User talk:Abd/Notes

This page contains notes about possible future activity of mine on Beta. Collaboration is welcome here, subject to my approval. That is, edits anticipated to be welcome may be made here. Correction of errors is always welcome, as well, and should be civil, or at least attempt to be so!

That something is here is not a decision to act outside my user space. It is not a call to action. It is a collection of notes, not conclusions except where specifically stated, and any conclusions should be understood to be preliminary, not final. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Language "community"

Beta is a multilingual hub. On all WMF wikis, users may participate whether or not they are familiar with and writing in the primary language of the wiki. With [1], it was suggested that en.wikiversity was full of "crappy" pages. In response, it was suggested that the user tag such pages for deletion, if they were obviously crappy. The user replied, "That would probably against the policy of the English community so I would not do that". It is not against policy, and it commonly happens, and, unless repeatedly done in a disruptive manner, it's welcome. It could actually be useful. En.wikiversity does have many pages that are so poorly developed, and that are not in the process of being developed, that identifying them is a community service. Such tagging will then trigger one of several responses: the page will be deleted, if a local custodian agrees, the local custodian might convert the speedy deletion tag to a proposed deletion tag (which gives three months of delay), or the custodian or another user might handle the page in another way, by making it a part of another learning resource or moving it to user space. And, of course, if the page is actually fine, the tag will simply be removed, and any user may do this, in which case Request for Deletion is required for deletion, a formal community process which we try to avoid, precisely because it takes time away from actual work on the project, while the other available responses are quick and easy and only require discussion if someone is stubborn (or taking a strong stand, to put it more neutrally).

Stewards and global sysops, for example, tag pages for deletion there, and sometimes participate in discussions, even when English is not their first language. No user has ever been sanctioned because they were not "English." Pages in other languages are sometimes deleted, or sometimes userfied, at least until the user has ample opportunity to rescue and use the content elsewhere. In some cases, non-English content is retained, especially in user space.

Most users can use Google translate to understand page content. It is understood that users who are not fluent in English may not be able to readily read extensive evidence and argument, where that is involved in a discussion, so voting by such users might be deprecated, but not attacked. Here, on Beta, the same phenomenon may take place. Where there is substantial evidence and argument in English, on Beta community pages, users who are not fluent in English may misunderstand this. The same happens in the other direction. I read Dutch with Google translate.

Because that is not a quick process, I may not readily understand discussions, say, on Wikiversity:Forum; hence I have refrained from assessing policy that may have been agreed upon by the "Dutch community." At this point, I do not know what consensus may have been expressed there. Many times, it's been asserted that the "Dutch Wikiversity" wants this or that, but there has never been, that I've seen, a reference to a specific discussion there or elsewhere. It's a bald claim without evidence, and this has been noticed by others than me.

Looking at the Forum page, though, I see no sign of formal policy approval process, that I would expect to accompany some proposal that is to be policy. Such policies, if declared, should also be subject to overall Beta approval, if they affect anything outside of the Dutch project. For a custodian to delete a page that is not inside the Dutch project, having been moved to user space, with the category tags removed, based on an alleged "Dutch Wikiversity" consensus, is clearly an action affecting Beta as a whole.

In the cases I have in mind (there are two such deletions), it was claimed that there was a Dutch Wikiversity consensus for deletion, but the actual deletion discussion page showed only a proposed deletion with no discussion or expressed agreement beyond the action of the Custodian. By that time, the creator of those pages, overwhelmed with deletion proposals, had stopped response, though he obviously disagreed with the deletions. In rescuing one of those pages, I was also disagreeing, but not opposing removal from the Dutch Wikiversity, at least temporarily. So a claim of deletion consensus, when, in fact, we can only infer two in favor and two opposed, would be incorrect. Formally, though, there was only the proposal with no expressed agreement or close on the discussion page.

