Wikimedia

Wikimedia is a shorthand term for the Wikimedia Foundation, an aggregation of sisterprojects comprising what can be called a Metacommunity:

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is the parent organization of the Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and Meta collaborative projects. It is a not-for-profit corporation based in San Francisco, USA, and organized under the laws of the state of California Please use work-specific template. See Template:Cite for more information.

. Its existence was officially announced by Jimmy Wales, who was hitherto running Wikipedia within his company Bomis, on June 20, 2003. Its approval by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, by letter in April 2005, as an educational foundation in the category "Adult, Continuing Education" means all contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation are tax deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes. see w:Wikimedia Foundation for more information

NOTE: links in bold text are to local Wikiversity pages

This article is about the development of Wikiversity. Please help Wikiversity by adding your ideas about what Wikiversity should become, or what it should do.

Wikiversity has a definite role within the Wikimedia Metacommunity. This learning project focuses on how to define and extend that role within a universal or university context, applying the traditional paradigm of how universities collect learning resourses and apply them to real-world needs. Because Wikipedia focuses on the encyclopedic context, it must maintain a neutral point of view, prohibit and discourage original research, prohibit and discourage self references and other aspects of creating content that constrain it to the encyclopedic realm. Wikiversity, conversely, can enter these prohibitive spaces from the universal or university context. Let's give it a whirl...

Wikiversity has a role to perform within the Wikimedia context and within a much larger Internet context. This learning project lab will focus on creating a relationship diagram that shows what Wikimedia looks like. We begin by working with templates, starting with {{Wikiversitysister-list}} and {{WikiversityUsers}}.

Challenge: Create local articles for each of the Wikimedia collaborative projects:

• Wikipedia
• Wiktionary
• Wikiquote
• Wikibooks (including Wikijunior)
• Wikisource
• Wikimedia Commons
• Wikispecies
• Wikinews
• Wikiversity
• Meta-Wiki

Include in these articles an opening statement based on the Wikipedia article of the same name. Include also a section Wikiversity and ... like this one.

Discussion: Get in touch with folks like Jimbo, Angela, and other Wikimedia heavyweights. Let them know that we are interested in studying Wikimedia from the university perspective. Contact mediawiki developers, stewards, admins and other folks that help form policies and guidelines for Wikimedia collaborative efforts.

The Learning to learn a wiki way article focuses on a "learn-by-doing" model. This model defines Wikiversity as a learning community. We can develop visualization tools through templates, diagrams, Portals, navigational aids, learning objects and a number of other instruments.

Example: {{daughters}}

Challenge: Create a lab series based on this one for each sister project linking to appropriate Schools, Portals and other local learning resources and groups:

• Wikiversity and Wikipedia
• Wikiversity and Wiktionary
• Wikiversity and Wikiquote
• Wikiversity and Wikibooks
• Wikiversity and Wikisource
• Wikiversity and the Wikimedia Commons
• Wikiversity and Wikispecies
• Wikiversity and Wikinews
• Wikiversity and Meta-Wiki

Edit the Wikiversity article to include links to the new local articles. Update {{Wikiversitysister-list}} and {{WikiversityUsers}} to link to them.

The idea is to establish within Wikiversity a means to strengthen its effectiveness as an online university and Wikimedia's role as a Virtual community of practice. See also Metacommunity

Discussion: Get in touch with the folks that help form policies and guidelines for each of the sisterprojects. Participate in our own colloquium to make other Wikiversitans aware of this learning project. Use the talk page to present problems and ideas concerning Wikiversity's relationship to its parent organization, Wikimedia.

Examples:

• One important discussion is taking place at Talk:Wikibooks about Wikiversity and Wikibooks services that help determine how the two projects can interface with each other more effectively.
• Another exemplary development is the relationship between School of Journalism with Wikinews.
• Another open project called strategy has been put in place by the Mediawiki Foundation for coming up with long-term strategic planning for all of the Wikimedia projects and languages. See Wikiversity:Strategy and Strategy:Wikiversity
• add others here!

• Wikiversity:Sister projects
• Wikimedia fund raising
• Wikiversity:Service community - services that Wikiversity can provide to the larger Wikimedia community

• Wikimedia pegs future on education, not profit (San Francisco Chronicle, 24 August, 2008)