> I think that SEWP was created like it is, partly by fear of creating a 
> project openly directed to children, and I'm afraid it precisely make it not 
> so compelling for them.

How is Simple English Wikipedia not compelling for kids? Define “not 
compelling.”

> Actually, Vikidia in english does exist, with 4,035 articles !


Oh, okay, so it’s going to be mostly out of whole cloth, not entirely. I’m not 
sure how many articles English Wikipedia has, but I know it’s in the millions.

> They may be a way to promote a existing (or to be launched) wiki encyclopedia 
> for children, to "use the momentum of Wikipedia to make it easier to discover”

I believe I’ve stated more or less stated that you can’t use our momentum since 
we need for the projects we have.

> I took a look at Vikidia, thought I could do something for them, signed up 
> with an account, read what I could find of the guidance, and created an 
> article on Underwater diving, following the rules as I understood them, using 
> properly attributed CC-by-sa content from Simple English Wikipedia as a basic 
> framework, and was busy expanding it when it was deleted without discussion 
> by user Ajeje_Brazorf with the edit summary (Please don't copy from simple 
> wikipedia}, and no explanation why not. If I had done that on English 
> Wikipedia I would risk losing my admin bit. If that is how new users are 
> routinely treated there that encyclopedia is doomed. I will not be back to 
> waste my time there. 

On top of that, it would seem that you were able to sign up easily without 
verifying your age; both verifying age and not can be problematic. 

Verifying age makes things safer in terms of everyone knowing that if someone 
says they’re a kid, they’re a kid, and if they’re an adult, they’re an adult. 
Part of online grooming and police sting operations is people saying “I’m a 
kid, let’s meet offline." It can be problematic due to reasons of privacy. It’s 
not like you want everyone knowing the age of a child who’s online. That can 
mostly but entirely alleviated by only having the administration know 
everyones’ birthdate, and forcing admins to have strict account security.