Then, after moving that page to the user space of the creating user -- which was not opposed by him; he could easily have tagged it for speedy deletion if he opposed, or could have moved it back -- I created a copy of the content, in my user space, because I considered the page to have important historical content. That page was not really part of the mainspace Dutch Wikiversity, it would more properly have belonged in Wikiversity space, as being plans for the development of the Dutch Wikiversity. Such pages are not normally deleted unless they are complete nonsense, certainly not on en.wikipedia. (They have a completely different process than the normal Articles for deletion process, because they are not articles.)

Both of these were deleted by the same custodian who also deleted over 5000 pages from the user, claiming that consensus was being ignored. This will all eventually be subject to review.

The basic issue here is how "consensus" is determined, particularly on Beta, where communities tend to be balkanized.

I have previously acted on Beta with respect to many pages not in English. That has never been found to be a problem. I removed a speedy deletion tag on a zh.wikiversity page, placed there by a non-Chinese user. In that case, I knew that a Chinese custodian had reviewed the page, so I was on solid ground. The non-Chinese user revert warred with me over the removal, claiming that I didn't know Chinese. True, and irrelevant. I had indeed read the page, in translation, and it was not improper.

The user also claimed that it was necessary for a custodian to remove speedy deletion tags, a policy he made up for Beta and this incident, it is not the norm. Speedy deletion is for uncontested deletion, deliberately made to be easy to handle without fuss. The user altered the speedy deletion template to require a custodian decision. I reverted that change to the standing template. Again, I knew that I was on solid ground. Revert warring started over that as well.

The revert warring on the Chinese page was stopped when, as I expected, a custodian would see the problem and make a decision, and this would likely be a Chinese custodian. And so it was.

The revert warring on the speedy deletion template was stopped when a custodian protected it and worked on it a bit, keeping out the language requiring custodian approval of removal. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Language bans

It is possible for a "language community" on Beta to develop policy and action relevant to the specific language project. However, enforcing this through custodial tools, and outside of the language project, is problematic. I think there is no doubt but that specific language pages may be deleted with consensus in discussions within the language community, but normally any user may comment in these discussions, not just the specific language users.

Further, it is a standing tradition on en.wikiversity, at least, that users may "rescue" pages from deletion by moving them to their user space. In doing so, as a special requirement here, to completely remove the pages from the jurisdiction of the "language community," the specific language Wikiversity category tag might be removed. That a page is in a language does not automatically make it part of that language Wikiversity.

User space here is not part of the specific language project, unless pages are so tagged. (When a specific language wikiversity is formed, independently of Beta, it is normal for all pages tagged in the language wikiversity category to be transwikied to the new project, and then deleted here.)

It often happens that a language community wants a sysop here familiar with that language, and elects one. This will not generally be opposed. However, a possible problem can arise when such a sysop then acts outside of the language community, particularly if not familiar with overall Wikiversity practices and actual or effective policies. The sysop has the tools to do this, because there is no way of restricting a sysop to a particular category of user, and no definitive categorization of users by language, and no way of preventing a sysop from deleting pages based on page categories.

Hence policy should be made clear, that to block a user, other than as a temporary measure, made necessary by extensive activity within the language Wikiversity (i.e., affecting those pages), a custodian should expect and satisfy general Wikiversity consensus, not just a consensus formed within the language community.

Any custodian blocking a user should not be in a personal conflict with that user, that is general policy without reference to language.

Sometimes, however, a block can be considered to be an emergency. Such a block should be declared as an emergency and should be immediately disclosed to the general custodian community, through Wikiversity:Request custodian action, which should be monitored by all sysops. Such a block should be temporary, until independently confirmed.

Any sysop may unblock such a blocked user, though it is courteous to consult first. If a custodian does unblock, perhaps based on an appearance of strong involvement, that custodian should monitor the situation to ensure that disruption does not arise or continue, and may declare restrictions on the unblocked user, and may issue, for example, topic bans, always subject to full community review if requested.

Again, we need clear recusal policy on Beta. We don't even have it on en.wikiversity, because attempts to establish it were always met with opposition from existing custodians. It should be no surprise that a user group may oppose limitations on the activity of that user group.

