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| Authored by: Vote March 28/29 on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 01:55 AM CST |
www.wprig.org
www.wpirg.com
www.feds.ca
(Preamble) - Currently each full time undergraduate University of Waterloo student pays $9.50 for every 8 month academic year to Waterloo Public Interest Research Group (WPIRG).
(Question) - Do you support the termination of the WPIRG levy?
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| Authored by: Sailesh Agrawal on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 06:55 AM CST |
It's really great that the content of uwstudent.org will be preserved even if the site "shuts down". It would a pretty large loss to the community to have all the discussions and articles here disapear.
It's also really interesting to see where we're headed as far as student journalism at a student level. What's the future here? I see two trends. Stable and well funded organizations will survive. Instituions like Imprint have enough funding and an sense of pre-established credibility.
The second type of instutions that I see growing over the years is the adhoc comming together of students in particular places. For example, take a look at LiveJournal. There's a thriving community of UWStudents there.
It's an interesting evolution of our culture. This particular website has definitely played its part.
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Collection of other places that serve a similar functionalit to uwstudent.org:
- www.livejournal.com/community/uwaterloo/
- www.imprint.uwaterloo.ca/
- www.mathnews.uwaterloo.ca/
- www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Alex on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 11:03 AM CST |
As a student on exchange for 4 months from UofT that has become involved with Imprint at UW, it's great to see an alternative media outlet that provides a forum for discussion in UWStudent.org.
It's upsetting to see it die during my time here; perhaps, though, this adds to the compelling argument for a discussion forum hosted by Imprint that might serve a similar function. There exists no such forum at UofT (to my knowledge), and let me tell you, it could use one.
Anyhow, congratulations on creating a forum that actually mattered to some students, and one that, at times, fostered intelligent debate that mobilized students across campus.[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Shaun T on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 02:35 PM CST |
| This site blows. There hasn't been a story posted in over a month. It's about time someone shut this place down. [ Parent ]
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| Authored by: hswerdfe on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 03:43 PM CST |
UWStudent is a good site, I've always thought it kicked ass, alas I am now an alumni and I can not help out, but good luck hope it continues.
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| Authored by: Mr. X on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 05:07 PM CST |
| I'm pretty sure there are people out there who have never heard of uwstudent.org. Why not get the word out about the site(like say in imprint) and that it needs more volunteers, considering the fact that people are leaving the university all the time I don't think i've seen much about letting the new people know about this site. I'm pretty sure if people knew about the site then more people would be contributing. I mean the idea of posting on this site that you need volunteers is a start but what about all the people that don't even know about uwstudent? [ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Alex on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 06:36 PM CST |
There's another compelling argument for keeping a resource like this alive (even if it's not this site; it would be nice to transfer UWS capacity into Imprint forums, for example) - today, the Referendum Committee handed down a decision fining the Yes Team for the words of Tom Levesque, a guy who wasn't even affiliated with them until after the article.
While I don't support Levesque's position (or that of the Yes Team), I will defend the right of Levesque to publish his opinion in his Imprint column. There's not even a logical progression in determining that Levesque's comments were "campaigning outside of the referendum period" when he had nothing to do with the Yes Team.[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Becky Wroe on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 07:05 PM CST |
Over the last couple of years I've become very familiar with uws, and what it has to offer. The Federation of Students has been known this year and previous years to post stories under Feds-announce informing students of opportunities and issues on campus. I can only hope that students recognize what a great opportunity it is and try to keep it alive.
I would also like to use this opportunity to request the editorial board post my submission regarding the Leadership Award applications that I submitted a week ago. The Federation has been having problems with our list-serve as of late, and I turned to uws to post this information. I await the posting, and nominations for the awards.
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Rebecca Wroe
President, Federation of Students
University of Waterloo
P: (519) 888-4567 ext. 2478
F: (519) 725-0992
E: pres@feds.uwaterloo.ca[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: ColdCock2000 on Wednesday, March 16 2005 @ 11:20 PM CST |
Donate the site to Imprint., as discussed a few years
ago. Have Imprint reporters update the site throughout
the week. They have the people who are obviously
interested in journalism. Does this mean my
uwstudent.org t-shirt is going to be worth something
Apr. 1?[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Roberto on Sunday, March 20 2005 @ 04:59 PM CST |
| ...I'll miss you. [ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Libido on Monday, March 21 2005 @ 09:36 AM CST |
I'd guess that less than 5% of the people I know visit this site. Of the 95% that don't at least 90% don't know about it.
The problems, as I see them, with UWS are as follows:
A) Nobody knows about it, you can whine until your blue in the face that nobody is voleneteering to help run it, but if nobody even knows about it you'll never get anyone.
