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User:Dan Polansky/About Wikiversity

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Requests for comments and votes

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Wikipedia has requests for comments. Wiktionary has votes, codified for closure based on numerical consensus.

One Wikiversity venue with a RfC character is Wikiversity:Community Review, at least in part, governed by a policy Wikiversity:Community Review Policy. There, I see many items relating to individual editors and not much of policy proposals.

Other pages that had something like votes:

The search for Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Support finds all the pages where the template for support has been used.

Policies and guideliness

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Here: User:Dan Polansky/Policies and guidelines

Administrators

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In the English Wikiversity, there are two kinds of administrators/sysops: "curators" and "custodians". I think of them as semi-admins and full admins.

  • Curator rights: delete pages, move pages without leaving a redirect, protect pages (etc.?)
  • Custodian additional rights: block users, undelete pages, view deleted pages (etc.?)

Example votes/requests for comment:

Recently active administrators using their deletion tools: User:koavf, User:MathXplore. See also recent deletions log.

Other relevant links:

Curatorship

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Curatorship is a lesser kind of adminship, say semi-adminship, featuring content-related tools/powers, but not user-related tools/powers.

The toolset seems less apt for dealing with incoming/new problems (as opposed to dormant problems) since the curator cannot block the offender and if bad pages are deleted by the curator, the offender can (and often does) create more pages. It can work if the curator can secure cooperation from custodians via the request for custodian action page (an if). For instance, in Wikiversity:Request custodian action#Block of User:KayYayPark or prohibition of new pages, no custodian responded to my request in any way, so no cooperation was secured by me.

Links:

Deletion

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I also have some notes here: User:Dan Polansky/Policies and guidelines#Deletion.

There are multiple deletion venues or processes (but I often move to userspace instead of outright deletion, consistent with tradition):

Venue/Process Policy/guideline link
Template		 Description/Note
Speedy WV:Deletion (a guideline)
Template:Delete

Quotes:

"Speedy delete ({{delete}}) for pages you authored, as well as for pages that clearly don't belong in mainspace." (italics mine)
"A non-exhaustive list of possible reasons custodians may speedy delete resources include [...]" (italics mine)

Above, it suggests that any author can delete their own pages, which I find problematic; it would allow auhtors to rage-delete content they released for others. Under which conditions author's request for deletion should be honored has to be more nuanced.

Proposed deletion WV:Deletion (a guideline)
Template:Proposed deletion

Quotes:

"Proposed deletions ({{subst:prod}}) for pages that perhaps should be deleted (or moved to draft or user space) unless they are improved."
"Resources may be eligible for proposed deletion when education objectives and learning outcomes are scarce, and objections to deletion are unlikely."

I don't fully understand the sentence and it raises doubts. Where should I look to observe "learning outcomes" to see whether they are scarce (in supply not meeting the demand?) How should I know whether objections to deletion are unlikely?

This one is perhaps best used when a discussion is not expected.

Request for deletion WV:RFD
Template:RfD

Suggests explicit participation and a discussion, like Wiktionary's RFD.
When conflict/active disagreement is very likely, a good venue.
When many pages are affected, a good venue (Colloquium is also not bad, I think).
When previous RFD resulted in keeping, a good venue (going to PropDel would be perhaps a bit too much under the radar?

Terminologically, I find "proposed deletion" vs. "request for deletion" confusing; the names of the two different venues are not particularly suggestive.

Links:

Alternatives to deletion:

  • Move to user space if there is only one major contributor.
  • Move to Draft space, possibly into the Archive subspace.

Advantages of moving instead of deletion:

  • Seems more friendly/kind to the creator.
  • For the move to Draft space, make auditing of quasi-deleted (since moved) pages possible for anyone and not just admins. This makes it possible for almost anyone to question quasi-deletion based on reviewing quasi-deleted content.

Finding entries tagged for proposed deletion (as opposed to speedy):

Related discussions:

When to delete instead of moving to user space: likely copyright violation is a good rationale for outright deletion. Pages with too many non-English elements could perhaps also be deletion-worthy. As long as we assume that people will sometimes be searching in user space, even cruft in user space presents a problem for search results. I lack clarity on this.

Requests for deletion

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Request for deletion is the most bureaucractic process, inviting discussion concerning the proposal.

Requests I participated on are found also in the following:

Archive page Years Description/Note
Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion/Archives/20 2022-2024 E.g. Nation, Draft:Proof for NP unequal P by Thomas Käfer, and Wikisphere
Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion/Archives/21 2023-2024 E.g. the topic of Invalid fair use by User:Marshallsumter
Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion/Archives/22 2024-2025 E.g. Pi, Openness, Ukulele, Yuuki, WikiService, Ontosomose of Gender, Metadata, HHF, Student Projects/Major rivers in India, Facilitation, Advanced C Programming, Particle Sphere Theory, Decadic numbers, Rational numbers/Introduction, Wikiphilosophers/Ontology/MarsSterlingTurner, Evan Ratliff, Wikiversity:Ignore all rules

Moving pages to userspace

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Moving pages to userspace instead of deleting them has a considerable tradition. Examples:

Page Year of move Mover
User:MrFidaAliEngr/Skardu 2011 Abd
User:Achiahe/Organizing A Maker Fair 2013 Atcovi
User:TyEvSkyo/Positions of Skywalkistan 2017 Dave Braunschweig
User:Emesee/Policy proposals 2019 Mu301/mikeu
User:Dc.samizdat/Radially equilateral polychora 2019 Dave Braunschweig
User:Annie Flanagan/Dr. John Creighton Buchanan 2020 Dave Braunschweig
User:Marshallsumter/Rocks/Glaciers 2022 Guy vandegrift
User:Marshallsumter/Sources/Astronomy 2022 Dave Braunschweig
User:TyEvSkyo/Particle Sphere Theory 2024 Guy vandegrift

A recent example where I moved a page to IP user space (after some hesitation):

Pros and cons:

  • Advantages of moving to userspace over outright deletion:
    • One can then state the items as precent cases (e.g. User:TyEvSkyo/Particle Sphere Theory; "Common Law") and all the discussion participants can see what they were about.
    • One can easily search through all quasi-deleted (moved to user space) content, even if one is not a full administrator (semi-admins/curators cannot view deleted content?). Can at least full admins search through all deleted content?
  • Disadvantages/cons of moving junk to user space:
    • One may sometimes search for something half-interesting in user space. If utter junk is moved to user space, the half-junk and personal notes not fit for mainspace is going to be drowned in utter-junk (sometimes actually signs of mental disorder?).

