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

== "Fair Use" of University logos? ==

Sort of trhee ser=parate but related issues about showing "brick and mortar University" colors here on wikiversity:

1. I'm interested in getting classes from a local university to use (and help make) the [[Plant identification]] quizzes for the horticulture department. If they were to make a "meetup page" for this, would they be allowed to use the University logo?

2. Also just in general, I think it might be nice for both students and alumni of universities to have userboxes here (since Wikiversity could perhaps become "the place where all universities come together"). Would userboxes using University logos be acceptable?

3. If Universities are using/developing materials here, perhaps they could be allowed (or even invited) to have "Home Pages" on wikiversity that provide links for students to projects that their departmenst or classes might be involved with? 

We are, after all, creating content for classroom use, and the Universities would be potentially good partners for us. --[[User:SB_Johnny|{{font|color=green|'''SB_Johnny'''}}]] | <sup>[[User talk:SB_Johnny|{{font|color=green|talk}}]]</sup> 18:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
:I guess the question really is: under what rights are universities willing to license their logos? If they don't want their logo to be used on Wikiversity, there's not much we can do about it. If they are willing to license it under some form of free license (personally, I'd have no object to even allowing non-derivative licenses for these cases), I don't really see the problem. [[User:sebmol|sebmol]] [[User talk:sebmol|<sup>?</sup>]] 19:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

:Someone made [[User:HartVisArts]]. I [[User talk:HartVisArts#page names|suggested]] that they make a page in the "School:" namespace for their bricks-and-mortar school. This would be a new direction for the "School:" namespace, but it should work fine. As long as it does not turn into some kind of advertising system for bricks-and-mortar schools, Wikiversity should be able to have [[Wikiversity:Userboxes|userboxes]] that show affiliation with real world schools/universities. I think each university probably has rules about how their logo can be used. --[[User:JWSchmidt|JWSchmidt]] 19:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

::Hmm, I'm not sure how I feel about that being in the School: namespace really. Thus far that's been an organizational namespace for Wikiversity content. Would you approve of moving our current School:X to Topic:X? I'm just concerned about mixing those particular apples and oranges, if you know what I mean. "School:" '''''does''''' seem the appropriate name for that usage (what would the alternative be? "Learning institution?"), but if we're going to redifine namespace usage, sooner is '''much''' better than later! --[[User:SB_Johnny|{{font|color=green|'''SB_Johnny'''}}]] | <sup>[[User talk:SB_Johnny|{{font|color=green|talk}}]]</sup> 21:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

:::If we view pages in the "School:" namespace as content development projects for broad subject areas and "Topic:" pages as content development projects for more narrow topic areas then there should be no problem with having "School:" pages for bricks and mortar schools that can link to all of the associated "Topic:" pages related to that school. At Wikipedia all the content development projects start with "Wikipedia:Wikiproject" and are mainly concerned with supporting efforts to write encyclopedia articles in particular subject areas. Wikiversity can certainly have content development projects that are oriented around specific needs of individual bricks and mortar schools. This does not meed we have to do away with the existing Wikiversity "School:" pages that deal with the subject areas in general. We already divide Wikiversity "School:" pages into "[[:Category:Wikiversity schools|major schools]]" and other schools. We can easily have an [[:Category:Real world school|additional category]] of "School:" pages for  bricks and mortar schools. --[[User:JWSchmidt|JWSchmidt]] 22:36, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 
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