University of Edinburgh
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University of Edinburgh on the Wiki
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You should be unblocked now I think. I've never had to unblock anyone before so was not aware that because you'd been blocked 3 times I also had to unblock you three times. But hopefully it's all good now???
University of Edinburgh
RK
But hopefully it's all good now???
All good, ta.
xmarilynx
You'd still be able to comment on the quality of accomodation, the nightlife and so on?
Well of course, but the existing wiki had a comprehensive section on accommodation, and we have a huge all encompassing sticky thread at the top of the subforum. Do you need to know more about accommodation than that? Likewise, we have a fairly good spread of nightlife stuff between a couple of threads and the existing wiki.
nearlyheadlessian
Well of course, but the existing wiki had a comprehensive section on accommodation, and we have a huge all encompassing sticky thread at the top of the subforum. Do you need to know more about accommodation than that? Likewise, we have a fairly good spread of nightlife stuff between a couple of threads and the existing wiki.
Well of course, but the existing wiki had a comprehensive section on accommodation, and we have a huge all encompassing sticky thread at the top of the subforum. Do you need to know more about accommodation than that? Likewise, we have a fairly good spread of nightlife stuff between a couple of threads and the existing wiki.
It would be easier to have all of the information in one place though (especially for people who aren't regular TSR users and won't think to look through the threads). And nightlife and accomodation were just two examples, I'm sure there are more. I just think personal opinions and experienced will, I don't know, bring it to life a bit?
JR
As I suggested last night, the number of people who have never been on the site and get linked to these sorts of pages through google is pretty high. Just searching general questions about schools and university in google seems to throw up dozens of TSR links on the first page. Forcing people who are only interested in finding things out to sign up to get the information they are looking for is counter-productive. After all, not everyone is open to the idea of spending their time posting on an internet forum - we need to cater for everyone and that's the point of the wiki.
Lots of click throughs and positive reputation amongst schools and applicants is great for your business. But what do we, the posters and contributors, get from this way of doing it. By removing encouragement to sign up and interact with us we lose potential social interactions, friendships, camaraderies, etc.
Sorry, I'm still fairly unconvinced that this will a) be any different to the old wiki b) be any different to what we already have on the forum c) how giving opinions are actually useful in the form of a wiki and d) how encouraging people not to use tsr is actually helpful for you as a business. Or is that the point and I'm not understanding, that it is supposed to be exactly the same as the forum? Just in a way I can give my opinion and people can't interact with me about it? As that sounds slightly pointless.
For pretty much all of the subheadings you've given we've already got substantial information for it anyway so I literally don't understand why you want me to write it all out again just so it can go on a wiki. My opinion on accommodation is as clear as day in the subforum - I wrote the accommodation sticky and regularly answered questions on the thread last year. A couple of us have been in discussion via PM about what we're going to do for the accommodation thread next year as obviously it helps us seeing as their are already a few of us if we can send people to one thread meaning I'm planning on doing a 2010 entry thread over the Christmas holidays once I've done my exams as I know it can be presented much better than it is because last year I just edited the thread as I went along. So one of my main issues is that I literally can not see how you expect this to be different than what we already have in the subforum if you are expecting the wiki to be opinionated.
The whole point of opinions is that they can be disputed and someone can interact with you to ask about your opinion. A wiki doesn't offer that facility and my opinion would simply be given as fact because there would be no name attached to it. As we've already pointed out - my opinion as an old and decrepit fourth year who studies a very specialist subject, with a hatred for anything scientific probably isn't going to be that useful to someone who is applying for something I've got no experience of, but if it was on the wiki it would be read as fact regardless of whether that is the intention or not.
As NHI has pointed out, surely the point of a forum is that you can be interactive and ask questions, whereas a wiki is just so people can look and find information. Then if they want to ask questions they can do it somewhere else because their questions will be specific to them. Take the PS help stuff for example, as far as I'm aware, the wiki exists so that people can get information and actual real facts about their application, then we have the PS questions thread in Ucas which lets people get more fact and ask questions, and then we have PS help where people can get a review and thus an opinion. If we started putting loads of opinions into the wiki instead of leaving it factual, it would ruin the resource in my opinion. If we suddenly did decide we were having an opinionated PS help wiki, I could go and edit it because I can chat all day about personal statements but this would only be social science related, so I couldn't let my opinion be the basis for every single PS ever written, it wouldn't be information which is much use to anyone applying for medicine. More to the point, anything I wrote which was opinionated would just be full of me and it isn't helpful if people can't interact with me and question me on my opinion, which they can if my opinion stays in the PS help forum.
This is the issue I feel here - why put an opinion on a wiki where someone can't interact with the person who has written it? What is wrong with us having an accommodation thread where I can write "I think Pollock Halls are rubbish", and then someone can pull me up on it? This is an opinion which is debated a lot amongst students in Edinburgh and to be honest, there is no right opinion on the matter, meaning people can then ask me why I think this is the case if I wrote it on a forum, whereas if I just wrote it on the wiki I couldn't be held accountable by other people for what I'd written, which isn't positive in my opinion.
Basically, my concern in this respect is that there isn't going to be one opinion and however hard you try, you're not going to get a rough opinion that is applicable to everyone wanting to go to Edinburgh. Even if out of nowhere the entire student population signed up for tsr and started editing the wiki, you wouldn't get one opinion which can be shown as the opinion of students at Edinburgh. Also, surely that would get incredibly complicated if say, loads and loads of users started saying "I think this" then someone else would say "well I think the exact opposite" and then loads of people in the middle - how is that helpful to an applicant, because surely, when one reads the wiki they will expect it to be full of factual information. If I use the actual wikipedia (which I assume you've taken the name from) I do it because I want factual information on a topic, not because I want the detailed opinion of Bob, who is a 1st year Chemistry student. If I wanted Bob's specific opinion I would find somewhere where I could ask Bob about it, I wouldn't expect to see it written as fact on something such as a wikipedia site.
Also, as artorscience says too, I appreciate that this is a business venture for you guys and you have to make money for your company (I only learnt that there were paid people on tsr last night so this is quite a new thing in my eyes) but what do users actually get out of you doing all of this? Okay you can get loads of hits through someone wanting to read my opinion on Pollock Halls in a wiki, but surely it is better from your perspective if you encourage them to source my opinion out on the forum? As then they will see all of the other information offered and will probably sit around, and then might end up buying a subscription and giving you money in the long run. By adding all of this opinion stuff into a non interactional area, you're probably losing a lot of people who would then at some point come and join tsr to make up for the opinionated aspect the wiki is lacking, because as a source of information it can never replace actual communication, which is essentially what you seem to be trying to do.
I think the thing I would like more is if there was some sort of facility where users could create a combined post for a forum. Or even, one person can work on it but in an "offline" forum where it is hidden from public view until it is ready to go on. Sort of like the admin forums, where only certain people can access the material and we can all edit things, but are private from the rest of tsr. Then for example, we could write a new accommodation sticky and say, several nominated users could all work on it when they were free. This would be much more useful, as then people would still be able to reply to the opinions given in the sticky and question it, and then the authors would also be able to be held accountable. I know you will probably reply back saying well this is the intention of the wiki, but as I've explained above, I don't think the wiki is suitable for this kind of opinionated thing, a forum is much better.
