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Wikiversity talk:Naming conventions/Original proposal

Archive 1

Votes
Are you pro, neutral or contra the whole Naming conventions page (but each individual convention should also be voted on separately)

 * works, yet massive edits need to be made Heltec  talk
 * Think course codes should be discouraged Ehremo 23:30, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Messedrocker 18:46, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * see comment Oliver 20:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * -- sebmol ? 12:18, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I hope that my vote aren't determinant --Dario vet 12:24, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * while a lot of work is being put in to this, there is a need to consider other options -- Reswik 16:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * because "Topic:" sound more like what courses should be put under. Divisions/Departments need a name that sounds like it's an group or orginization, like school. Rayc 02:02, 22 August 2006
 * Needs evolution. Mirwin 05:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * TimNelson 02:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC) It needs work, but I'm in favour of making what we've already got into an official policy, and refine it as time goes on.
 * --Dnjkirk 12:26, 8 October 2006 (UTC) See comments below
 * because of capitalization. The Jade Knight 08:36, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * -- capitalization should be up to each project's community to decide. I find the upper hierarchies rather confusing and over-engineered as well (and not really a naming convention issue anyway). Can we scratch this and start over? b:WB:NP is much simpler and less constraining. --SB_Johnny  talk 11:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments

 * The only problem I can see is that although you may have a course it will be difficult to tailor it for certain levels of education required. How could you have one lesson suitable for bachelor and masters degree, for example.  Maybe one of the levels should be the depth of the subject.  I don’t  like the idea of ‘school’ and ‘college’ I think: Department -> Subject -> Module -> Lesson e.g. Engineering -> Electrical Engineering -> Introduction to Electronic Components -> Resistors.  I do agree that lessons should be one standard wiki page and confined to a single page. Oliver 20:35, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think this needs to be a policy. A little creativity, flexibiliy, and freedom in how we name things should be encouraged. We're a brand new project, let's act like one. Some approaches will work, some won't. Those that won't will disappear or be disappeared when their time comes. -- sebmol ? 12:18, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I think it *does* need at least a guideline, so that people who want to create new content in the right place have something to guide them in doing so. For example, I saw one school in WikiVersity that was putting course content on the school page.  TimNelson 03:15, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I suppose that's true. But the thing is, this is a Wiki, and stuff like this can be easily fixed. There is no "right" way of doing things at the moment, I suppose is one way of putting it. --HappyCamper 03:23, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Just one implication
Just to point out one implication of the current name space is that it implies that there will be one lesson for each topic. This may or may not be a good thing.

Roadrunner 19:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

 * "one lesson for each topic" <-- Can you explain how you reached that conclusion? --JWSchmidt 19:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I have been using each topic to start a list or index of lessons. See http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic:Engineering and click on topic:statics for an example. Mirwin 13:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization
"Introduction to Partial Differential Equations" or "Introduction to partial differential equations"? --HappyCamper 05:03, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Does it matter? -- sebmol ? 05:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It does to the software. Different capitalization leads to different files. Topic:StaticsTopic:statics Bizarre.  Capitalization mattered earlier this evening.  I will need to check into this further.  Aha! Not on first word.  Help Desk Help desk  Mirwin 13:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

One page naming policy I strongly recommend is the use of "sentence style" capitalization, as opposed to "title style": that is, capitalize the first word (this is actually optional as things stand now) and then lower case after that, except proper nouns and any other words that would ordinarily be capitalized in running text. For example: Lesson:In statics the sum of the forces is equal to zero (actually, I would use a much simpler name, but this is just for illustration purposes) instead of Lesson:In Statics the Sum of the Forces is Equal to Zero. This example demonstrates the reason for this policy: the word "is" should actually be capitalized in the latter link, according to standard English "title" capitalization rules (because it's a verb). The inevitable confusion that arises when people try to use "title case" should be avoided by preferring, as much as is reasonable, "sentence case". - dcljr 18:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC) (Merged here from ==Capitalization revisited==)
 * That's not actually true; "is" is usually not capitalized in English titles. The Jade Knight 08:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There is disagreement on this point, but:   - dcljr 12:02, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
 * In any case, the disagreement only proves my point. - dcljr 12:07, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Why

 * 1) Lowercase is easier to read. Google it if you want to read about that. --Rogerhc 20:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Hypertext page names and headers, and links to them, are already typographically distinct from normal text. So the paper technology convention of Title Case is no longer necessary in hypertext and can be dispensed with in favor of readability. --Rogerhc 20:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

NOTE: Wikiversity's paper printable version (see toolbox in left sidebar) should display hyperlinks distinctly from normal text, even on paper, so that readers will know where further information is available online. The printable version styling does not do so currently. This is a paper version styling readability bug that should be corrected immediately. --Rogerhc 20:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't believe it's necessary to enforce this. It's ok to have it as a suggestion but there's no need to go around policing page titles. -- sebmol ? 21:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki should be modified so that page names and page section names are case insensitive but until that is done (I rather doubt it will ever be done) strict conformity with well defined page naming conventions including capitalization rules remains central to simple navigation. :-) --Rogerhc 23:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, in Wikipedia, sometimes casing creates two separate articles; for example, "Leading Edge" is an article on the magazine, whereas "Leading edge" is the article on the aviation term. However, this is much less of a virtue for Wikiversity, where case-insensitivity would be much appreciated.  The Jade Knight 08:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually pages are and always has been case sensitive, except for the first letter in the page name, not the first letter in a word. Wiktionary is the only project currently that makes use of case sensitivity of the first letter as well, where Doctor is different from doctor. True case insensitivity has never existed that I know of. --dark[[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]]lama 15:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

A New Opinion
I, personally, think having lower-case school and topic names (such as Topic:European history) is ugly. I think that this is even worse with categories. I strongly prefer title capitalization in these contexts. The Jade Knight 08:45, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 1. School and topic names - I would say: let the participants of the topic decide. 2. Main namespace -  keep the mediawiki convention in using the lower case, for in-line wikilinking.  This is mostly a technical matter. Hillgentleman|Talk 12:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is any "mediawiki convention" for naming pages, since otherwise the software would force a specific convention to be used and there would be no questions about what convention to use. Wikibooks for instance uses title case for books, and subject case for categories. Another option is to require consistency within a learning project. Like Wikiversity could discourage "Learning Magic/Art of Distract", "Learning magic/Art of illusion" and "Category:Magick" from being used within the same learning project. This proposal could be thrown out in favor of this consistency being covered in Wikiversity's Manual of Style. --dark[[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]]lama 14:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

History
This is my attempt to provide an account of the problems that arose when the Wikiversity "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces were created.

When the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces were created, the intention was that editors would be free to create schools and each school would be concerned with topics of study. At that time, pages were being imported from Wikibooks. Confusion arose over what should be placed in the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces. Wikiversity participants started creating various organizational units corresponding to academic subject areas. The most common organizational units were "schools", "departments" and a new hybrid entity, the "school department". Schools and departments began to be organized in this way: "school departments" contained schools that contained departments. This organizational system was similar to the system used at Wikibooks where the largest organizational units for academic topics were called "departments" on the main page. For example, "Life Sciences" was listed on the main Wikiversity page of Wikibooks as a "department". At Wikibooks, the "Life Sciences department' contained schools such as "School of Medicine". In most case, Wikibooks schools contained courses.

Wikiversity "school departments" contained "schools" which contained "departments" <--first "system" tried Wikibooks   "departments" contained "schools" which contained courses

A fundamental problem with the system used at Wikibooks was its use the term "course". The Board of Trustees had requested that Wikiversity not have courses. The need arose to find a new term to refer to the academic topics that had been called "courses" at Wikibooks. The "courses" at Wikibooks often covered topics that are called departments at bricks-and-mortar universities. For example, at Harvard, the Medical School has departments such as: Cell Biology, Genetics, Neurobiology and Pathology. In the Wikibooks School of Medicine, topics such as Cell Biology and Pathology were called "courses". This is why it made sense for Wikiversity to start calling major academic topics "departments" rather than "courses".

However, if what had been called a "course" at Wikibooks was to be called a "department" at Wikiversity, this was in fundamental conflict with the existing use of the term "department" on the main Wikiversity page at Wikibooks. Thus, the term "school department" was coined at Wikiversity and used as a new name to replace what had been called a "department" at Wikibooks.

Use of the term "school department" was a problem for Wikiversity. At bricks-and-mortar universities, academic topic areas such as "Life Sciences" are often given names such as The Faculty of Life Sciences. At Wikipedia, the "Portal:" namespace has become a popular tool for organizing the many topic areas that are defined by Wikipedians. I decided to change the "school departments" into Portals; for example, we now have Portal:Life Sciences. The Social Sciences Portal has a corresponding category called Category:Social Sciences that can contain the School of Psychology.

Wikiversity "main portals" contain "schools" which contain "departments" <--second "system"

Another problem is that some schools contain many departments. Wikiversity can have many different types of "topics". It was suggested that the term "division" be used to refer to a part of a school that contains and organizes some of the school's departments. Wikiversity participants are free to create any type of organizational units desired within the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces. The school > division > department hierarchy is just one suggested system that was created to help deal with pages imported from the existing hierarchical system at Wikibooks. Beyond serving that basic task, I think a hierarchical system will be useful to help some new Wikiversity participants find the main academic topics that they are familiar with by browsing a short list of major Wikiversity schools.--JWSchmidt 16:42, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

My thoughs and ideas
I think the problem we have here is the differences between US and UK Universities. A UK University has at the uppermost level departments (Engineering, Law etc) then various courses which will get you a degree with that name, each course then is split into modules and then lessons. I think we are all agreed that it should run from the uppermost level ie Engineering down to a lesson, but the problem is the names to use. Being Bold I would suggest the following which doesn't rely on what people think they are from different countries.

Engineering -> Electronic Engineering -> Electronic Components -> Resistors

Portal -> Division -> Subject -> Topic -> Lesson (no pre name)

And of course various subjects may point to the same topics etc.