B) It's not really an open forum at all when the administrators are starting the threads and posting the stories. Seems to me you end up searching for interesting topics people have interjected off-topic into other threads.
Solution:
A) Get the word out
B) Allow users to create threads, or at least submit thread ideas to be created. [ Parent ]
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- sex Authored by: LONG LIVE BOOBS
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| Authored by: uwser (pronounced "user") on Monday, March 21 2005 @ 11:05 PM CST |
Of course, uwsers all across the globe will stuggle to see who can leave the last post on the once-buzzing news site. Undoubtedly, there will be a heated contest resulting in a spike in usership ... followed by the uws admin getting the last word in, just because they can.
Ah well. In a completely off-topic attempt to join in the fray...
VOTE RICK THEIS AND MATT JERMYN!!
That's photo #3, you uwsers. Who wouldn't want to be there?
(Oh, and no, I am neither Rick Theis or Matt Jermyn. In fact, they'd be pretty mad if they knew I was posting this...)[ Parent ]
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- Fight on Authored by: Lawrence
- . Authored by: Margie
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| Authored by: Jesse Helmer on Tuesday, March 22 2005 @ 05:37 PM CST |
So a bunch of new volunteers are interested in trying to save uws. That
means that the site will continue to operate for at least the next few months.
After a few months, the future of the site will be reconsidered. Hopefully, we
are not just delaying the inevitable. ---
join the uws writers' list! http://uwstudent.org/mailman/listinfo/uws-writers [ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Rob in Japan on Tuesday, March 22 2005 @ 11:12 PM CST |
Hi,
I'm just a student who occasionally (note: this is somewhat rare) gets a little "homesick". I checkout the daily bulletin, sometimes check the imprint site, and then poke around uwstudent. I used to at least cause yeah this site is kind of... deadish.
Why not consider some kind of merger with the imprint?
Rob (in JP for a year)[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: Rob Ewaschuk on Monday, March 28 2005 @ 06:28 AM CST |
If I Were To Rescue uws,
a treatise by Rob Ewaschuk
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would get it a dedicated server, for it and only it. The generosity that has let uws run for free has also made it difficult to let new people get involved, since the box was shared amongst many, and giving out root on a linux box willy-nilly is pretty bad practice, and organizing the box to a point where that wasn't necessary was a task beyond the available resources.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would probably get a box at openhosting.com. They've served me well so far, and are a friendly group. Their base package is probably enough to run uws. I would foot the bill for this for a month or two, or ask someone who could foot it to help me out, to prove that the this was a serious endeavour before asking for more money.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would then ask for dumps of all of the relevant databases (wiki, archive, and geeklog, mostly) and software/configurations (geeklog and its configs, the archive, the current relevant apache.conf, and whatever jesse has done with MediaWiki.)
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would apply for Special Projects Funding from Feds. I would email Jesse, myself and Ryan asking for support on the application. If this application failed, I would ask alumni (myself included) for money, once the rescue was demonstrably in swing.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would not try to grow it beyond what it has successfully been in the past, until it has at least reached that level again. As far as I'm concerned, ambitious plans to grow uws significantly before hand-off to a younger generation are what killed a successful hand-off.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would de-incorporate. The overhead, mystery and headache are too much for casual volunteers, and (IANAL) don't provide much liability protection for anyone. The major benefit that I see is credibility, but I think having a well-run site with good articles and decent discussion is credibility enough.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would just do it. Start asking me and Rob and Ryan and Jesse for the things you absolutely need, and keep asking until they're delivered. At least Rob and I are bad at getting to things the first time. I tend to get distracted from rescuing things from the Wiki, and write long treatises about partially-related things.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would be one or two people with the necessary mix of skills -- mostly technical at this point -- to get things running again. They are Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, and such. Getting people is important, but if the site is well-run technically, people will start helping out.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would diff the current (modified) Geeklog source against an original for that version, and do my best to carry forward features onto more recent versions of geeklog, but with priority to upgrading this beast. It's been two years, after all. :-)
If I Were To Rescue uws, I would open up the article submission process. In my opinion, the right way to get quality writing is to get lots of writing, and pick the best, rather than to only get quality writing in the first place. That means going through a period of having a little bad writing, then lots of bad writing, and letting people get better, or encouraging better people to get involved. You can distinguish between two tiers of writers or stories if you like, as we have done semi-successfuly with RDC.
If I Were To Rescue uws, I probably wouldn't listen to me too much, since I didn't rescue it in the first place.
-Rob
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Rob Ewaschuk - rob.infinitepigeons.org[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: theboatcandream on Tuesday, March 29 2005 @ 04:54 AM CST |
| Just remember that it's easier to shut it down than it is to get it back. [ Parent ]
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