For pretty much all of the subheadings you've given we've already got substantial information for it anyway so I literally don't understand why you want me to write it all out again just so it can go on a wiki. My opinion on accommodation is as clear as day in the subforum - I wrote the accommodation sticky and regularly answered questions on the thread last year. A couple of us have been in discussion via PM about what we're going to do for the accommodation thread next year as obviously it helps us seeing as their are already a few of us if we can send people to one thread meaning I'm planning on doing a 2010 entry thread over the Christmas holidays once I've done my exams as I know it can be presented much better than it is because last year I just edited the thread as I went along. So one of my main issues is that I literally can not see how you expect this to be different than what we already have in the subforum if you are expecting the wiki to be opinionated.
The whole point of opinions is that they can be disputed and someone can interact with you to ask about your opinion. A wiki doesn't offer that facility and my opinion would simply be given as fact because there would be no name attached to it. As we've already pointed out - my opinion as an old and decrepit fourth year who studies a very specialist subject, with a hatred for anything scientific probably isn't going to be that useful to someone who is applying for something I've got no experience of, but if it was on the wiki it would be read as fact regardless of whether that is the intention or not.
As NHI has pointed out, surely the point of a forum is that you can be interactive and ask questions, whereas a wiki is just so people can look and find information. Then if they want to ask questions they can do it somewhere else because their questions will be specific to them. Take the PS help stuff for example, as far as I'm aware, the wiki exists so that people can get information and actual real facts about their application, then we have the PS questions thread in Ucas which lets people get more fact and ask questions, and then we have PS help where people can get a review and thus an opinion. If we started putting loads of opinions into the wiki instead of leaving it factual, it would ruin the resource in my opinion. If we suddenly did decide we were having an opinionated PS help wiki, I could go and edit it because I can chat all day about personal statements but this would only be social science related, so I couldn't let my opinion be the basis for every single PS ever written, it wouldn't be information which is much use to anyone applying for medicine. More to the point, anything I wrote which was opinionated would just be full of me and it isn't helpful if people can't interact with me and question me on my opinion, which they can if my opinion stays in the PS help forum.
This is the issue I feel here - why put an opinion on a wiki where someone can't interact with the person who has written it? What is wrong with us having an accommodation thread where I can write "I think Pollock Halls are rubbish", and then someone can pull me up on it? This is an opinion which is debated a lot amongst students in Edinburgh and to be honest, there is no right opinion on the matter, meaning people can then ask me why I think this is the case if I wrote it on a forum, whereas if I just wrote it on the wiki I couldn't be held accountable by other people for what I'd written, which isn't positive in my opinion.
Basically, my concern in this respect is that there isn't going to be one opinion and however hard you try, you're not going to get a rough opinion that is applicable to everyone wanting to go to Edinburgh. Even if out of nowhere the entire student population signed up for tsr and started editing the wiki, you wouldn't get one opinion which can be shown as the opinion of students at Edinburgh. Also, surely that would get incredibly complicated if say, loads and loads of users started saying "I think this" then someone else would say "well I think the exact opposite" and then loads of people in the middle - how is that helpful to an applicant, because surely, when one reads the wiki they will expect it to be full of factual information. If I use the actual wikipedia (which I assume you've taken the name from) I do it because I want factual information on a topic, not because I want the detailed opinion of Bob, who is a 1st year Chemistry student. If I wanted Bob's specific opinion I would find somewhere where I could ask Bob about it, I wouldn't expect to see it written as fact on something such as a wikipedia site.
Also, as artorscience says too, I appreciate that this is a business venture for you guys and you have to make money for your company (I only learnt that there were paid people on tsr last night so this is quite a new thing in my eyes) but what do users actually get out of you doing all of this? Okay you can get loads of hits through someone wanting to read my opinion on Pollock Halls in a wiki, but surely it is better from your perspective if you encourage them to source my opinion out on the forum? As then they will see all of the other information offered and will probably sit around, and then might end up buying a subscription and giving you money in the long run. By adding all of this opinion stuff into a non interactional area, you're probably losing a lot of people who would then at some point come and join tsr to make up for the opinionated aspect the wiki is lacking, because as a source of information it can never replace actual communication, which is essentially what you seem to be trying to do.
I think the thing I would like more is if there was some sort of facility where users could create a combined post for a forum. Or even, one person can work on it but in an "offline" forum where it is hidden from public view until it is ready to go on. Sort of like the admin forums, where only certain people can access the material and we can all edit things, but are private from the rest of tsr. Then for example, we could write a new accommodation sticky and say, several nominated users could all work on it when they were free. This would be much more useful, as then people would still be able to reply to the opinions given in the sticky and question it, and then the authors would also be able to be held accountable. I know you will probably reply back saying well this is the intention of the wiki, but as I've explained above, I don't think the wiki is suitable for this kind of opinionated thing, a forum is much better.
RK
x
J
x
oxymoronic
I understand what you're saying, but in all honesty I don't think that is going to work with this subforum - there are so few current students who are active on here, I could count the main names in the Edinburgh forum on one hand and all but one of us are arts/social science students anyway, so how are my experiences as an anthropologist going to help a chemistry student establish whether or not there are enough books in the library for them when I've never even been to their campus, let alone actually stepped foot in one of their libraries? Perhaps this would work at a university such as Durham where there does seem to be loads of current students so there would be a broader picture, but with Edinburgh it will simply be a record of the personal experiences of a couple of select students which doesn't really relate to how good the actual university is at all as the departments are so different. I could give you an incredibly honest reply with regards to the facilities for books for an anthropology student, but as a 4th year I'm in the last year of the old course meaning literally every other 1st to 3rd year in the university will be doing a totally different course structure with totally new books meaning I can't comment at all as to whether there are books available for them to use, as I don't know. Meaning in that respect you've already lost one persons opinion as it would be pointless in me writing it, and I make up 20% of us on tsr.
I've looked at the questions too and I can't be bothered answering them... if someone really wants to know what I think they can just ask me... I've got too much to do in life than to answer questions for someone who is too lazy to sign up for an account and ask the question themselves, which seems to be the main reason for this activity anyway. If they really had any desire to know what I thought they'd sign up and ask me a question, why should I spend my time helping someone out who can't be bothered to do that when I already spend so much time answering questions in the subforum and ps help anyway? It doesn't make sense.
I feel the questions are too general and they're not really going to get anything much which is conclusive because in Edinburgh terms it is just literally going to be 4 or 5 people giving opinions which aren't relational to the university as a whole, for numerous factors. Surely a hell of a lot of the additional questions you've put there about the library anyway are subjective to interpretation - it depends what member of staff you get as to whether they are nice or not, it depends which side of the library you work on as to whether its noisy or not as they're doing building works, it depends which library you're even talking about with regards to opening hours, and then what day it is... the list is endless.
I don't know... sorry we're not being all enthusiastic and jumping for joy at this idea, but it does sound kinda pointless from my perspective. Also, I've got no idea how to work a stupid wiki even if I did want to give my opinion, I can just about manage to edit posts and do reviews on the main tsr thing without adding in anything else more complicated than that to the mix!
I've looked at the questions too and I can't be bothered answering them... if someone really wants to know what I think they can just ask me... I've got too much to do in life than to answer questions for someone who is too lazy to sign up for an account and ask the question themselves, which seems to be the main reason for this activity anyway. If they really had any desire to know what I thought they'd sign up and ask me a question, why should I spend my time helping someone out who can't be bothered to do that when I already spend so much time answering questions in the subforum and ps help anyway? It doesn't make sense.
I feel the questions are too general and they're not really going to get anything much which is conclusive because in Edinburgh terms it is just literally going to be 4 or 5 people giving opinions which aren't relational to the university as a whole, for numerous factors. Surely a hell of a lot of the additional questions you've put there about the library anyway are subjective to interpretation - it depends what member of staff you get as to whether they are nice or not, it depends which side of the library you work on as to whether its noisy or not as they're doing building works, it depends which library you're even talking about with regards to opening hours, and then what day it is... the list is endless.
