Educational Status
Educational Status
From the desk of pieterh
Via the put-the-apple-on-the-table department, on 1256831498|%e %B %Y, %H:%M
While free private sites are limited to five members, Wikidot.com has offered universities and schools the option of unlimited private sites for their classes and courses. Now, we've decided to make it really simple to get an educational site. In your site manager Access policy page, just click the "educational upgrade" link, enter your school or university name, and description of project, and click "Please upgrade my site now".
It takes just a few seconds.
Comments: 15
page_revision: 2, last_edited: 1256917184|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z (%O ago)
Don't you think that this opens the door for abuse? Shouldn't this be checked before giving the status of educational private site?
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
We do see a small % of abuse currently, and our solution is to rescan educational sites over time to check that they are honest.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
This is good news for me. It seems to be extremely easy to upgrade the site, maybe almost too easy (just upgraded mine since it meets the requirements). I guess this will lighten the work of Wikidot staff as long as it isn't misused, as Brunhilda said. The sites will have to be monitored and the wrongly obtained edu-upgrades (if any) cancelled and that's extra work.
___TTT___/ http://www.trumpetexercises.net
(_|||_) \ - Janne
We are providing educational upgrade for over a year now, and honestly we found only a few abuse cases. Now, since the upgrade is automatic (no pre-approval), there might be a bit more abuse cases.
But we feel this model is much better for:
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
I like this. And it will further enhance Wikidot's position as the best platform for educational wikis.
I am just curious: how will you know when someone upgrades his site? Do you have some notification system or you check private sites from time to time? I mean, there must be a very good system that will keep you updated, especially now when upgrading is automatic…
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
This is a really good idea. My daughter starts school next year, and I have been thinking that I would volunteer to set up a wiki for the school. (My wife and I are just starting to put one together for the Kindergarten at the moment) I was going to set it up under my account, but I'm sure the school would prefer that they have full control over it. In the long term it would be fantastic to have a large crop of school leavers well versed in wiki syntax and used to working collaboratively to solve problems and build sites and communities of interest. I think this could be a very good thing for Wikidot, the schools & universities that take up the offer, and eventually for the workplace.
Wayne Eddy
Bundaberg, Australia
I had recently applied for an upgrade to educational status and was wondering why I hadn't got a response. Now I can see why :-) This is a wonderful idea and will help wikidot become more popular among university faculty members like me. Thanks a lot.
Suresh Govindarajan
http://sgovindarajan.wikidot.com
Same as sureshg. Waiting for beeing applied with the educational status the last few days was kind of frustrating. Seeing this post solved the issue, updating worked well and fast. Thanks for this and for the site in general.
You might consider sending a note to all that applied for educational status the last days and to put a note on wikidot.com/learnmore:education
We have been running an educational site for over half a year and it is just great! I do not know how the checking for abuse is done, but our site is in Czech language, so it might be hard to check. When we applied for the educational status, we did not have to fill in the information about school or project. If such information is necessary now, I will gladly provide this information. Thank you and have a good one!
There are automatic translators online (e.g. Google and Babelfish) which can do a good enough job to know what the website is about, at the very least. So checking isn't a problem :)
— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40
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perhaps one way to avoid abuse is to restrict registration to e-mail addresses with educational domains (ac.uk, sch.uk, edu, etc.) where confirmation is sent to the e-mail address.
That's not a good solution. For example in Finland we don't have separate "educational domains" and I suppose it's the same in most countries.
___TTT___/ http://www.trumpetexercises.net
(_|||_) \ - Janne
Neither do we have separate educational domains in the Czech Republic. My university's homepage is www.vse.cz and my email adress goes like zc.esv|resu#zc.esv|resu However, they could go to tell from the homepage it is a university. On the other hand, I could as well run run a private site and give them my school adress… I guess this solution just won't work.
What about using meta-information for each domain? I guess each university would identify its web site to classify the institution as a university and wikidot could search for certain keywords (in the local language of course).