Talk:Main Page/Archive

Spam Problem
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It was supposed to be replaced by the moodle forums. I think this is a rather kludgey solution, but if phpBB is such a problem maybe we need a w:wikipedia:Village Pump or w:Wikipedia:Community Portal like solution.

--Phsi 13:14, 17 January 2007 (CET)

Phil is right - Previously we were using Phpbb for structured forum discussions. However, SPAM bots became an issue which we couldn't manage and have disabled these to read only. I like the village pump solution. We are also in the processes of ramping up the Community portal page - which currently is in need of much improvement. Brent is coordinating ideas on this - suggestions are most welcome on the relevant talk page: WikiEducator_talk:Community_Portal. --Mackiwg 15:50, 17 January 2007 (CET)

I'd prefer that we mostly use the talk pages on the wiki -- keep it in the family I say :-) ... Village Pump or something like that sounds like a great idea. Perhaps we could have a Virtual Quad... -- name suggestions welcome. brent 23:33, 17 January 2007 (CET)

The link for discussion points to "our discussion forum" ... which seems remarkably void. Is there something amiss here? --Bentrem 06:42, 17 January 2007 (CET)

Yip - it is pretty void - since we moved discussions from phpbb - with endless spam problems - folk have preferred to use the talk pages - which is pretty neat. --Mackiwg 08:35, 19 February 2007 (CET)

Or maybe we should call it Syposium. Anyway the problem of talk pages is that each one is linked to one page. e.g. I created a template called Template:PrevNext which makes using the linked images brent is using in the tutorial eaiser, just put two arguments the previous and the next page. I want to tell the community about this (I only found out about {clickpic} 'cause I looked at the wikitext of one of the tutorial pages) ... if you are not watching this particular page You will not get to know about it.

So maybe the Village Pump/Virtual Quad/Campus/Symposium, should not be modeled after the wikipedia one, but be more of a Public Notice board/forum (on the page propoer) and use its talk page to discuss improving the page itself. so Community Portal would be a sort of official What's going on, while the Village Pump would be somewhere were someone can say "Hey what do you think about this ..." or "I found a good way to do X, here it is" ... Remember that part of Wikieducator's aim is to get people who are not so familiar with the technology to use it, so a bit of centralisation might not be bad. Pesonally I still think there is scope for a forum/mail-list or similar, to help create comunity, maybe we could use some external service ala blogger/yahoo groups etc..

--Phsi 09:42, 19 January 2007 (CET)

Phsi: i'd agree that we need both the Community Portal (and associated talk page) and place that is more centralized for discussion about things that are going on in the wiki (kind of like the Village Pump). I'd also second that we also get a group going -- i participate in a Google Group for the Teaching and Learning Online (TALO) group and we use Google groups. Let others worry about the spam, etc... plus the new Google groups are really quite nice. I've created one that we can have a look at here: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/wikieducator If people like it we can start using that as well. I'll also set up an IRC channel on Freenet next week if people are into IRC. I'm on already most of the day so may as well be on for Wikieducator -- i've been lurking on Wikiversity a bit lately, and have wished that there was one for Wikieducator rather than Wikiversity so i'll just create one myself. Wayne has asked me to work on the Community Portal page, but i'll need to get the tutorials finished before I can put much time in there. brent 03:03, 20 January 2007 (CET)


 * Brent & Phsi - Thanks for the initiative setting up the Google group for Wikieducator. Setting up an IRC channel for Wikieducator shouldn't be too difficult. I'll have a chat with Erik. Where possible - Without being dogmatic about OSS etc, I'd like to use the wiki as far as possible - perhaps we'll discover one or two innovative ways of communicating and structuring our interactions! --Mackiwg 18:40, 20 January 2007 (CET)


 * Wayne, i'll set up an IRC on Monday. Not a big deal. I'm on IRC most of the day anyways. I'd like to keep as much discussion as well as possible on the wiki. We just need to have well defined spaces for directing this 'traffic'. Perhaps when I start redesigning the portal we can also think about creating some defined spaces for talk about particular things/subjects. brent 19:10, 20 January 2007 (CET)

I could set up a web-based chat gateway like this one. IRC is fairly good for group collaboration and community-building; we use it a lot in Wikimedia. Wiki-based discussions suck, but there's a project to improve MediaWiki's forum capabilities. If we could find some funding for this, we could put it back on track.

Glad to see the Wikieducator community growing. January has been the biggest month yet, with about 600 visits per day on average.---Eloquence 20:01, 20 January 2007 (CET)


 * Erik, I'll setup a Wikieducator channel on IRC on Monday (perhaps today if I get time) then if you can setup the Web/CGI interface that would be great. We use one of those as well for eXe and it's a good way to get people on who don't want to muck around with an IRC client, etc... brent 20:28, 20 January 2007 (CET)