I don't know... sorry we're not being all enthusiastic and jumping for joy at this idea, but it does sound kinda pointless from my perspective. Also, I've got no idea how to work a stupid wiki even if I did want to give my opinion, I can just about manage to edit posts and do reviews on the main tsr thing without adding in anything else more complicated than that to the mix!
Yo, I exist!
Rainfaery
Yo, I exist! 
Yes hence the ALL BUT ONE OF US part of my sentence.
I am very much in favour of this new proposal. I want to read information about student experiences good and bad, and although they will be subjective, at least it conveys a feel of the place. I suppose a more balanced perspective would develop over time with more contributions from students of different disciplines. So continuing on with the library example, if the university is say that it has quiet areas but the experience of students was that they are always occupied (meaning there is insufficient provision for demand) or they are located near to air conditioning plant (meaning there could be noise issues) then this information could be useful. It is also useful to know how students actually cope with lectures, timetabling, feedback, and the quality of facilities provided. I want comment on the factual information given, and does it really 'stack up'. Finally it is nice to know whether students overall are happy with their choice. Rainfaery here seems keen as mustard, and she has related her experiences so far that I have use to get an impression of Edinburgh uni. Obviously this will change over time, but this information adds to the collage of information.
oxymoronic
Sorry, I'm still fairly unconvinced that this will a) be any different to the old wiki b) be any different to what we already have on the forum c) how giving opinions are actually useful in the form of a wiki and d) how encouraging people not to use tsr is actually helpful for you as a business. Or is that the point and I'm not understanding, that it is supposed to be exactly the same as the forum? Just in a way I can give my opinion and people can't interact with me about it? As that sounds slightly pointless.
For pretty much all of the subheadings you've given we've already got substantial information for it anyway so I literally don't understand why you want me to write it all out again just so it can go on a wiki. My opinion on accommodation is as clear as day in the subforum - I wrote the accommodation sticky and regularly answered questions on the thread last year. A couple of us have been in discussion via PM about what we're going to do for the accommodation thread next year as obviously it helps us seeing as their are already a few of us if we can send people to one thread meaning I'm planning on doing a 2010 entry thread over the Christmas holidays once I've done my exams as I know it can be presented much better than it is because last year I just edited the thread as I went along. So one of my main issues is that I literally can not see how you expect this to be different than what we already have in the subforum if you are expecting the wiki to be opinionated.
For pretty much all of the subheadings you've given we've already got substantial information for it anyway so I literally don't understand why you want me to write it all out again just so it can go on a wiki. My opinion on accommodation is as clear as day in the subforum - I wrote the accommodation sticky and regularly answered questions on the thread last year. A couple of us have been in discussion via PM about what we're going to do for the accommodation thread next year as obviously it helps us seeing as their are already a few of us if we can send people to one thread meaning I'm planning on doing a 2010 entry thread over the Christmas holidays once I've done my exams as I know it can be presented much better than it is because last year I just edited the thread as I went along. So one of my main issues is that I literally can not see how you expect this to be different than what we already have in the subforum if you are expecting the wiki to be opinionated.
oxymoronic
The whole point of opinions is that they can be disputed and someone can interact with you to ask about your opinion. A wiki doesn't offer that facility and my opinion would simply be given as fact because there would be no name attached to it. As we've already pointed out - my opinion as an old and decrepit fourth year who studies a very specialist subject, with a hatred for anything scientific probably isn't going to be that useful to someone who is applying for something I've got no experience of, but if it was on the wiki it would be read as fact regardless of whether that is the intention or not.
I don't think so. These guides are going to be clearly signposted as separate from the factual guides in every link and list that mentions them. All of these pages will have links to the forum, so if anyone does come onto the wiki and think "why has someone said this about x halls? Is it really that terrible?" then they will see the link to the forum and think "I can go and ask why people might think this way". Like I've already said (twice?) in this thread, not everyone that uses the internet is so receptive to using forums and interacting with people they don't know. It's easier for these unregistered people to arrive, read, find what they want and leave again. Sure, getting people to sign up to the forum is inevitably a positive in the long run, but we're not going to lose anyone who wouldn't have signed up in the first place (or the second place if they read the initial guide and decided they did want to talk about it).
oxymoronic
As NHI has pointed out, surely the point of a forum is that you can be interactive and ask questions, whereas a wiki is just so people can look and find information. Then if they want to ask questions they can do it somewhere else because their questions will be specific to them. Take the PS help stuff for example, as far as I'm aware, the wiki exists so that people can get information and actual real facts about their application, then we have the PS questions thread in Ucas which lets people get more fact and ask questions, and then we have PS help where people can get a review and thus an opinion. If we started putting loads of opinions into the wiki instead of leaving it factual, it would ruin the resource in my opinion. If we suddenly did decide we were having an opinionated PS help wiki, I could go and edit it because I can chat all day about personal statements but this would only be social science related, so I couldn't let my opinion be the basis for every single PS ever written, it wouldn't be information which is much use to anyone applying for medicine. More to the point, anything I wrote which was opinionated would just be full of me and it isn't helpful if people can't interact with me and question me on my opinion, which they can if my opinion stays in the PS help forum.
But there is no equivalent resource here. It's not like these subforums are offering any kind of service in the same way we do with PS Help. In addition, since there's no bare facts about how to write a Personal Statement, the sort of thing we are proposing here wouldn't work (and wouldn't even be suggested) for the PS Help stuff. That resource itself is advertised particularly well and (as you are certainly aware), it's a very busy part of the site. There are bare facts about the university, this is what we'll have on the official page; and then there are experiences/opinions. Maybe the onus should be moved off of "opinion" and onto "experience" but those are pretty closely linked in terms of what we're trying to achieve here. Across the wiki we're looking to balance fact with experience - see the graduate employers guides, the teacher training profiles, the day in the life of an A-Level student guides or the week in the life of a postgrad guide. The wiki is a quick stop shop for fact and experience and by putting these complementary guides up, we can show both sides of the coin. I don't really think that's taking anything away from the forum if you bear in mind that as many users of the internet will not want to join a forum as those that will. (As an aside, as far as I'm aware TSR was trying to get people to review personal statements that have been uploaded into the wiki gallery. I can't say I know why, but I certainly wasn't going to waste my time if it wasn't to be helping someone applying at the moment.)
oxymoronic
This is the issue I feel here - why put an opinion on a wiki where someone can't interact with the person who has written it? What is wrong with us having an accommodation thread where I can write "I think Pollock Halls are rubbish", and then someone can pull me up on it? This is an opinion which is debated a lot amongst students in Edinburgh and to be honest, there is no right opinion on the matter, meaning people can then ask me why I think this is the case if I wrote it on a forum, whereas if I just wrote it on the wiki I couldn't be held accountable by other people for what I'd written, which isn't positive in my opinion.
Basically, my concern in this respect is that there isn't going to be one opinion and however hard you try, you're not going to get a rough opinion that is applicable to everyone wanting to go to Edinburgh. Even if out of nowhere the entire student population signed up for tsr and started editing the wiki, you wouldn't get one opinion which can be shown as the opinion of students at Edinburgh. Also, surely that would get incredibly complicated if say, loads and loads of users started saying "I think this" then someone else would say "well I think the exact opposite" and then loads of people in the middle - how is that helpful to an applicant, because surely, when one reads the wiki they will expect it to be full of factual information. If I use the actual wikipedia (which I assume you've taken the name from) I do it because I want factual information on a topic, not because I want the detailed opinion of Bob, who is a 1st year Chemistry student. If I wanted Bob's specific opinion I would find somewhere where I could ask Bob about it, I wouldn't expect to see it written as fact on something such as a wikipedia site.