From,
I dream of horses
She/her





> On Jun 24, 2022, at 5:09 AM, Peter Southwood <peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> 
> wrote:
> 
> I took a look at Vikidia, thought I could do something for them, signed up 
> with an account, read what I could find of the guidance, and created an 
> article on Underwater diving, following the rules as I understood them, using 
> properly attributed CC-by-sa content from Simple English Wikipedia as a basic 
> framework, and was busy expanding it when it was deleted without discussion 
> by user Ajeje_Brazorf with the edit summary (Please don't copy from simple 
> wikipedia}, and no explanation why not. If I had done that on English 
> Wikipedia I would risk losing my admin bit. If that is how new users are 
> routinely treated there that encyclopedia is doomed. I will not be back to 
> waste my time there. Cheers, Peter
>   <>
> From: Mathias Damour [mailto:mathias.dam...@gmx.fr 
> <mailto:mathias.dam...@gmx.fr>] 
> Sent: 24 June 2022 00:00
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Small joy of the day: Txikipedia
>  
> Ok, I did read your message too fast... I nevertheless know Simple English 
> Wikipedia.
>  
> I think that SEWP was created like it is, partly by fear of creating a 
> project openly directed to children, and I'm afraid it precisely make it not 
> so compelling for them.
>  
> > The thing is, as the main English Wikipedia more specialist, and therefore 
> > more complicated, we have a Simple English Wikipedia that we shouldn’t let 
> > languish in the hopes of creating a children's encyclopedia out of whole 
> > cloth.
>  
> Actually, Vikidia in english does exist, with 4,035 articles !
> https://en.vikidia.org <https://en.vikidia.org/>
> Unfortunately, the developpment of the wikis for children is very uneven, and 
> it seems hard to overcome the delay when they were launched later one than 
> another or missed their launch. For exemple I know about two or three unlucky 
> attempts in german before Klexikon* (and I beleive German had or has a very 
> good potential for such a project - demography and cultural ground favourable 
> to children participation and their freedom of information). Yet it was in 
> Dutch that Wikikids was launched early and is now quite big and active.
>  
> They may be a way to promote a existing (or to be launched) wiki encyclopedia 
> for children, to "use the momentum of Wikipedia to make it easier to 
> discover" as just said Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga, but somewhat different from 
> the way they chooses on the Basque Wikipedia : That would be to let appear 
> the kid equivalent article in the "In other projects" section.
>  
> Or maybe a very active work both in promotion and gathering a substantial set 
> of core articles (picking the best/most usefull, most viewed articles from 
> several kids wikis and Simple English Wikipedia, translating...)
>  
> **************
> *- the original "Wikikids" proposal as a Wikimedia project was made by german 
> speaking wikipedians in early 2005 : 
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-January/015108.html 
> <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-January/015108.html> 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikikids&oldid=89757 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikikids&oldid=89757> but was 
> chilled down by the reactions on this list...
> - Grundschulwiki was launched in december 2005, it still exists but is 
> restricted to works done in primary classroom and therefore is not much 
> developped : 
> https://grundschulwiki.zum.de/index.php?title=Hauptseite&dir=prev&action=history
>  
> <https://grundschulwiki.zum.de/index.php?title=Hauptseite&dir=prev&action=history>
> - a 2010 project ended as they were told to request a Simple German Wikipedia 
> and then denied to open it: 
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redaktion_Medizin/Projekt_Kinderleicht
>  
> <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redaktion_Medizin/Projekt_Kinderleicht>https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Simple_German_3
>  
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Simple_German_3>
> Meanwhile Wikikids.nl <http://wikikids.nl/> was launched in March 2006 and 
> Vikidia in French in November 2006.
>  
>   
> Envoyé: jeudi 23 juin 2022 à 21:15
> De: "Neurodivergent Netizen" <idoh.idreamofhor...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:idoh.idreamofhor...@gmail.com>>
> À: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
> Objet: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Small joy of the day: Txikipedia
> The English Wikipedia has a “plain language” wikipedia, the Simple English 
> Wikipedia. It’s targeted not only towards children, but also towards people 
> who aren’t fluent in English and/or have learning disabilities. A few 
> “internet hack” memes say “If you can’t understand the Wikipedia article, 
> change en to simple!” Basically, the English Wikipedia community has two very 
> general-to-slightly-specialist encyclopedias.
>  
> Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed in years past that the Simple English 
> Wikipedias’ activity level was, shall we say, wanting. I hope that’s changed; 
> I suspect kids would enjoy learning to research for the purpose of writing on 
> Simple before moving on to the so-called “real” English Wikipedia, but that 
> might require some assistance that might not always exist offline. I think 
> Simple would certainly be a good place to start making Wikipedia more 
> accessible to 8-10 year olds.
>   
> From,
> I dream of horses
> She/her
>  
> 
>  
>   
> On Jun 23, 2022, at 11:40 AM, Mathias Damour <mathias.dam...@gmx.fr 
> <mailto:mathias.dam...@gmx.fr>> wrote:
>   
> Hi,
>   
>  De: "WereSpielChequers" <werespielchequ...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:werespielchequ...@gmail.com>>