Oliver 18:37, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree that use of the term "School" for a wikiversity namespace has caused many problems. There are many kinds of "schools" that have very different ways of fitting into systems for organizing academic topics. This is something that should have been planned before Wikiversity was launched. I made the error of assuming that Wikiversity would adopt the use of Portals (and not "School:" and not "Topic:") and use Portals to organize everything in the way they are used at Wikipedia. We are now basically "stuck" with the "School:" namespace unless someone is willing to do a huge amount of work to reverse what has already been done. Could we just put a map like this:

 * (conceptual, British) Portal -> Division -> Subject -> Topic -> Lesson
 * (conceptual, U.S.A.) Portal -> School -> Division -> Department -> Lesson
 * (Wikiversity namespaces) Portal: namespace -> School: namespace -> Topic: namespace -> Lessons in the main namespace (no prefix)

 * On all of the major Portal and School pages? --JWSchmidt 19:01, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I think that as long as its obvious to someone coming to learn something it should be ok, but what I would say is that portals should then only point to schools and schools to topics to prevent confusion and no using 'Department of ...'. This way it’s irrelevant to a new comer who just wants the content what our namespaces are called.  Also to simplify things the Browse page should only point to portals and pages such as Portal:Engineering_Discussions should be either given another name space or even better kept to the talk/discussion page provided on each wiki page. Oliver 20:14, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

 * The link you cite above is and was intended exactly as a place for engineers or tech students to discuss detailed topics of interest to technically educated and oriented people. It is as labeled a "portal" intended to serve as a water cooler or starting place for discussion.  By definition or purpose a central discussion place cannot be split up to the talk pages of other subjects.  Last time I checked the Browse pointed to the School:Engineering which has a link to the Portal:Engineering Discussions.  Seems useful and consistent with the naming conventions intent to me.  It allows a group with similar interests to quickly find a useful central discussion place focused on their interests.  Any with extreme interests might prefer to check for portals at a specific engineering school or subject before falling back to generic engineering if there is no action at the more extremely differentiated location. Mirwin 04:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree with your general philosophy. I would emphasize that right now we are building Wikiversity. We need an emphasis on how to organize things now so that everything works out good six months from now....and ten years from now. Anyone "coming to learn something" right now is probably going to leave in disappointment or else role up their sleeves and help build Wikiversity. If you look here you can see that a distinction has been made between the major "top level" portals and "lesser portals". I suspect that Wikiversity will come to have thousands of portals, but a few will remain the really important ones for browsing, as is the case at Wikipedia. Now, when Wikiversity has very little actual content, the many "administrative" School and Topic pages might seem insane. However, I think that Wikiversity will eventually have so many individual learning resources (millions of main namespace pages) that there will have to be thousands of "Topic:" pages acting as portals to the many learning resources. --JWSchmidt 20:44, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

 * If you want to and can justify (based on existing objections) changing the namespaces soon to:
 * (conceptual alt) Area -> Subject -> Topic -> Lesson
 * or: (conceptual alt2) Area -> Field -> Topic -> Lesson
 * or: To whatever reduces or removes the school/topic dissonance
 * Then I would help with substantial editing of pages to support such a transition. I have a few more days of vacation before I get swamped doing stuff. Reswik 22:44, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

An Australian perspective
Just as an alternative here's how we'd structure things here in Australia:
 * Faculty of Science (Equivalent to Wikiversity Portal? -- It'd be nice if we could call them Faculties instead of Portals, if that's Internationally acceptable)
 * School of Computing & Mathematics (Equivalent to Wikiversity School) -- School and Department seem to be interchangeable here; maybe we're too small :).
 * Degree -- Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) vs. Bachelor of Science (Software Engineering); each is a specified collection of semester-long subjects, some of which may not be part of the same school or faculty. The word "Course" is can be used for this.
 * Subject: Semester-long program for learning. The word "Course" is also used for this; I recommend we avoid the word "Course".

 * Division seems to be the word used for non-faculty branches of the university, such as the library and the IT department: . I'm not sure Wikiversity needs these.  But it might be nice to have at least a bage dedicated to "Divisions", listing the Library (Wikibooks), Division of InterAcademic Co-operation (basically lists institutions using Wikiversity courses), and other things like that.

And a few links for your enjoyment:
 * Template:Department_boilerplate
 * Template:Division_boilerplate
 * Template:Subdivision boilerplate
 * Template:Learning project boilerplate

I like Boilerplate :)

Wikiversity needs Glossary similar to w:Wikipedia:Glossary.

conceptual maps: (conceptual, Australia) Faculty -> School -> area/department -> subject -> Lesson (conceptual, British) Portal -> Division -> Subject -> Topic -> Lesson (conceptual, U.S.A.) Portal -> School -> Division -> Department -> Lesson (Wikiversity namespaces) Portal: namespace -> School: namespace -> Topic: namespace -> Lessons in the main namespace (no prefix)--JWSchmidt 18:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia conventions
One of the conventions on Wikipedia is the following:
 * Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized (for example: John Wayne and Art Nouveau, but not Computer Game).

Do we want to adopt this over here? I have an inclination to not do this, simply because it gives article titles here more flexibility. Thoughts? --HappyCamper 20:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I think we should consider if it would be a benefit for there to be uniformity at a "School" or at a University-wide level so that different departments using the same learning programs will have the same capitalization style in page titles and not a mix that looks odd or requires a lot of extra editing. Reswik 00:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Flexibility in capitalization of second and subsequent words seems a bit overrated to me when it allows: Lesson:In_Statics_the_Sum_of_the_Forces_is_Equal_to_Zero or Lesson:In statics the sum of the Force is Equal to Zero or Lesson:In statics the Sum of the Forces is equal to zero or Lesson:In Statics the Sum of the Forces is equal to Zero across the permutations.  We will need lengthy descriptive lesson titles since it has been proprosed that no organizing or indexing information be attached directly to the title of the lesson.  I suppose we can fill the gap with meta information tags such as categories. Mirwin 05:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Friendly amendment to current Namespace policy: rename Topic namespace to Field
Context: Only 2 of 6 have selected pro above to support this policy as I write the following. There are several reasons: One reasons is that the policy is faulty, though it is improving. The following doesn't address the idea that we need no namespace policy now at all! When the following is implemented, pro positions can be interpreted as 4 of 6. See the positions above.

One Problem: People are using Topic namespace to refer to "Departments" (Literature--"Department of" used on the page but not in the page title) and other structural groups. Topic refers to courses of study, which are usually cognitively labeled courses of study (eg, 19th Century American Literature). When used for structural groups like "Department," "Topic" as a namespace creates a cognitive dissonance between a structural group and the idea of a topic of study. We can and probably should eliminate this interpretation problem now.

A Simple Solution: I suggest we replace "Topic" with a namespace called "Field" (a flexible spatial term) to deal with groups called Divisions/Subdivisions/Departments/etc. -- understanding that those won't be formally in page titles. Specifically...

Currently, we have these namespaces:
 * (Wikiversity namespaces) Portal: namespace -> School: namespace -> Topic: namespace -> Lessons in the main namespace (no prefix)

I suggest adding one namespace to have these namespaces:
 * (Wikiversity namespaces) Portal: namespace -> School: namespace -> Field: namespace -> Lessons in the main namespace (no prefix)

Secondarily, I think we could replace "School" with "Area" (a flexible spatial term). If anyone else agrees, great. But, mainly, I think we need a new namespace category of "Field" or some other structural term to replace the dissonance caused by using "Topic".

Note: I prefer the flexibility of the Portal/Category network scheme. But, we don't need a conflicting meaning in one of the main categories of the hierarchy system which many are likely to use. Let's fix this.

If there are no objections over the next few days, I will write this into the naming conventions page and make a note of that proposed namespace change(s) on the Colloquium page.

Comments? Reswik 00:47, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

 * If there is going to be a change such as from the existing "Topic:" namespace to a new "Field:" namespace it will cause a major disruption of many existing Wikiversity pages. There would have to be a good reason for doing this. So far, no good reason for such a change has been provided. --JWSchmidt 05:41, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, that is why I have been addressing this now -- to see how to deal with this. But, there has already been a disruption caused - at the top of the hierarchy (old large schools --> portal; some topics/departments --> schools). So, due to the portal switch: It seems the problem mentioned above is partly resolved by a recent change in the naming conventions policy. The above amendment was written yesterday with the policy as it stood a day or two ago in mind where there was a problem with using Topic namespace. In the middle of this policy under the topic discussion section this old policy still seemed to be reflected yesterday. But, now the policy has changed at the top of the page and invalidates the above amendment suggestion. The switch to using portal namespace for top level structure (divisions such as social sciences) replaces the past usage of school for that. And school namespace now replaces the use of main "departments" under topics. There will still be sub-departments under topics it seems so this may be awkward but it is better. I think it is reasonable still to change "school" and "topic" to "area" and "field" (of study) due to the strange-sounding quality of calling departments like sociology as school and due to conventions like the department of algebra being under "topic" namespace -- but it is not as much a structural problem now as a language issue (or conflict different usages happening at same time). Reswik 09:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Besides my personal opinion that I prefer some ambiguity and flexibility in the naming system and my distaste for writing such things as policies, I'd also like to point out that the naming scheme used by many actual institutions of higher education aren't consistent either. I'd much rather see us work on content and presenting it to users than debating how to classify things. Right now, it appears to me like we've spent a lot of time talking about structural issue yet to new users coming to this page, the actual substance they find is rather slim. -- sebmol ? 09:12, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I would prefer to see a flexible process and structure too. But, this policy (which has weak support) is being used by default. The way this policy is set up (and complemented with diagrams) it can drive the naming of new pages (not namespace - but top of pages) into structural terms like "school" (for departments) and "department" (for subjects/topics of study). This policy can be restructured to be quite a bit more flexible. I have a suggestion for that below. Reswik 14:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * After I read your proposal below, I think we have a very different understanding of what I meant by flexibility. To me, flexibility means that it doesn't have to the same way everywhere. Meaning, that how structural entities are named differs throughout the project based on the preferences of those most actively involved in a specific area. In other words, the school of business would have a different naming convention than say the school of physical sciences (or they might have the same, up to them). In fact, I'd prefer a loose competition between naming conventions where the one that's most useful gets adopted naturally for its benefits and merits. That means no central imposition of naming conventions. -- sebmol ? 15:11, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * But that loose competition can happen at the level of the top of the page! Competition very likely won't happen in the programming of the namespaces (unless we say: no namespace conventions period and I don't think we want that) -- anyway, with any set of conventions (one or many) these will become locked in over time due to extensive links and page instances and the increasing difficulty of changing those. We are close to having the current default plan (which doesn't have approval) locked in (unless we take some effort now). So, I agree with flexibility at level of what people do on page (and call a group on the page) but not in namespace -- the most simplicity in namespace allows the greatest creativity on pages. A paradox but it is so I think. Reswik 15:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

 * So. I think flexible and multi-dimensional plans can be helpful. Simple flexible plans are great too. Two or more simple complementary plans that can work together -- so much the better. Over lunch, this idea came: We could design a naming convention policy that has both the flexibility you suggest (noting that various alternate naming conventions are possible and up to groups to decide) and the basic policy I suggest below as a suggested option if people don't want to try something new (with other alternates also possibly suggested at first or in ongoing way). The policy steps would be to say: part 1) use whatever namespace conventions you wish (as long as any specific namespaces are respected for their usage, such as Wikiversity for wikiv wide policies) and part 2) here is the basic minimum suggested namespace convention, a default: use Portal, Topic and main namespace, as suggested below). In short, plan 1) groups choose/create namespace policy and 2) here is the simplest alternate that you can use.  Reswik 18:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: The simplest and most flexible naming policy
There remains significant opposition to the current naming conventions. There remain problems (though improving) with the current naming conventions, which are being used by default. Some of these are discussed above.