Basically, my concern in this respect is that there isn't going to be one opinion and however hard you try, you're not going to get a rough opinion that is applicable to everyone wanting to go to Edinburgh. Even if out of nowhere the entire student population signed up for tsr and started editing the wiki, you wouldn't get one opinion which can be shown as the opinion of students at Edinburgh. Also, surely that would get incredibly complicated if say, loads and loads of users started saying "I think this" then someone else would say "well I think the exact opposite" and then loads of people in the middle - how is that helpful to an applicant, because surely, when one reads the wiki they will expect it to be full of factual information. If I use the actual wikipedia (which I assume you've taken the name from) I do it because I want factual information on a topic, not because I want the detailed opinion of Bob, who is a 1st year Chemistry student. If I wanted Bob's specific opinion I would find somewhere where I could ask Bob about it, I wouldn't expect to see it written as fact on something such as a wikipedia site.
As far as I'm aware the term 'wiki' existed before wikipedia.
I just went to an online dictionary and the term wiki (originally used 'wikiwiki') refers to a quick resource, which funnily enough corresponds to what I said above about the wiki being a quick stop shop for those that don't find forums a useful way to spend their time and gather information.
oxymoronic
Also, as artorscience says too, I appreciate that this is a business venture for you guys and you have to make money for your company (I only learnt that there were paid people on tsr last night so this is quite a new thing in my eyes) but what do users actually get out of you doing all of this? Okay you can get loads of hits through someone wanting to read my opinion on Pollock Halls in a wiki, but surely it is better from your perspective if you encourage them to source my opinion out on the forum? As then they will see all of the other information offered and will probably sit around, and then might end up buying a subscription and giving you money in the long run. By adding all of this opinion stuff into a non interactional area, you're probably losing a lot of people who would then at some point come and join tsr to make up for the opinionated aspect the wiki is lacking, because as a source of information it can never replace actual communication, which is essentially what you seem to be trying to do.
At the moment, current users aren't getting anything to fill them in, but this is just a test to gauge how people would respond to being asked to fill them in. The hostile response from this thread (at least showing that you guys are thinking and caring about the information you're able to provide and how that can be relayed through TSR) shows that we need to have a rethink about the best way to go about this. But we've had positive feedback too about the idea of having these complementary guides that should make it much easier for new, and existing members, to find the exact sort of information they want.
Which reminds me of another point that would probably have been better off coming higher up, but anyway; sometimes forums are slow: internet users, especially those that are navvy at web exploring, often want their information as quickly as possible: by providing them this on the wiki (quick shop) we can give them what they want. If they can find what they want, they're more likely to think "hey, that was a good site, I found the information I wanted. I wonder if they will have this information too...". This will encourage those users to return to the site. Even if they don't sign up (and if you read threads in the Welcome Lounge people often say they had been linked here through Google so many times that they 'decided to sign up this time') then they are still arriving on the site, viewing our content, and more importantly (depending on how you look at it) the advertisements on the site. If they post a question and have to wait 10, 12 hours, maybe more to get a response, then where's their incentive to return? A large number of members on this site have signed up to ask a few specific questions and then left and done whatever with their lives; it's a relatively minor percentage that end up posting more and becoming an active part of the community. (You may also be interested to know that subscriptions actually make up a fairly insignificant part of TSR's revenue.)
oxymoronic
I think the thing I would like more is if there was some sort of facility where users could create a combined post for a forum. Or even, one person can work on it but in an "offline" forum where it is hidden from public view until it is ready to go on. Sort of like the admin forums, where only certain people can access the material and we can all edit things, but are private from the rest of tsr. Then for example, we could write a new accommodation sticky and say, several nominated users could all work on it when they were free. This would be much more useful, as then people would still be able to reply to the opinions given in the sticky and question it, and then the authors would also be able to be held accountable. I know you will probably reply back saying well this is the intention of the wiki, but as I've explained above, I don't think the wiki is suitable for this kind of opinionated thing, a forum is much better.
This sounds a lot like going down the route of giving people admin powers in single subforums which sounds like it'd be a lot of hassle and, I think, would be counter productive to the moderation systems, but this really seems to be a bit of an extended non sequitur.
Just clearing something up about wikis.
A wiki is simply a term used to describe a type of user-generated resource where you can create pages which other people can come along and edit to add more information to and to update.
Wikipedia is an example 'wiki' that happens to be an encylopedia, and so contains factual information. It doesn't contain factual information because it's a wiki, but because it's an encylopedia. Not all wikis need to be factual.
The wiki here on TSR happens to use the same software behind it that Wikipedia does (something called Mediawiki), but there are other pieces of wiki software out there. Mediawiki happens to be reasonable to use, and because of wikipedia, more people know how to us it than many other types of wiki.
So essentially the TSR wiki is there for creating pages relevant to students which allows other people to edit them over time - to either update them or add more content to. Whether this content is factual or opinion or anything else will depend up on the page. So we just need to make it clear in the page title or intro if the content is fact or opinion/experience.
A wiki is simply a term used to describe a type of user-generated resource where you can create pages which other people can come along and edit to add more information to and to update.
Wikipedia is an example 'wiki' that happens to be an encylopedia, and so contains factual information. It doesn't contain factual information because it's a wiki, but because it's an encylopedia. Not all wikis need to be factual.
The wiki here on TSR happens to use the same software behind it that Wikipedia does (something called Mediawiki), but there are other pieces of wiki software out there. Mediawiki happens to be reasonable to use, and because of wikipedia, more people know how to us it than many other types of wiki.
So essentially the TSR wiki is there for creating pages relevant to students which allows other people to edit them over time - to either update them or add more content to. Whether this content is factual or opinion or anything else will depend up on the page. So we just need to make it clear in the page title or intro if the content is fact or opinion/experience.
Hey guys, we've been having a discussion of how to proceed from here, and I've made some changes to the page. Hopefully this way will encourage people to put down their experiences without feeling the need to edit other people's if they disagree with them. Could you tell me whether this is a better structure? And a better way of gathering responses? (i.e. less patronising? 
)
Regardless of whether you currently feel this is a good exercise I would be grateful for your feedback.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_-_Student_Guide
)Regardless of whether you currently feel this is a good exercise I would be grateful for your feedback.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_-_Student_Guide
nearlyheadlessian
...
oxymoronic
...
artorscience?
...
rainfaery
...
JR
Hey guys, we've been having a discussion of how to proceed from here, and I've made some changes to the page. Hopefully this way will encourage people to put down their experiences without feeling the need to edit other people's if they disagree with them. Could you tell me whether this is a better structure? And a better way of gathering responses? (i.e. less patronising? )
Regardless of whether you currently feel this is a good exercise I would be grateful for your feedback.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_-_Student_Guide
)Regardless of whether you currently feel this is a good exercise I would be grateful for your feedback.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_-_Student_Guide
I definitely think this way is better; people will be able to see who wrote different bits, and can thus PM if they have questions, and it's also quite clear that everything is an opinion.
JR
Hey guys, we've been having a discussion of how to proceed from here, and I've made some changes to the page. Hopefully this way will encourage people to put down their experiences without feeling the need to edit other people's if they disagree with them. Could you tell me whether this is a better structure? And a better way of gathering responses? (i.e. less patronising? )
Regardless of whether you currently feel this is a good exercise I would be grateful for your feedback.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_-_Student_Guide
)Regardless of whether you currently feel this is a good exercise I would be grateful for your feedback.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/University_of_Edinburgh_-_Student_Guide
That works better as then people can be held accountable for what they have written. But if these people don't use tsr, like you said, is there any use in having a username anyway if they can't do anything with it?
