User talk:Mfinney

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Contents

[edit] Redirects

Hi, Welcome to Wikibooks. Please don't create redirects from the user and user_talk namespaces into the main content namespace. Thanks. Gentgeen 10:17, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Actually, that's not that big a deal, although it did mess up your talk page. (You should have not used your talk page as a sandbox.) It's perfectly fine to work on a module in one's user space and then rename it into the module namespace when it is ready. It would be a big deal if you had created a redirect the other way, from the main namespace into the user namespace. That is very much frowned upon. Uncle G 00:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naming policy

Please read our Wikibooks:Naming policy and rename the chapters of your modules in line with our policy. Please don't create any more chapters that are not sub-pages. Uncle G 00:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

  • You only needed to rename the existing chapters, not to create duplicate pages with copy and paste. I've performed a history merge for you. Please check each chapter's edit history to ensure that the current version is the most up-to-date version. (This is not always the case after a history merge.) Uncle G 01:54, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response to e-mail

For unknown reasons, my e-mail was rejected by your mail server so I will respond here to your message.

> Hey thanks for making the adaptions to the website for Fire Officer IV. Now it is starting to make sense. One of the issues I am running into that you may be able to give me some insight on options is:

> What I am looking at developing an avenue for firefighter training and certification curriculum to be delivered in a low cost or free format. This way training academies can reduce overhead and in turn reduce costs to the students (firefighters.) The courses I am developing are based on National Fire Protection Association standards (NFPA). For example, if you were to go to the NFPA standards and look for the Fire Officer Professional Qualifications... you would find Fire Officer I, Fire Officer II, Fire Officer III, and Fire Officer IV. Under, for example, Fire Officer IV, you would find the categories listed on my ebook. For a student or an instructo looking to teach such a course, they are going to look for the title listed and the headers for the sections or modules... any other will be confusing and probably won't recieve the support to add to this that I am looking for. Any thoughts on what I can do?

You can add your book to a bookshelf - see Wikibooks:All bookshelves

> Finally, is there a section in Wikibooks that I can go to to research ways to market this to the general fire service community?

You mean you want to spread information about this book and don't know how? There's no special place for such tasks at Wikibooks. If you want to discuss something, you can always use Wikibooks:Staff lounge --Derbeth talk 15:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] community for learning

If you have time, please drop by Wikiversity/Modified project proposal and add some comments about the importance of making a Wikiversity an academic community. --JWSurf 18:50, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] fire portal on wikipedia

I only know of the wikipedia fire portal. Is that the site you are talking about? Timothy Clemans198.104.0.100 18:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blanking of Ground Ladders/Ground Ladders

You seem to have blanked Ground Ladders/Ground Ladders, that is, you apparently deleted everything from the page. Is there some reason why you blanked it, or was it an accident? --Kernigh 04:39, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Different information will be added to this one, more consistent with NFPA standards. Please don't delete this page.--Mfinney 12:33, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that P-18 Training/Cognitive Applications/P-18 Test One and P-18 Training/Cognitive Applications/P-18 Test Two are also blank. Is Wikibooks to delete these pages, or revert them to their text before the blanking? --Kernigh 04:56, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Please delete this page. Formatting issues caused us to go with a .pdf upload rather than cutting and pasting inormation. Sorry for doing that.--Mfinney 12:33, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Response

Mfinney, I was led to believe that the bot, which is used by another user, User:tsca.bot would preserve all internal links. Can you give an example of where it went wrong. I'd be interested to know its limitations? Jguk 08:22, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Offhand Thoughts Regarding Formal Organization of "Wikiversity"

I think success in my terms is feasible without formal organization locally. I also think formal organization achieved by some publicly formulated and rigorously followed method which a larger fraction of potential participants trust and buy into would greatly speed progress locally to critical mass. Without formal organization forking is much more likely. Discouragement and fast fade in face of conflict is also a well known phenomenon. Neither is necessarily a bad thing but neither is helpful to immediate speedy development of high quality free online materials effectively delivered to participants world wide. Massive projects require large groups of people working together concurrently somehow if one wishes enjoy the fruit of the effort. Forking assures diverse approaches but dissipates potential concentrations of locally effective participation, ease of initial advertising, and access to adequate mindshare for visible irrefutable results. Perhaps this is the hidden agenda of the stacked Board or our illustrious leader. Protect the initial mutation or paradigm prototype while the seeds sown have time to propagate and flourish. Perhaps they merely wish disgruntled participants would take their experiments to wikicities.com and make them some money while flourishing there. Easy to toss around wild allegations or coldly evaluate opportunity, history or risk matrices. Difficult to prove beyond any reasonable doubt and expensive to force change. So here we sit with the status quo.