I was about to write that en.wikipedia has recusal policy. No, it does not. My impression was based on a large body of Arbitration cases where administrators were sanctioned for recusal failure. Notice [2] where a proposed Code of Conduct for the Arbitration Commitee failed to find consensus.

Wikipedia never took hard steps. The lack of policy or even guidelines meant that administrators were sanctioned for violating unstated "rules." Obviously, from many cases, failure to recuse was taken seriously, yet it was never defined clearly. Enormous disruption has resulted from that. Both of my ArbCom cases were rooted in recusal failure, and both cases were confirmed by the Committee as involved admin recusal failure, use-of-tools-while-involved. And we see the pattern in many Wikipedia decisions: users are sanctioned for violating unspoken rules that don't exist. "They should have known," would be the refrain. Yet these administrators were, almost certainly, following Wikipedia Rule Number One.[3]. Notice that Rule Number One has no definitive explanation, accepted by consensus.

I could say that this is by design. Yet Rule Number One is actually common law. It is not something unusual or particular to wikis. Increasingly, the trend is for societies to replace the common law principle with fixed rules, such as "sentencing guidelines" establishing minimum sentences, tying the hands of judges, or attempting to. (Nobody can force a judge to issue a particular decision; the question would be possible sanction of a judge for judicial error, or public reaction if the judge is subject to election.)

Setting up policies is *not* requiring that they be followed in specific cases. It is, however, setting up a presumption that if one follows the policy, one will not be sanctioned for it, unless the policy is confirmed as applied to the specific case by community consensus.

And Wikipedia never defined "community consensus" in such a way as to make it completely clear that this was a genuine consensus, and not just an ad hoc collection of biased opinions. The result of all of this is that Wikipedia is not reliable. And that's famous; among those who know, with high experience, it is often considered an insoluble problem. I don't agree. It's soluble, but it will take some community will to solve it before it will be solved.

Those who do not even recognize the problem are not likely to do the serious work required to address it. And there the matter sits, until and unless the pain gets so great that users start to deal with the real problem: reliable and clear decision-making structure.

Beta has some unique situations that do not arise on other wikis, except perhaps Incubator (with which I am not familiar). We should develop policy on this, and, as well, generic Wikiversity policies; this was a part of the mission of Beta, mostly neglected. We cannot impose policy on other wikis, but we can certainly advise and guide and demonstrate. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Dutch Wikiversity

[4] Because right now, editing this page could be provocative, I will not now comment there, but may add this later:

A Beta community may decide to establish this as policy or guideline (this is not policy on en.wikiversity, nor has it been on Beta, and it is not policy on en.wikipedia, for brief periods of time to allow page development, though incomplete pages or stubs are often, more recently, deleted there -- with many users complaining that this bites newcomers).

If so -- and it might be a good idea --, that should go with a guideline that incomplete pages are generally moved to the user space of the creator, so that the creator may continue to work on them. Only if the page is truly devoid of work product would it be directly deleted, and then only if it is not new. It may be better to tag it for speedy deletion, and a custodian can decide to make the move to user space (that gets the ball rolling, and if any user may remove a speedy deletion tag, which is normal policy, it does not do harm.) On en.wikiversity, ordinary users frequently make these page moves, it does not require a custodian, and they almost never cause any upset. Telling a user that their page is "incomplete" or "undeveloped" is not taken as an insult. Telling them that it's "useless," "garbage," or even "unsuited for Wikiversity," is often taken that way. It drives users away for no good reason, because it's unnecessary. Clean up Wikiversity by organizing it, don't drive users away! Five users with sustained contributions here will be needed in order to move to an independent project, and independent projects are not a slam-dunk if there is objection. Don't create objections! Welcome users, help them, educate them, and acknowledge their contributions! --Abd (talk) 14:34, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

inactive namespaces

Portaal:Dagelijks leven en vrije tijd is moved to a pseudo-namespace Faculteit.