I don't understand how wikis work, but could you link the bit up which says the persons username to their tsr profile? Then it would make it seem a wee bit more like they could contact them as then I think it says pm this user or something? Then as well, if the user had stuff in their profile about what they studied etc that would help with the context of their opinion too. Otherwise I could just write any old name and it would make no difference.... I think its really important to show that these are opinions of actual people who can be contacted to ask why they've said X when you actually think Y. Otherwise if it is just a name it will be like on university adverts where they show you "real" people who have supposedly had an amazing time at this university, who are obviously fictional.
I understand that you've said that people do want this - and clearly, there have been one or two applicants on this thread who have said this is a good idea, but in Edinburgh terms the boxes you've got and everything you want defining is far too generic and basic. As we've all said several times - there is literally no way we can comment on anything within the university which can be taken across the board, even on things as basic as the libraries or faculty buildings or teaching. So although all of these new people are saying it is a good idea, it just doesn't feel practical from the perspective of someone who you are expecting to contribute to this activity and make it work. Okay, I'll give you the accommodation one, we can do that quite well with regards to opinions, but we already have a thread for that here anyway.
I still think you're not going to get a clear opinion because we're a city uni and most of us have only ever been to our faculties. I've been here for four years and have probably stepped foot in about 5 of the many university buildings across the city, if that, so I'm not really qualified to comment as to whether the buildings in general at the university are pretty/warm/easy to access etc. More to the point, a lot of the places I spent my first two years in have now been knocked down meaning I literally only go in one building now, so I'm hardly going to have a helpful opinion. I can envisage that a lot of the boxes will remain unanswered due to this reason. If we were a campus uni it would be a hell of a lot easier to put everything into boxes like you're wanting to do as I assume then everything would be in one place. Similarly, if we were a uni with a college system, again, it would be easier to do, whereas you're expecting us to write about a university which goes across an entire city.
What I feel would be more useful, in terms of Edinburgh, would be having something to explain to people how the Scottish university system actually worked and our opinions/experiences of this, rather than having us rambling on about the library which is no use to anyone. There are so many misconceptions and confusions relating to university in Scotland so if you made somewhere where all of this could be answered in one go, this would be much more useful I feel than us all attempting to give our opinion on a building we've never been to in Edinburgh. This would be something I would really consider contributing to as I hate the fact that no one seems to understand Scotland and how we do things as tsr is incredibly English in that respect, which is silly given it is supposed to be UK based not England based.
The actual education system (along with accommodation) are the things we spend most of our time answering questions on in this forum, not about the cheapest places to buy alcohol. This is why we've got the accommodation sticky and the outside subjects sticky, so yeah, I can see a reason for having this information on it but not anything else particularly
(Also, even if wiki doesn't originate from wikipedia, this is what people will associate it with regardless of the actual meaning. I've never used the tsr wiki and don't know where you keep it, but in my head I expect it to be a similar thing to wikipedia and full of actual fact about universities)
oxymoronic
That works better as then people can be held accountable for what they have written. But if these people don't use tsr, like you said, is there any use in having a username anyway if they can't do anything with it?
I don't understand how wikis work, but could you link the bit up which says the persons username to their tsr profile? Then it would make it seem a wee bit more like they could contact them as then I think it says pm this user or something? Then as well, if the user had stuff in their profile about what they studied etc that would help with the context of their opinion too. Otherwise I could just write any old name and it would make no difference.... I think its really important to show that these are opinions of actual people who can be contacted to ask why they've said X when you actually think Y. Otherwise if it is just a name it will be like on university adverts where they show you "real" people who have supposedly had an amazing time at this university, who are obviously fictional.
I understand that you've said that people do want this - and clearly, there have been one or two applicants on this thread who have said this is a good idea, but in Edinburgh terms the boxes you've got and everything you want defining is far too generic and basic. As we've all said several times - there is literally no way we can comment on anything within the university which can be taken across the board, even on things as basic as the libraries or faculty buildings or teaching. So although all of these new people are saying it is a good idea, it just doesn't feel practical from the perspective of someone who you are expecting to contribute to this activity and make it work. Okay, I'll give you the accommodation one, we can do that quite well with regards to opinions, but we already have a thread for that here anyway.
I still think you're not going to get a clear opinion because we're a city uni and most of us have only ever been to our faculties. I've been here for four years and have probably stepped foot in about 5 of the many university buildings across the city, if that, so I'm not really qualified to comment as to whether the buildings in general at the university are pretty/warm/easy to access etc. More to the point, a lot of the places I spent my first two years in have now been knocked down meaning I literally only go in one building now, so I'm hardly going to have a helpful opinion. I can envisage that a lot of the boxes will remain unanswered due to this reason. If we were a campus uni it would be a hell of a lot easier to put everything into boxes like you're wanting to do as I assume then everything would be in one place. Similarly, if we were a uni with a college system, again, it would be easier to do, whereas you're expecting us to write about a university which goes across an entire city.
What I feel would be more useful, in terms of Edinburgh, would be having something to explain to people how the Scottish university system actually worked and our opinions/experiences of this, rather than having us rambling on about the library which is no use to anyone. There are so many misconceptions and confusions relating to university in Scotland so if you made somewhere where all of this could be answered in one go, this would be much more useful I feel than us all attempting to give our opinion on a building we've never been to in Edinburgh. This would be something I would really consider contributing to as I hate the fact that no one seems to understand Scotland and how we do things as tsr is incredibly English in that respect, which is silly given it is supposed to be UK based not England based.
The actual education system (along with accommodation) are the things we spend most of our time answering questions on in this forum, not about the cheapest places to buy alcohol. This is why we've got the accommodation sticky and the outside subjects sticky, so yeah, I can see a reason for having this information on it but not anything else particularly
(Also, even if wiki doesn't originate from wikipedia, this is what people will associate it with regardless of the actual meaning. I've never used the tsr wiki and don't know where you keep it, but in my head I expect it to be a similar thing to wikipedia and full of actual fact about universities)
I don't understand how wikis work, but could you link the bit up which says the persons username to their tsr profile? Then it would make it seem a wee bit more like they could contact them as then I think it says pm this user or something? Then as well, if the user had stuff in their profile about what they studied etc that would help with the context of their opinion too. Otherwise I could just write any old name and it would make no difference.... I think its really important to show that these are opinions of actual people who can be contacted to ask why they've said X when you actually think Y. Otherwise if it is just a name it will be like on university adverts where they show you "real" people who have supposedly had an amazing time at this university, who are obviously fictional.
I understand that you've said that people do want this - and clearly, there have been one or two applicants on this thread who have said this is a good idea, but in Edinburgh terms the boxes you've got and everything you want defining is far too generic and basic. As we've all said several times - there is literally no way we can comment on anything within the university which can be taken across the board, even on things as basic as the libraries or faculty buildings or teaching. So although all of these new people are saying it is a good idea, it just doesn't feel practical from the perspective of someone who you are expecting to contribute to this activity and make it work. Okay, I'll give you the accommodation one, we can do that quite well with regards to opinions, but we already have a thread for that here anyway.