The position of Dave Braunschweig from Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion/Archives/18:

  • "We have long agreed that part of the Wikiversity:Mission (creation and use of free learning materials and activities) includes the learning opportunity for the creator, irrespective of any learning value for others. From my perspective, there is no question that Landmark Education was a learning opportunity for Abd, just as Radiation Astronomy was a learning opportunity for Marshallsumter. If the community does not see value for others in these resources, they can be moved to user space. They should not be deleted, as they are still supporting the Wikiversity mission, just as thousands of other User: space resources do. (The many engineering homework projects are examples.)"

Notification of the user: I was notifying users on the talk page after a page move, just like Guy Vandegrift did (I did not use a template, unlike him). But it is additional effort. I am starting to think this could be unnecesssary: the user can find their pages by using the "User contributions" tool. Thus, I may see it optional in future. An alternative is to place a markup for automatic listing of user pages to the user page (which is useful to do anyway, for administration): {{Subpages/List}}.

WikiJournals

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There are "WikiJournals" as something of a separate project within Wikiversity (Category:WikiJournal):

Home page Est. year[1] Category link Article count[2] NAC 2024[3] Req.on reviewers Journal editors
WikiJournal of Medicine 2014 Articles included in ... 54 1 .../Peer reviewers .../Editors
WikiJournal of Science 2018 Articles included in ... 43 9 .../Peer reviewers .../Editors
WikiJournal of Humanities 2018 Articles included in ... 8 0 .../Peer reviewers .../Editors
WikiJournal of PPB[4] 2023 Category not found 0 0 .../Peer reviewers .../Editors
Totals N/A N/A 105 10 N/A N/A

A vote running from 2016, with votes still coming in as of December 2023:

An example of a wikijournal article:

  • WikiJournal of Humanities/Rosetta Stone.
  • Features:
    • The article has an author.
    • The text seems to be under control of the author?
    • Reviewers posted their comments on the article talk page.
    • The article looks pretty much like an encyclopedia article.
    • Before the article was accepted, it was a preprint located here: WikiJournal Preprints/Rosetta Stone
    • Problem: What if someone want to write another article about Rosetta Stone later? Is it typical for journal articles to use such an encyclopedi head?

Root category for articles (subcategories show breakdown by year as well, showing article counts per year):

Activity:

  • No new article in 2025? Only few (10) new articles in 2024; but is perhaps 10 not such a low count?
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There is a concern that Wikiversity becomes a place where people will make pages about Wikipedia and other wiki projects. It is not clear to what extent this has become a problem or will become a problem. If Wikiversity gets dominated by such quasi-introspective content, it may look like a failed project. The term "navel gazing" was used disparagingly in Meta: Requests for comment/Shut down Wikiversity. It is possible that the user name Omphalographer is a reference to this possible problem of navel gazing; ὀμφαλός is Ancient Greek for navel; this would be navel-writer, perhaps in the sense of one who writes about their own navel.

The value of Wikiversity

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See Is Wikiversity a project worth having?.

Page views

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Page views for the English Wikiversity hugely went up in 2024[5], unlike for the English Wikipedia[6]. This is somewhat matched in increase of unique device access count[7]. Something similar can be seen for Wikibooks and Wikisources. Something's going on but it is unclear what it is.

See also Is Wikiversity a project worth having?.

Draft space

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Regulated via Wikiversity:Drafts. Editors voted to delete pages from there after 180 days (about 6 months), as per Wikiversity talk:Drafts#Draft namespace resource retention, April 2019. The draft deletion policy was approved by Dave Braunschweig, mikeu, Guy vandegrift, Bert Niehaus and Marshallsumter.

Tolerance of junk

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There are conflicting signals in the English Wiktiversity concerning tolerance of "junk": nearly worthless material. On one hand, there has historically been a lot of junk in the mainspace that did not face deletion. Often, when new junk is added, some admin sees it, adds a category or the like, and leaves it alone. On the other hand, if there really were a desire to tolerate junk indefinitely, there was no need to institute deletion of junk from the Draft space after 180 days (ca. 6 months) as per #Draft space above, which took place unanimously[8] via votes of Dave Braunschweig, Mu301/mikeu, Guy vandegrift, Bert Niehaus and Marshallsumter. This 2019 vote signaled a desire to delete junk.

Another sign of intolerance of junk is the moving of many pages created by Marshallsumter to his userspace: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex?prefix=Marshallsumter%2F&namespace=2, e.g. User:Marshallsumter/Radiation astronomy/Absorptions. The trigger for this move seems to have been the nomination Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion/Archives/17#Radiation astronomy/Lensings (opened on 8 December, closed on 9 December), which was followed up with Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion/Archives/18#Radiation astronomy -> User:Marshallsumter/Radiation astronomy.

Quasi-deleting/moving to userspace of junk via proposed deletion is likely to be exceedingly slow; a nominated page has to sit for 3 months before it can be moved. Things could be speedied by speedy-move-to-user-space by competent admins and semi-admins, but to what extent this would be acceptable is open to doubt; one would have to discuss the matter first. Wikiversity has some first-rate content, e.g. that created by Dave Brownschweig; the subpages created by the students of J.T.Neil do not seem too shabby either (there are other examples and I apologize for not listing them; this requires more research).

Giving up on entropy

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A slogan I heard/read in Czech, tentatively rendered into English: The struggle against entropy in the form of mess/disorder is in vain and doomed to failure.

One possible approach is this: don't worry too much about the junk and focus on creation of good content (has Dave suggested something of the sort?). A downside is that the brand of Wikiversity will thereby remain in a damaged state. A benefit is that the efforts can be less divided since the effort to remove junk from mainspace will no longer be there, only the effort to create decent content.

