Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.netwrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/ Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki, - children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles, let appear works on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely take their share in growing the content and in maintenance tasks, - older children, teenagers that don't (yet) edit Wikipedia can have the chance to do it here, and to make a good work. The advantage is both the amount of
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Have you looked at working with the Wikipedia for Schools people? I spoke to them back in 2008[1], but don't have current contacts. [1] https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/2008-09_Wikipedia_for_Schools_goes_online On 2014-02-20 10:56, Richard Nevell wrote: It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour [1] we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org [2] and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 [3] Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki, - children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles, let appear works on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely take their share in
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Le 20/02/2014 12:22, Brian McNeil a écrit : Have you looked at working with the Wikipedia for Schools people? I spoke to them back in 2008[1], but don't have current contacts. Yes, I have met the person in charge of Wikipedia for Schools ( http://schools-wikipedia.org/ ) at EduWiki, he made a presentation just before I did. This project has a significant audience, however they sometimes have some remarks about the content being still too difficult for children. There is not many people working for it, so they can't rewrite each article. Meanwhile, Vikidia may be seen among others as a forge for encyclopedic content for children that may be reuse for a future release version of Wikipedia for Schools, it's some free content anyway ! :-) On Vikidia in french, we have been asked for on offline release, and it's available here : http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Vikidia_hors-connexion [1] https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/2008-09_Wikipedia_for_Schools_goes_online On 2014-02-20 10:56, Richard Nevell wrote: It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour [1] we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org [2] and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 [3] Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by
[Wikimediauk-l] Accounts on the Wikimedia UK wiki
Dear all, As you may be aware, Wikimedia UK wikihttps://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Main_Pagewas migrated from WMF servers https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page to that of WMUK back in September. If you previously had an account on the old wiki, but have not requested password for your account on the new wiki, please do so now. With the aid https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56938 of the WMF server ops, we are looking to shut off the old wiki in the next few days or as soon as possible thereafter. If you haven't gotten your password to an account on the new wiki yet by that point, and especially if your account is not unified https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login, then we will have no way of confirming your identity and you will require a new account. Regards, Katie -- Katie Chan Volunteer Support Organiser Wikimedia UK +44 (0) 20 7065 0990 +44 (0) 7885 980 534 Wikimedia UK is a Charitable Company registered in England and Wales. Registered Company No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office: 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents. ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Le 20/02/2014 11:56, Richard Nevell a écrit : It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? The current colours on the main page were made by a 15 years old user of (mainly) Vikidia in French, we just make it in a wiki way you know ! (Would you believe it can work ? ;-) ) On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net mailto:mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8–13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a