Unfortunately, in my view, there is no current ratification procedure beyond "Jimmy says ...". He initiated the Wikimedia Foundation via a private cabal or uniliaterally. Larry Sanger assured the mailing list they were discussing it over a period of months, so probably the TINC method is most descriptive of actual process. He publicly announced his intention on the community mailing list to stack the Board and then proceeded to do so. This has not been a large problem for Wikipedia since an evolutionary selection process of volunteers was already in play. Few people other than actual troublemakers and vandals will choose to stick around after being labeled and lynched by an existing "community".

Much might be accomplished by simply eliminating sock puppet uncertainty in straw polls. I have seen no real efforts to improve these so I assume the current stacked Board and owner is satisfied with results from processes developed to date. We volunteers are clearly satisfied as we are still here. Who cares how much effort goes into partially validating sock puppet votes if one can simply ignore the results and pick own methods by fiat? Uncertainties regarding consensus can be debated ad infinitum on the mailing lists until desirable options are available for selection and announcement. If regular influx of newcomers exceeds steady state loss of experienced volunteers then the community is golden, right? In my view, this does not mean Wikiversity is bound and doomed by precedent.

Wikimedia software users and expertise even to the developer level is propagating ever more rapidly and it is just a matter of time before various groups of educators, volunteers, students, other participants fan out to establish alternatives and then fan back into specific environments percieved as successful. What Alexi and Google give, a better mousetrap can swiftly divert. For example. It would not surprise me to see your Fire School migrate en masse to a server controlled by a local fire department somewhere. Even if much counterproductive and delaying nonsense remained; it would probably usually be nonsense less destructive to the fire fighters' community's common interests in qualifying its pool of volunteers or professionals. The local (en.wikibooks.org/wiki/wikiversity) remaining fire school/learning portal, to retain any credibility at all, will need to point to other going concerns. A departure of even a significant minority of local expertise should inevitably be pointed at if it successfully spawns an effective online resource to the remaining community. The "Spanish Fork" might provide data regarding such a case. Maveric149 is familiar with the history of the fork, speaks Spanish, and has participated at Spanish Wikipedia so he would be a good source of information if you ever get interested in forking phenomenon.

Volunteer fire departments in the rural/small town areas of the routinely raise and spend hundreds of thousands if not millions on equipment. It is no stretch of the imagination to assume eventually somewhere an internet capable volunteer (or paid professional network administrator) willing to learn enough to establish and support a "Wikiversity" environment adequate and eventually perhaps even augmented for your Fire School will emerge. The original wikipedia.com attracted a couple of volunteer administrators. I am unclear on whether they were associated initially with Bomis or Nupedia.com. Perhaps after a couple of valuable volunteer fire fighter candidates or departments get tired of excessive nonsense or chaos or delay in pursuing their educational goals at Wikiversity; a fire chief or city council somewhere will view a few thousand dollars for a starter server and bandwidth as valuable outreach to the local community as well as fire fighters worldwide. I advise you to suggest a trial fork period if contacted privately. After someone proves they can provide sustainable reliable web access with a minimal oversight hassle from the top, bottom or sideways; then you can stop updating the less effective community site. Simple evolution. Tourist towns might be particularly interested. Name recognition is lucrative in some industrial towns. Perhaps local high schoolers not allowed to particpate at actual fires could find satisfaction supporting the server and associating with responsible role models. It would take little effort for such a budding virtual organization to support additional potential schools. The biggest hurdle is adequate initial infrastructure and keeping that infrastructure online reliably.

For example, two local schools districts with a couple of hundred computers apiece routinely limit student internet access on those computers to reduce virus contamination which teachers performing other duties as assigned or expensive staff specialists or consultants must repair. BOINC screensavors are not allowed to enhance research efforts worldwide despite systems left idling overnight to reduce thermal shock failures. If a forward thinking, frugal, or innovative fire chief proposed to help reduce the high school's operating expenses, or better ... enhance its effectiveness, by organizing responsible volunteer administration of school student computers by day (or simple mentoring regarding how to fix student enabled disasters and reduce future risks) Wikiversity Grid by night machines might become available. Given proper system architecture and software, a single set of participating high schools in each English speaking timezone could in theory exceed the reliability and capacity of Wikimedia's existing centralized server farms and mirrors. I doubt a "Jimmy says ..." approach to formal organization would be adequate long term to address public concerns about manipulation of knowledge base issues such as propagation of personal bias, institutional bias, technical bias , etc. An arbcom operating in accordance with documented policies and procedures reporting to a duly elected Board of Directors by delegates of responsible community groups such as Fire Chiefs, Police Chiefs, Principals, Education Boards, etc. might be viewed as a better approximation of useful "NPOV" than "Jimmy says" selection and finalization on all controversial issues. Or perhaps we would fork into "The School Board says ...." or "My lawyer says .." etc. Perhaps each new wikimedia site will start with an "owner says" or the "adminstrator says" unless forced to evolve something else (or pretend to evolve something else) by the local participants. Personally I have a lot of faith in both evolution and the scientific method (try it and find out). If God can use it to evolve slime from quarks or neutrinos, and us from local strains of slime, I see no reason to think that monkeys typing cannot evolve the singularity. Might take a while. Might take a lot of participation.