I think JW wrote something yesterday that caught my attention. To paraphrase: Every namespace is a portal. So it is. So, then, why create extra structures? To facilitate organization. That isn't happening very well with the current policy.

Taking a step back: The basic distinction we have in the idea of how to conceptualize Wikiversity learning is the distinction between learning groups and learning projects. So...

 * Let's consider naming every page that organizes learning groups and structures to "Portal" namespace. (This involves renaming current "schools" to "portals," which we have experience with now. It may involve renaming some "topic" pages which are groups.) Every group of learners and scholars (division, subdivision, department, subdepartment, section) would have a portal page. There would be interdisciplinary portals and "structural" portals (that is, academic structures). This means dropping the use of "school" namespace and lifting out of "topic" namespace of groups dedicated to multiple learning projects. We would have thousands of portals and many layers of them, organized on differing index and outline pages. Fine.
 * As is case now, name every learning project focusing on actual content (activity schedules, lesson plans and syllabi) to "Topic" namespace. No change needed there.

This is a bit similar to the idea of a network naming convention I was discussing earlier, but simpler, more flexible and more effective. In summary, basically this idea eliminates some remaining problems in the current plan and lets all groups structure index pages to organize portal relations as they will. I'll mention specifically benefits of why to do this later... But I think you can get the idea from various discussions above. Reswik 15:05, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I request that everyone who still cares about this discussion take ten minutes to read the section above called History and when you do so, please take the time to visit these three pages at Wikibooks: 1) The Wikiversity main page at Wikibooks - look at the list of "departments" 2) The list of Wikiversity schools at Wikibooks - for example, School of Medicine 3) The page for the School of Medicine at Wikibooks - note that the content is called "Courses"

 * I am aware of the Wikibooks structure and I think it is not too effective for an online environment that could encompass teachers and learners from thousands of learning institutions. At some point, I will look at this more to see how that structure developed. But, on the face of it, it has problems. It seems to me that structure is part of the source of the problems that people are having with this proposal. Reswik 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Starting on the 15th of this month, we faced the task of importing the Wikiversity pages from Wikibooks. A significant fraction of what the Wikiversity community had developed at Wikibooks during the past six months was a hierarchical system that divides conventional academic disciplines into an easily-browsable set of meta-pages. That hierarchical system had three levels of meta-pages. These meta-pages provide a way to organize Wikiversity learning resources. The History section of this page, above, describes how a similar system of meta-pages was set up here starting on the 15th.

It would have been possible to make all Wikiversity meta-pages for organizing learning materials be portals in a "Portal:" namespace. However, it was decided to create two additional namespaces, "School:" and "Topic:" This was sensible. The existing structure at Wikibooks was built around Schools each of which is concerned with a set of academic topics. We now have a three level hierarchy at Wikiversity matching the original structure at Wikibooks: portals > schools > topics This system works and it allows us to build on the foundation that was created by the Wikiversity community when it was working at Wikibooks.

 * But, this could work better. I disagree that School and Topic are working well. The majority of opinions expressed above in the comment section disagree as well with various aspects of the proposal. This is problem situation to not overlook. Reswik 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"Every namespace is a portal" <-- I think this statement is nonsense. What I said was that pages in the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces function as portals. They function as specialized, well-defined types of portals.

 * For current purposes, discussing Portal, School, and Topic, this is the case then: They are all portals. So, the paraphrase is not nonsense in the case at hand. Thanks for the clarification. Reswik 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"consider naming every page that organizes learning groups and structures to 'Portal' namespace" <-- Prior to August 15, my assumption was that we would use "Portal:" namespace for all meta-pages that organize learning materials residing in the main namespace. This is the system used at Wikipedia (portals organizing main namespace content) and I had the mistaken idea that "Portal:" namespace was a default component of MediaWiki. However, now that we have the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces I find that I like them. I see nothing wrong with using the "School:" namespace for schools and "Topic:" namespace for the topics that are studied within each school.

 * That is not how these are only being used. Reswik 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"renaming current 'schools' to 'portals' .... renaming some 'topic' pages" <-- I estimate that several thousand page edits over the course of the past week have gone into naming the many "School:" and "Topic:" pages and creating the correctly named links between them. If we are going to reverse all of this work, at the cost of a huge disruption in what is now a functioning system, we need to have a compelling reason. In my view, no compelling reason for such a change has been advanced.

 * The compelling reason is that it will take even more time later *and* the strong majority above have not voted to support the current proposal. Reswik 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"name every learning project focusing on actual content (activity schedules, lesson plans and syllabi) to 'Topic' namespace" <-- I think this is a totally bad idea. In the Wikiversity model of e-learning, learning projects are fundamental educational content of Wikiversity. Learning projects absolutely belong in the main namespace.

 * Totally bad? How can something be totally bad? I think you have been a bit combative and dismissive with your language several times in these replies and in those on my talk page.  Let's look for solutions, ok?  My view in suggesting this is that the planning of lessons in Topic space but the Lessons themselves in main namespace. This actually makes sense if you want the content of main namespace to be actual instructional material and not thousands of syllabi (with minor variations probably) taking up naming options. But, it is something that can be discussed reasonably I think.  The educational content is not a sticking point for me -- it is the way we use school and topic for group structures that is most of concern to me. Reswik 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"simpler, more flexible and more effective.... and lets all groups structure index pages to organize portal relations as they will" <-- The "Portal:" namespace provides Wikiversity participants with nearly total freedom to create portals. The exception is that we are using specialized "School:" and "Topic:" pages to organize a set of conventional academic disciplines. My expectation is that with time the "School:" and "Topic:" pages will become increasingly unimportant and "Portal:" pages will come to dominate Wikiversity's organization of learning resources. "Portal:" pages will allow Wikiversity participants to provide a flexible system of organized access to categories. People arriving from bricks-and-mortar educational institutions will probably continue to make use of the "School:" and "Topic:" pages as an introduction to Wikiversity.--JWSchmidt 20:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Then, let us start with Portals as the default and first mentioned options. Let schools and topics be another alternate mentioned. Why choose to advance a system to which there lacks a majority of support? Why not choose also to mention the system which offers the most flexibility and let people choose. I would also advice that sysops transferring material go with the simpler model. I think the burden of justification using school and topic should be justified and it has not been so. Reswik 01:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"How can something be totally bad?" <-- If someone tried to suggest that a tree can be called an animal then I would object and say that is a bad idea, totally bad. Yes, such judgments can be wrong, hence the softening qualifier, "I think".

 * Yet, there was merit to the content of what I was saying (which I will go into later) -- though different from your view. It is a debate tactic to prop up a straw person (or straw animal to extend the metaphor you introduce in this case) which misrepresents a differing view or takes a subpart of it and then dismisses that, pretending to dismiss full import of another position. This is not effective discourse I think. See end comment below. Reswik 18:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

"I think you have been a bit combative and dismissive with your language several times in these replies and in those on my talk page." <-- I have spent a great deal of effort trying to discuss options for organizing learning materials at Wikiversity. I have made an effort to be diplomatic and thoughtfully address every issue raised. If I feel that a suggested idea is wrong, I say so and explain my reasoning.

"Let's look for solutions, ok?" <-- Fine, but let's clearly define the "problems" and make sure that any proposed "solution" does not cause more difficulties than it fixes.

"My view in suggesting this is that the planning of lessons in Topic space but the Lessons themselves in main namespace. This actually makes sense if you want the content of main namespace to be actual instructional material and not thousands of syllabi (with minor variations probably) taking up naming options." <-- This is fine for "lessons" but lessons are only part of the mission of Wikiversity. The Wikiversity Project Proposal has two main parts:1) Create and host a range of learning materials/resources<BR>2) Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials<BR>The learning projects themselves are Wikiversity learning resources: by engaging in the projects, Wikiversity participants will learn. Yes, a distinction needs to be made between<BR>1)"administrative" efforts of Wikiversity participants to organize systems that support the development of learning projects ("Topic:" namespace)<BR>and<BR>2) the actual learning projects themselves (main namespace).<BR>The actual learning projects are activities that can be engaged in by people who have nothing to do with the planning and development of the activities. The learning projects are key educational content of Wikiversity and belong in the main namespace. The planning and development and organizational structuring of learning projects are meta-educational activities and they belong in Wikiversity namespaces that are for meta-discussions of how Wikiversity functions to produce learning resources. The idea that only "actual instructional material" belongs in the main namespace assumes a model of learning in which inert objects like textbooks are the only learning resources. The Wikiversity project proposal explicitly rejected such an educational model. The Wikiversity e-Learning model places emphasis on active learning, "learning by doing". A key subset of Wikiversity learning materials is learning projects. The term "lesson" is tainted by the influence of conventional bricks-and-mortar educational institutions. Conventional bricks-and-mortar educational institutions have traditionally placed emphasis on models of learning in which students are empty containers to be filled with knowledge that is held in learning materials such as textbooks. In a "learn by doing" model of education, learners can participate in the construction of new learning resources. "name every learning project focusing on actual content (activity schedules, lesson plans and syllabi) to 'Topic' namespace" <-- this is a mistake because a critically important way that Wikiversity will produce what you define as "actual content" is by involving Wikiversity participants in learning projects that will produce Wikiversity "actual content". An example of this that has been going on at Wikibooks can be seen for the Human Physiology textbook where a group of physiology students were assigned the task of developing the textbook. This is exactly the kind of learning project that Wikiversity needs; activities that allow participants to learn about a topic while they participate in the process of producing learning resources that will be Wikiversity content. This sort of participant-produced content is the main source the "actual content" of wikis. This is why the Board Of Trustees directed the Wikiversity community away from the goal of producing conventional courses. In courses the learners passively receive the knowledge. In a wiki environment the learning is by doing, by editing wiki webpages. At Wikipedia there is one type of "learning project": make encyclopedia articles. At Wikibooks there is one type of "learning project": make textbook modules. At Wikiversity we have been turned lose and our job is to find the most exciting and innovative wiki-editing activities that will stimulate learners so that they want to participate in Wikiversity. Their participation will constitute learning activities and a by-product of those activities will be the creation of every sort of "learning material", including some that will be useful to learners in bricks-and-mortar educational institutions.