Pseudonamespace pages here might end up in an established namespace in the final independent project, that might occur automatically, as long as the project creation request sets up the namespaces. I recommend that this be a community agreement first, before using pseudonamespace page names, there could be possible problems with this.

As noted in some current Dutch discussion of the namespace issue, en.wikiversity has some substantial confusion over the namespace issue. The community never settled on a clear organizational plan, so various users have interpreted how to use the namespaces and mainspace differently. A Beta project has the potential for finding a pre-independence structure, but the disadvantage of this could be that a small community, especially if inexperienced with what actually happens in a Wikversity, long-term, may not anticipate the real issues. Hence it's advisable to more carefully examine the en.wv situation, where the use of namespaces is actively being discussed.

There is a Portal namespace there. There is no Faculty namespace. However, the School namespace could roughly be equivalent, i.e., a School of Mathematics can be established, say, and then "teachers" may sign up. This creates certain wiki problems, though.

We have no way of validating credentials, and no definition of what credentials might be required to "teach" a subject. Indeed, this problem was sometimes advanced as an argument against the entire Wikiversity project concept.

The School has not necessarily been used that way, so there is a huge mixture of usages, and that's under discussion.

En.wikiversity calls participants "scholars," formally. Projects are created by people who are studying a topic, most are not teachers of it. Some of these users, however, are actually college professors and credentialed academics, and some projects are formally "courses." We encourage, on Wikiversity, the usage of real names and the posting of real and hopefully verifiable credentials. For this reason, it's important that independent user names be allowed on Wikversity and be maintained as distinct from SUL usernames, if the user desires to maintain an anonymous account for use elsewhere. So we will always resist claims that a user on Wikiversity is "actually" an SUL user, and we will not sanction users who occasionally use both usernames, except for double-voting or the like. That double usage can happen accidentally. Given that we attempt to make most contested decisions with real consensus, a single extra "vote" doesn't really matter, it is arguments and evidence that actually count in genuine consensus formation.

Other users, not actually teachers of a subject, are simply students, some advanced, some beginning.

Those who only think of "educational resources" as finished products, created by "teachers," will not understand "learning circles." They will not understand "independent learning," where someone who wants to learn about a topic creates a resource designed to facilitate their own learning, including by inviting others to participate. Yet "independent learning" is now, among academic educators, well-known to be more effective in deep education than highly structured learning. Advanced education has always understood this, in fact, that is why graduate students write theses on projects that they choose. Yes, for credentialing, those projects are reviewed.

Wikiversity has no credentialing process, and suggestions that it develop one were generally shot down; it conflicts with privacy policy, for example.

This lack of clear hierarchy is what fits the wiki model, because "scholar" is not a hierarchical concept. We may call a first-grader a "scholar," or any one who reads and studies and seeks to learn. Or teach.

However, we do, in practice, give those who organize a learning resource, initially, substantial freedom. We will recognize a kind of resource "ownership." General users may monitor and revert edits seen as disruptive to the activity of a course "leader," even if not vandalism. However, if real conflict arises, we will neutralize it, often with page moves to subspace that then allow participants, in conflict, to each develop their resources, with the overall structure being overall neutral -- and useful to all learners! We resolve conflict by making it unnecessary.

One more point: I have, with en.wikiversity, though off-wiki communication attracted the registration and participation of users who include the world's foremost scientists in some fields, and that includes a Nobel Prize winner and others with Wikipedia articles, as well as professors and authors of published academic works. In addition, we do have experts active on wikiversity who are credentialed academics. Two of these, at least, have been banned elsewhere, and one is even globally locked, so I advised him to create an independent, non-SUL Wikiversity username. (The global locking was, in my opinion, abusive, but there is no real discussion of these and even study of the situation has been literally suppressed.[5][6]) Eventually, all that will be studied, either within the WMF family of wikis or elsewhere. For now, though, there was inadequate community support on meta, i.e., some, but very little. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

sequence for RCA

• 21:30, 22 August 2014 User comments on RCA request.
• 19:27, 23 August 2014 comment on RCA by new user.
• 23:15, 23 August 2014 comment above is mentioned.
• 05:34, 24 August 2014 User comments again on RCA request.