A relating slogan (from Covey?): feed opportunities rather than problems.

As per Special:Statistics, as of 13 Oct 2025, the English Wikiversity has over 38,000 content pages. A lot of it seems to be bad in the sense of not mainspace worthy. Let me assume 20,000 pages are bad. If 1000 bad pages get deleted in a year (and that would be a lot), it would take, say, 20 years to delete bad content.

Student efforts

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A good example of good student effort is this: Motivation and emotion/Book/2025/Transactive goal dynamics theory and motivation. This is created by actual students in an actual class in which they are instructed to use Wikiversity, and they receive feedback from the teacher on the talk page. Thus, it is the pressure and feedback from the teacher that cause the decent quality; the page is ultimately not a responsibility of a random pseudonymous editor but rather by a university teacher.

An example of what to my mind is no student effort but rather junk is that page with 4 photos that I tried to get deleted and failed. Links: Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion/Archives/20#PhotoTalks, Student Projects/PhotoTalks. Moving just to mainspace subpages is not good enough, IMHO; it belongs to user space. If I am reading the discussion correctly, I and MGA73 were for deletion, Guy was for moving to a subpage (Guy seems to be a very nice guy and he seems to be a bit too nice here, in myview).

Further on the subject, there is Student Projects which are not "projects" by any stretch but rather mostly junk, e.g. Student Projects/Healthy cooking. Pages in mainspace have to have at least some value for the readers; if all that is of concern is practicing wiki editing and bad writing, user space is more than adequate. This one page was moved there by Dave Braunschweig; perhaps he could be convinced to accept user space as a better place.

Let's consider User:B.NIROSHAN/Hydraulic energy. If this were a student assignment, even minimalist one, it could not result into a page with three sentences tracing to a single source and no other.

Fringe physics

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The following pages have been moved to user space as fringe physics (pseudo-science?), by me or others:

The page Cold fusion states that "Research on the topic of w:Cold fusion is currently banned from Wikiversity", linking to Wikiversity:Community Review/Fringe research#Cold fusion. Was this the subject area of Abd? Did it involve some major controversy within the English Wikiversity?

There is Category:Fringe science, as of 28 Sep 2025 featuring Cold fusion, Cosmology/Dichotomous, Four potential theory of gravitation, Massless particles and the Neutrino, Parapsychology, Scalar theory of gravitation; it has two subcategories.

Fringe linguistics

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Fringe etymology drove me to nominate Korean/Words for moving to user space.

Fringe philosophy

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A problem with fringe philosophy/pseudo-philosophy is that, to my mind, a lot of what in academia counts as philosophy falls under that head. Then, who am I as a physicalist, an atheist, somewhat empiricist and somewhat Popperian critical rationalist to tell others that Hegel or Foucault are "rubbish"? The question is this: what pages are so bad that they should be moved out of mainspace to user space?

Candidates:

  • User:MarsSterlingTurner/Ontology -- this is so overtly bad/nonsensical that move to userspace is clearly justified, I think; moreover, the user posted similar ideas to various forums and wikis on the web and met with (understandable) rejection

An example of possibly tolerable material would be a page dealing with the argument from design for God's existence. While I find that argument unconvincing, it is not a pure piece of sophistry/very bad philosophical argument. It is rather sensible on the face of it and it is Darwin's theory of origin of biological form and function by evolution by the natural analogue of artificial (man-made) selection that provides a compelling response to the argument.

A page that I need to figure out is Ninefold Resonance Theory.

Statement of authorship in articles

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I practice statement of authorship on my articles. Since, I find the reader has the right to know who the author is, given the authority of the statements made in the article generally does not derive from reliable sources, unlike in Wikipedia. Moreover, articles I write should be protected from arbitrary intervention of other parties; disagreements about article design and content in Wikiversity generally cannot be resolved by reference to requirements of encyclopedicity, neutral point of view, summarizing reliable sources and only them, etc. Some interventions should be possible, though, such as into content considered unethical or otherwise highly problematic.

An example of an article from someone else that states the author is Functional Logic : Inquiry and Analogy by Jon Awbrey, created in 2017‎.

Articles published in Wikijournals typically (or always?) state the author, such as WikiJournal Preprints/COVID-19 pandemic by Ozzie Anis, created in 2022.

Page ownership and editorial control

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In Wikipedia, there is no article ownership. In Wikiversity, at least some pages seem to support the concept of ownership or at least partial ownership:

Cranks and trolls

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Jimbo Wales has some interesting things to say about cranks and trolls, as per this:

Some quotations from Jimbo:

  • "You care about this project - you don't want it to become known as a haven for cranks and trolls. You won't want it to be hijacked by people who - trust me - will waste as many hours of your time in pointless argumentation about nonsense as you are willing to give them."
  • "And think about the impact on serious learners if they show up to find the site dominated by cranks and trolls making up completely weird and useless things, and apparently serious contributors dealing with them all the time."
  • 'I think we would all rather people come away from Wikiversity after each visit saying "Wow, that's an amazing place, there's such high quality stuff there. I was having such a hard time in my statistics class until I read Exploratory factor analysis/Data analysis tutorial/PASW at Wikiversity." This in contrast to saying "Wow, I really trusted that site but then I found out that they have such a wide-open policy of never getting rid of crackpots that their so-called physics articles were completely full of bizarre theories that no one has ever heard of and that don't really make sense."'

An example of something characterized by some as "crackpottery" in a RFD discussion (which resulted in a move to userspace):

Desing of article names

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I am struggling to find a good strategy/design for names of articles that I am creating.

I created Hedonism (Polansky), but that is now One man's look at hedonism. The idea was that I cannot occupy "Hedonism" since other people could want to occupy it, so I use "(Polansky)" for disambiguation. There was some opposition to that so I went for "One man's look at X". But of course, "One man's look at" could refer to any editor, not just myself, so it is hardly optimal. It is a temporary solution until someone complains or proposes something better.

