Talk:Mahara (software)

Sub article

Stub article, please expand! :-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎Jonathanischoice (talk • contribs) 23:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

TODO, notes, links etc.

Sources of information:

• Mahara Community Forums - news, announcements, development, discussions, etc.
• @maharaproject on Twitter

Potential further citations:

• Gerbic, Philippa; Maher, Marguerite (2008). Collaborative self-study supporting new technology: The Mahara e-portfolio project (PDF). Proceedings of ASCILITE, Melbourne. pp. 320–324. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
• Himpsl, Klaus; Baumgartner, Peter (6 March 2009). "Evaluation of E-Portfolio Software". iJET. 4 (1). International Association of Online Engineering. ISSN 1863-0383. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
• "Mahara newsletter January 2019". Mahara Newsletter. 8 (4). 1 January 2019. ISSN 2230-4045. Retrieved 27 March 2019.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanischoice (talk • contribs) 23:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

COI declaration

I have made a good faith WP:COI declaration on my user page regarding this article, in that I have worked and/or currently work at Catalyst, where Maraha was initially developed, even though I have never contributed directly to the Mahara software itself. This article was deleted some time ago for being too much like an advertisement or brochure; I was not involved (or even aware) of that previous article. I have endeavoured to create what I believe to be a decent starting stub for this article, and strived to maintain WP:NPOV and WP:WEIGHT. Further work and expansion would be desirable, and I have left some potential sources of more information, including some credible tertiary sources, in the talk section above. A future edit effort will hopefully involve @Giantflightlessbirds:. I moved this article into main space as a stub because keeping it under my User space as a draft was making the copyright bots orphan the screenshot and logo images. Cheers! — Jon (talk) 23:45, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I responded to a similar post you made at Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board#Mahara software article, but moving the article to the mainspace to avoid image-related notification might've just created more problems. The image issues would've likely been sorted out eventually; even if they were deleted, the files could've been restored per at a later date once their issues were resolved. Creating an article, even a stub article, of questionable Wikipedia notability (no matter how good your intentions are) might only end up with the article being deleted. It probably would've been better for you to submit this via WP:AFC, given your COI declaration and especially since it has apparently been deleted before for being too promotional. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:04, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Okay. In that case is it worth moving this into the actual Draft namespace? I looked into that briefly a week ago but it did not seem straightforward. — Jon (talk) 01:09, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Also I guess it's not the end of the world if the images are deleted, and we re-upload them later once there's an explicit logo/artwork statement we can link to (other than the fact they are bundled with a GPL licensed codebase). Notability is something I'd hoped to address before main-spacing the article. :-/ — Jon (talk) 01:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It's here now, so perhaps someone more familiar with articles about software will be able to clean it up and build upon what you started. WP:DRAFTIFY would be an option to ask for if someone does decide to bring it to WP:AFD. Anyway, sorry if my comments seemed all "doom and gloom", but there often can be a pretty strong reaction from the community to COI editing in general, particularly regarding article creation, and COI editors who go about trying to do it in accordance with relevant policy and guidelines often do end up getting conveniently lumped together with those who don't. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:21, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Someone has already started trying to improve it; so, not much for you to do but sit back and watch what happens. If you want to propose further improvements, just follow WP:PSCOI#Steps for engagement and things should be fine. -- 01:25, 8 April 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marchjuly (talk • contribs)

Hi Jonathanischoice, thanks for disclosing your conflict of interest and contributing this article to Wikipedia. It would have been best to submit this article through the Articles for creation (AfC) process, but the article in its current state (with the newly added sources) would probably pass AfC. In the future, please follow the advice in the WP:PSCOI#Steps for engagement link that Marchjuly recommended above. You can also ask the free and open-source software task force for help. Thanks! — Newslinger talk 02:16, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Edit suggestions, definition of mahara, update current version (automatically?)

Hi, here are a couple of editing suggestions for the article, with references that can be reused; I can't edit it myself due to my declared COI. Firstly, can we change the wording of the definition of mahara in the opening paragraph? It seems to suggest (somewhat strangely) that the software team have defined mahara to mean something, when in fact the simpler explanation is that it is a Te Reo Māori word with its own definition. Also, the latest version is now 20.04, released in April. I understand there is a way to get a software version bot to update this automatically somehow, but I am unfamiliar with the process; perhaps someone from the FOSS taskforce can help here? Cheers, Jon (talk) 21:20, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

References