To conclude on a very positive note: At least one credible authentic open source developer[1] previously selected and approved by the stacked Board as a Wikipedian capable of performing community activities responsibly is publicly pondering porting the Wikimedia Software to Java. This should greatly increase the potential pool of Wikiversity type servers and qualified supporting personnel. Later dude. Lazyquasar 04:41, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Regarding your query about my opinion of Wikiversity's chances

Mike, in answer to your query. I think success with the Wikiversity concept is inevitable somewhere on the public internet within a few years. Roberth has assured me there is more activity on Wikiversity than is easily detected or obvious (presumably unless one uses the site monitoring tools effectively). This makes the site look dead to casual traffic and discourages newcomers. Personally I do not track individual users and I have esoteric interests so perhaps I have an unduly pessimistic current impression. There are some very good Wikibooks and modules in demanding arcane subjects such as advanced physics and Computer languages so some specialized/advanced expertise in addition to yours has found us, us construing Wikibooks as the Wikiversity library/publishing/bookstore as any typical drop in traffic would assume. Your fire school is the first organized effort with specific achieveable goals attracting obvious (to me) external interest and new participants that I have seen. I consider it likely that when you succeed your efforts will be pivotal in inspiring others locally. I think this is true whether your fire school succeeds here or at a fork using similar or different web technology. In first case, Wikiversity is validated as feasible. In the second there would be a firestorm of re-evaluation. Why did the fire school succeed elsewhere from scratch without the supposed advantages of an existing community and potential pool of participants and proven technology and word of mouth advertising to attract initial web traffic?

Consider how a simple implementation of JWSurf's genious in proposing assisting scholarship/research/citation at Wikipedia guarantees Wikiversity positive exposure. It is work many of us would do anyway as introductory background material and preparation for drafting lesson plans. May as well get credit for it with Wikipedia community. Besides, how can it fail to benefit Wikiversity when in the middle of a debate/discussion or rephrasing a POV argument someone cites a list of links at Wikiversity page such and such, provides a best link as a citation and proceeds to "NPOV" your best argument into obscurity or irrelevancy or flat out incorrectness which must be deleted? There is no recourse. Wikiversity must be visited to at least look over the list of available links, data, and analysis or one must go do one's own research/scholarship. Or that fate worse than death, admit error or simply lose face via a silent fast fade later excused as having gone on vacation or sabbatical. Exposure could even be throttled if we collected some basic stats and graphed them. Do we get .00001 or .1 student/participant edits per edit/citation on Wikipedia? If Amazon can track and count links to books surely we could do the same in our custom citations, then aggregate anonymously and graph? Pick critical threshold to snowball desired participation in desired time frame, do the initial seed scholarship, draft initial materials at whatever initial level desired for desired retention rate, go make the estimated number of Wikipedia edits (productive improvements all, we are not spam linkers .... ok one NOT! I find desirable in Wikiversity policy, if someone else demands freedom! I can live with avoiding grumpy Wikipedians victimized by Wikiversity spam linkers; maybe even do my fair share of appeasing apologies to help calm the victim) then go back and play around at the course in work.

Who knows what we (Wikiversity community participants) would figure out as a result of your impending successful learning community migrating to a more responsive, useful, productive environment focused on your communities' learning needs? Well, join you and your team at new location if possible; obviously, if your solution fits well with specific personal goals. I personally suspect different schools or bodies of knowledge will need different approaches to propagating knowledge and participation over the virtual environments we are building on the internet. People trying to responsibly assist others with experimenting with DNC machines driven by files from the internet will need a different approach from allowing a kid to play with source for a graphics editor in a math or computer science course. A computer crash is a lot less dangerous to a neophyte than a tool bit fracturing under inappropriate speeds or loads. Likewise, people working with a single home system depended upon for food budget critical income, kids homework and/or family email ... will need different download and installation procedures or helpful advice than a computer professional working with a network of diverse operational and experimental machines. When I start aggregating information at a free engineering site for fun or profit an initial service will undoubtedly be some reviews of various free software tools as well as recommended avoid lists. It will save everyone a lot of time to distribute the load, evaluate, rebuild cycle some of the crappier advertised stuff available online involves. Risks are different and sometimes subtle. The personal opportunity cost/risk and cost of recovery or salvage efforts will be different, resulting in different reasonable options for participation in free projects.