An alternative in use is COVID-19/Dan Polansky. Thus, there could be "Hedonism/Dan Polansky". What I dislike about this option is that it looks like a chapter of a "Hedonism" book or project, but it is not: it is my take on hedonism and not part of any project. And it is ambiguous: what if we had "Ethics/Immanuel Kant"? It would not be a page written by Immanuel Kant but rather an article on ethics of Immanuel Kant.

An article name like Technology as a threat or promise for life and its forms is so unique that I probably have a right to occupy the title.

I occupied Proper name, now at One man's look at proper names. (Was: On the other hand, as long as no one else wants to create their own write-up on proper names, this seems okay as a temporary solution.)

Apart from "One man's look at X", I sometimes use "An analysis of X", e.g. An analysis of truth. The indefinite article suggests that it is not the Wikiversity analysis of truth but rather one of muliple possible analyses.

Another option would be "Dan Polansky/Hedonism", in the namespace. The point is that this is indexed by Google, unlike user space, so "User:Dan Polansky/Hedonism" is not a suitable alternative. Such an article has to be good enough for mainspace, even if it is in a subpage for author disambiguation. I seem to prefer "Hedonism (Polansky)" or "Hedonism (Dan Polansky)", but I am not sure why.

There is Perquin's Reincarnation Argument. I find the page title fine but others can disagree. I argue that the author name in the title is fine since the voice of the page is the author's one, not a wiki voice. I find a putative moving to "Reincarnation Argument/Perquin" not an improvement.

Related discussions:

Itemized options for my article on Hedonism, as a table:

Example/Paradigm MPR[9] CBO[10] Note
One man's look at hedonism 2 0 Currently in use by me, but surely there are other people besides Dan Polansky that "one man" can refer to. This was inspired by page title C language in plain view; while the author took something like ownership of the form "X in plain view", I as if took ownership of the form "One man's look at X". I find it tolerable but am unhappy/unsatisfied with it.
An analysis of hedonism 2 0 Currenly in use by me for other topics; other people could want to occupy the title; "an" is fine in pointing this is one of possible multiple analyses
Hedonism (Polansky) 2 1[11] Problem: there can be more users called Polansky; this is where I created the page, but it was moved by Dave
Hedonism (Dan Polansky) 3 1 I like this one
Hedonism (Dan Polansky, 1977) 1 1 That's may be bit too much in the direction of lack of ambiguity; moreover, it may not be clear that this is the birth year
Dan Polansky's look at hedonism 3 ? I quite like it
Hedonism/Dan Polansky 2 0 This will probably see support, given the COVID-19/Dan Polansky (and COVID-19/Guy vandegrift) precedent, but I dislike it; Philosophy/Karl Popper would not be an article by Karl Popper
Hedonism/User Dan Polansky 2.5 ? Is this better than the above one? By indicating the subpage is for a user?
Hedonism/Essays/User Dan Polansky 1 0? Do we need to state "essays"? I don't even know what the word "essay" means exactly and whether it applies to all my pages. And the shorter the title the better, all else the same.
Dan Polansky/Hedonism 2? 1?[12] I guess this would work for me. It would make it possible to auto list all my articles as subpages of Dan Polansky.
User:Dan Polansky/Hedonism 0 0 Would work if user space was searched by Google, which it isn't; and user space is too deprecatory?

Article for others to read vs. exercise

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I am trying to write my articles in such a way that they could be useful or interesting for others, worthy of someone's reading time. However, even if that fails, writing these articles can be thought of as an exercise. In general, the purpose of an exercise is not original contribution; it is practice. To write a philosophical article without careful consultation of sources is an exercise in doing philosophy, even if possibly bad philosophy. For example, I can imagine a teacher of a philosophy class assigning students to write their own analysis of the concept of knowledge, without use of literature. Since everyone has an idea of what they mean by knowledge, they should be able to make some initial/pre-theoretic statements about it. It is one way of learning how to think using sentences of natural language and to get acquainted with one's limitations. Since, if one writes something and then compares it to, say, an SEP article (SEP is remarkable), one can see how much did one miss. The heuristic of first figuring out what one thinks and then going to literature is inspired by Pirsig's Lila, where he talks of philosophy vs. philosophology.

One can ask why should an exercise be published in a public wiki rather than being saved on a local harddrive. For one thing, the wiki tools are just beautiful, although one can install MediaWiki locally. Moreover, the risk that someone will read the text and think the author is stupid/incompetent/naive seems to be motivating for doing a better or more thorough job of it than one would do in private. Furthermore, one can get some defect statements on the article talk page and address the defects/comments, although that does not usually seem to be happening (but it could).

The character of a possible exercise is supported by author-specific page titles such as "One man's look at X" that I am using (see also section above).

Template advise

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There is Template:Advise, which directs the readers to Wikipedia. I do not understand the purpose of the template and especially not the selection criteria for its use. Since, one could indiscriminately place this template into a huge list of article names that match Wikipedia article names; that cannot be the intent. I can imagine someone wanting to place the template into pages that are often recreated by various users.

Thus, I deleted multiple pages that had the template, including Diaz College.

As per WhatLinksHere, on 18 March 2025, the template is used in 21 pages in the mainspace, after I deleted it from a couple of pages; it must have been in no more than 100 pages in the mainspace, as a conservative estimate.

Blocks and blocking

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There is WV:Blocking policy, a policy proposal.

There is block log, 500 recent items.

There is Special:BlockList, having more than 2500 items and less than 2800 items.

There is Category:Blocked users, having over 50 items.

There is Category:Denied requests for unblock, having 24 pages (22 Mar 2025).

