Editing Encyclopedia:Colloquium/archives/December 2006 (section)

==Proposal for a course on methodology==
A course on methodology is necessary to acquire a basic level of expertise to be able to contribute properly in a certain field of study, especially within a scientific discipline. There are courses on methodology for several sciences and they learn students skills that are differ widely from science to science. So, it is needed to decentralize this kind of course. I am a historian and i think that writing essays that perform to a certain methodology would be a good tool to give people basic qualitities for dealing with history, but this would probably not suffice for mathematics. 

My proposal is that faculties will be founded that will organize courses on methodology that best fit into the scheme of a single faculty. The leaders of this faculty will determine what will be taught in such a course. To counter the threat of becoming overly bureacratic, it would be good to have several faculties even within a single scientific discipline. This way, faculties can decide on their own how inclusive or exclusive they will be and Wikiversity could become an organization where experts and amateurs alike could have a sattisfied working environment. Faculties that aprove eachothers skill could cooperate, so clusters of faculties can come into being that will live up to a certain level of quality or a sense of community.

Problem with this proposal is that it is highly decentralized. The central authority on Wikiversity has to play certain roles as well, for conflict resolution for instance. The central authority also has to take care for vandalism and to stop an abundance of half-finished courses and learning materials that will not be used by anyone and which are of a mediocre quality. I propose that when a single user starts a course or a learning material, that he gets freedom to develop this for a couple of months and to get advertise his work and that the central authority will delete this material after consultation when it doesn't live up to a certain level of quality. Faculties will get more freedom in developing courses and learning materials, but these should be monitored by the central authority of Wikiversity as well. (This has become way more then a proposal for a course on methodology)-[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 09:45, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

:Maybe each Wikiversity [[Wikiversity:Schools|school]] can start a project to encourage participants to [[Wikiversity:Cite sources|cite]] and [[Wikiversity:Verifiability|verify]] [[Wikiversity:Reliable sources|reliable sources]]. Each main page for a [[Wikiversity:Schools|school]] could display links to one or more wiki pages that need better citations and a link to a central organizational page for that school's citation improvement project. "the central authority will delete this material" <-- A wiki is about collaboration. If one editor starts a page and other editors are not satisfied with the page the correct action is to improve the page. --[[User:JWSchmidt|JWSchmidt]] 16:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would be good that every school has its own project for citing and verifying reliable sources. (I got a little bit carried away above)

Regarding the deletion, i was contemplating on what to do with deadends. My experience in certain organizations using wikis is that articles are deleted without debate and without consent of the creator. I want to prevent this. It could be good to delete articles but not deleting without discussing the deletion with the creator up front.--[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 20:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

:I can imagine many steps that would fall short of deleting content that is perceived as a "dead end". Sometimes discussion with the original author is impossible because people can add content to a wiki and then never return. We can create systems that promote "distributed discussion", potentially extending over long periods of time and involving many different collaborators. There are poorly developed pages at Wikipedia that have existed for years; there is really no need to delete such content. If there were Wikiversity content that one is tempted to delete, it might be possible to mark that content with a warning template that lists the perceived problems associated with the content and invites Wikiversity participants to fix those problems. At Wikiversity we have the luxury of creating main namespace subpages and we can have many parallel "lessons" for each topic. Wikibooks has a system for marking the state of development of books. We could have a system for indicating the state of development of lessons. We could have a way of marking links to lessons that have been flagged as undeveloped and problematical without having to delete them. --[[User:JWSchmidt|JWSchmidt]] 23:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

But for how long should these warning templates be on an article? If nobody develops the contents, then it will be on there forever. A solution could be that every school or department within a school can make clear which (active) articles are part of their school. Deadend articles don't have to be deleted in that case, but they don't belong to any school or department. A school, or part of a school could decide wether an article will not be used anymore. This way, we don't have to use warning templates. Instead of using warning templates, i would prefer the solution that the creator of an article is being warned about the article. He or she could be asked to join one of the schools and participate with others.--[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 09:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

::Does "deadend' mean that the article hasn't been edited for a while, and needs improvement? If so, the obvious solution is to try to improve it yourself, or to highlight it as "needing work" to others. I don't see a problem with something having a reasonably unobtrusive template at the top saying that it needs work. As to making a value judgement about what materials are more or less useful, I agree that this ''could'' be given a general guidance to by the school or portal, but it could also be validated by the user (eg. teacher, self-study student) - which I think would be very useful. I definitely think we should be incorporating feedback systems into all modes of our work - if people see a page that is unfinished, and don't want to edit it themselves, they should be able to at least tell others what they thought was good/bad about it, and how it could better address their needs. They can then do likewise with other materials on the same subject. [[User:Cormaggio|Cormaggio]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Cormaggio|talk]]</small></sup> 15:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

:::My experience on Wikipedia is that templates are ignored. Of course a database of articles could be created where certain templates are referring to, but this would be hard to maintain. Wikipedia is different from Wikiversity, because we don't want to create articles for a encyclopedia. Our articles have a temporary purpose, when they belong to a course. Learning materials could be used for longer periods. I suspect that they will only be used when they are of enough quality. What should be taken into account is the weariness of those who have to maintain the system that we create. My experience on Wikipedia is that most of my questions are not answered at the Vilage Pump and half of the questions that are answered are answered by typically grumpy people who act in a bureaucratic fashion typical of those who have to answer the same set of stupid question over and over again. I am infavour of a decentralized organization where participants can keep their enthusiasm within small and dedicated communities.--[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 17:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