Resources in Category:Wikiversiteit

as of 21:14, 26 August 2014 (UTC). Note: manually compiled, may contain errors.

Category:Wikiversiteit

1. Bibliografie Template:Weg 06:49, 23 August 2014
2. Drainage perceel basis 1
3. Wikiversity:Forum
4. Hoofdpagina
5. Huisregels Template:Weg 17:27, 16 August 2014‎
6. Software Testen Template:Weg 17:29, 18 August 2014‎
7. Software Testen: Algemene kennis Template:Weg 17:29, 18 August 2014‎
8. Software Testen: Algemene kennis - Case Template:Weg 17:29, 18 August 2014 (earlier speedy nom)
9. Software Testen: Projecten Template:Weg 17:29, 18 August 2014‎ (earlier speedy nom)
10. Software Testen: Voorwoord Template:Weg 17:29, 18 August 2014‎ (earlier speedy nom)

Subcategories

• category:Beleid‎ (2 C, 5 P)

1. Wikiversity:Announcements/nl
2. Wikiversity:Multilingualism/nl
3. Wikiversity:Policies/nl
4. Wikiversity:Te verwijderen pagina's
5. Wikiversiteit talk archief 2010 en eerder

Subcategories

• Category:NL verwijderverzoeken‎ (3 C, 8 P)

1. Bibliografie
2. Huisregels
3. Missie van de Nederlandstalige wikiversiteit
4. Software Testen
5. Software Testen: Algemene kennis
6. Software Testen: Algemene kennis - Case
7. Software Testen: Projecten
8. Software Testen: Voorwoord

• Category:Natuur & Leefomgeving‎ (1 C)
• Category:NL templates‎ (empty)
• Category:Vooronderzoek Natuur & Leefomgeving‎ (empty)

• Category:Opdrachten voor het MBO‎ (1 C, 1 P)

1. Drainage perceel basis 1

• Category:Vooronderzoek Natuur & Leefomgeving‎ (empty)

• Category:Voorstelrichtlijnen‎ (1 P)

1. Wikiversity:Privacybeleid

• Category:Hulppagina's‎ (12 P)

1. Wikiversity:Communication/Nl
2. Help:Contents/Nl
3. Help:FAQ/Nl
4. Wikiversity:Leerprojecten
5. Missie van de Nederlandstalige wikiversiteit
6. Wikiversity:Mission/Nl
7. Nederlandstalige wikiversiteit/leertraject
8. Nederlandstalige wikiversiteit/leertraject/afbeeldingen
9. Nederlandstalige wikiversiteit/leertraject/afbeeldingen/randen
10. Nederlandstalige wikiversiteit/leertraject/afbeeldingen/wikimedia commons
11. Wikiversity:What is Wikiversity?/Nl
12. Wiki basiskennis

• Category:Vakgebieden‎ (3 C)

• Category:Dagelijks leven en vrije tijd‎ (1 C, 1 P)

1. Faculteit:Dagelijks leven en vrije tijd

• Category:Tuinieren (1 P)

1. Vijvers

• Category:Exacte wetenschappen‎ (4 C)

• Category:Geologie‎ (1 C)

• Category:Hydrologie voor het MBO‎ (1 C, 6 P)

1. Drainage perceel basis 1
2. Hydrologie beek basis 1
3. Hydrologie kunstwerken open dag
4. Hydrologie neerslag 1
5. Hydrologie retentie 1
6. Vijvers

• Category:Drainage praktijkvoorbeelden‎ (1 P)

1. User:The Banner/Praktijkvoorbeeld Tusveld

• Category:Informatica‎ (1 P)

1. Embedded software

• Category:Watermanagement (2 P)