Blocking IP addresses:

  • WV:Blocking policy: "Blocks for IP addresses and IP address ranges should be kept short because often other people are affected too.". What "short" means is not specified.
  • Wikipedia has a dedicated page: Wikipedia:Blocking IP addresses.
    • It says "Most IP addresses should not be blocked more than a few hours, since the malicious user will probably move on by the time the block expires".
      • Seems too lenient to me. I wonder whether this matches the actual Wikipedia practice. One week or two weeks seem not too long for an obvious vandal. At a minimum, I am not seeing why the minimum is not at least 1 day, and why one specifies in vague terms such as "a few hours" instead of being specific.
    • It says "IP addresses should almost never be indefinitely blocked". Plausible enough.
  • User:177.44.228.43 is an example that was blocked (by MathXplore) for 1 day, then 5 days and then 1 week. Blocking first for 1 day seems very typical when done by MathXplore.
  • User:~2025-59180-4 (an autouser for an anonymous IP) was blocked by MathXplore for 5 days. Looks reasonable; I would go for 7 days since it is a conventional hinting point, an established time unit.
  • See also Should Wikipedia and related wikis allow anonymous IP editing?

Blocking templates: {{Blocked}}, {{blocked user}}, etc.

Required competence

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Wikipedia has this:

However, Wikiversity is not Wikipedia. Wikiversity, with its mission to support learning, could have much higher tolerance for incompetence than Wikipedia. Part of Wikiversity mission could be to turn incompetent people into half-competent ones or better.

Further reading:

Collaborativeness

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I see Wikiversity's collaborativeness as of a different kind from the one of Wikipedia. In Wikipedia, the encyclopedic and sourced character of an article leads to a considerable multi-editor collaboration on an article. By contrast, Wikiversity articles/pages would typically have one or only a few authors. Since original research is allowed, the partially subjective free hand of the authors manifests itself in the page, which makes multi-editor editing much harder: the additional authors would need to make their editing fit within the intent and design of the autor, one that is often not articulated and has to be as if extracted/induced from the article. What is possible is editors posting comments/defects on the talk page, and then, the author can respond and correct them as applicable. What would also make sense is something like auxiliary editors helping with minor work such as improving references, e.g. replace bare URL with something better.

Collaborativeness is seen in Wikidebates, often edited by multiple editors. But there, the strain it creates becomes apparent. Where in Wikipedia, disagreements can be resolved by reference to policies and sources, it is much harder to do in Wikiversity, where the arguments seem to operate within a much more open-ended underspecified common sense. Making sure the Wikidebates do not become flooded with low-quality contributions seems a challenge.

Some major contributors

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Some major contributors to the English Wikiversity, judging in part from the number of pages created and from page views of the articles created:

User PCL[13] Live pages IM[14] Example page Note
User:Bocardodarapti pages created 6,070 Linear algebra (Osnabrück 2024-2025)/Part II Math
User:Dave Braunschweig pages created 1,937 Object-Oriented Programming Computer science; first-rate quality
User:Jtneill pages created 1,715 Motivation and emotion Psychology
User:Guy vandegrift pages created 1,165 Why is the Sky dark at Night? Physics
User:Marshallsumter pages created 863 User:Marshallsumter/Dominant group Many fields. Now indefinitely blocked.
User:KYPark pages created 795 Symbology/Introduction Korean, information science? subjective note: dubious content
User:Lbeaumont pages created 766 Wisdom Philosophy
User:Scogdill pages created 613 Social Victorians Humanities
User:Atcovi pages created 425 Meditation: An Overview and Analysis Psychology, etc.
User:Watchduck pages created 372 Sequence Anise Math (studies of boolean functions)

The above is not systematic.

Links:

Active users

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These are listed here:

Active users who are curators or custodians[1]:

  • 28 July 2025: Atcovi, Dan Polansky, Jtneill, Koavf, Lbeaumont, MathXplore, Mu301

Active users with at least 20 actions in last 30 days per Special:ActiveUsers (cat _.txt | sed "s/ action/_action/;s/ discuss/_discuss/;s/\[/_/;s/^ *//;s/,//" | awk -F_ "$3>=20 {print $1, $3}", run on Windows):

  • 28 July 2025: Alandmanson, Atcovi, Bocardodarapti, D.H, Dan Polansky, Dc.samizdat, Jtneill, Lbeaumont, MathXplore, Mickie-Mickie, Ruud Loeffen, S. Perquin, Scogdill, ShakespeareFan00, Stevesuny, Watchduck, Young1lim

See also:

Decently good content

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Some pages that I consider to be well done, to serve as role models for other pages, showing the promise/potential of the English Wikiversity:

  • Subpages of Motivation and emotion managed by Jtneil (James). It shows how course participants created author-specific pages making use of research in literature, and how the course instructor (James) provides feedback on the talk page.
  • Object-Oriented Programming by Dave Braunschweig. A course that has not much learning content of its own; rather, it links to items to be perused by the course participants.
  • Python Programming/Classes page in a course by Dave Braunschweig.

The above is not systematically selected; it is "impressionistic", idiosyncratically selected.

See also the section on "junk".

English and translation

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I have seen Dave state that articles in the English Wikiversity have to be in English. That makes sense; there are other language mutations of Wikiversity, and an article in a non-English language is one which in general English speakers cannot easily review and assess (although machine translation and LLMs are available for support).

See also User talk:Saltrabook#Non-English Content and User talk:Saltrabook#Non-English Content Continued.

However, there is {{Translations}}, used e.g. in Hilbert Book Model Project/Relational Structures. It seems translations are allowed provided there also exists an English version.

See also Wikiversity:Language policy.

Semiprotecting pages

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I like to semiprotect pages indefinitely; they become locked for IP addresses and unconfirmed registered users. I need to figure out under which conditions it is acceptable, ideally as a set of tentative/putative rules. When there is a fair amount of bad editing of the page by unconfirmed users over a significant period of time, semiprotecting a page indefinitely seems justified, but the specification is vague, not quantitative.

It is fairly easy for anyone half-serious about Wikiversity to register an account, which becomes confirmed relatively easily. There are now even wikis that prohibited anonymous IP editing completely.

See also Should Wikipedia and related wikis allow anonymous IP editing?.

Inactivity desysopping policy

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It is specified at Wikiversity:Custodianship#Notes. As per Wikiversity:Request_custodian_action/Archive/24#Reviews_for_Inactivity, 2019, it now seems to be this:

Activity required: 5 edits and 5 actions within 12 months.