On the original proposal for courses in "methodology", I fully agree that it is a very necessary thing to guide people in the creation of high quality materials (it could also, I think, go a long way towards addressing fears of bias in materials). But, I have to ask: "methodology of what?". Are you talking about [[Introduction to research|doing research]] /  [[Wikiversity:Scholarly ethics|scholarly ethics]]? Or is it wider in scope than these practices? (I'd also like to bear in mind that this project isn't just geared towards academia, and we should be allowing for varying 'academic' levels of contributors, and modes of contribution..) [[User:Cormaggio|Cormaggio]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Cormaggio|talk]]</small></sup> 15:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

:A course of methodology is only necessary, when the goal is to come to academic material of high quality. Methodology is a name that corresponds to acquiring a certain level of experise, other names could be used as well. For those who prefer the pleasure of learning instead of acquiring a high level expertise, it could be unnecessary to follow a course of methodology. For those people, there should be place her as well in my opinion. I don't believe in bias. Every knowledge and every language could be considered as bias.--[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 17:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

::Well, methodology is itself the major site of contention amongst educational and social science research communities at least. "How can you ensure that your truth claims are valid?" one group will say. "What do mean by truth?" counters another. The debate goes on and on (and it is worth having!), but it is wrong, in my opinion, to say that research is unbiased. What I think the central benefit of ''methodology'' is that we are open and honest about the ''process'' by which each part of our knowledge was generated, that this process is described in as much detail as possible, and so, if anyone wants to examine our work for themselves, they can subject it to their own style of scrutiny. Overall, I think this notion of methodology as a system of intellectual honesty is a necessary feature of Wikiversity; but it still needs to be clarified that we are simply setting out guidelines for open and critical thinking - and this is something that can (and should, IMO) be facilitated well before we reach the standards of academia. But still, "methodology" is such a general word, and needs some clearer context - what about something like "scholarly practice", "open-mindedness", "rigour", or even "(intellectual) honesty" instead? (See also [[#Honesty/Integrity]] above.) [[User:Cormaggio|Cormaggio]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Cormaggio|talk]]</small></sup> 02:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

:We are having a cultural difference at the moment. In my country, the Netherlands, i had once had a course of methodology. The aim of this course was not to determine which truth claim is more valid, but it was meant to set a certain standardization in research, so communication would be easier. We learned the technical terms used in the study i did at that moment, social geography. My main study is history. Here i didn't had a course of methodology, the rules of research were learned by trial and error, in which the writing of essays was of most importance. I learned how footnotes had to be made and what the structure of essays were supposed to be. Also, the significance of citing sources was learned and the difficulty of having multiple sources that contradict eachother. In both social geography and history, the words honesty, integrity and openess were never used. I am willing though, to submit to the will of the majority if these terms are regarded as important. It could work in practise. My fear is though that a demand of honesty will not prevent the correction of mistakes, which could be an indication of a lack of quality. The reason i started to spend less time on Wikipedia and started to search for substitutes had to do with the lack of quality, caused by a disregard for objectivity. JWSchmidt made an appeal of the importance of citing sources, which is a hopeful sign for me. In my view methodology and scholarly practise would nearly mean the same.--[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 10:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

::Yes, methodology is usually (briefly) defined as "the study of methods" - looking at the process of "discovering" or constructing" knowledge (these two words themselves indicating differing worldviews about knowledge). I was just trying to point out that methodology isn't as "standardised", "objective" or "neutral" as is often claimed. I completely agree that methodology is something we need to be clear and transparent about - and it is something we can and should encourage a better understanding of here in Wikiversity. By "better", I don't personally mean "more objective", I mean "more informed, more critical, more open-minded, more likely to provide for further open-minded inquiry and understanding...". Does my view remind you of the culture you disliked on Wikipedia, or is it any different? [[User:Cormaggio|Cormaggio]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Cormaggio|talk]]</small></sup> 19:39, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

:::I agree with you that methodology and objectivity are hard to maintain. The practise in the academic world is that each scientific discipline and specialization has its own distinctive methodology and sense of objectivity which differs widely from other scientific disciplines and specializations. Also, the sense of objectivity and the methodologies are changed throuout the decades within scientific disciplines and specializations, thereby seemingly making them pointless. Still, i am an advocate of using the words methodology and objectivity within the context of Wikiversity. It means that i favour academic expertise and serious scientific inquiry with a high regard for reality outside the views and the possibility of selfrealization of an individual. I don't want this to become the dogma for the whole project of Wikiversity, but to have a place for it in certain parts of Wikiversity, which try to gain respect from the academic world.--[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 08:41, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

::::Ok, but I still maintain that objectivity isn't simply "hard", as you say, but is an inherently problematic concept, particularly in the social sciences. There are many in academia that simply do not believe in the notion of objectivity, yet they are still able to produce rigorous research (as they see it). Personally, I'm not a complete postmodernist (as this is the worldview that more or less embodies this perspective), but I do acknowledge multiple selves, identities and realities - all of which make objectivity a very dubious concept. This is why I would oppose "objectivity", but favour instead something like "methodology" or "scholarly practice". [[User:Cormaggio|Cormaggio]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Cormaggio|talk]]</small></sup> 11:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

:::::I would go further then you. I think objectivity is impossible. Still, i would like to use objectivity as a concept. Objectivity refers to a reality beyond the individual and is therefore usefull.--[[User:Daanschr|Daanschr]] 11:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

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