Likewise JWSurf appears to me to have awesome potential as a founding community participant. An experienced academic scientist with complete resources and credentials and willingness to work with any comers. Initially I mean. Rapid ejection should be more appropriate at Wikiversity if some version of effective forking prevails over the "there can be only one" philosophy of knowledge chunks and truth. All his portals are missing is effective advertising to divert appropriate traffic to him. And some basic Wikiversity procedures, examples, and SOP. If he must do all marketing (and rudimentary mentoring) himself, and then do it again when the URLs change due to "community" indecision or Board diversions, and gets no coaching assistance from mutual aid factions within his participant base or learning portal community, then what does he gain from FDL'ing his materials here at Wikiversity? Authority to proceed with a stable namespace is fundamental to any kind of method of generating web traffic. I do not know him personally from elsewhere. I suspect he is in a holding pattern until approval is received and/or basic policy established to make participation here worth his effort. With his experience, credentials, communications skills, and willingness/ability to smooth ruffled feathers and attempt to mediate agreements; I suspect he can single handedly initiate the local biology/neurology activity (and probably wide range of associated skillsets and schools) with active traffic as soon as he feels it an appropriate investment of colleagues, subordinates, personal and student time. I further suspect he has access to better collaboration facilities at his job than wiki can provide at moment but is interested in wide effective outreach to the general public worldwide via grids. (As you have probably noticed Wiki interactivity reaches out and grabs some people even though they fear it initially. There was an excellent reason for Wikipedia's edit boldly policy concisely advertised on the front page initially.) It also looks to me like he has sufficient credentials and resources to productively receive and implement grant money if he becomes convinced wiki learning communities can assist with achieving any of his professional goals. If he expresses any interest we (a group of interested willing volunteer Wikiversitians) could team wiki some grant proposal prototyppes, charter, basic procedures, etc. etc. and he could sign and mail custom tailored proposals whenever they were likely to generate our seed money. Obviously he would need to coach us after acquiring intelligence regarding likely funding sources and qualified application and also regarding what resources we would need and constraints his academic employer would levy on the servers, software data and bandwidth .... peronally I would rather go after Homeland Security money and setup an independent NGO. Iraqui war, education issues, taxes and deficits are all coming to a head. We could be the next well funded straw grasped. Maybe our military advisers this time around will be restricted to safe U.S. bases and telecommute. If so they might find FDL'ed educational materials a useful tool in the War on Terrorism currently scheduled for completion under existing strategic policies no sooner than 2250.

OTOH For all we know a college or high school somewhere has already been experimenting privately or publicly with Wikimedia software and either google will so inform us during a random search, a human interest new article will catch someone's eye soon, or a passerby will put a link on our front page. So far the links I have followed have lacking somehow in my view. If you now tell me to just set it up myself, it is the hacker way, we may be enemies for life. 8( If I had thought it would take a couple of years to begin a couple of years ago I might have approached the small business administration, some funding philanthropist organization, some P'hd buddies in education or former colleagues in mysterious black programs for seed funding. However, I do not have the expertise or credentials to run a real university and I do not want to be holding the bag on a couple of million dollars worth of nonresults as a result of bad timing when Wikimedia or a real university or government agency decides to proceed with the obvious. Surely there must be a philanthropist, entrepreneur, bureaucrat, or politician somewhere who sees some potential in establishing mutual aid societies across the digital divide? Where are the political conservatives advocating fair cost effective welfare? FDL'ed materials are given fairly to everyone. Perhaps Howard Dean would be willing to cough up seed money if we posted a notice encouraging U.S. citizens to register to vote? He has been claiming the internet will revolutionize politics. Maybe he needs an FDL'ed political science class functioning online to help prove this in the next set of elections? Is it necessary to wait ten years for the conflicted Board members to achieve billionaire status off of wikicities.com before anyone anywhere else with access to web servers and bandwidth will experiment with wikimedia software or equivalent? It makes me wonder if the U.S. military budget should be cut in half and the Education department by two thirds just to get some "civil service" attention. Maybe we could invite Hillary to swing by and host/moderate or answer questions at an asynchronous global village meeting? Oops! Nope. We would have to announce a permanent URL so the world could find us over a period of months whenever it was convenient.

Maybe we should send an email to Stallman or the EFF.org proposing a GNUversity.org or .com or a Free Electronic University. You know it is possible we could do some cool interactive firebug simulations. Might need some study to verify it decreased fire hazards more than it inspired arsonists. Maybe you could get some funding for a server and supporting computer consultants from the Forestry service. Any idea how much they spend on TV advertising with their Smokey the Bear campaign? Last time I checked the Wikimedia Foundation's total budget was under a half a million a year for all the server's, bandwidth, and a couple of employees. A server farm might be good addition to your local firehouse. Makes good trickle heat in winter, you could partner and trade off with a fire station down under to impress local eco/recycling enthusiasts with your efficient dual use of electricity. Never mind the cost of dual manufacturing unless they bring it up. Reduced load from summer air conditioning might justify it anyway. Your staff could probably also build and support local hazard databases. Here in Oregon they mandate that be done at a State Government level and have made about zero progress getting timely information to the official emergency response crews. The local gas company has started building their own private database of hazards in private residences when you inquire about connecting to gas lines.