In case of inactivity, there seems to be some kind of process?

In that Reviews_for_Inactivity thread, the proposer said that "the major issue in regards to inactivity is a safety issue". I find it uncompelling/unconvincing and largely speculative; I am unaware of any hacked admin accounts specifically in the English Wiktionary.

The English Wiktionary has 5 years of no use of tools, as per my proposal (Wiktionary: Wiktionary:Administrators#Removal for inactivity; the vote I created in Wiktionary: Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2017-03/Desysopping for inactivity had 19 participants and only 1 editor opposed the passed proposal in preference to 2 years; the 2 years option failed at 6:12 support:oppose). Once the condition is met, the desysopping proceeds without further ado, with no process/notification required. My cast vote said this: "When an admin was away for 2 years, they should be exposed to the temptation of doing the admin work again without any further bureaucratic hassle of voting. Like Equinox, I think that somone fit for an admin flag should be able and willing to check key policy changes upon their return. Furthermore, key policies are remarkably stable over years; WT:BLOCK was last substantively updated in 2010."

Reminder: there are two kinds of sysops here, full sysops/custodians and partial/semi sysops, curators.

Ethical breaching experiments

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Back in 2010, there was some "affair" (as we call it in Czech) in which Jimbo was involved:

The above page features multiple subpages and a lot of material to review, for which I do not seem to have enough energy. From what I understand, someone was describing an experiment in which editors would create fake/bogus articles for Wikipedia, thereby testing its editorial standards. This would be reminiscent of Sokal hoax (and see also Boghossian). My guess is that a debate erupted as to whether these experiments are really "ethical", or rather inappropriate waste of resources and damage of Wikipedia with no genuine added value, or added value that is not worth the disruption. And moreover, a debate about process and powers would have erupted.

Investigating potentially problematic editors

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In the past, I have investigated some editors who turned problematic, e.g. the prove-God-from-nothing guy. It would help me to be able to create pages like this:

However, I fear this could be seen as inappropriate. But it would be extremely helpful and effective dare I say. The closest I currently got is this:

Here, given how much Wikiversity's human resources this person has already burned, it seems well justified.

New page reports

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One is here: Special:NewPages.

Minimum content

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As stated in User:Dan Polansky/Policies and guidelines#Deletion, there seem to be no specified requirements on minimum content in the policies and guidelines (or is this wrong?). However, one can interpret the "learning outcomes are scarce" phrase as a requirement on the content to be more than subminimal.

Example low-content pages, for which it is doubtful they should be kept:

  • Need in Category:Psychology stubs. But then, this may be taken as a disambiguation page rather than a learning resource
  • Theatre (two sentences of statement content), Theatre/Makeup and Theatre/Musical do not contain what I would think of minimum useful content
  • IBM in Category:Stubs. It has 1) no statement about IBM, 2) two trivial broad questions and 3) three external links.
  • Digestive system in Category:Stubs. Arguably, one learns nothing from the page, and the page does not even direct one to a list of resources (internal or external) from which one would learn about the digestive system.
  • Non-experimental design in Category:Stubs. There is no statement at all (not even to characterize the subject), a single See also to "Research design", and no further reading and no external links. Can hardly be more substubby/deletion-worthy.

What creates value in a Wikiversity page:

  • Set of (at least somewhat) original statements, analysis, deliberation, etc. And then, good further reading attached attached. I like to attach further reading also on section level rather than only on article/page level.
  • Specification of a subject together with a list of links to learn from, e.g. to Wikipedia but also elsewhere, where the list is reasonably complete.
  • Set of activities, that is, set of instructions guiding the reader step by step.
  • Something like an instruction book, e.g. PowerShell and Python Programming. This reminds of Wikibooks, but why not: it is original material and educational as well.
  • Lecture notes published as pdf generated from a presentation software, e.g. Haskell programming in plain view, pointing e.g. to Sudoku Background (0A).pdf. Not very wiki-like (no revision history of plain-text markup), but if it works for someone, why not.

Wikiversity as a document store for research

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User:Saltrabook seems to have used the English Wikiversity as a document store for research, much like one would use e.g. Google Docs or the Microsoft service whose name I have now forgotten. In so far as Wikiversity would want to support research, this could perhaps be fine. Moreover, the reader of these pages could as a result observe how someone who organizes research works (which would be educational). Still, I hesitate to conclude that this is material fit for mainspace. At any rate, it shows the great lenience and tolerance of the English Wikiversity.

Root pages for the content by Saltrabook:

A relating user seems to be User:IMHAR; in the name, we see the same abbreviation "IMHA" as above.

Merely decorative photos

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(Perhaps I get the terminology wrong or use unconventional one.)

I think merely decorative photos should usually not be in articles. A photo is merely decorative if it is included primarily for its being photo rather than for the information value. For example, an encyclopedia article on the domestic cat that includes a photo of the domestic cat is fine since the photo of an animal brings much more information about an animal that text could easily convey. By contrast, a photo of Orwell in a dictionary entry on the term newspeak is in my view merely decorative; Orwell is too tangential of an entity brought into a relation to the dictionary entry (via etymology).

Example: Article Context Indexing features an allegged photo of B. C. Brookes. While he is mentioned in the article, he is not the primary subject of the article, and it is doubtful whether he is a secondary subject of the article. I would remove the photo.

Findability by Google or indexing by Google

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Initial questions:

  • Does Google index prime pages in mainspace? Yes. But for a freshly created page, it may take some time before it is indexed. For example, Google finds "Let us start by showing the relevance of the question to human action" in my Technology as a threat or promise for life and its forms. Search for "Alle Organismen sind Erfinder und Techniker" finds that article as well.
  • Does Google index subpages in mainspace? In principle or sometimes, yes: "What follows are Dan Polansky's researches on COVID-19, created mostly in 2020" from COVID-19/Dan Polansky is found by Google.
  • Does Google index pages in user space? If not, how is this technicaly achieved? (Google Books does index user space?) Is there a discussion about this? Answer: it does not, see below. As for discussion, TBD.

Searching the Wikiversity space for "robots.txt" finds some relevant discussions[15].