"The educational content is not a sticking point for me -- it is the way we use school and topic for group structures that is most of concern to me." I remain skeptical that any further changes to the Wikiversity namespace structure will lead to significant improvement in how Wikiversity functions. The current "school and topic" system for organizing the activities of Wikiversity participants has arbitrary elements, as does any such system. I think we need to seriously ask if any other system would be significantly better while still respecting the structure that the Wikiversity community already produced while working at Wikibooks. We need to ask if our efforts can better be spent developing Wikiversity content rather than debating the "proper" names of page name prefixes.<BR>--JWSchmidt 06:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

 * We haven't been addressing too much my most recent idea. I think the idea I mentioned at the end of the section above about combining two simple policies (having an open flexible model of namespace use, as sebmol suggests, combined with a simple model option--either of which as policies could stand on their own) has some merit. I think problems remain with the current plan (mentioned in discussions in various places). I feel it is necessary to repeat that the majority of opinions expressed above have issues with the current proposal and we need to fix issues that people are concerned about. Efforts now will same time and/or confusion later. I am going to hold off with further comments for a few days to see if others have comments then respond above point by point and also outline separately a combined flexibility-simplicity proposal. Reswik 18:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

 * The current system provides a vast amount of flexibility. There is one small part of the potential Wikiversity pagespace that the existing naming suggestions try to shape, the hierarchy of academic subject pages that was previously developed at Wikibooks. The reason for having an organized naming system for this hierarchically arranged set of pages is that it prevents the types of conflicts that were arising when no organized naming system existed. We had situations like this: people were creating "school of mathematics" and claiming that it contained the "department of computer science" while at the same time other people had made a page for the "school of computer science" and they claiming that it was not a department in the school of mathematics. We are still in the process of importing the pages from Wikibooks. This is difficult enough without having dozens of people creating contradictory systems for organizing academic subjects. The existing system of placing these schools into the "School:" namespace and placing the smaller organizational units of those schools into the "Topic:" namespace works. This system of organization is allowing us to continue importing pages from Wikibooks in a rational way, without new "turf wars" over how to arrange all of the various subject areas. Beyond this one specific task/goal of importing this already organized material from Wikibooks, Wikiversity participants are free to create content pages and meta-pages as they please. --JWSchmidt 19:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Various thoughts

 * Degree planning: See Template:Unit boilerplate
 * Material target level: See below
 * Educational philosophy comments moved to Disclosures policy
 * Course codes moved to non-talk page (as "Learning Project codes")

Numbered Lists; Numbers in Page Names; Course Numbers
I support the idea of finding ways to organize Wikiversity content. I have no objection to creating numbered lists of learning resources. In such lists, each number needs to be matched to corresponding descriptions. If someone starts using the numbers independent of the verbal description then I would call such numbers "jargon". Wikipedia has a rule about how to control the use of jargon. Numbers should not be used in Wikiversity page names. Page names should be descriptive (verbal, not numerical). Numbers corresponding to learning resources might be useful if we had a scale such as level 1 = preschool, level 2 = early grade school, .... level 10 = post-terminal degree. Such a system could provide Wikiversity participants with a quick estimate of the "level" of a numbered learning resources.--JWSchmidt 19:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, that sounds good. TimNelson 04:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

 * It is indicated in the Proposed Policy that "Course numbers should not be used to indicate the name of a lesson." Your Servant wonders if a certain flexibility might flow from Numbered Pages.  Various Schools, Divisions, and Departments could perhaps productively use Numbers where the Names could therefore change as needed.

 * (s) Dionysios (talk), a Participant in the Wikiversity School of Advanced General Studies, Date: 2007-07-10 (July 10, 2007) Time: 1706 UTC

 * I think it would be useful to describe exactly how numbering systems could be used (and why they are a good idea in a particular case), and to make it clear in pages that use these systems what the system is and how it works. Cormaggio talk 23:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Cormaggio. Part of the difficulty is that various schools and departments may wish to have their own numbering systems, so that it will be difficult to get a sense of unity out of them.  Another problem is that if an individual makes a page called "Thought 101: Cognition" and another makes a page called "Cognitive Science 3207: Cognition" because they both have different ideas of how number systems should be used, etc., you're likely to end up with a bunch of people who are not collaborating (and may not even be aware of each other's efforts).  The Jade Knight 04:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

#Removing course numbering scheme...
A New Section: "#Removing course numbering scheme..." is below.

(s) Dionysios (talk), a Participant in the Wikiversity School of Advanced General Studies, Date: 2007-07-11 (July 11, 2007) Time: 1329 UTC

Are course codes necessary?
I think course codes like that should be discouraged as a wikiversity doesn't need in the way that a normal university does. It'd make more sense to encourage content authors to categorize their courses in a hierarchical fashion in the school's wiki section. For example rather than coming up with some obscure code like ECU2-MM2 which no-one can guess the meaning of (hence leading to probable duplication of courses), why not just let the course be filed under

School:Mathematics/Undergraduate/Mathematical Methods II

which already serves as a unique course identifier?

Ehremo 23:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Does 'S' stand for Science or Social Sciences?
The article uses both conventions in different places. --Ian Kennedy 10:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

School levels
Ok all, one thing that's certain to come up regularly is the fact that different countries name their different year levels differently. Here's a scheme comparing Australia and America, with some comments.

 * You know, instead of trying to cement one international system's naming convention or another, why don't we base it off of something outside of school names. Ideas are "Suggested age" (Example: Intro to computer science: 15?), or some sort of prereq system.--Rayc 14:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

--

TimNelson 03:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Age system: The age indicator is a good idea, but to my mind, age is an entirely different criteria.  I was thinking about this while helping migrate some of the German stream stuff; it's possible for a 5-year-old to be much better at German than a University undergraduate, and yet not understand the teaching material that is presented to the undergraduate.  I think that if we have an age system, it shouldn't be in the course code, but should be an additional entry in the Template:Unit boilerplate.
 * 2) Prerequisite system: I like these, which is why I put it in Template:Unit boilerplate).  I'm not intending that course codes represent everything about a course, just that they give an indication of the intended target material (among other things).
 * 3) I'm not particularly attached to the details of the scheme I have there, but it seems to me that countries mostly have similar schemes, even if the names are different.  Some places don't have a preschool group, but most have ~13 years of school followed by 3-6 years of university, followed by ? years of graduate studies (not that everyone goes through this to the end).  I think people are familar with this concept, and I suggest we stick with it, whatever names we use.  Further, I suggest that we use the naming convention of one (or more) countries, because that way at least some people will know what it means (I'm trying to avoid Wikiversity-specific jargon here).  The only one I'd recommend avoiding is Kindergarten, because it means different things in different countries.  That's why I went P1-3 for what Australians call Kindergarten, and J0 for what Americans call kindergarten.
 * 4) The only other constraint I used was that I tried to constrain myself to 2 characters, otherwise I would've used Y0-Y12 (year 0 to year 12) for the primary/secondary schooling groups.
 * 5) The reason this is on the talk page is to explain some of my reasoning -- I'm not intending that it become part of the policy.

 * I would vote for a much simpler scheme: Primary, Secondary, and University levels. The main distinction between primary and secondary levels is the level of abstract thought (and/or synthesis of ideas) involved, the (somewhat fuzzy) dividing line being at roughly age 11 or 12 (grade 6-ish in U.S.). As I see it, there's less of a disctinction to be made between "middle school" and "high school" coursework, especially since at this point students tend to diverge anyway, based on abilities and interests (i.e., some students take algebra in middle school, some in high school). The "university" (undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate...?) level is pretty well standardized around the world, I think, so it's probably pretty obvious what would go in there. - dcljr 19:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't like Divisions
Just to follow up on what I said before, I'd prefer to see the term Divisions (and Sub-Divisions) used for non-academic departments, and something else put in instead. We have a number of choices. TimNelson 14:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * In my mind "non-academic departments" are things that go in the "Project:" ("Wikiversity:") namespace. That should be the place for non-academic meta-discussions about how to keep the wiki running. If we need portals to organize such pages, we can use the "Portal:" namespace. In my view, "I do not like X" and "I like Y" need to be supported by solid reasons. For example (made-up example), "I searched 100 randomly-selected English-language universities and found that 75% use the term 'Center' but not 'Division' to organize collections of academic departments". --JWSchmidt 14:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the comment about non-academic "departments" being the Wikiversity namespace -- you changed my mind :). TimNelson 02:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Reorg of Learning Materials
What would people think of a Reorg of the Learning Materials? I'd suggest:

 * Study guide contains:
 * Lesson Information

 * Teacher's Guide contains:
 * Lesson Plans

TimNelson 05:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Learning projects and streams
Hi. I'm unsure just what a learning project is, and how it fits in with everything else. So If someone could help me think this through, that'd be great.

Basically, my understanding of a "Learning project" is that it's a set of material to be worked through/with to enable those in the learning group to learn. My understanding is also that it will generally be on the same scale as a course/unit/whatever, ie. 5-60 lessons/activities/whatever (not exclusively, but generally).

Having said that, different learning projects will be at different levels, and it's a good idea to know ahead of time what's likely in terms of prerequisites. I see streams as being summaries of what requires what else. I see them as containers for learning projects, not learning projects themselves.

Having said that, possibly they don't need to be separate boilerplate in most cases, and could be integrated into the Department boilerplate (although this wouldn't work very well for the Language Acquisition department).

As for the Degree planning stuff, to my mind, that's just advisory stuff to give an idea of what might be equivalent. But again, it contains streams and learning projects, and so belongs with the department stuff, and outside the Learning Projects stuff.