1. Geschiedenis van het waterbeheer
2. Watermanagement

• Category:Wiskunde‎ (1 P)

1. Omwentelingslichaam van een kromme (wiskunde B)

• Category:Natuur & Leefomgeving‎ (1 C)

• Category:Opdrachten voor het MBO‎

• Drainage perceel basis 1
• Category:Vooronderzoek Natuur & Leefomgeving‎ (empty)

Impressions

Missie van de Nederlandstalige wikiversiteit is a document, "Mission of the Dutch Wikiversity", created by Timboliu in 2012, and with cosmetic changes by custodian Crochet.david. Material was added by Lotje 26 June, 2014. The deletion of a page like this is unusual. On a project like Wikipedia, this would be a Wikipedia space page, the same on en.wikiversity. It would either be improved (which could be a radical revision) or it would be deprecated, with a template. Or it would be moved to user space, since it is really an essay by the user. Such pages are almost never deleted unless positively harmful to even have in history. This page is a description of the Wikiversity mission by a user with incomplete ideas about it. For example, he has it that, "learning projects are preferably organized bottom-up rather than top-down." That is not necessarily so. Rather, what is accepted by Wikiversitans is that learning projects may be organized that way. Indeed, the whole original apparatus of science was organized that way. The top-down concept of formally organized public research is a recent invention, much of it in the last century. Some might say it's harmful. But it is, in reality, just another way of doing things. Wikipedia, as a project was bottom-up organized, mostly. Individuals decided what to work on. Within a few years, mainspace became far less accessible; originally, stubs multiplied like mice. Gradually, stubs were either improved or deleted and new stubs had tough going.

But users remained completely welcome to create stubs in their user space. A short stub is not worth asking a sysop to undelete, but if a user has a longer piece of work on Wikipedia, that is deleted, especially speedy-deleted, and it was not deleted for copyright violation or other serious offense, it is routine that the user may ask for the page to be undeleted. In fact, such pages may be undeleted to mainspace on request. However, to avoid conflict, and with pages that were deleted through formal process, that is, AfD, "userfying" pages is routine, i.e., undeletion followed by immediate move to user space. Sometimes nofollow tags are added, etc. --Abd (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

There are pages on Beta that show up in the category structure that are not tagged with Category:Wikiversiteit, such as Vijvers. There may be others that have no Dutch tags on them. Actually here is how that page was removed from Wikiversiteit: [7] --Abd (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The Dutch Wikiversity pages should all be tagged with the standard Category:NL, that being the ISO code for Dutch. When Dutch Wikiversity is started up, all pages in that category will be transwikied and deleted from Beta. Category:Wikiversiteit is nonstandard. In either case, these categories will be removed as part of the transwiki process. --Abd (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The category structure is messy and may be getting a bit messier. But that's only a preliminary impression. What stands out is that, if the Weg-tagged pages are deleted -- as every other one was -- there are only three pages left in the category, being Hoodfpagina, the "top page", Wikiversity:Forum, the Dutch Forum created in July of this year, and Drainage perceel basis 1, a page that was moved out of mainspace by a user, who later thought that a mistake, so I moved it back. That is the only actual content page left, then, since the Forum is Wikiversity space and the Hoodfpagina will become the Home page, presumably. So I will have edited the oldest Dutch Wikiversity page, and the same will be so if I rescue any other content. Unless one of the other pages is kept. At least one looks like a good candidate to me. --Abd (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Meanwhile, it is essentially true that the entire content of the Dutch Wikiversity has been deleted. I wonder, if this was the goal, why Incubator was not used instead of Beta, to start a separate Dutch Wikiversity project. Three of the major participants that came here to start with massive deletion have also voted to close Beta. I.e., they want to use it, now, and then shut it down so nobody else can use it. I find that odd. If the Dutch Wikiversity continues with its xenophobia and narrow concept of "education," I may oppose creation of the independent project, until there is a true Wikiversitan community active here. We will see what is created. --Abd (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2014 (UTC)