In conclusion to your original question. I just do not know. It is intensely frustrating. A few years ago I thought the Wikiversity concept was obvious and inevitable awaiting only widespread public notice of a successful encyclopedia to spawn millions if not thousands or at least hundreds of competitors as every other U.S. cow college raced to allow their students to compete with MIT's open course ware initiative with little or no special effort required on the part of the general faculty. Not to mention "outreach". Oregon State must have ten or twenty outreach offices. They have one here locally (town of 5,000 county seat' probably 50,000 total in Coos County) competing with the local community college. Both colleges are tax supported. Where is the benefit to increasing overall costs, raising costs and reducing remote participation in outreach programs vs. using existing assets on the mother Campus efficiently during off hours to reach worldwide audiences at no additional cost to Oregon taxpayers while providing unique research opportunities for Oregon State students and faculty? At the weeder courses at OSU's Engineering Physics program we were encouraged dramatically to form study teams and work together to understand the material. Failure was an option and no B.S. conferred if you failed 400 level Electromagnetism, Mechanics, or Quauntum Mechanics. After a week or two of homework sets the advice took effect. We ignored loose women at drunken parties to form alliances, studied in mass late at the student memorial union, consulted archives of secret notes established at frat houses and handed down between domitory acquaintenances, sought out esoteric examples in old texts at libraries, purchased extra reference texts, purchased higher level graduate course level texts, anything to grasp this bizarre dense material we were drowning under. Half of us washed back or out each year. Has this changed? I doubt it. So where are the misfits needing extra help in one senior level course when everyone else has moved on to the next class or homework set? Surely there should be some evidence of their passing at Wikiversity in the last two years if there is any merit in studying collaboratively via the internet. Perhaps the firewalls block us or the illegal MP3 downloads saturate their bandwidth at critical times when desperados would be finding Wikiversty help desks and asking questions? Know anybody with college kids you could ask about this bizarre mystery? Most of my friends kids are just at the high school stage.

I still think it is obvious and inevitable but if this is correct where is it? Wikipedia is near the top twenty of overall internet websites by traffic. Every other high school, well maybe one in three or five, in the industrialized world has sufficient assets: computers, a computer club, alma maters and parents with computer skills and some of them want high SAT scores. Wikimedia's resources could easily be matched by any PTA or Alma Mater to establish a generic Wikiversity. They (wikimedia developers, Bomis, Wikipedia community and Wikimedia Foundation) have successfully done the heavy lifting of software development and project prototyping. They have Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta on the defensive in public interviews for God's sake! All a new organization needs to do is be friendly, honest, and clear regarding community goals and motives to internet participants to build an expanding community. Wikipedia has even prototyped much of the heavy lifting associated with that, although I think large improvements are possible. Clearly I have slipped back into the twilight zone. Maybe the black helicopter guys have routed me into their private supercomputer web servers again. Gotta go get some sleep.

If I get my Verizon DSL to talk to Fedora Core Linux in the next few days I may be getting a domain and light commercial bandwidth (probably near half a mb both ways) soon. If so, I will probably attempt a free engineering specific site of some kind and divert other interests to other wikis. Failing that perhaps a Java version of a content tracking wiki will become available within a few years. Even I could setup a single button installation of a Java based wiki server under Windows and run it a few months to see it it is reliable enough to trust with a few million man years of semi random human effort donated over the internet. Or I could cheerfully assume when the effort becomes valuable somebody else will download it, thus acting as an offsite backup to my local PC based seed server.

What is your best guess regarding local (Wikiversity) low levels of action and possible impending failure to achieve Board approval? Can you see fundamental flaws in people cooperating via available wiki tools to deliver free educational materials to each other? I mean if internet collaboration works with operating systems, compilers and nested apps layers and mutually antagonist proposed standards ... some of the most complex finicky aggravating work ever discovered or created by humanity ... vulnerable to a single bit rot event or a script kiddy with internet access ... is there a fundamental reason nobody will develop, download or use free educational data or participate at a development site for the same? Besides having no stable place (URL, namespace, whatever) to put it I mean. And marauding screaming meemies shouting Wikiversity is NOT %put random pet peeve% here? Perhaps if you, Derbeth, JWSurf or some other valuable looking member of the community with no previous adverse interaction with the Board asked politely on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list what the holdup is we could get some reasonable (timely, specific, useful) feedback. Do not mention my name or use my wording, idioms or slang. The stacked Board ... well the old nonexistent cabal anyway, is well aware of my potentially inflammatory opinions regarding benevolent dictators with potential conflicts of interest soliciting public donations of resources under false pretenses. Sorry about the book. Guess I am bit more frustrated than I thought.