Thoughts? TimNelson (Talk) 13:01, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

New Diagram
I just uploaded this:

But I'm not sure if it is of use. I can update/add to it if anyone has a request. I did it because I'd like to see the naming conventions be more strict, and I see a lot of non-uniformity at WikiVersity so far. - Trevor MacInnis 20:19, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

 * I like the diagram (there is a "gray box problem" in the lower right corner at "human body"). I think there will always be tension between people who want a more strict categorization system and people who want a more free system. --JWSchmidt 20:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Note from Robert Elliott
 * I like the chart but how does real world situations (such as the example below) fit the chart? Here is the actual location of a lesson page.  Note: this list of hierarchal addresses passes through two portals to get to a lesson page from the outside world if the user were to follow down the full hierarchy.

 * The page address of a real world example from Learning the Basics of Filmmaking:

 * Wikiversity (English) $$\Leftrightarrow$$ Humanities $$\Leftrightarrow$$ Art and Design $$\Leftrightarrow$$ Fine Arts $$\Leftrightarrow$$ Film and Television $$\Leftrightarrow$$ Narrative Film Production $$\Leftrightarrow$$  Course #01 - Learning the Basics of Filmmaking $$\Leftrightarrow$$  Lesson #001 - Formatting the Script $$\Leftrightarrow$$  Page 2 - Analyze the story for Seduced by the Dark Side!

 * Using Portals both speeds up access and creates an organizational nightmare. Both Humanities and Fine Arts are Portals but Fine Arts is part of Humanities.

 * And there is no structure available for lessons. The last three levels in this example are supposed to be placed in Namespace which provides none of the necessary structure needed for the lessons and pages of lessons in a course. Robert Elliott 14:34, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

 * At a fundamental level, wiki content is organized by categories. Each category can have a portal if that is useful to help guide people to the contents of a category. Why are "nested portals" a problem? Wikipedia has major portals such as Portal:Science and subportals such as Portal:Biology. "supposed to be placed in Namespace" <-- I assume this means that all Wikiversity pages that are actually educaltional content go in the main namespace. Categories can be used to organize groups of related articles. In addition, Wikiversity allows subpages for main namespace pages. A page such as Basics of Filmmaking can have subpages such as Basics of Filmmaking/Formatting the Script. --JWSchmidt 16:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Software problem with naming conventions
It should not matter which naming system you final decide on... if the software is working correctly. But, I think that you have a bad bug in the software.

 * Example
 * If you decide to use TOPIC as a level, every time someone creates a TOPIC with TOPIC: (example Topic:Film_and_television) then the software should keep track of all TOPICs and be able to create a list of the TOPICs that have been used.

 * Currently the software is not doing this. It works for Portals and it works for Schools but not Topics or Streams or Departments.

That indicates that certain names are hard wired into the program and only those names will work. It means that no matter what system you decide on, the program must be manually changed to work correctly. This is not good. Robert Elliott 05:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Correction
 * I can now see "TOPIC" at http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=&namespace=104. My browser did not show this before because the list was too long for the pop up window.   Robert Elliott 14:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The contents of the "Topic:" namespace are available (see), as for all Wikiversity namespaces. "Streams" and "Departments" have no meaning within the software, they are just names that people are using to refer to certain Wikiversity content development projects (in the case of departments) and collections of related learning projects (in the case of streams). We could certainly create categories to hold all departments and streams. --JWSchmidt 05:32, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Same goes for "study guides"--Rayc 14:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Is a "study guide" something that can be kept at Wikibooks? --JWSchmidt 14:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Naming of Streams and Degrees?
If this could be clarified, that would be great. The templates are kind of vague too (a reference one with example streams/degrees filled out would be nice), but the naming is a bigger problem- is it just in the main namespace and something descriptive? Thanks.--AdamG 19:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Like, for example, Topic:Introduction to Computer Programming. Should that just be Introduction to Computer Programming? Ditto with Topic:Visual Basic. And I still can't find any already- written streams or degrees to use as an example...--AdamG 20:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Topic:Introduction to Programming could be moved to Introduction to Computer Programming unless someone wants to turn it into a content development/improvement project that links to a set of lessons and learning resources. Topic:Visual Basic looks like a department in the Division of Computer Programming that is devoted to the development of lessons for learning Visual Basic. --JWSchmidt 23:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Lets say I want to make a stream for United States Copyright Law (which I do). Would I put this under "United States Copyright Law", or "Portal:United States Copyright Law"? There will also be courses named "Modern/History of United States Copyright Law" and there may well one day be a single course called US copyright law, so it makes sense to put it in a portal, but the naming conventions don't really mention that. Thanks. --AdamG 00:32, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments regarding "contra" vote
This material is disjointed and doesn't answer the fundamental question I believe is begged by the proposition to organize learning into "projects." This explanation does not explicitly point out what a project is. There is no unified attempt to organize the projects, classes, etc. into a comprehensive structure. A lack of structure makes this system difficult to use. Looking at this page and the Portal:Learning_Projects page, no good description of what a project is has come to light. This means that projects are being approached as classes, programs, etc. From the high level organization I've seen posted here I don't think there is any disagreement as to the way in which the schools should be hierarchized (though I see there is some disagreement on nomenclature which is not critical). What I do not see is a cogent theory on how to structure the low-level organization.

From what I see (and what I think is most practical), a School or its subdivision (whatever it be called in future) should offer a Degree Program structured with several course offerings organized into years (based on the level of difficulty and prerequisites). The program should follow the boilerplate example above that states how many credits are required, shows the core and elective courses, and allows a student to structure his own learning. Each course is then organized into several discreet learning objectives, each of which is served by a project. Once all of the projects are complete in a course, the student can consider that course completed. This follows the same scheme as universities use, and makes good sense in a place styled after a university.

It would also serve to have a full list of all courses and projects on the Wikiversity site, as they are discreet, interchangeable, and likely have broad utility in different degree programs. There should be a "course calendar" with short descriptions of the courses, and a schedule of projects with short descriptions.

This is where coding and numbering would come in useful, as it would rapidly identify the subject area of a given course or project, and help future degree planners in selecting courses to fill out their programs.--Dnjkirk 12:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

A crappy picture to illustrate my thoughts
As you can see, the upper levels of organization are the same, but I'd treat Topics as pools of learning materials and Projects as discreet and singular learning objectives illustrated by exercises. These would in turn be combined into Classes, which have reading material (from Topics) and a curriculum of exercises to teach discreet learning objectives (from Projects) that add up to a full course of work. Completion of all projects and readings would constitute completion of the class. I feel this would make a transition to becoming a degree-granting institution in future far easier to accomplish (if you're into that kind of thing). The classes would in turn be part of degree programs aimed at replicating a university course load. Departments may contain one or more degree programs, and Schools may contain one or more Departments. This is how I'm trying to organize Strategic Studies at any rate.--Dnjkirk 18:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * By tradition, Wikimedia projects use the main namespace as the location for the "real content" of the wiki. The term "topic" has taken on a special meaning at Wikiversity following creation of the "Topic:" namespace. Wikiversity can use categories as "pools of learning materials" for a particular topic. If needed, each category can have an associated portal that can function as a user-friendly guide, efficiently linking Wikiversity browsers to the content pages. Then the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces were created, the term "school" already had a meaning within the Wikiversity community as it had developed at Wikibooks (see). Wikiversity schools correspond to broad academic subject areas. Within the Wikiversity schools, in many cases, there were pages corresponding roughly to "courses" covering specific academic topics found in conventional universities of the USA. For example, Introduction to Programing in C in the School of Computer Science. The other important fact about most of the Wikiversity schools and "courses" listed at Wikibooks is that they contained almost no actual learning resources. As such, they existed mainly as place keepers with a promise for the future development of actual Wikiversity main namespace content. When the Wikiversity content from Wikibooks was transferred to the new Wikiversity website, decisions had to be made about where to put the Wikiversity schools and the Wikiversity "courses". In my mind, the "School:" namespace was the logical place for Wikiversity schools and the "Topic:" namespace was a logical place for most of the "courses" that had no actual content. For example, many medical schools have a department of Cell Biology, so Wikiversity can have Topic:Cell Biology that functions as a content development project for the Cell Biology topic area and has links to actual learning resources which are in the main namespace. Alternatively, many universities have a biology course called "Cell Biology" and it would be possible to put a Cell Biology "course" in the main namespace. Such a "course" could have a "pool of learning materials" related to cell biology. However, it would no longer be wise to call such a "pool of learning materials" a "topic" because "topic" now has a special meaning arising from the "Topic:" namespace. If we accept the tradition that actual Wikiversity content (learning resources) should be in main namespace then it would be confusing to speak of topics as "pools of learning materials". By tradition at Wikipedia, "content development projects" exist in a "pseudo-namespace" with all of their page names starting with "Wikipedia:WikiProject". I think it makes sense to think of Wikiversity pages in the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces as Wikiversity content development projects; places where Wikiversity participants work together to plan/create/manage the actual learning resources of the main namespace. Since the Wikimedia Foundation Board of trustees explicitly directed the Wikiversity community to avoid online courses, degrees and accreditation, I do not think it is wise to try to propose a new organizational system for Wikiversity content that is based on courses and degrees. --JWSchmidt 03:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I have to admit that reading through some of the articles you linked was rather frustrating. First, there is little explicitly said about how learning is to be structured on Wikiversity. That is fine, I'm game to go making up my own approach and if Wikimedia wants to let a thousand flowers bloom, then cool. However, what I am hearing from you is that there are legacy namespaces (and their associated ideas) from another project. Without knowing the context on the other project, we newbs who'd like to feel like we can contribute are left a bit in the dark. Second, it seems that this isn't a standalone project, it was created to serve other wiki projects, not to exist as a school in its own right. That is quite misleading. Essentially, if one digs deep enough in the proposal, this is an annex of the grander Wikimedia scheme that seeks to create better Wikibooks and Wikipedia articles. By the name and the front page of the site, I was convinced this site was primarily trying to teach people, not harness their learning activities to support Wikipedia and Wikibooks. I work in the developing world and there is a need out here for this kind of learning resource. I'd much rather create curricula for those who don't have access to conventional educational systems than do research for Wikipedia. So, please, tell me that I'm wrong about this site. I'd like to know that this place was created to help people who don't have access to education - for one reason or another - to get an education. I don't want to think that this place was created (and the organization and name spaces were created) to service the needs of the flagship sites of the Wikimedia project.--Dnjkirk 13:38, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikiversity was not created to serve other wiki projects.....I'd be interested to know what gave you that idea. Wikiversity can be several things at the same time. It is no contradiction to say that Wikiversity is an integral part of the larger Wikimedia Foundation and that it is its own project with a unique mission to harness wiki technology to support education. Wikiversity can have learning projects that support Wikipedia and Wikibooks without that being a major aspect of the Wikiversity project. Support for other Wikimedia projects is a minor component on the Wikiversity project proposal and as far as I know there has been very little effort by the Wikiversity community in that direction. Personally, I think Wikiversity could benefit from interacting with the Wikimedia Foundation sister projects because it would be a way of attracting more Wikiversity participants. Yes, it can be frustrating to join a project that has an existing "culture", but at the same time, the "culture" of Wikiversity is relatively new and nobody claims that it is a perfect system. Wikiversity needs new ideas and is open to new ways of doing things. While the Wikiversity website only started two months ago, the Wikiversity community has actually existed for a couple of years. The community developed certain ways of doing things and so there is some cultural momentum. This is a reality of all social organizations. However, this is a wiki, and new good ideas are supposed to be able to replace older ideas......it just takes a lot of discussion so that people can understand the change. Also, it is easy to set up little "pilot projects" and "demonstration projects" to test and incubate new ideas. "there is little explicitly said about how learning is to be structured on Wikiversity" <-- In my opinion, Wikiversity is an experiment. We are exploring how to use a new technology (wiki websites) to support education. Nobody knows the best way to do this. I think this applies: "we should run small experiments, tests, see what works, what doesn't, and be prepared to be flexible and change, and not be too locked into stone about how things should work." Each Wikiversity participant should feel free to add and organize learning resources as they think is best. We can all explore, catalog and discuss alternatives. With time, the Wikiversity community will learn what works well. The phrase "let a thousand flowers bloom" sums up the situation. For example, Wikiversity could change the use of the "Topic:" namespace and adapt it to your proposal (above). Wikiversity could create a new "Course:" namespace. However, such changes should probably either be widely discussed (say at Colloquium) and/or tested in a set of pages that can function as a demonstration of the new organizational system. I suspect that creating learning resource for the developing world is one of the main reasons that the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation decided that there should be a Wikiversity project. So far, the Wikiversity community has been slow to move in that direction. Anything you can do in this area will be of great importance to the future of Wikiversity. I hope you can provide leadership in this area. For example, we can develop this project which is of interest to one of the members Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. --JWSchmidt 17:07, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I got the impression from the Mission and Scope sections of the Wikimedia Project Proposal page, along with the Wikimedia Projects part of the Wikiversity Scope page ("Other Wikimedia projects, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and Wikispecies, have very clear goals which do not overlap with Wikiversity's at all. However, Wikiversity will attempt to benefit any/all of these projects — for example, by developing resources, methods and communities to improve Wikipedia articles/graphics etc., or information on animal/plant taxonomies, or, of course, translation efforts between projects."), from the Learning Groups subsection of the Wikiversity Learning page. These are just a few. It is also the third statement in the mission statement of the organization, so I think there is at least a hint or two that might make the hypothetical rational actor scratch his chin on this issue.
 * Back to the discussion at hand. In the end, I guess no learning project should be organized in exactly the same way as another. For the Strategic Studies School, the University layout is best IMHO, whereas for the film school above, another style is best. Perhaps letting a thousand flowers bloom is the only way to make this site effective. Perhaps there should be no attempt at standardization at all, but aid for those who prefer one style of instruction/learning over another. A University-style learning experience would not be practical for those who want to learn to bake a better cake, for example.--Dnjkirk 17:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

