Cormac’s blog

I had a fascinating discussion last night with Leigh Blackall, over voice chat (Gizmo), about what Wikiversity is, where it’s come from and where it might go. You can download the recording here or bookmark it here. The recording is in “Ogg” format, which you’ll need something like VLC to play. Also, the sound levels are a bit uneven. But still, it’s great to have, and I’m deeply grateful to Leigh for instigating this. (He’s also blogged it on his blog with a useful comment already from Chris Harvey.)

Many very interesting thing coming from the discussion. Leigh mentioned the potential problem with the “versity”, part of the Wikiversity name, making it possible for people to interpret this as a university-level only space. He talked about the original meaning of the word “university” - I never asked him during the chat about it, but have done subsequently by email, about what he thinks the word originally meant, what it’s become in the modern world, and what it might become through our collaborative efforts at Wikiversity. I’ll be fascinated to continue that thread - not just with Leigh, but with everyone who’s interested. Executivezen, with his penchant for words, might even throw in a comment..

We also talked about the possibility of extending the MediaWiki developers’ community, possibly even collaborating with specific institutions/organisations. How that’s possible or to be done is very much yet to be seen..

Loads of other stuff, but that’s all I’ll post for now. Overall, I’m very excited that we can build up a bank of dialogues that can go towards developing Wikiversty, and hope we can widen the pool of interested parties. AmiDaniel also suggested last night on IRC the possibility of creating a “Wikipedia weekly”-style communique type thingy. Let’s see how all this develops..