis of identity and One man's look at hedonism. The key differentiator of Wikiversity is that it allows original research. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 11:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Cool! If you would like to summarize your ideas in the project; feel free to create pages! Kind regards, S. Perquin (discuss • contribs) 17:36, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Vote now to fill vacancies of the first U4C

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Dear all,

I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now through August 10, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C,

RamzyM (WMF) 02:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Fair use on Wikiversity

According to Wikiversity:Uploading_files#Exemption_Doctrine_Policy (EDP) fair use is allowed on Wikiversity in some cases.

Right now there are more than 2,700 files in Category:All non-free media. But after several discussions about files uploaded as fair use by Marshallsumter there have been deleted many unused files and per Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion#Deleting ALL non-free uploads by User:Marshallsumter there seems to be agreement to mass delete uploads by Marshallsumter (more than 1,100 files).

There also seems to be support to delete any copyvio or file that does not meet the requirements of the EDP. Not a surprise!

The easy solution would of course be to stop allowing fair use. But unless there is concensus to do so and mass delete all non-free files I think someone have to try to clean up.

It will be a big task to go through the files uploaded as fair use to make sure they all meet the requirements. But I did a few random checks and found a few that I think does not qualify:

1. File:10372572 10202793042199912 859331590740509955 n.jpg seems to be own work by uploader so uploader could have chosen a free license. The file was unlicensed but Marshallsumter added a fair use tag.
2. File:1structurewithoutsecondshelve.jpg same here except this time fair use tag was added by MaintenanceBot.
3. File:2.4.17.JPG same here.

So before anyone spend time checking non-free files I think it would be good to discuss if there should be any changes in the EDP and how we understand the EDP. Otherwise we will waste time and perhaps have to go throught the files again.

Fair_use#Fair_use_at_Wikiversity explain that screenshots of reviewed software can be used. But it mentions nothing else. It could be an indication that it is mostly screenshots that should be uploaded as fair use. But it could also just be because whoever made the page wanted to explain why screenshots can be allowed.

Besides WHAT should be allowed there is also HOW LONG files should be allowed. The files I mentioned above seems to be allowed because they were a part of a school project. But what when the project is over? Should the non-free files then be deleted? School projects mostly benefit the students that takes part in the project. Once the project have been ended and evaluated then I think it is hard to say there is still so much value in it that it still qualifies as fair use.

I think it would reduce the work required to check the files would be reduced a lot if we said that all non-free files more than 2 or 3 years old could deleted unless there are strong indications that it still has a value.

So what do you all think? --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 21:22, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Good questions. A couple of comments:

Sounds like we need some work on Wikiversity:Fair use to provide greater clarity.

In general, I think we'd prefer to see media uploaded or moved to Wikimedia Commons where there are more human resources for checking appropriate use. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:54, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Reminder! Vote closing soon to fill vacancies of the first U4C

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Dear all,

The voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is closing soon. It is open through 10 August 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility. If you are eligible to vote and have not voted in this special election, it is important that you vote now.

Why should you vote? The U4C is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community input into the committee membership is critical to the success of the UCoC.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

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-- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

User group for Wikiversians

Was there ever a discussion about the possibility of establishing a user group in the sense of an affiliated organization that would defend the interests of professors and scientists on Wikiversity and possibly actively develop some projects? Juandev (discuss • contribs) 20:21, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:20, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Rich's Illustrated Companion at Wikiversity: Right place?

Hello! I am creating a Wiki-version of a classical glossary (Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon by Anthony Rich, 1849), which explains the meaning of Latin headwords, primarily those "representing visible objects connected with the arts, manufactures, and every-day life of the Greeks and Romans." The aim is to help understand what a (classical) Latin text is actually about, instead of merely translating it. I already transcribed the entire text and scanned the images (about 1900) from an original 1849-edition. I am currently working on uploading the images to Mediawiki Commons, which probably will take some time. In the meantime I want to prepare the other aspects of the project (more than 3000 articles, already with many internal links). The important thing: this is not a might exist-project. My question: Is Wikiversity the proper place for it? Although I created an exact rendition of the original text, Wikisource is not applicable, because the project has a broader scope (adding content to the articles, e. g. links to online editions for quotations, adding images, but also adding entirely new articles). Neither is Wikibooks, because this is not a textbook and may otherwise breach its scope. For more about the project see my user-page at en.wikipedia. So, is Wikiversity the right place for it? CalRis25 (discuss • contribs) 09:15, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. To be clear, it is acceptable to make annotated editions of texts at Wikisource and Wikibooks does host at least one annotated guide to a copyright-protected work. So if what you're looking to do is to include inline annotations to a public domain text, you certainly can put that on Wikisource. If you have a textbook or guidebook that is a companion, that would go at Wikibooks. If you have some other kind of learning resources (like maintaining a list of relevant links, organizing a book reading group, etc.), that could go here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:26, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick answer. Actually, Wikibooks was my first thought. However, this project is not merely an annotated edition. Although at first it will be a faithful copy of the original text, I want the project to be "open", i. e. adding articles should be possible. And the project should enable to do a lot more than mere inline annotation. See section Improving Rich in the project description a my user-page (en.Wikipedia). No Mediawiki-project (Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikipedia, Wiktionary) seemed to be a sufficiently applicable "fit" for the project, so I thought of Wikiversity as a last resort, because it is supposed to be home to all sorts of "learning resources". CalRis25 (discuss • contribs) 09:57, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

The scope of Wikiversity is pretty catch-all and would allow for a pretty flexible place to host most learning resources that don't fit elsewhere.

Also, as nitpick, "MediaWiki" is the software that is the basis of these wikis (wikis being collections of interlinked documents that can be edited) and "Wikimedia Foundation" is the non-profit who owns the trademarks and hosts these projects like Wiktionary and Wikivoyage. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:06, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello Justin, thank you for the reply. I think that settles it. I will create this project at Wikiversity. Just for additional clarification, why I do so. Let's imagine a full transcription of the original 1849-edition of the Illustrated Companion by Anthony Rich and call it RICH-1849. We shall call my project, for brevity sake, RICH-2K. And now, let's have a look at the article about the Roman toga (a piece of attire). In RICH-1849 we can can call it RICH-1849/Toga, and it contains exactly the content of the 1849-book. Now, let's look at the article RICH-2K/Toga. At the beginning its only content would be the article RICH-1849/Toga. Does that make RICH-2K/Toga and RICH-1849/Toga the same? Not at all, because in truth RICH-2K/Toga is a "container" which initially contains only the article RICH-1849/Toga but later on may include more stuff: images, external links, article text which builds on or extends RICH-1849/Toga and information from other sources of information (Wikipedia, specialized books). By the way, this added article information would not be a mere copy of the text at en.Wikipedia, because the information needs to looked at through the eyes of someone reading the original text (more citations with direct links to these etc.). CalRis25 (discuss • contribs) 11:39, 17 August 2024 (UTC)