 * Many people edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects without having the needed skills to find and cite good sources. Wikiversity could potentially run "training sessions" or workshops on how to find, evaluate and cite sources. Such "service courses" would both benefit the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole and help make participants in Wikimedia projects aware of the existence of Wikiversity. This is an idea that was added to the Wikiversity project proposal at a late date. It has nothing to do with the main reasons for the project. --JWSchmidt 23:15, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Heirachy
Not quite sure if I understand this correctly - those crappy imaginative diagrams are a bit confusing. "The actual content matter, the learning materials, are in the main namespace (eg Algebra I), and the School: and Topic: namespaces are simply used for organising and finding this content." If that's right, surely that sentence should be on the project page? Xenon 11:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "the project page"? The roles of the Wikiversity namespaces are decribed at Namespaces. --JWSchmidt 13:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I was referring to the articles about the namespaces and the naming conventions. (The link away from the discussion in the cactions at the top says "project page") My point is that the system isn't as clearly defined as it could/should be. There should be a simple clear defining sentence that briefly explains how Wikiversity works. That is currently missing, and the confused reader has to wade through pages of descriptions and diagrams before understanding it. Xenon 13:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Part of the problem is that we are still inventing "the system". The rest of the problem is that we need ways to clearly describe how things work. What do you think of this introduction to School: and Topic: namespaces using QuickTime? --JWSchmidt 00:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Another alternative...
My proposal:

School -> Department -> Division -> Subject -> Course -> Lesson

An example:

School of Humanities -> Language & Literature Department -> Foreign Language Division -> -> Japanese -> Introduction to Japanese -> Hiragana & Katakana

I think every level needs to have an individual namespace, instead of things like divisions and topics both being grouped under "Topic:" like they are now. Naturally, some levels can be skipped if they are unnecessary. Whatever is decided, it needs to be decided quickly so that we don't end up converting a multitude of articles. Maybe it's already too late... -- Xlbnushk 02:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

These are issues that were decided a long time ago, way back when Wikiversity was under development within Wikibooks (see b:Wikiversity:Wikiversity Schools). At Wikiversity, the humanities are divided into several schools (see Portal:Humanities). For example, there is a School of Language and Literature. If you want to propose a way to change the existing system you need to explain how another system has advantages over the system that already exists. For example, if you think there should be additional namespaces, you need to explain why there should be additional namespaces. --JWSchmidt 03:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Xlbnushk 06:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC) -- I'm a bit of an organization freak, and more namespaces would allow better organization. I realized that this topic was dead only after I posted. Now that I know it's already been decided, I'm not so excited about it. If there's a standard already in place, there's no necessity in disputing it. I was simply hoping to be able to put in my two cents before the big decision was made. But I guess I didn't make it here soon enough. Consider the topic closed on my end.
 * It is not unusual for decisions to be made at one point in time and then later to have the discussion started again. For example, others have recently suggested that there could be a "Research:" namespace. --JWSchmidt 07:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Xlbnushk 07:18, 10 November 2006 (UTC) -- Where would one proceed with such discussions?
 * Very few Wikiversity participants notice discussions on a page such as this one. If you want to increase the chance of attracting participants for a discussion, it is probably best to use the Colloquium. --JWSchmidt 14:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Xlbnushk 15:40, 10 November 2006 (UTC) -- Thanks. I've already visited the Colloquium and taken a look around. What's your take on the current namespace setup?

 * Message for Xlbnushk…
 * These issues were decided long before anyone actually tried to create a full course using the current namespace. The current system is totally wrong and you are 100% correct. Every level needs to have an individual namespace!

 * As you can see from the illustration for the Wikiversity namespace, the proper names of the namespace are clearly defined in the pictures. But this excellent system was never implemented even though this illustration is still used today to explain the namespaces in Wikiversity.

 * Eventually, the names spaces will also need to be expanded to include "Course" (for multiple lessons on a single subject), "Lesson", "Lesson Pages" (or just "Pages" which are additional pages of a lesson), "Homework" (as in assignments turn in by students), and perhaps "Reference" (reference pages which are used by a number of lessons in the same course.)

 * It should also be mentioned that this design fix is about a two hour programming job. The structure is there for adding the desired names to the namespace.  It just has not been implemented yet. Robert Elliott

 * Note
 * As an alternative, "Category" can be used to overcome some of the weakness of the current namespace. By combining multiple categories, a simple database can be established.  However, this is not the ideal solution.  Fixing the namespace design problem is the ideal solution.  Robert Elliott 02:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Xlbnushk 04:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC) -- I've started a small discussion about this at the Colloquium. I've proposed that we add additional namespaces for clarity and ease of differentiation. If we want to start some sort of petition, that would be the place to do it. Let's transfer this over there, shall we? That way our argument will be more accessible.

"Every level needs to have an individual namespace!" <-- Why?<BR>"....the names spaces will also need to be expanded to include "Course"....."Lesson", "Lesson Pages" ..... "Homework", and perhaps "Reference" <-- Why? --JWSchmidt 07:03, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Because through the experience of creating extremely large lessons and schools (such as Mr. Elliott has done) experience has instructed us that a greater number of namespaces would encourage both uniform structuring of content at analogous levels of organization (which would add to the capacity of visitors to understand the layout of the site much more naturally), and greater emphasis on the structure that has been put into place by most of the organizations on this site. It would also make for an easier time constructing the Browse page, without having to provide for content for that page manually. It could simply be handled as a "category" style page. I'm for increasing the namespaces to take into account the peculiar structure of Wikiversity.--Dnjkirk 07:15, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Xlbnushk 07:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC) -- The articles in Wikiversity are very interconnected because of the nature of the learning process. Amidst the resulting myriad of relationships, it will become increasingly difficult to pinpoint the hieararchical position of various pages. Without special namespaces to identify the levels of these pages, the web will become tangled and the relationships unclear. Say hello to redundancy and orphaning. More special namespaces will allow us to better see the position of the trees in the forest in relation to each other and the forest as a whole. Am I still being too vague?

 * The Two Purposes of Namespaces
 * There are two purposes of Namespaces, not just one purpose.

 * Organization for the User
 * Currently, the namespaces are vague and confusing to users. However, this can be overcome by the use of "Category".  Using multiple categories for each page as a database is awkward but works.

 * Users don't see the namespaces so it does not confuse them that the beautiful illustration about Schools, Divisions, Sub-divisions, Departments and Lessons are NOT the current namespaces. Users don't care that this beautiful illustration was ignored when Wikiversity was designed.