What is your opinion of Wikipedia? Would you let your kids use it online after adequate periodically recurring basic internet safety briefings and occasional unadvertised field tests or restrict them to a CD offline? You know. Basics. Never meet without parental permission (and escort?). Uncle Mike will never arrange by email to meet you anywhere he will come to the house or school only in person, never send a friend of his to pick you up. Give out no personal data. No escalating arguments with nuts, simply discretely move on. Etc. If so, at what rough age or school/mental development level? In your view, is the Wikipedia community likely to degrade and collapse in a few years when when they run out of large volumes of web surfers noticing it for the first time or are they retaining and developing applicable community collaboration skills faster than people get bored (or trolled or lynched) and move on? Is it a fad or a fairly steady state fact of the internet accessible future that future projects and training plans can responsibly be budgeted and built around?

This whole surreal experience is like a microcosm of Fermi's question regarding extraterrestrial life. To paraphrase: If vast hordes of intelligent social learners exist on the planet (homo sapiens) with viable internet access (300 million and counting up?).... then .... where are they?

I think Wikipedia's past procedures imply we are nonexistent. When there is a link to wikiversity.org on the main portal project advertisements people will start showing up and the policy debates can all start over. And when they are done we still will not have any routine ratification method beyond "Jimmy says ", the "stacked board" says, or the committee chairs selected by Jimmy and the Board says,

Eventually various schools and portals will find that they need local policy, which must be tailored for their circumstances, and for which they must await review and approval from some appointed committee somewhere who knows nothing about local specilized issues ... and so then to form a useful local committee with authority to enforce local safety issues the locals will find they have to fix the entire committee system which was never formally ratified by the Board because a legal question got lost pending review or vote on a secret (non-public) committee mailing list.

Cloning Esperanza is not the answer. At least not in my view. There is no way for typical users to verify the sockpuppet counts. No verifiable consensus. When new faction participants figure this out it only further erodes whatever confidence they had in the legitimacy of the existing stacked Board. Like it, fork it, or just leave is the standard response when somebody gets grumpy about this inability to modify or question past decisions handed down by Jimmy or with whatever his political machine decides. Most people in disagreement with this process simply leave. Life is short. Let someone else argue about how to get across the digitial divide or whether the sky is blue blue light blue or blue light blue blue with annoying people.

If you mean setup an organization that can and will leave when faced with the ultimatum of detrimental consequences from compliance or inability to act pending Board approval not forthcoming .... sure we could do that. We could even setup a secure verifiable voting system for the group. Either gnome or debian have one that looked ok to me a few years ago that we could review, tweak for infallibility and auditability, and implement. It is not really useful or necessary unless one is attached to the local community and wishes to succeed on Wikimedia Servers under the control of "Jimmy says" or a new social contract emerging from improved bargaining position. Such as group can apply little useful pressure because there is no verifiable count of the constituency of the Wikimedia community. Is it 50 key participants who wrote 90% of Wikipedia whom Jimmy must appease? Do they know who they are and this power they have to influence Jimmy? Are there 300,000 significant contributors now? I think I saw a number of 500,000 registered accounts but that could be faulty memory. What is a semi qualified vote count of 268/300 sockpuppets or verified users in the face of 500,000 plus or minus uncountable users, donors, stakeholders? Jimmy is a good guy, founder and former owner so he must fullfil his sacred trust and do as he feels is best to represent the silent/noisy majority and the people/organizations he has pitched for cash donations. Most of the people who stick around can get along with his hand picked "leaders". Natural selection in progress. There will never be a viable local constituency to oppose "Jimmy says". When he feels it is appropriate for whatever reasons there may be changes or perhaps he will face revolution in the ranks or perhaps the outside experienced leadership the Board is contemplating bringing will revise matters with all due respect for phenomenal success and shining leadership skills displayed to date.

Why am I still here occasionally? I am still learning and making contacts. I am confident the Wikimedia software and the various types of online communities it is capable of supporting have a large role to play in our nearterm future on this planet. I intend to catch a wave soon. Lazyquasar 13:56, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiversity is very much alive

