Archive:Expert commentaries

This page describes a proposal for a new resource type on Wikiversity. Please join the dicussion of this proposal.

What is an expert commentary?

An expert commentary is a commentary on a Wikipedia article by an expert in the area. An expert commentary is not a free-standing educational resource in its own right, but has a close relationship to a particular outside resource (encyclopedia article on Wikipedia). In this sense, Wikiversity is directly facilitating the work of Wikipedia in the same way that Wikimedia Commons does. Wikimedia Commons does not (primarily) offer a self-standing set of resources - the images become useful mainly through their integration into sister projects. Likewise, the exprt commentary is only primarily useful in the context of its sister project relatives. However in the course of time, the image collection on Wikimedia Commons has become a valuable internet entity in its own right, and the expert commentary resource type on Wikiversity might go through a similar development.

The need for expert commentaries

Formal criteria for an expert commentary

Title: the expert commentary has the same title (on WV) as the equivalent page on Wikipedia. In the case of pre-existing resources on WV with the same name, a kind of disambiguation list should be created. In the case where a WP page has more than one expert commentary, the main WV equivalent page should be a list of the commentaries, and the commentaries should be out into subpages.
Interwiki links: the WV pages should link back to WP using the standard Template:Wikipedia box. The Wikipedia article should have a special inline reference - something like this (with hyperlinks added):
Expert commentaries: Wikiversity has expert commentaries on this topic or section.
An expert commentary should stay on topic, the topic being the content of the equivalent Wikipedia article. If it strays off-topic, it could become a different kind of learning resource. Such an evolution might be welcome.
We need to think about how policies (such as NPOV and verifiability) attach to commentaries. We would be hosting them on Wikiversity precisely because they are out-of-scope on Wikipedia. But while we want to preserve valuable or "expert" commentaries, we don't want to encourage charlatanism. An expert may have a point-of-view, but the style should be academic/professional and the resource should be properly informed.

The expert commentary in the light of Wikiversity history

How radical a change is this for Wikiversity?

At the time of writing, the first initiative to exhaustively catalogue all naturally-occurring resource types on Wikiversity was drawing to an end, and about 26 top-level resource types (e.g. lessons, quizzes, reading groups, activities, assignments, papers) had been identified, many of which had subtypes (e.g. blogs were categorised as a subtype of essay).

The "expert commentary" suggestion needs to be seen in this light. It is a 27th top-level resource type, alongside the existing 26 (the exact numbers will change anyway, because they constantly do). In other words, there is no suggestion here that the "core philosophy" (if there is one) of Wikiversity is being changed. We are adding a mere single further ingredient to a fruit salad which already contains dozens of ingredients.

On the other hand, there is a sense in which this suggestion is more radical. Like the project Wikiversity:What shall we do with Wikipedia?, this resource type subtly shifts Wikiversity's stance towards its sister projects. It moves the focus away from the Wikibooks parent project and towards Wikipedia. This does not mean that everything will revolve around Wikipedia in future. It adds to what is currently being done and thought.

Future consequences

One of the future consequences which should be borne in mind are side effects. The expert commentary resource type, if welcomed and properly supported by Wikipedia, will raise awareness of Wikiversity and its multiple uses among Wikipedians. While Wikipedian experts may initially be attracted here by the promise of less cruel editing of their hard-written texts, during their stay they may come across other possible uses of Wikiversity and shift their editing interests. The expert commentary is, to a small and subsidiary extent, a form of marketing for Wikiversity. The audience targetted by this market is precisely the audience we need: not just any Wikipedia contributor, but precisely those with higher ability levels, such as academic and professional trainers who really know their fields well.