 * Organization for the Instructors (authors)
 * There is a second reason for an organized hierarchy of namespaces. As lessons turn into full courses, we are quickly reaching the point where the instructors are having a very awkward time keeping track of all their pages.  This is why we need namespaces that match the actual use of the pages in Wikiversity.  Using the same namespace for multiple purposes does not work when there are a thousand pages in a single department.  For now, authors, such as myself, must maintain a second database by hand to keep track of our pages because the current namespaces is not useful for instructors of large courses. Robert Elliott 09:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Confusion. It is my belief that ANY system for organizing all of human knowledge is going to be a source of confusion. There is a strong tendency for people to think up an organizational system and then assume that system is the best system. However, I am very skeptical that there is a "best" system. There are many possible systems and any claim that one is better than another needs to be supported by evidence, not just proclaimed to be true on the basis of personal opinion.
 * Dnjkirk 17:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC) -- There is a best system. It's the system that universities have developed over the period of 800 years, and that's listed in the graphic above. What you are arguing from is the perspective of "organizing all of human knowledge," which is a question for a dictionary or an encyclopedia to solve. The issue at hand for Wikiversity is to disseminate knowledge. The proclaiming "on the basis of personal opinion" is, in this case, being done by those who support the status quo. We can trace Universities back to Paris and formalized education back to the Academy. We have been thinking about the structure of education for millennia. To argue that the forms we have evolved over these years must be supported by evidence is to fall upon your own epistemological sword: the fact is that the current paradigm is unsupported by evidence. The hierarchical structure we find in institutions of higher learning must be the preferred option based on your own statements above, not the current Wikiversity system.
 * The organizational system shown in the figure is being used here at Wikiversity right now; it is fully supported by the existing Wikiversity system of namespaces. "There is a best system. It's the system that universities have developed" <-- I'm skeptical that anyone can define "the system that universities have developed". There are many different systems that various universities use. Further, I doubt that the organizational systems used by bricks-and-mortar universities tells us much about how to construct the namespace structure for Wikiversity. First of all, Wikiversity is not a university. Second, any wiki makes use of hypertext links and other similar software "tricks" to organize data structures and communities. This moves Wikiversity into a type of organizational domain that is different from what governs conventional educational institutions.

How we got where we are now. Wikiversity is organized according to a system that was developed over the past five years by the Wikipedia community. The English language Wikipedia website has nearly 1.5 million well-organized main namespace pages. Wikiversity has a few hundred. I am very skeptical about the suggestion that Wikiversity suddenly finds itself in a crisis of organization which requires drastic changes to the system for wiki content organization that has been developed at Wikipedia. By introducing the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces the Wikiversity community has shown that it is able to innovate and modify the Wikipedia system. Wikiversity also allows subpages for main namespace pages, another significant difference from what is done at at Wikipedia (see w:Wikipedia:Subpages). So, yes, Wikiversity is able to make changes as needed, but it is not wise to make changes that are not needed and we do not want to make changes that will increase confusion.
 * Dnjkirk 17:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC) -- Wikiversity is separate from Wikipedia and Wikibooks because it is not the same project. It would be a disservice to the spirit of the split to attempt to replicate the systems of other Wikimedia simply because Wikiversity has fewer pages. The changes recommended above will cause no greater confusion than the current system does. The implementation of School: was a good move. Topic: (and why it was not called Department:) has consistently made no sense to many, as Departments seem to be made at the Topic: level here. This is already a reinterpretation of the existing system to try to fit a more sensible system: that system we all know from our own post-secondary education.
 * "The changes recommended above will cause no greater confusion than the current system does." <-- Several different types of namespace changes have been suggested so it is useful to be specific when making claims about the effects of namespace changes. The reason that the term "Topic" was selected was because it is NOT specific. There are dozens of different terms used in various English-speaking cultures that refer to academic topic areas. There is no need to create a new Wikiversity namespace for every such term. If you want to make new namespaces for just one subculture's set of terms, you have to be ready to defend you choice against complaints by every other subculture that has a different set of preferred terms. We already have a similar problem because the term "school" is used in different ways depending on the student age level. There is no need to go down the contentious road of introducing more namespaces that are not needed. Many Wikiversity participants have already made the point that we do not need both "Topic:" and "School:" namespaces for content development projects; "Topic:" alone would be adequate. With the current namespace system, Wikiversity participants are free to set up any desired hierarchy of academic subject and topic areas. Wikiversity does not need a new namespace every level in such hierarchies. Any attempt to artificially define a single fixed set of such hierarchical levels would involve institutionalizing a single biased choice and forcing it on participants who come from many different cultures and who do not share a single set of biases. Constructing such a rigid system is not needed. We can easily construct hierarchies using the flexible portal/category system. --JWSchmidt 18:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Where we are now and where we want to be. In my opinion, any proposals for changing the existing system need to be based on a clear understanding of the existing system and a clear description of any proposed new system. Wikiversity participants who want to propose new changes need to make coherent proposals. For example, if Wikiversity is going to create new namespaces we need a list of names for the new namespaces, descriptions of how the contents of those new namespaces will differ from the contents of other namespaces and reasons why having the new namespaces will be better for Wikiversity than what we have now. This means that proposals for change (such as the introduction of new namespaces) need to be based on an understanding of the current system. If you do not understand the current system you cannot possibly make rational claims about a proposed new system being better than the current system.
 * Dnjkirk 17:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC) -- In my opinion, the current Wikiversity system must be justified as a deviation from the norm: the structure of universities around the world.
 * If the topic under discussion is still the system of Wikiversity namespaces, I do not understand how the "structure of universities" is relevant. There is no need to map the organizational structure on some existing university onto the Wikiversity namespace structure. The fact that we have "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces is not an aborted attempt to do so. The Wikiversity "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces arose as a convenient way for the Wikiversity website to organize the content development projects that were previously created by the Wikiversity community at Wikibooks (see b:Wikiversity:Wikiversity Schools). A set of "schools" for broad subject areas had been defined and each "school" had an associated list of more narrow topic areas. Any proposal to add additional namespaces for content development projects needs to be justified since the two we have is more than enough already. --JWSchmidt 18:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Three important facts about the current system.<BR>1) It has been suggested that Wikiversity needs new namespaces for both "meta content" and for the purpose of splitting main namespace content into subsets that would each become a new namespace. Wikiversity has already created two new namespaces for "meta content" ("School:" and "Topic:") and we could easily create more if there were a good reason to do so. This has always been the purpose and use of namespaces; to have new ways to organize and work with main namespace content. Proposals to split the main namespace into additional namespaces move us into a significantly different type of discussion. Splitting the main namespace is very unlikely to happen. Each Mikimedia Foundation sister project is defined by project goals. Wikipedia makes encyclopedia articles. The main namespace of Wikipedia holds pages that are encyclopedia articles. Wikibooks makes textbooks. The main namespace of Wikibooks holds pages that are textbook modules. Wikiversity is a project for the creation, development, hosting and use of learning resources. Pages in the main namespace of Wikiversity hold learning materials and learning projects. Wikimedia Foundation wikis do not split main namespace content into multiple namespaces. Any proposal that Wikiversity do so needs to explain why doing so has advantages over the methods that already exist to organize main namespace content.<BR>2) Two namespaces that exist for organizing main namespace content are the "Portal:" and the "Category:" namespaces. ANY group of related main namespace pages can have a category. When useful, any category can have an associated portal. The portal/category system is very powerful and it can deal with hierarchical data structures and all other types of organization.<BR>3) In addition to pages in the "Portal:" and the "Category:" namespaces, pages in the "Template:" namespace can be used to help organize main namespace content. Navigational templates of many types have been developed at Wikipedia to help navigate between complex networks of related main namespace pages. As the content of Wikiversity grows, Wikiversity needs to make use of portals, well organized categories and aids such as navigational templates.

Conclusion. In my opinion, the portal/category system combined with navigation templates provides a good way to organize main namespace content. Any proposal that involves splitting the main namespace into multiple namespaces needs to include a clear description of how doing so would provide benefits over the existing system based on making use of pages in the "Portal:", "Category:" and "Template:" namespaces.<BR>--JWSchmidt 15:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Dnjkirk 17:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC) -- Why is Portal: not Faculty:, why is Topic: not Department:? One could call the existing method a "good" way to organize content, but it rather flies in the face of something better and far more rigourously tested: the extant University hierarchy. The people who are requesting this are not simply lagabouts who want to plan Wikiversity to death. We're all rather tireless contributors. We've found, through experience, that the current system is flawed. If you remain unsatisfied, you not only disagree with your own statements that the system must be "supported by evidence" (as far more evidence exists for the proposed system than the one currently in use), but you disagree with a growing group of people who are working very hard to contribute to this project. I sincerely think that no evidence will sway you.
 * Why is Portal: not Faculty, because the users are the faculty. I, for one, do not want to become a namespace. (Fun with British/American naming)--Rayc 19:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Almost all names are arbitrary labels. You might be comfortable calling the high level portals of Wikiversity "faculties" but other people will not be. Wikiversity is not a university. Wikiversity has a mandate to provide learning resources for all age levels. "Faculty" has different meanings at different age levels and the term "faculty" means different things to various groups of educators and students. It does no good for individuals who are totally absorbed in their personal biases about how to use a word to claim that their way of using the word is "best". "Portal" is a general term that has been developed in a wiki environment (Wikipedia) and that is already built into the software for Wikiversity. Wikiversity participants are free to call particular portal pages "faculty" pages without having to change the namespace. There can be portal pages of many different types and we do not need a new namespace for each type. The term "Topic" was selected as a general purpose term; there are many more specific terms that can be used to refer to academic topic areas and use of those more specific terms would not be constructive. "Department" is only one such term and it is a term that is used in different ways in different cultures and even at different educational age levels within single cultures. There is no need for a "Department:" namespace and to create one would introduce new confusion because the term "department" is used by various people in different ways. The portal/category system is the proven way of dealing with hierarchical and other organizational structures within a Wikimedia Foundation project. Trying to enforce a particular content hierarchy using a set of namespaces is a new idea that needs to be justified before it will ever have a chance to be adopted. In particular, it needs to be explained why Wikiversity should abandon the existing system that is known to work and replace it with a new system that tries to advance a new way of using namespaces. Wikiversity took one small step down that road with the creation of the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces and there were immediate and lingering objections and confusions. Any proposal to create even more namespaces for content development projects needs to be justified to people who feel that we already have one too many. "the current system is flawed"<-- In order to fix existing problems they need to be clearly described. If existing problems were described, in some cases, the problem might be shown to be "user error" and failure to apply existing solutions to problems; if so, the system will not need to be changed. Any proposal for changing the namespace system needs to be justified in terms of how the changed system will be better than the existing system. Creating new namespaces is not done on a whim. I reject the suggestion that reasons justifying a namespace change need not be presented because nobody will pay attention to the reasons. Also, I reject arguments that attempt to justify a change because there is a "growing group" that wants change; you really have to show that the change has a chance of leading to an improvement over what is possible now. The only real basis for such change is rational discussion of the existing system and proposed new systems. "far more evidence exists for the proposed system than the one currently in use" <-- Please provide a list the existing wikis that use a hierarchy of namespaces to organize their content. --JWSchmidt 19:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Topic: or just nothing
What is the difference between topic namespace and main namespace? When I was making the I didn't see any differences in their use.--Rayc 19:15, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The origin of the "Topic:" namespace was that the Wikiversity community had created many pages at Wikibooks that had little or no educational content (for example see b:Wikiversity:School of Biology). These pages often took the form of a "department" (or other similar organizational unit) and they often linked to additional pages that held the actual educational content (often in the form of "lessons"). Actual educational content should be in the main namespace. In my opinion, pages in the "Topic:" namespace can function as content development projects. Topic pages are for Wikiversity participants who want to collaborate on the creation and organization of educational resources for a particular topic area. --JWSchmidt 19:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Merge?
I'm just wondering, what is the point of having this page as well as Namespaces? Should these two pages be merged? Cormaggio 17:11, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Streams?
There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what Streams should be. Having re-read the descriptions, I can tell that they seem to be the equivalent of an "emphasis" mixed in with a degree plan, or "major". Altogether, though, I think they're confusing. There needs to be more clarity. Oddly enough, the French stream has evolved into a participant coordination page. The German, Elvish, Arabic, and Italian streams (along with the streams of 5 other languages) are all somewhat similar (though perhaps more versatile but less utilized). The Portuguese stream seems to reduplicate Topic:Portuguese. The Journalism Stream has become primarily a repository of links. The Photojournalism stream contains nothing but a single name. See the confusion? The Jade Knight 10:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You echo my sentiments exactly. --Remi 05:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Removing course numbering scheme...
While I am sure the numbering scheme was created in good faith, when I examine the scheme, it does not seem highly useful for functional. It appears to me that the numbering scheme could potentially serve to confuse users, and good organization using categories and intrawiki links could accomplish the purpose of course numbering without the potential obfuscation. Again, I appreciate the intent of it, but I find it hard to see a reason to keep it. What say you? --Remi 05:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree completely. The Jade Knight 04:44, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Course numbering should only be applied to completed courses. Robert Elliott 07:27, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * A comment in the Colloquium by Mirwin <15:20 (UTC), 24 September 2007> might be instructive, in part it reads: "Course numbers are like cockroaches, they will be here long after the internet is dead and buried. Archaeologists and anthropologists, if cockroaches or nonhominid aliens ever have any, will argue about whether course numbers were from splintered religious sects or arcane encoding of natural laws decipherable only by select system administrators...."  --  Dionysios  (talk), Date: 2007-10-03 (October 3, 2007) Time:  1813 UTC