I still think you're not going to get a clear opinion because we're a city uni and most of us have only ever been to our faculties. I've been here for four years and have probably stepped foot in about 5 of the many university buildings across the city, if that, so I'm not really qualified to comment as to whether the buildings in general at the university are pretty/warm/easy to access etc. More to the point, a lot of the places I spent my first two years in have now been knocked down meaning I literally only go in one building now, so I'm hardly going to have a helpful opinion. I can envisage that a lot of the boxes will remain unanswered due to this reason. If we were a campus uni it would be a hell of a lot easier to put everything into boxes like you're wanting to do as I assume then everything would be in one place. Similarly, if we were a uni with a college system, again, it would be easier to do, whereas you're expecting us to write about a university which goes across an entire city.
What I feel would be more useful, in terms of Edinburgh, would be having something to explain to people how the Scottish university system actually worked and our opinions/experiences of this, rather than having us rambling on about the library which is no use to anyone. There are so many misconceptions and confusions relating to university in Scotland so if you made somewhere where all of this could be answered in one go, this would be much more useful I feel than us all attempting to give our opinion on a building we've never been to in Edinburgh. This would be something I would really consider contributing to as I hate the fact that no one seems to understand Scotland and how we do things as tsr is incredibly English in that respect, which is silly given it is supposed to be UK based not England based.
The actual education system (along with accommodation) are the things we spend most of our time answering questions on in this forum, not about the cheapest places to buy alcohol. This is why we've got the accommodation sticky and the outside subjects sticky, so yeah, I can see a reason for having this information on it but not anything else particularly
(Also, even if wiki doesn't originate from wikipedia, this is what people will associate it with regardless of the actual meaning. I've never used the tsr wiki and don't know where you keep it, but in my head I expect it to be a similar thing to wikipedia and full of actual fact about universities)
Thanks for this post. It is very easy to link to people's profiles, and if they're happy for that to happen then I will do that.
You meantion that Edinburgh is a city university, and obviously this is something we need to consider. You make a good point that you haven't been in a lot of the other buildings (or even seen them, maybe), so for other city universities it might be a good idea to come up with slightly different headings that effectively get the same sort of information but in a more effective manner. (I was unaware Edinburgh was a city university, and as I said before, this was built from a very generic template.) Could you suggest a better way of breaking down the questions to get opinions on faculty buildings?
Does the Scottish university system work that differently to the English ones? (This is my own ignorance, not TSR's
) Again, this might be something we'd need to consider, but I would assume the information on the difference in education systems is already on the wiki (I know we have a page for Scottish Highers and Advanced Highers because I made it and got some current Scottish students to fill it in).JR
Thanks for this post. It is very easy to link to people's profiles, and if they're happy for that to happen then I will do that.
You meantion that Edinburgh is a city university, and obviously this is something we need to consider. You make a good point that you haven't been in a lot of the other buildings (or even seen them, maybe), so for other city universities it might be a good idea to come up with slightly different headings that effectively get the same sort of information but in a more effective manner. (I was unaware Edinburgh was a city university, and as I said before, this was built from a very generic template.) Could you suggest a better way of breaking down the questions to get opinions on faculty buildings?
Does the Scottish university system work that differently to the English ones? (This is my own ignorance, not TSR's) Again, this might be something we'd need to consider, but I would assume the information on the difference in education systems is already on the wiki (I know we have a page for Scottish Highers and Advanced Highers because I made it and got some current Scottish students to fill it in).
You meantion that Edinburgh is a city university, and obviously this is something we need to consider. You make a good point that you haven't been in a lot of the other buildings (or even seen them, maybe), so for other city universities it might be a good idea to come up with slightly different headings that effectively get the same sort of information but in a more effective manner. (I was unaware Edinburgh was a city university, and as I said before, this was built from a very generic template.) Could you suggest a better way of breaking down the questions to get opinions on faculty buildings?
Does the Scottish university system work that differently to the English ones? (This is my own ignorance, not TSR's
) Again, this might be something we'd need to consider, but I would assume the information on the difference in education systems is already on the wiki (I know we have a page for Scottish Highers and Advanced Highers because I made it and got some current Scottish students to fill it in).Edinburgh is weird - we effectively have the central area and then Kings Buildings. KB is about a mile or two out of the city centre and I've never been there because it is where all of the science/engineering type things take place. However, even in the central area this is a massive place which is literally just the old town city centre of Edinburgh, there is a main bit called George Square where the main library etc is, but even then, this is just mostly offices and tutorial buildings plus some faculty buildings. The actual faculties are all over the place. Which is why I say that no one can really comment on anything other than the little tiny bit of the university they know about from the course they do. Then the medics, vets, education students, religion/divinity, geography, sports, law etc all have a different place yet again to go which isn't at George Square either. I've literally never seen the vast majority of places.
Our maps:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.3732!fileManager/edinburgh-campus-maps-08.pdf
So yeah, you'd need some sort of categorisation within the whole "what is the university like?" type thing because that is just a stupid question to ask when you actually know Edinburgh, which is what we've been trying to explain. I guess if you did it under schools, which is kind of like the faculty, (not colleges as thats too general) it might work, but then again there are loads of schools so I don't know how feasible that would be at all. Plus again, there is a lot of building work going on so someone can write something now which means nothing to people starting in september because it will have been knocked down by then. But even then, in the lower years, you just have your lectures and tutorials in any building that will take you, meaning even if I did go ahead and write about the amazingly new SPS building, chances are 1st and 2nd years don't actually step foot in it because certainly in my faculty, you're only granted access to the real stuff once you start honours in 3rd year as a "real" student.
The Scottish system is much more flexible than the English one, yes. It involves everyone (other than say the medics etc) taking 3 subjects in their first two years, then you can decide from these 3 subjects which ones you actually want to do as your degree and finally graduate in. Most people change their degree after they have arrived at uni, it is very normal to do it.
See by moi: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=892298
This is what I think would be much more useful having on a wiki, as we get asked so many questions about it as obviously, someone applies for philosophy then suddenly finds out they have to study two more subjects too, then they don't understand why or what the purpose is of it. Additionally, our degrees are MAs but just in name, meaning you don't actually get a MA in an English sense, it is just the traditional Scottish degree which the ancient universities in Scotland award. This is confusing because our degrees are also 4 years long regardless of the subject, meaning people think they're getting a post grad qualification as it would only take 3 years to get the same thing in England. On top of this, in the science subjects, A level students with AAB or higher can enter with direct entry into second year, whereas arts students can not do this at all.
Therefore, universities in Scotland are incredibly different to England, hence the reason this sort of information is much more useful for students wanting to come here than say, finding out about whether you can buy cheap alcohol. I know that Aberdeen, St Andrews and Glasgow also opperate a similar 3 subject policy to Edinburgh, but I don't know if they have any differences etc, and then all of the newer universities opperate on more of an English system even though the degree is still 4 years, so even a generic "university in Scotland" page wouldn't really work.
I just tried looking if there was already something like I am talking about, but I don't know where the wiki thing is kept so I will leave that to you
So I have a question regarding the potential developments surrounding the university wikis. We've just put out our new accommodation sticky thread in this subforum. Now this is really the sort of information that should be featuring in a wiki. It has no place in the student guide, and when the university pay for the privilege of writing their own wikis they're hardly going to provide detail like we have. So where does this category of information fall in future plans for TSR?
The wiki's had some time to collect some contributions and some of my worries have been confirmed. For example, the "shops" section seems a little pointless. Why discuss national pricing policies of Tesco and Lidl in relation to the student experience in Edinburgh? This again still feels like the sort of thing that should really be appearing in the existing wiki. Granted the accommodation entries are more useful, but surely they are the sort of thing that would do better in a dedicated accommodation resource. There's a good review of the library, but it's not really very helpful for future students. Renovations are underway at the library and are mentioned, yet next year they'll be somewhere else. The rest feels like statement of fact, surely better for it to appear in the existing wiki. In a lot of these cases it feels like you're neglecting the current wikis in favour of trying to develop new ones. It feels like there is a lot of information that is going to fall between the cracks. UofE will not be mentioning a lot of stuff, either because it simply isn't directly relevant to their institution, or because it isn't positive.
