On our topic here, Kaldari was largely clueless as to how Wikiversity functions; his opinions were "Wikipedian." Yet he did find Wikiversity personally useful, and that's the point. He could do the work on spiders there, without hindrance. If there was a problem with it, it could be easily resolved (as one problem was resolved). Administrative support or interference was not required.
Mancunium wrote:Abd wrote:I see that Kaldari only recently lost the bit.
rights log. I just looked at this thread today, and I remembered an interaction with Kaldari on Wikiversity. By no means the worst Wikipedian to show up there, but it was weird. Bristly. Readily took a reference to history, a bad block (of him, not by him), as a threat. While he regretted that Wikiversity was a hangout for trolls.
He did do some nice work there.
Some discussion on Wikiversity brings back memories of old times....
Oh dear. I followed your link to Kaldari's Wikiversity page, and now I want to know all about the Unified Theory of Interactions (
link and
link).
We don't normally delete material like that, not any more. Rather, if it is controversial, and not presented neutrally, we often non-administratively move it to user space.
The RFD I was going to write that the page was properly deleted, in the end, by Ottava, but then I realize that I might have overlooked something. So I will ask for the page to be undeleted and moved to my user space.
Notice that there was certainly no consensus to delete in that discussion. The decision to delete was made unilaterally, for technical reasons
that were not discussed. There are, as pointed out in the discussion, many pages on Wikiversity with fringe or pseudoscientific theories. Yet we have the same overall neutrality policy as Wikipedia. How do we manage this? Well, set aside stuff that has been created but nobody has dealt with it yet.
We handle this in a way similar to academic institutions. The full body of the institution's library, lectures, presentations, guest events, class notes, and personal archives of students, includes all kinds of nonsense. Yet a custodian or campus cop doesn't read a paper and throw it in the trash just because he or she thinks it's nonsense. Rather, it's filed appropriately, in the end.
Wikipedia collects and sorts and presents the "sum" of human knowledge. That means that it has been selected and filtered for notability and verifiability, at least in theory. And this selection process and the decisions about presentation are, then, almost inherently create controversy that is difficult to resolve.
Wikiversity is not an encyclopedia. It facilitates the creation and presentation of learning resources, and it also facilitates the learning process. The essay in question might be pseudoscience or Just Plain Wrong. However, by writing it, the author may have learned something. By reading and criticizing it, others may learn something, or practice or demonstrate what they know. Kaldari, in his criticism of the page, was untempered and non-academic, incautious at best.
However, we do not want readers to be misled. That a page exists on Wikiversity should not create an impression that some fringe idea is accepted by the mainstream, unless this can be shown by reliable source. Just as the professor in a course is not actually obligated to satisfy the famous cartoon student, with the {{cn}} sign, and may simply speak from knowledge and opinion, Wikiversity participants may simply write. Original research is allowed.
It is what happens then that restores neutrality. In user space, simply writing is fine. We routinely allow users to "own" what is in their user space, as long as there is some educational value. (We also disallow what is clearly spam, or clear copyvio, or unethical content. Attack pages are not okay.) In mainspace, though, top-level resources are not owned, anyone may edit them.
If revert warring looms, if consensus cannot be found in a mainspace resource, we may fork the resource into sections. Attributed opinion is verifiable, as opinion. Wikiversity allows subpages in mainspace. Wikipedia would be quite a different animal if it did that.
For an example of how this was recently done, see
Wikiversity's resource on Landmark Education, permanent link.
Indeed, the potential of Wikiversity, what keeps me engaged there, is that it is possible that Wikiversity becomes the machinery underneath ultimate genuine consensus on Wikipedia. Consensus famously requires massive discussion, which Wikipedians massively hate. So it can take place elsewhere.