Alphanumerics

 * Numbers are just as good as letters anytime.

 * In the Hebrew and in the Greek, Numeration is the basis of Literation, which is to say that Numbers are a form of Letters.

 * For example: In the Greek System, here expressed primarily in Roman Letters:

 * A = 001
 * B = 002
 * C = 060
 * D = 004
 * E = 005
 * F = 500
 * G = 003
 * H = 008
 * I = 010
 * J = 010
 * K = 020
 * L = 030
 * M = 040
 * N = 050
 * O = 800 (Large, 'Mega'), O (Small, 'Micron') = 070
 * P = 080
 * Q = 090
 * R = 100
 * S = 200
 * T = 300
 * U = 400
 * V = 006
 * W = 900
 * X = 600
 * Y = 010
 * Z = 007

 * In this Scheme the Greek Letters not represented in Roman Alphabet have the following values:

 * Θ = 009
 * Ψ = 700

Your Servant's next Wikiendeavor: Alphanumerics.

Numbering Courses

 * One might ask, "What does all of this have to do with the Numbering of Courses?"  Well, it happens that the Numbering of Courses has a long and well established plan throughout Academia and that Your Servant has been doing his best to properly Number Courses in accordance with the Numbering Protocol handed to he Signed On and became a Wikiversitan:

Course Numbers

 * Levels of Courses offered at Wikiversity:

 * 1000: Entry Level Classes, broad ranges subjects
 * 2000: Secondary Entry Level Classes, broad ranges subjects
 * 3000: Specialized Level Classes, more specific subjects
 * 4000: Specialized Level Classes, more specific subjects
 * 5000: Specialized In-depth Level Classes, extremely specific subjects
 * 6000: Specialized In-depth Level Classes, extremely specific subjects
 * 7000: Special Research Projects, in-depth personal studies
 * 8000: Special Research Projects, in-depth personal studies

Proposed Policies

 * Your Servant knows that is Proposed Policy that "Course numbers should not be used to indicate the name of a lesson."; but he cannot help but wonder if a certain flexibility might flow from Numbered Pages.

 * The retention of Course Numbers should permit the various Schools, Divisions, and Departments to productively use Numbers according to the Numbering Protocol and thus permit the Course Titles easily to change as needed.

 * Now, the objection might be raised that various Schools and Departments might have their own numbering systems which might therefore make Unity difficult or impossible to obtain.

 * Might not Symphony be a better goal, however, than Unity?

 * This Participant introduced a Numbered Course Thought 5501.01: Cognition. The Link is to Thought 5501.01, indicating that the Course is "Level 5000": (The Course is a part of the School of Advanced General Studies.  It was intended to attract seasoned scholars for an "Advanced" consideration of "Specialized In-depth Extremely Specific Studies".  At the time of the introduction of this Course, it remained to be seen just which subjects would be undertaken, so, the simple Course Title "Cognition" was placed on the Text of the Page, making the Course Title flexible.

 * Now what if a "Cognitive Science 3207: Cognition", for example, should be introduced by, for instance, the School of Psychology with some other understanding  of Course Numbering?

 * What harm would result? If this "Level 3000" Specialized Level Class on a More Specific Subject should be introduced by a School not yet collaborating with School of Advanced General Studies and perhaps not yet aware of AGS's efforts?  So what?

 * If Psychology is not aware of AGS (and Your Servant would not for a moment suggest that Psychology is not aware), AGS is aware of Psychology and will work to advance Cognition through connection with Psychology.

 * Connection is about which it all is. Will not diligent work by those interested in a subject eventually result in Symphony?

 * This Participant is certain that it will. Let us keep, if necessary improve, and use the Course Numbering System.  It has great potential value.

 * (s) Dionysios  (talk), Founder of the Wikiversity School of Advanced General Studies, Date: 2007-07-11 (July 11, 2007) Time: 1530 UTC

 * With respect to Course Titles and Numbers, I favor a distinction between<BR>1) allowing people to create number systems for courses<BR>and<BR>2) allowing people to use numbers for page names rather than descriptive titles.<BR>If people want to use a course number system, there is no need to use those numbers in page names. When there are lists of courses, you can provide both the number and the descriptive page name. At the top of a page for a course that has a course number, you can display the course number without having the course number in the name of the page. This thinking and approach also applies to situations where you have a single link from one page to another, you can provide the reader with both the descriptive page name and the course number for that course. For example: "This subject is explored in more detail at Advanced Foo stydies (a 5000 level course).<BR>--JWSchmidt 15:44, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Assuming I understand him, I agree with JWSchmidt. The proposed policy is also inherently problematic—it generally ignores non-university level learning (Wikiversity is not a university).  Another advantage to using generic names is that Psychology and AGS could then both include the same project as part of their Schools, even if they had different numbering systems.  For interdepartmental projects, this is particularly useful.  The Jade Knight 03:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

 * To my mind, numbers are not the most useful (or even understandable) solution to the structuring of content on Wikiversity. The above numbering system by Dionysios seems to simply indicate level. Ok. But what about two courses/resources on exactly the same subject at the same level, but from different pedagogical perspectives? How would they be delineated numerically? (My proposed answer: only by some contrived system that would require some time to construct and understand, without any certainty of its usefulness.) My perspective (and aim) is to make page naming as simple as possible in order to facilitate widest use and most active participation. However, as my above example is supposed to illustrate, page naming/structuring is not unproblematic. Perhaps page numbering could play a role in this process; though I am not convinced, and I would like to see a simultaneously more intuitive, flexible, and complex system in place before it should be used at all. (A big ask, I know!) Cormaggio talk 16:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Once again, I agree completely with Cormaggio. The Jade Knight 11:35, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Reminder: The level of a course is not known until the course is written.  Putting levels on stubs (or worse, putting levels on non-existent courses) is not productive.  Robert Elliott 20:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd like to second that. The Jade Knight 11:35, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems to the undersigned  as though the intended level of a course should be known before the course is written.  In a wiki enviornment courses might perpetually be in the process of being written.  --  Dionysios  (talk), Date: 2007-10-03 (October 3, 2007) Time:  1735 UTC

Course title proposal
"Each course has a course number and course title, which is always capitalized (even if the course is referred to without the number)."

(another example)

(you must scroll down)

As with books it seems that course titles should be capitalized.

I propose that course titles of actual courses be capitalized. This would require a lot of changes, but I really think that in the long term it will be best for Wikiversity. I am at great fault for moving Wikiversity in the other direction, which guidelines currently seem to advocate; I would be glad to propel us in the other direction...

If this is implemented then the following would be correct for actual courses.
 * "Introduction to Engineering"
 * "Introduction to Psychology"
 * "Advanced Physics"
 * "Intermediate Physics"
 * "Applied Financial Engineering"
 * "Intermediate Human Anatomy"
 * And so forth

This is not to say we could not have pages titled "Intermediate physics", "Applied financial engineering", "Intermediate human anatomy", "Applying financial engineering", or "Advanced physics". However these pages could then link to relevant courses and learning materials. Might we have more than one course on Introduction to Psychology or Intermediate Human Anatomy? --Remi 22:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Consistent style (not "Consistent Style")
 * This is a matter of style. Either could be correct, however, it was decided (long before I arrived) that only the first letter of the entire title will be capitalized.  Therefore, I believe we should continue with that policy so that we have a consistent style.  Robert Elliott 02:36, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Conventions
 * See Manual of Style for the reason that you should NOT capitalize anything but the first letter of a title. Robert Elliott 17:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That actually doesn't provide a reason... The Jade Knight (d'viser) 12:37, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

 * I'm actually with Remi on this one. The Jade Knight 08:42, 10 September 2008 (UTC)