RK brings up the interesting point that, of course, wikipedia does not actually need to be an encyclopaedia but merely user generated content. This may be the case, but it's important to bear in mind that whenever someone stumbles upon it and sees that it's a "wiki" they may not understand that.
A point that both JR and RK seem to have ignored in this thread is effect on current users. A number of us, albeit a fairly small number - but if extrapolated onto the entire forum a rather larger proportion, come here to relax and enjoy the interaction with new members posing new questions about our university. We enjoy helping and we enjoy talking. More importantly, I feel you've missed another important point that was raised by artorscience? initially. There's all the incentive in the world for members of the administration to encourage us to contribute because your salaries depend on the number of click throughs and users. Where's the incentive for me to work for free on your behalf so that you can earn a salary? A number of us are already PS helpers, and that's something I do because I like to think it's directly helpful to individuals. I am even paid for this - whether or not I think the "riches" are actually worthwhile is another matter - but my contribution is recognised. The new wikis, on the other hand, seems to be largely in order to make money for a business in which I am not a stakeholder. There have been suggestions in this thread that even if we don't like it, we should allow others to contribute. Now in the past week contributions have been minimal. You have a number of a regular Edinburgh contributors who remain unconvinced and uninterested in contributing to this project. how are regular posters such as us going to be persuaded that this is a good idea, or are you intending to simply circumvent us.
I'm not quite able to crystallise my thoughts here properly right now, but I remain concerned at the thinking behind this move. It feels like it is to do with finances and little else - the fact that there's been little effort to persuade us otherwise seems to be confirmation of this. By selling out to the universities, surely the independent nature of TSR as a resource is in jeopardy and the alienation of your regular users cannot be a good thing.
The wiki's had some time to collect some contributions and some of my worries have been confirmed. For example, the "shops" section seems a little pointless. Why discuss national pricing policies of Tesco and Lidl in relation to the student experience in Edinburgh? This again still feels like the sort of thing that should really be appearing in the existing wiki. Granted the accommodation entries are more useful, but surely they are the sort of thing that would do better in a dedicated accommodation resource. There's a good review of the library, but it's not really very helpful for future students. Renovations are underway at the library and are mentioned, yet next year they'll be somewhere else. The rest feels like statement of fact, surely better for it to appear in the existing wiki. In a lot of these cases it feels like you're neglecting the current wikis in favour of trying to develop new ones. It feels like there is a lot of information that is going to fall between the cracks. UofE will not be mentioning a lot of stuff, either because it simply isn't directly relevant to their institution, or because it isn't positive.
RK brings up the interesting point that, of course, wikipedia does not actually need to be an encyclopaedia but merely user generated content. This may be the case, but it's important to bear in mind that whenever someone stumbles upon it and sees that it's a "wiki" they may not understand that.
A point that both JR and RK seem to have ignored in this thread is effect on current users. A number of us, albeit a fairly small number - but if extrapolated onto the entire forum a rather larger proportion, come here to relax and enjoy the interaction with new members posing new questions about our university. We enjoy helping and we enjoy talking. More importantly, I feel you've missed another important point that was raised by artorscience? initially. There's all the incentive in the world for members of the administration to encourage us to contribute because your salaries depend on the number of click throughs and users. Where's the incentive for me to work for free on your behalf so that you can earn a salary? A number of us are already PS helpers, and that's something I do because I like to think it's directly helpful to individuals. I am even paid for this - whether or not I think the "riches" are actually worthwhile is another matter - but my contribution is recognised. The new wikis, on the other hand, seems to be largely in order to make money for a business in which I am not a stakeholder. There have been suggestions in this thread that even if we don't like it, we should allow others to contribute. Now in the past week contributions have been minimal. You have a number of a regular Edinburgh contributors who remain unconvinced and uninterested in contributing to this project. how are regular posters such as us going to be persuaded that this is a good idea, or are you intending to simply circumvent us.
I'm not quite able to crystallise my thoughts here properly right now, but I remain concerned at the thinking behind this move. It feels like it is to do with finances and little else - the fact that there's been little effort to persuade us otherwise seems to be confirmation of this. By selling out to the universities, surely the independent nature of TSR as a resource is in jeopardy and the alienation of your regular users cannot be a good thing.
JR
x
RK
x
nearlyheadlessian
So I have a question regarding the potential developments surrounding the university wikis. We've just put out our new accommodation sticky thread in this subforum. Now this is really the sort of information that should be featuring in a wiki. It has no place in the student guide, and when the university pay for the privilege of writing their own wikis they're hardly going to provide detail like we have. So where does this category of information fall in future plans for TSR?
The wiki's had some time to collect some contributions and some of my worries have been confirmed. For example, the "shops" section seems a little pointless. Why discuss national pricing policies of Tesco and Lidl in relation to the student experience in Edinburgh? This again still feels like the sort of thing that should really be appearing in the existing wiki. Granted the accommodation entries are more useful, but surely they are the sort of thing that would do better in a dedicated accommodation resource. There's a good review of the library, but it's not really very helpful for future students. Renovations are underway at the library and are mentioned, yet next year they'll be somewhere else. The rest feels like statement of fact, surely better for it to appear in the existing wiki. In a lot of these cases it feels like you're neglecting the current wikis in favour of trying to develop new ones. It feels like there is a lot of information that is going to fall between the cracks. UofE will not be mentioning a lot of stuff, either because it simply isn't directly relevant to their institution, or because it isn't positive.
RK brings up the interesting point that, of course, wikipedia does not actually need to be an encyclopaedia but merely user generated content. This may be the case, but it's important to bear in mind that whenever someone stumbles upon it and sees that it's a "wiki" they may not understand that.
A point that both JR and RK seem to have ignored in this thread is effect on current users. A number of us, albeit a fairly small number - but if extrapolated onto the entire forum a rather larger proportion, come here to relax and enjoy the interaction with new members posing new questions about our university. We enjoy helping and we enjoy talking. More importantly, I feel you've missed another important point that was raised by artorscience? initially. There's all the incentive in the world for members of the administration to encourage us to contribute because your salaries depend on the number of click throughs and users. Where's the incentive for me to work for free on your behalf so that you can earn a salary? A number of us are already PS helpers, and that's something I do because I like to think it's directly helpful to individuals. I am even paid for this - whether or not I think the "riches" are actually worthwhile is another matter - but my contribution is recognised. The new wikis, on the other hand, seems to be largely in order to make money for a business in which I am not a stakeholder. There have been suggestions in this thread that even if we don't like it, we should allow others to contribute. Now in the past week contributions have been minimal. You have a number of a regular Edinburgh contributors who remain unconvinced and uninterested in contributing to this project. how are regular posters such as us going to be persuaded that this is a good idea, or are you intending to simply circumvent us.
I'm not quite able to crystallise my thoughts here properly right now, but I remain concerned at the thinking behind this move. It feels like it is to do with finances and little else - the fact that there's been little effort to persuade us otherwise seems to be confirmation of this. By selling out to the universities, surely the independent nature of TSR as a resource is in jeopardy and the alienation of your regular users cannot be a good thing.