Discussions:

The robots.txt of Wikiversity: https://en.wikiversity.org/robots.txt. Here, draft space and user space are excluded:

Disallow: /wiki/Draft:
Disallow: /wiki/Draft%3A
Disallow: /wiki/Draft_talk:
Disallow: /wiki/Draft_talk%3A
Disallow: /wiki/User:
Disallow: /wiki/User%3A
Disallow: /wiki/User_talk:
Disallow: /wiki/User_talk%3A

The way it apparently works is that the content of MediaWiki:Robots.txt (Wikiversity-specific addition) is added to global robot.txt. MediaWiki:Robots.txt has a revision history; user space was disabled in December 2019 in this edit.

Links:

Resource types

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I don't like the word "resource", but it is so used in the English Wikiversity.

It seems to be a good idea to wonder about resource types. Different types can have different requirement on style.

Type Description or note
Author-specific article, original research I understand that well, as well as its usefulness. I created many of them. I strive to provide at least some decent further reading. When I have enough energy/gumption, I strive to reference various claims using inline references.
Wikijournal article Similar to above but much more rigorously made, as an effort of both the author and the reviewers (subject to peer review).
Wikidebate Lovely format for structured argument analysis.
Lecture I am not clear how that is supposed to look. There is some guidelines and a category. Historically, the concept seems to have been hijacked by Marshallsumter with dubious results.
Topic There used to be a topic space, I think, and was abandoned (double check). Topic pages are useful. I created Proper name as a topic page to link to my author-specific article. From what I recall, Dave was creating something like topic pages: he would characterize the topic using a statement from Wikipedia and that would be pretty much it. A topic page would not be like a Wikipedia article.
Blog But these are in user space and since Dec 2019, the English Wikiversity user space is not indexed by Google.
Course Dave created some items called courses. A course can link to external videos for its material; then, Wikiversity only organizes the material but does not directly host it.
Portal There are many but I doubt their usefulness. Wikipedia has portals.
Modular math module These are rather small pages that are composed into lecture-like material via transclusion. There is one such resurce, by TBD.

See also Help:Resource types. Category:Resources by type shows a Sammelsurium (hodgepodge? hard-to-overview plentifulness?) of resource types, too many for my taste.

Marking resource types: some pages are marked with a resource type, many are not. For instance, Wikidebates are marked using a template. I mark my articles using Original research template, but that does not seem to be a resource type.

Self-promoting user profiles

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For some time, I wondered to what extent one is allowed to have a self-promoting user profile. Eventually, after many years, I indicated more about me in 2020 and even more in 2022. I now have something like self-promoting user profile (a little bit like a reduced version of a CV) on Meta and Wikiversity. On Meta, I have a link to LinkedIn. I must have seen other editors doing something similar. I started editing wikis around 2006 and 2007; more than a decade elapsed before I stepped out of relative privacy by indicating the year of birth and education (the account name "Dan Polansky" identifies Czech citizens ambiguously). The combination of the civic name and the year of birth is likely uniquely identifying; additional information on LinkedIn cement the identity.

Photos and fields of work are stated in Wikijournals, e.g. TBD:here. It is not considered inappropriate self-promotion. After all, university/academic workers often have public internet profiles full with photo and publication history.

User:Tomlovesfar is an example that makes me wonder. Creation of a user profile full with links to LinkedIn and Instagram is one of the first things the user did. There is a user photo (I saw a similar thing in quite many user profiles.) I am a little uncomfortable viewing that.

Promotional content

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There should be a way to limit promotional content in the mainspace (see also #Self-promoting user profiles). Each content is somewhat promotional of its author/authors and of the entities it treats of. What is to be figured out is when it is promotional in an inappropriate way.

In 2025, I have seen at least two cases of content inserted into the English Wikiversity where the primary purpose seems to have been to promote the authors; both had a GenAI wibe. One case was in the field of mathematics, the other was in information technology/computer science.

Some ideas:

  • Situation: A mainspace page links to a web site of one of the authors from the author name, promoting a commercial/profit-making entity.
    • A possible rule/policy: identifications of authors can never link to a .com web site.
    • A possible rule/policy: identifications of author cannot contain links (no links at all, not even to user page in the wiki; very stringent).
    • A possible rule/policy: pages must not state authors since even the author name is promotional. Con: this cannot work. It does not work in Wikijournals. Original research requires individual authorship rather than Wikipedia's collective authorship.

I have a semi-friend (acquaintance?) who wrote a book about which I would be interested to write, or at least about text snippets from it. My writing would be actually in part rather critical. Even so, I fear that by writing about the book, I would be unduly promoting it, and get a favor with my semi-friend by doing so (being critical may not be decisive). If it could be established that the book is significant enough for Wikipedia, I could have a line of defense. By contrast, writing about e.g. Pirsig's ZMM seems fine: it is already an international bestseller and subject to academic analysis.

See also Wikiversity:Self promotion, a page featuring also nothing except for three links to Colloquium discussions.

Interacting with GenAI slop

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On User talk:Dan Polansky (October 2025), I had the displeasure to interact with posts that are GenAI slop. I do not know of an English Wikiversity policy on the matter. I am inclined now to outright remove it, or at least refuse to engage. I must have seen some English Wikipedia editors refuse to interact with GenAI slop. (I find more. Děkuji. Otherwise, I will be execute. Copyright SBC.)

How might one recognize AI slop? It seems not too hard, really. It is more verbose than necessary. It is overexplaining. Sometimes, it is very structured, with items with bold leads, which most humans do not do in a wiki discussion. There are online tools to recognize it, e.g. zerogpt.com (but when I gave it one piece of text that looked like slop, it only ranked it around as 20% slop.)

Example of GenAI slop: S: Wikisource:Proposed_deletions/Archives/2025#Index:Cookie_Encryption.pdf. Quote from the responding admin, EncycloPetey: "None of the items you listed above are automatic criteria for inclusion on Wikisource, and most are irrelevant. [...]".

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(This is inspired by a recent protracted process I was involved in. I want more clarity on how should I best proceed.)

