QUOTE(Ottava @ Mon 12th September 2011, 8:53pm)
"because building educational resources is much more easily a cooperative project than building an encyclopedia."
This is exactly why Wikiversity should only be edited by real educators and academics. Your understanding of education is wrong. "Education" does not involve copyvios and spreading nonsense POVs because the mainstream academics think your ideas are laughable.
Ottava is like that cartoon character that runs off the cliff and keeps on running, not noticing that he's unsupported.
He may or may not be an "academic" (he's been a student), but he's definitely not a "real educator." He has no idea how people work, and education is about
people.Wikiversity is being used by real educators for real classes, and it's being used for many kinds of non-standard education. My work there is to bring order and structure to it all, so that resources are accessible. Most of the work as a custodian, though, isn't about that, it's much more mundane: vandalism and spam patrol, welcoming users, and assisting them.
I do make inclusion decisions, like any administrator. I've been deleting spam. I'd delete copyvio if it's brought to my attention, but I haven't been taking pages and googling snippets looking for plagiarism or copyvio. I see no improvement coming from that, and the time it takes is time taken away from improving the project, and there is
plenty to do. But anyone is welcome to do it, and I'll fully cooperate and assist, consulting the community if I have any doubt.
I avoid deleting any content that might reasonably be of use for any educational purpose. What's marginal, I'll userfy. A result: the requests for deletion page has gone almost entirely empty. Stuff is still being deleted, but without controversy. In the last month I deleted 180 pages. But there has been no controversy about this, none. Spammers and vandals don't complain. There is now one user who has been repeatedly creating pages on his Favorite Topic, which is probably himself. He hasn't actually complained, he just keeps ignoring requests to stop. For a while, I moved all these pages into a user space for an account of his. No response. He just kept creating more variations and then created a new account. So maybe eventually there will be some sort of conflict. But this isn't really controversial; I've been bending over backwards to try to accommodate this guy, Ottava would have deleted everything and blocked him long ago, and I saw Ottava do that with real students, and real academics, because he didn't understand what they were doing. That's part of why Ottava had to go as a custodian.
An analogical comparison between Wikiversity and Wikipedia, once both are mature, would be a large university, including broad "free university" projects and traditional education with tighter standards, combined with a massive university library, ongoing classes and seminars and educational events, including discussions, as compared with an encyclopedia. Which is more important, in the end? Which one do you go to to get an education, as distinct from an article on a topic?
Wikiversity is just a baby project, it's barely begun. Like many babies, it can make a mess. But I've had seven real babies, and there are now six grandbabies. Babies grow up. Wikiversity has practically unlimited possibilities, Wikipedia has few. Maybe it can become a better encyclopedia, but where is the help for that going to come from?
I won't explain this here, in depth, I'll just say it. From Wikiversity. From academics and experts and enthusiasts who develop deep resources on Wikiversity, and then, as a side-project, perhaps student projects, create better Wikipedia articles, drafts, fully satisfying Wikipedia sourcing and content guidelines, as well as being well-written and
interesting, which are then proposed on Wikipedia as replacements for the train wrecks that WP articles often become, farragos of detritus from generations of revert wars and incoherent piecemeal editing. The old Wikipedia articles will vanish, whenever this happens. People will recognize quality, it won't take massive disruption.
If there are different points of view, they may create alternate articles, and those good at facilitating consensus will create "consensus articles." May the best article win!
Academics, real academics, will be an important part of that. Wikiversity truly respects academics, far more than Wikipedia. We
protect them. Banned on Wikipedia or not.