WAS 4.250 and Moulton have launched a new Learning Project on Wikiversity...



Greg Kohs and Fiery Angel are among the first to sign on. SB Johnny, who is a custodian on Wikiversity, has also signed on.

QUOTE(Announcement and Request for Community Input on Ethics)

We are creating a learning resource at WikiVersity.

Please look at Ethical Management of the English Language Wikipedia. You may wish to add your name to the list of human resources. You may wish to contribute to one or more of the items on the to-do list. May we request input on proposed ethical guidelines for management of the English language Wikipedia, or suggestions on a practical objective method of evaluating the same?

I think it's really important in this case for folks unfamiliar with Wikiversity to hold their fire a bit: this is not the first time that we've had angry, banned Wikipedians come to the project, and so far our track record of preventing Wikiversity from being used as a platform from which to launch attacks on other foundation projects (or any other thing that might be attacked) is 100%.

These guys just arrived 3 days ago, and we're trying to work with them to concentrate on their stated goals (coming up with ethical guidelines that would improve collaborative content creation on websites such as Wikipedia), rather than what they're being distracted by (they use the language of war to describe their situation).

It would really be of help to us if folks could just sit on their hands a bit and let us (the WV custodians and community) do our jobs. In particular, we're trying to keep the "battles" out of the picture, and help them focus on the hard work of teaching-learning-sharing that we've spent the last 2 years learning how to do ourselves. We might even learn more about the possibilities of "learning the wiki way" through their efforts. BUT: we're never going to find out if we don't give them a chance.

Please just give them a month or so to develop this learning resource without interference. The Wikiversity community is very good at exploring possibilities, if nothing else. We're idealists, but not of the dewy-eyed variety, we have a very high ratio of sysopped users to regular contributors, and we even have our own checkusers in case it really gets ugly. We won't allow any harm to come of this, but our scope and policies are radically different from the other WMF wikis, so we're not going to say "no" to things unless they fall outside that (very broad) scope or violate one of our (few) policies.

I've viewed some of the links they've provided, and as much as I wouldn't want any of them dating my sister (or even my third cousin once removed), I'm completely open to the possibility that I could learn something from them, as long as they're given some space to tell their stories without the distraction of constantly having to defend themselves from what they interpret as "attacks".

I encourage anyone who wants to work on this to visit the en.wv custodians on #wikiversity-en (freenode). We're definitely keeping an eye on things, and we're interested in everyone's opinion.

Brian McNeil of Wikinews has started a discussion thread on foundation-l about the newly launched project.

Among the posted remarks, I highlight these by Wikiversity custodian SB Johnny, who is also working with us on the new project.

I think it's really important in this case for folks unfamiliar with Wikiversity to hold their fire a bit: this is not the first time that we've had angry, banned Wikipedians come to the project, and so far our track record of preventing Wikiversity from being used as a platform from which to launch attacks on other foundation projects (or any other thing that might be attacked) is 100%.

This project on Ethics Anonymous is brought to you by the letters WP:RS.

Jon

Jonny, you are going to kill me one of these days! I almost chocked to death laughing at that!

Now, I still think that this is going to go down in flames, but I'm trying to take a constructive tack and say that "the core policies should fix all of this. You guys just need to apply them to all editors regardless of seniority". Oh, and I've linked JA's history of the NOR policy … We'll see how well that goes over …

Now, off to the Bastille Day celebrations! Whose head should we chop off today??

This project on Ethics Anonymous is brought to you by the letters WP:RS.

Jon

And also by Action Research.

[The whole thing starts out Absurd and only gets more Ludicrous the longer you try to keep up the Joke.[/font]

Thing is, Jon, I have two complementary agendas here.

On the one hand, I'd love to imbue some ethics in those who could use an ethical upgrade.

On the other hand, I'm also interested in studying the dynamics of the learning process itself, with special attention to discovering best practices for dealing with learning resistance and learning disabilities.

So this particular learning challenge nicely balances those two sides of the Yin and Yang of it.

I was hoping to give Action Research a spin. Do you expect I will fail at that, too?

I suppose that depends on how you go about it.

I can only think of the sorts of things that I had to do in the past when I wanted to learn a new research paradigm, and you don't seem to be doing any of those things.

Jon

Here are four recent references to Action Research at Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity...

Who on Wikipedia cares a busted flush about discussions on Metawiki or Wikiversity?

Funny you should ask …

In the above link, which Jon found in the Internet Archive, note the To Do List...

To do list

1. Brainstorming
2. Ethics data gathering
3. Create one or more proposed ethics standards for Wikipedia management
4. Get feedback from actual Wikipedia management
5. Identify process for objective evaluation of ethics practiced in Wikipedia management
6. Evaluate Wikipedia management ethical practices
7. Identify what needs to be learned by Wikipedia management
8. Create learning resource to provide that learning opportunity
9. Encourage use of that created learning resource
10. Improve the learning resource in response to feedback

If memory serves, it was SB_Johnny who organized the above outline for content to be developed. And as we did so in the ensuing weeks, a number of power players from WP (notably FeloniousMonk, KillerChihuaha and others from IDCab) became alarmed that their unethical practices were coming under academic review. It was at their behest that Jimbo eventually intervened to gut the project.

Now the same issues resurface yet again, this time with PrivateMusings and SB_Johnny in the gunsights of Mr. Wales.

I was on Jimbo's shit list back then too, he just wasn't public about it.