WikiStudent Blog

I need to come up with some editing policies for WikiStudent, and think that looking at Wikipedia’s policies is a good starting point. Here’s a quote from page 12 of How Wikipedia works and how you can be a part of it:

Three policies are so central to Wikipedia’s workings that the encyclopedia would be unrecognizable (or nonexistent) without them. These core policies are Verifiability (V), No Original Research (NOR), and Neutral Point of View (NPOV). In broad strokes, they form the framework in which content is created and edited on a daily basis with no top-down editorial control.

Verifiability (V) means that you should always be able to verify that that the content is accurate by including references.
We don’t need this on WikiStudent. I am not going to require you to reference the Unisa calendar to prove that the module prerequisites you gave are correct, or reference the official Unisa exam time-table to prove that the exam date you gave for a particular module is correct. Just put down what you know is correct, and if it isn’t, someone who is better-informed should fix it.

No Original Research (NOR) means that all concepts should be based on prevously published accounts and ideas.
This doesn’t apply to WikiStudent, which will be full of original ideas and opinions and notes. Obviously you shouldn’t make up stuff! But something doesn’t have to exist somewhere else (which Wikipedia requires) for it to be published on WikiStudent.

Neutral Point of View (NPOV) means that all points of view about a particular topic should be fairly represented.
This is very very important. On the wiki everything should be ‘neutral’ and you should never use the word ‘I’. Even the ‘Pros’ and ‘Cons’, which are more subjective, should be as neutral as possible. A ‘Pro’ would be e.g. “In 2008 the prescribed textbook covered the entire syllabus in depth“, and a ‘Con’ would be e.g. “In 2008 the study guide was full of typos“. It won’t be helpful if for a module you have a ‘Pro’ saying “This module is easy” and a ‘Con’ by someone else saying “This module is difficult“. The polls on each module page will take care of conflicting opinions on topics like how easy / useful / interesting a subject is.

What it needs are EDITORS.

On the old WikiStudent anyone could become a member. All you had to do was register, click on your membership activation link, and you were in.

All sorts of people registered, not just Unisa students. There were people from other universities (Stellenbosch, Wits, UPE…) and Unisa lecturers registered too. There were also members who were not connected to any university at all.

On the new site I don’t want just anybody to register (and thereby have editing access to the wiki). Why? Because there will no doubt be people who will want to use the site to ask for past exam papers, or even upload some. This is not a past paper site - it’s about providing information (everything you need to know) about all the popular Unisa modules. Yes, this information includes stuff about the exams, but you’re supposed to put down what you know, not ask the general public for help!

On the old site, there were over 4 000 members who made absolutely no contribution at all (and only 24 students ever wrote for the wiki). On the new site, if you have a WS account you will be expected to edit, which is why I’m giving the name “Editors”.

An “editor” will essentially also be an “admin” because you’ll be able to correct other people’s mistakes and do back-end tasks. Super-user actions (like deleting pages and blocking spammers) will hopefully not need to be done too frequently, and will be done by me. I think I like this new set-up.

I installed a nice wordpress plugin to inform IE6 users to this blog that they’re long overdue for an upgrade to IE7 or 8. Here’s the message you should see if you’re using IE6:

Your browser is outdated. Stop living in the past and upgrade! You are using the long outdated Internet Explorer 6 browser. This site may not display or work correctly and you are putting your data and privacy at risk. To get the most out of the web, upgrade to the newest version of Internet Explorer right now. If you are at work and you see this message, talk to your IT department and ask them to upgrade the browser to secure your company data.

Let me know if it works. I don’t have any access to PCs with IE6 so I’m unable to test it myself!

The above message is just a warning banner. IE6 users can still browse this site, but when WikiStudent goes live I’m going to be more ruthless and block that browser completely. So many other websites are doing this and I’m glad to be doing my bit towards phasing out Internet Explorer 6.