WikiEducator talk:Community Portal

This seems like strange content for this area; most portal pages in the mediawiki suit state something like this:

e.g from wikipedia, ''The Community Portal is the central place to find out what's happening on Wikipedia. Learn what tasks need to be done, what groups can be joined, and get or post news about recent events or current activities.''

It might be better served as a frequently updated page on what's going on in WikiEducator, perhaps active editors of projects could be referred here to add updates on their progress, etc. brent 00:27, 15 December 2006 (CET)

Community portal improvements
I agree - this is not an appropriate use of the portal page. I will have a little time over the next few weeks to improve the structure and use of these pages. I was a little pressed for time when starting the metawikieducator page for free content funding proposals and just linked this from the portal page.

Thanks for reminding me to get this sorted. --Mackiwg 03:04, 15 December 2006 (CET)

Wayne: I'm finding that the whole structure of WikiEducator a little confusing currently. The Community Portal would be a good way to provide an overview of what's really going on in WikiEducator and a way for people to get involved in projects that are of interest to them. I've been looking closely at the overall structure and organizatio of the areas today so will be making some suggestions in various talk pages in the coming week. If this is to be useful in the long run as it starts scaling it will need more of this type of work done. brent 04:10, 15 December 2006 (CET)

discussion area
If Forum software is out of the question at least for the moment the I suggest LiveJournal for the time being. A mature system, it supports threading in a very well developed manner as well as handling registration and email notification. Setting up an account takes only moments, though customizing layout can be as involved as one might want. By way of example, peek the Informatics group. --Bentrem 19:00, 17 January 2007 (CET)

Maybe as I hint in talk:Main Page This area can be used in leiu of the forum.

I'm looking for a place to post this link [|http://edumedia.salzburgresearch.at/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=110&Itemid=120] which should be of interest to wikieducators in general, but do not know where to put it.

Until there is enough activity on wikieducator to require a fully fledged Community Portal this can be a stop-gap.

Anyway, the organisation of Wikieducator is a tad confusing. one hopes that by sheer crtical mass effect things start falling into place organicly, with some people taking on the role of sorting out the structure, but where's the place to discuss this?

--Phsi 13:25, 17 January 2007 (CET)


 * Phil - as Wikieducator has grown, the need for improved navigation has arisen again. I'm a little tied up over the next two days - but lets set up a temporary discussion area on the wiki to start brainstorming thoughts on improving our structure. --Mackiwg 15:55, 17 January 2007 (CET)

I'm planning on diving into the Community Portal page early Feb so any suggestions/discussion I think is welcome. I'd like to use the talk pages for this, don't see the point in starting a seperate forum for this when the talk pages can do the job and all the ideas are in the location where all the action is to take place as well. Let's start doing some organisation here to get ideas out. Perhaps just a simple list of the most significant projects would be a start. brent 22:07, 17 January 2007 (CET)

What's the wikieducator equivalent of JC?
How will WikiEducator resolve community disputes in the future? Fortunately we've not had any to date - but as the community grows, this may become an issue. What is the Wikieducator equivalent of JC (Judicial committee). See this this video on Fairhaven school - about 3 minutes into the clip. --Mackiwg 23:20, 17 March 2007 (CET)

- Archive

Wikiversity
A few of us have come over here from Wikiversity intending to collaborate on many common goals toward bringing free learning to the world. I just wanted to sort of "break the ice" a bit by letting everyone know that pages on wikiversity can be linked via the interwiki map by using something like wikipedia:v:Learning resources where the v: maps through Wikipedia's extended map. I think I speak for the Wikiversity learning community when I say we're looking forward to contributing to and learning from WikiEducator. yeoman 02:39, 16 April 2007 (CEST)


 * yeoman - apologies for not responding to your post earlier, just noticed it now although I'm sure that this page is on my watchlist. Oh well, better late than never. Thanks for the interwiki link tip. brent 07:54, 23 May 2007 (CEST) aka: Wikipedia:v:User:Countrymike

Sharing Templates etc.
Hi, is this a good place to suggest the above (specifically portal templates)? Or is there already a WikiEducator page on setting up portals? On Wikiversity I have set up a few which are easier than doing the same on WikiEducator. Much as I would like to, I seldom have time to geek out and set these up on WikiEducator. About a year ago I posted this page to encourage others to chip in - perhaps that was also the wrong place to post such a page ... and I should use one of the mailing lists ...? The tabbed portal might also be useful on WikiEducator, if anyone has the time to implement it on WikiEducator. K 21:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Community portal looking good - thanks Brent!
The Community portal is a HUGE improvement - BIG thanks Brent!

Taking into account that many Wikieducators are new comers to the wiki environment - in may instances folk who are visiting a wiki for the first time in their lives, I wondering whether we should have a short sentence at the top of the page which says "The community portal is a page where ......

Similarly with the Community Bulletin Board we should have a short sentence which says - "The community bulletin board is a place where ......

I'm wondering whether we shouldn't implement the "help" feature we used in eXe (hacked from moodle) i.e the little question mark that links to context specific help. We could have a series of help pages that are contextually linked by means of a little question mark at strategic points in the main wiki pages on WikiEducator.

What do you think?

--Mackiwg 06:44, 23 May 2007 (CEST)

Why does Community portal page take awhile to load?
I'm connected to a pretty fast server ~ yet, there is a signifcant time delay (10 secs) for the Community Portal page to load...

I'm wondering if it has to do with the page address somehow....

It is not: www.wikieducator.org/Community_Portal

It is, instead - http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Community_Portal

Anyone have any ideas?

--wikirandy 21:56, 2 August 2007 (CEST)

Randy: It's not the name; it's because the community portal page has to go get the content of about 5 RSS feeds ... that's how it's so up-to-date without anyone really having to edit it that much ;-) I'm going to remove my blog from the portal as i'm not blogging that much anymore on stuff that is relevant to WikiEd... that will help a little. brent 00:25, 3 August 2007 (CEST)

Which goes to show why I'm so sceptical of enabling any old extension in mediawiki. Caching should take care all that fetching and parsing. The feed reader extension has some cache settings, which we need to check out, but I think the buggy one is the feed generator. The Initiatives feed isn't quite correct, and this is because its feed items are taken from headings not list items. --Phsi 09:09, 3 August 2007 (CEST)

Can't edit active projects list
Hi there; I noticed my typo in the description of the Biology in Elementary description and I can't seem to edit it with either the whole-page edit or with the nearest edit button above the typo. Any thoughts?Dmccabe 03:55, 17 November 2007 (CET)


 * Hi Dmccabe,


 * Good question! This is actually an RSS feed from the initiatives page - see Initiatives. You can edit the entry from there. When Brent set this up - he used a little Wiki magic to help keep the portal page maintenance to a minimum. --Wayne Mackintosh 04:10, 17 November 2007 (CET)


 * Thank you Wayne. Typo fixed! Declan Dmccabe 04:24, 17 November 2007 (CET)