The wiki's had some time to collect some contributions and some of my worries have been confirmed. For example, the "shops" section seems a little pointless. Why discuss national pricing policies of Tesco and Lidl in relation to the student experience in Edinburgh? This again still feels like the sort of thing that should really be appearing in the existing wiki. Granted the accommodation entries are more useful, but surely they are the sort of thing that would do better in a dedicated accommodation resource. There's a good review of the library, but it's not really very helpful for future students. Renovations are underway at the library and are mentioned, yet next year they'll be somewhere else. The rest feels like statement of fact, surely better for it to appear in the existing wiki. In a lot of these cases it feels like you're neglecting the current wikis in favour of trying to develop new ones. It feels like there is a lot of information that is going to fall between the cracks. UofE will not be mentioning a lot of stuff, either because it simply isn't directly relevant to their institution, or because it isn't positive.
RK brings up the interesting point that, of course, wikipedia does not actually need to be an encyclopaedia but merely user generated content. This may be the case, but it's important to bear in mind that whenever someone stumbles upon it and sees that it's a "wiki" they may not understand that.
A point that both JR and RK seem to have ignored in this thread is effect on current users. A number of us, albeit a fairly small number - but if extrapolated onto the entire forum a rather larger proportion, come here to relax and enjoy the interaction with new members posing new questions about our university. We enjoy helping and we enjoy talking. More importantly, I feel you've missed another important point that was raised by artorscience? initially. There's all the incentive in the world for members of the administration to encourage us to contribute because your salaries depend on the number of click throughs and users. Where's the incentive for me to work for free on your behalf so that you can earn a salary? A number of us are already PS helpers, and that's something I do because I like to think it's directly helpful to individuals. I am even paid for this - whether or not I think the "riches" are actually worthwhile is another matter - but my contribution is recognised. The new wikis, on the other hand, seems to be largely in order to make money for a business in which I am not a stakeholder. There have been suggestions in this thread that even if we don't like it, we should allow others to contribute. Now in the past week contributions have been minimal. You have a number of a regular Edinburgh contributors who remain unconvinced and uninterested in contributing to this project. how are regular posters such as us going to be persuaded that this is a good idea, or are you intending to simply circumvent us.
I'm not quite able to crystallise my thoughts here properly right now, but I remain concerned at the thinking behind this move. It feels like it is to do with finances and little else - the fact that there's been little effort to persuade us otherwise seems to be confirmation of this. By selling out to the universities, surely the independent nature of TSR as a resource is in jeopardy and the alienation of your regular users cannot be a good thing.
I'm quite confused by your post, so I'm going to answer what feels like the gist of things, and you can hit me with any other problems you feel still exist.
Firstly, you mention the accommodation sticky. When the new pages are up, those people who are navigating the wiki will be encouraged to head onto the forum via a number of links/"buttons" relevant to each subsection of the wiki they are reading. (For example, if they are reading the accomodation section there will be a link saying ''discuss Edinburgh accommodation''). I think what is causing some problems in our communication, as in, from TSR to you guys, is that the impending site update will give completely new functionality to the wiki. The wiki pages are going to be much more user friendly, that includes how the pages are laid out (which I don't think will be anything like how these are; this is just the section divisions we are trying to finalise), which again should make it easier for us to direct users onto the forum from the wiki. Much of the information in the sticky thread, which I've just had a look at, will be covered by the university anyway - since that's their information to give. Aside from that, most pages link to useful threads like this anyway, and this accom. sticky will be no different.
Your next point relates to the current information, and what we're asking for. The stuff about pricing, I feel, is relevant. I'm sure some prospective students would be interested in the views of current students about the general cost of living, for example, hot meals on campus or a weekly shopping purchase. Since I would assume most students reading the guide would still be living at home, and therefore be unlikely to have a large amount of financial independence of their own, then knowing whether students think their university is good value for money is going to be a useful thing. Similarly with the library; surely if all the reviews say that the library is too cold, too cramped, too noisy, with too few books, etc, then prospective students might not like the sound of that. Since the users filling out the student guides are under no obligation to propagandise the university (whether they wish to is another matter), the honesty of personal experience will give prospective students some degree of satisfaction in knowing that current students like or dislike the university.
Links to all pages will make it clear whether the information is factual or opinion based. Further, the new guides will be working closely together, linking between related sections (so the university accommodation info will link through to the student views directly and vice versa), so it really shouldn't confuse anyone, even if they expected only factual information.
As for incentives, as I'm sure I've already said in this thread, this is just an experiment and the fact that there has been little to no contribution shows us we may have to rethink our strategy. If that means offering incentives in the future then this may or may not be the case when the people whose decision it is (i.e.not mine) come to consider this. Furthermore, if you do the Personal Statement helping for the helping, not the riches, it sounds to me a little counter-productive (I'm reluctant to say hypocritical) to not contribute to something like this (i.e. helping) without that riches incentive. But as I say, this is something that will have to be considered at a future point.
JR
As for incentives, as I'm sure I've already said in this thread, this is just an experiment and the fact that there has been little to no contribution shows us we may have to rethink our strategy. If that means offering incentives in the future then this may or may not be the case when the people whose decision it is (i.e.not mine) come to consider this. Furthermore, if you do the Personal Statement helping for the helping, not the riches, it sounds to me a little counter-productive (I'm reluctant to say hypocritical) to not contribute to something like this (i.e. helping) without that riches incentive. But as I say, this is something that will have to be considered at a future point.
As for incentives, as I'm sure I've already said in this thread, this is just an experiment and the fact that there has been little to no contribution shows us we may have to rethink our strategy. If that means offering incentives in the future then this may or may not be the case when the people whose decision it is (i.e.not mine) come to consider this. Furthermore, if you do the Personal Statement helping for the helping, not the riches, it sounds to me a little counter-productive (I'm reluctant to say hypocritical) to not contribute to something like this (i.e. helping) without that riches incentive. But as I say, this is something that will have to be considered at a future point.
I will comment on the rest later, but I feel this needs to be addressed now:
How is it hypocritical of us to say we don't want to help with this but we want to (and do) want to help with PS help? They are two totally different things and just because I'm contribute to PS help through doing reviews and being a FA, it doesn't mean that I am totally up for helping out tsr in every way shape and form I can, because thats just stupid.
I will help somewhere where I feel I can make a difference and I can see the benefit to the person I am helping - with PS help I can hopefully help people with their application in a PERSONAL manner and actually communicate with them in the thread. It isn't generic and everything I write in my reviews there comes from me and that is clear - I'm taking time out of my life to help them because I am interested in their application. In the same way, I come and use the Edinburgh forum and answer questions from prospective students, have spent time making FAQ threads and answer PMs relating to my subjects and the university. When I use the forum, again, I can interact with people in a PERSONAL way and really respond to their exact question, and as you'll presumably agree it is really nice seeing that you've helped someone out by taking the time to do so. Okay, this person might only be user X who has 5 posts and I'll never speak to them again, but the fact that they have come on here and asked a question to me is something which is nice, because it is them saying I want to know what you think about this issue. Again, it is PERSONAL and I can interact with people.
Helping you write some wiki thing about Edinburgh isn't personal at all, it is generic and it is forced. Its impersonal and isn't something I'm interested in, and from PM chat with a couple of other people on this thread, it isn't something most of us are interested in - we use tsr because we can help people out in a PERSONAL manner, through PS help and then posting in this sub forum and interacting with other users. This whole wiki thing doesn't have anything in it for us at all... okay we've said that we're not interested in riches (I couldn't care less about them for doing PS help) but it doesn't mean that we don't get something out of PS help that right now you're not offering anything here which is appealing to us in terms of why we use tsr and what we get out of helping people in a non tangible form. (if you consider riches to be tangible)
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