Hi Mike,

I'm sorry I haven't been more active in helping along your course (which is looking great, by the way), but I just want to counter the perception that Wikiversity is not going anywhere. I have been asked to join the m:Special projects committee, one of whose tasks it is to set up Wikiversity as a fully-fledged Wikimedia project. The above perception of a "hand-picked" "stacked board", and the notion that Wikimedia can only do what "Jimmy says" is, quite frankly, absolutely ridiculous - one of the board members, Anthere, has been consistently supportive of the project, and I think others are positive about the project, providing it has a clear and practical mission to start with as per the board's decision. I don't know exactly what time frame we're talking about before it's set up, but I'm looking forward to working with you on this, and finally getting this show on the road! (It's probably better to message me on my meta page.) Talk to you soon. Cormaggio 21:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Great to hear back from you Mike, thanks! (By the way, I'm checking Wikibooks regularly now so you can reply here (even here on your own talk page - I've added it to my watchlist).
So, basically the situation with Wikiversity is this: The board has set up a m:Special projects committee, which I have been asked to join. We are currently setting up our modus operandi, and one of those things will be to set up subcommittees on individual projects, such as Wikiversity. This subcommittee is the "core initiative" - we'll be (hopefully) voting on that tomorrow. When that's in existence, we (the subcommittee - that includes you ;-)) have a few weeks to at least report on our own procedures, if not actual recommendations to set up Wikiversity. So, like I said, I don't know how much time this will take, but if we all put in the work, it could be quite soon indeed :-) And, of course, I'll keep you informed. Take care - and great to hear about the feedback on your course - it's really encouraging. Cormaggio 14:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and PS: my research has been dithering a bit over the last few months, but I've finally found (rediscovered) what I'm looking for - Wikiversity! Cormaggio 14:40, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


Great to hear your research is going to be on Wikiversity. I'd be curious to see what pans out from it. My dissertation is on web-based learning, so your study would be interesting to my findings. Let me know what you need for the Wikiversity project... I will be glad to help out. Also, really glad to hear this is moving forward.--Mfinney 04:30, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I knew your research was on the same lines, and that's great, because I think what we'll need to do is to give some sort of background to learning online, what's been done, what works, what doesn't etc. Incidentally, the subcommittee I mentioned was approved last night - no more details as of yet - but we exist (and you're the first to know)! Cormaggio 12:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
AWESOME NEWS! I'm glad to hear it was approved. I agree with your thinking on initial steps, there seems to be so many variables going on within Wikiversity that early steps should be pulling it together. Also, some type of definition of "learning online." The term carries so many definitions, we should look at them to see which applies to us. --Mfinney 16:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Nod. I'm going to set up a page on Meta where we can work on things like a definition of learning online and how it applies to us etc. I've done a recent literature review of wikis in education, but it needs to be tweaked - have you done anything similar yourself? (Maybe even link to one paper/article you think is useful for now..?) But we also need to be pragmatic here - are we suggesting we set up Wikiversity as an e-learning centre? I don't think that will work or be accepted - it has already been rejected. We need to be specific to our context, but first we need to specify what that context (ie scope) is. Cormaggio 19:00, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I would say we do a transition (slowly). Begin with a resource for learning materials and things like that. Create an online collaboration to get the teachers and faculty comfortable and we will find there is less resistence to something like this. We are a resource for the current colleges and universities that are out there. Begin to add resources for students as well. Create avenues for (again) collaboration and networking. From there, the transition is much easier to an online environment. Online courses can be an easy step then. It also allows us to build credibility. One of the things we could do as well is begin building research. Create a storehouse for whats going on in the universities. Again, easy step from there into our own research (I know I know... frowned upon.) What we are talking about here though is a complete change in paradigm for education... we don't want to let the Laggards (Geoffery Moore reference) hold us back because we want to be the cutting edge technology... but we don't want to leave our wounded either... what are your thoughts? --Mfinney 21:53, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm absolutely 100% behind you here - and on research too. I've been arguing for quite some time now that Wikiversity needs to be allowed to host original research - that way we can truly build learning communities. You're right we need to start small and manageable and look to who we can work with, including universities etc. But look at all of the other Wikimdia sites that could benefit from Wikiversity. We can have a school of translation, where material gets reused across language projects. We can set up projects to find and discuss how to go about researching and writing a balanced encyclopedic article on a given topic. We can even start an initiative to write MediaWiki code to help the developers. It's all good! JWSchmidt and I have been discussing Wikiversity almost as a service provider to begin with (have you been following any of the discussions on Meta?). It will probably be a lot more, yes, a paradigm shift, but yes, the focus now needs to be on what will give it the best possible start. Cormaggio 22:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


I would love to see the discussion you guys have been having onthe service provider. Where is it? Should we begin to set up a page to begin pulling all the past discussion together and begin bringing in the focus?--Mfinney 07:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the sheer volume of text about Wikiversity is intimidating (hence, I feel, the board's confusion). You're right - what we need to do is synthesise and distill this into a shared vision, and then supplement this with background theory. If you want to catch up on these conversations - I'd recommend selectively reading the following:
And if you're looking for a theory of wiki-learning
Phew! Good luck! Cormaggio 15:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