A question: in case of a suspicion of a copyright violation, how swiftly should one act? What venue should one use?

Options:

Option Description/Note
Tag the page using Template:Copyrighted Pro: allows time for everyone to clarify whether it really is a copyright violation. Pro: no conflict arises about the location of the page, unlike when the page is moved to user space. I did a similar tagging once in Czech Wikipedia, but there, only portion of the text was to be removed and not the entire page.
Delete the page If the page is in fact not a copyright violation, the user who entered the page can say so. Very swift.
Tag the page for RFD Con: possibly copyright violating material remains in mainspace until the request is handled. Con: with low RFD participation, it can be difficult to get votes to get the material deleted, but the responsibility to prevent copyright violation is everyone's, even of the person putting it to RFD. Handling copyright violation is not a matter for a popular vote. Pro: uses a process allowing input from more people. The inserter of the possibly violating material cannot complain that the deleter acted on his own will as a sole person. The four-eye principle would require at least two people, one tagger and one deleter.
Move the page to user space Benefit: everyone can see what we are dealing with. And Google does not index the English Wikiversity user space sice Dec 2029. But Wikiversity still does not have the right to host the text there, even in the user space.
Tag the page for proposed deletion Con: the rules seem to currently allow the potential copyright violator to remove the tag without any rationale.

Peer review

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Let us see whether peer review is required.

From Wikiversity:Original research, category: Research policy proposals, I quote:

"Authors of original research should seek and address formal peer review"

My questions/comments on that:

  • How should we interpret the "should"; as a recommendation or a duty?
  • This does not seem to match the common practice.

Places where something like peer review does take place:

  • Wikijournals. They seem to take peer review quite seriously. That's something like a separate subproject of the English Wikiversity, so much so that there is a proposal to make it a completely standalone project.
  • J.T.Neill is providing comments for his students in subpages of Motivation and emotion. However, it is not a peer review, literaly speaking, since he is a teacher and not a peer/on the same level.

I cannot recall anything else. Perhaps there are more people like J.T.Neill; not that I remember right now.

Statutory law vs. common law

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The concepts of statutory law vs. common law apply well to many wikis. The statutory law are the codified rules: policies and guidelines (policies that are easier to override). Usually, many aspects of the functioning of a wiki are not covered by the codified rules. One has to figure things out by observing the common practices and precedents. But the precedents are not binding. In particular, the fact that pages of a certain characteristic remain in mainspace for a long time is not a binding precedent to keep such pages going forward. Often, wikis are something of a chaos; the rules marked as rules are being violated/broken (often for good reasons!), extraction of common patterns of culture (a nod to Ruth Benedict), the common practices, is laborious and fraught with error.

To wit, the specification "learning outcomes are scarce" as a criterion for deletion is very vague. Like it or not, one must engage in operationalization ("interpretation"?) of it, in making up own's tentative principles that are more specific and detailed. And these can become contentious: they are not part of the codified law/rules.

Collecting precedent decisions helps, for orientation. For instance, there is a considerable precedent/tradition of moving pages to user space instead of outright deletion, and one can use that as a guide even in the absence of a codified rule (ideally voted on, but that is often lacking even for codified rules).

Links:

Criteria for inclusion

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The English Wiktionary has the well-named criteria for inclusion. In the English Wikiversity, there is a redirect from WV:Criteria for inclusion to Wikiversity:What is Wikiversity?, which has an official policy status. However, that page does not provide any clear criteria for inclusion. That is, the design of a criteria for inclusion page with clear, unambigous criteria is an unresolved problem. In the meantime, common practice and precedent decisions can serve as a guide.

Regulation of user space

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The English Wikiversity user space seems largely unregulated. Sure enough, illegal material is unacceptable, including copyright violation and libel. But other than that, the leeway seems extreme. To wit, User:VeronicaJeanAnderson/old is a page with most bizarre material, to my mind anyway, having nearly 470 KB. By contrast, e.g. W:User:VeronicaJeanAnderson/We shall not die now was deleted with the summary "U5: Misuse of Wikipedia as a web host". The question of which uses of the user space in the English Wikiversity count as misuse as a web host seems to lack clarity, contributing to uncertainty.

See also #Moving pages to userspace.

Major disruptors

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Major disruptors of the English Wikiversity include the following:

User Blocked in Description/note
User:Marshallsumter 2022 Was an admin. See also User:Dan Polansky/Change request on articles by Marshallsumter.
User:Abd 2017 Was an admin. According to some sources, had a schizophrenia diagnosis and was "terminally online". See also User:Dan Polansky/Change request on articles by Marshallsumter#Relation to Abd.

There are likely to be other items to be added.

Wikiversity closure or shutdown

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I must have seen someone indicate recently that Wikiversity should better be closed or shutdown. Sure enough, the English Wikiversity is junkyard for the most part. At the same time, there is some decent content and some decent activity, e.g. J.T.Neil's students making articles about psychology online. Things could be turned around if sufficiently many admins support it and if disruptive editors are properly disciplined.

See also:

Links:

Similar pages by other users

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References and notes

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  1. ↑ Establishment year
  2. ↑ As of 29 Sep 2025
  3. ↑ New article count in 2024
  4. ↑ Psychology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
  5. ↑ https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikiversity.org/reading/total-page-views/normal%7Cbar%7C2-year%7C~total%7Cmonthly
  6. ↑ https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/reading/total-page-views/normal%7Cbar%7C2-year%7C~total%7Cmonthly
  7. ↑ https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikiversity.org/reading/unique-devices/normal%7Cline%7C2-year%7C(access-site)~mobile-site*desktop-site%7Cmonthly
  8. ↑ Wikiversity talk:Drafts#Draft namespace resource retention, Apr 2019
  9. ↑ My Preference Rank
  10. ↑ Challenged by others or likely to be
  11. ↑ I created this at Hedonism (Polansky), and it was moved
  12. ↑ I saw a similarly formed page deleted?
  13. ↑ Pages created link
  14. ↑ Live pages in the mainspace
  15. ↑ search WV: robots.txt
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