Wow...looks like you guys have really been doing a lot of work. I DEFINITELY agree with the concept that whatever we come up with for online courses... it definitely needs to be interactive... not just a bunch of stagnate pages. The only issue I see is that the pages seem to be the center point for the wiki projects. However, I am finding that such components as the IRC are a little too complicated for the average computer user. As well, doesn't seem to offer the capabilities of delivering a robust interactive class online. What are your thoughts?--Mfinney 18:49, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I think that materials need to be interactive - hey, we're a wiki. But still, one proposal is: let Wikiversity host lesson plans, teaching aids etc, but no actual courses/activities allowed. That word, "courses"; it really has been an issue, and we need to be clear about what we mean by a course and an activity - at the outset at least. My take on this, is that the materials hosted need to be used to prompt discussion, work, possibly research (another word which causes problems). So, for example, we have a coursesheet on how to critique an advertisement, examples, questions etc. But then we need to have a link - possibly on this page's discussion page, or maybe more usefully on a discussion portal for this topic. This is where the community who are interested in advertising hang out and this is where questions and answers are tossed around. It's a lot less focussed than Wikipedia or Wikibooks, which is about finding/selecting what is right or appropriate for this page; it is more about learning through questioning and evaluating the material that we find. That's (partly at least) my vision for how learning takes place on Wikiversity.
I think IRC has a place in this, as a logical 'real-time' complement to wiki (asynchronous) discussion. I think some people could start to tutor through IRC, but that this shouldn't be the only way in which courses/activities take place. For one, as you say, there are technical dimensions to this - some people might not like it, and some people might not be able to manage it. There is one such case at the moment, Pos 1000 (and Pos 1001) that I am worried about about, and though that concern is a kinda separate matter, it still does raise the issue of whether an IRC delivered class really serves the interests of the interested community - look at the comment on the talk page about not being able to participate, due to connection speed. Still, I think overall we shouldn't be looking at providing for "robust interactive classes online" just yet. I reckon we stick with the basics for now - wiki-based materials and related learning communities - and the rest will develop of its own accord (whatever "the rest" turns out to be). What do you think? :-) Cormaggio 20:38, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I would tend to agree with you. I think as well the "talk" pages will be helpful as well since it will build discussions and so forth. I think the benefit we can show in the immediate is the ability for online collaboration. From a curriculum development standpoint that really opens up some incredible possibilities. That is some of what I was thinking with the Fire and Emergency Managment page. Start by looking for ways to begin collaborating. --Mfinney 02:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Building Structure

I was just reviewing my squad email tonight when i came by a powerpoint presentation illustrating a new gusset-free truss consturuction that is nothing but finger jointed lumber glued together. This incredibly unsafe design feature reiterated to me the importance of building construction in evaluating safety of a given evolution. I think a piece overviewing the basics of building construction would be beneficial to the collaborative project. Do you think this would be best organized as a list of structures or a procedure for analysis? Shaggorama 06:25, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I think both would be good. Thinking about it though... there is a lot on list of structures... but now a lot on procedure for analysis... I would find it interesting if you took the procedure approach.--Mfinney 13:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Policy review

Policy is not the most exciting subject at Wikibooks but we do have some major unresolved issues.

The most important issue, in my opinion, is Dispute resolution which starts by declaring that:

"Currently there is no official organized process to resolve disputes between users"

The suggested remedy for this is: Wikibooks:Ad hoc administration committee which puts into place the absolute minimum in terms of an enforcement apparatus.

The second most important is Wikibooks:No personal attacks where a vote has recommended the policy be enforced but it still languishes as "proposed".

The third policy that is needed and which will prevent edit disputes from getting out of hand is Wikibooks:Editing disputes policy.

Other policies that need consideration are at: Policies and guidelines.

Please spare a minute or two to peruse these issues and add a comment and/or a vote. RobinH 12:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiversity Proposal Tasks and Schedule

Hi Mike, I am surprised you have not erased the wikiversity essays yet to free up some space for other visitors,

I have asked Cormaggio specifically when the Wikiversity proposal is going to be submitted to the Board for authorization to proceed with permanent dedicated URLs and wiki space. I get nothing back but vague generalities. Mr. Wales has indicated on the public Foundation mailing list in response to queries that to the best of his knowledge Wikiversity (within some appropriate initial scope) has overwhelming support from every single Board Member. The only holdup on its approval and activation is the complete lack of any information from the Wikiversity community/proponents in response to the Board's fairly minor inquiries. In view of this information do you have a feel for what specific tasks need to be completed and when they be finished? Is this a manpower issue or coordination issue between the appointed members of the activation committee? Is it a matter of final technical editing of wording such that a majority of the five acting committee members agree it is ready to go? I, and possibly others, would appreciate some specific information if it is available on how we can proceed immediately as there has been no visible action for months in the public space. Thanks. user:lazyquasar

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