>> A childrens' encyclopaedia written for nine year olds would surely be very 
>> different than one written for thirteen year olds. And content that parents 
>> of fourteen year olds thought was age inappropriate in Alabama might be 
>> thought appropriate or even bowdlerised by parents of ten year olds in 
>> London.
>> 
>> In other words, are you sure that one single childrens' encyclopaedia is the 
>> answer to either the problem of reading age or age appropriate content?
> 
> There is one thing that is sure, that "one single childrens' encyclopaedia" 
> is a great step for children (and often teenagers and older people) than 
> having just Wikipedia available, and they love it.
>   
> Where I think that Wikipedia could and should change re this is in our use of 
> jargon. To my mind a "general interest" english language encyclopaedia should 
> be written in plain English. I suspect other language versions have similar 
> issues.  Perhaps if we focussed more on this we would make it easier for 
> those who wish to create childrens' versions.
> 
> Yet there is not realistic hopes that the language of Wikipedia will change 
> to be easier. That wouldn't address the fact the articles on general subjects 
> are among the longest ones.
> It sounds a bit weird that a content for 12 yo would not fit well for a 8 yo, 
> and then that Wikipedia could fit to children. The "reading level" of 
> articles on Vikidia is not perfectly homogenous, nor their developpment is. 
> They can be usefull for adult beginners on a subject just as a child can 
> prefer Wikipedia on a subject he's fond of and allready informed.
> That was developped in this post (in english):
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids/Documentation_and_Vikidia 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids/Documentation_and_Vikidia>
> 
>   
> De: "Ziko van Dijk" <zvand...@gmail.com> <mailto:zvand...@gmail.com>Ideally, 
> one would have
>> * an encyclopedia for the very young, that parents read to them,
>> * an encyclopedia for the 8 to 13 year olds, the target group for many
>> of the existing kids' wikis,
>> * an encyclopedia for juvelines, 14 to 18 years
>> * an encyclopedia for everyone; this is what "regular Wikipedia" should be,
>> * an encyclopedia for specialists; this is what "regular Wikipedia"
>> actually develops into.
>> And maybe encylopedias for people with specific challenges such as
>> dyslexia.
> 
> Most language don't have a single wiki encyclopedia for children or an 
> under-developped one. So I guess that's not realistic nor wise to wish such a 
> division in this work. So let's work on the allready allready launched ones ! 
> (Especially the one of the Vikidia family of course ;) see 
> https://www.vikidia.org/ <https://www.vikidia.org/> )
>   
> You actually do not need millions of articles for a good encyclopedia, some 
> thousand well written articles are enough.
> 
> Vikidia in French and Wikikids in Dutch are by far the biggest wiki 
> encyclopedias for children, with about 35000 articles each. Yet young reader 
> on the Vikidia's guestbook still ask for "more content", which certainly mean 
> both enought developped articles (not just a few lines) and more subjects. So 
> yes, we need, if not millions of articles, at least several dozens of 
> thousands articles.
> Of course, we see that (as everywhere) 20 % of the articles make more than 80 
> % of the pageviews. But you can't really guess in advance which subject will 
> be in the top 20 %.
>   
>  De: "Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga" <galder...@hotmail.com 
> <mailto:galder...@hotmail.com>>
>> About Txikipedia: the age range is 8-12, but is more 10-12 than 8-9. The 
>> problem is that some of the writers are 8-9 years old, so their content is 
>> quite simple.
>> 
>> (...)
>> 
>> When I read French Vikidia I think that most of the contents are still too 
>> difficult for 8-9 years old students, but French education system maybe more 
>> advanced in some issues. Or it might be that Vikidia is centered in 8-13 
>> years old, and 13 years old readers are way better reading and understanding 
>> texts. Klexikon seems very suitable, but it's logical, since it is written 
>> by educators, and not children or whoever wants to write. When we make 
>> courses with university students who will be the next primary school 
>> teachers, they write longer articles, but not necessarily better. The main 
>> goal there is to explain things as easily as possible, and not granting 
>> anything for known. We advise them to write shorter sentences, without 
>> dependencies and to explain all technical concepts inline, if possible. 
>> Also, they normally add boxes of "did you know?" so they can add a layer for 
>> curious children.
> 
> Just as on Wikipedia, article don't have only one author. That makes them 
> better, more accessible and accurate.
> 
> You can't just test an average child to write on such a wiki to tell if 
> children and teenagers are able to participate to a wiki encyclopedia for 
> several reasons : 
> the 1% rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule>) fully apply there (or less than 1%)
> regular editors are few but very motivated,
> they typically learn and are engaged for months and years, which is VERY 
> different than having been trained to edit for one or two hours.
> A 12 yo with 2 years of participation, or a 15 yo with 3 years of experience 
> are often very valuables editors, either as writer of for maintenance and 
> community tasks.
> 
> Adults as well have to learn to write on Vikidia, be they educators or not. 
> Just as it is well know that a journalist or a scientist, which are supposed 
> to be skilled is writing articles, often don't fit immediatly with the style 
> that is expected on Wikipedia.
> 
> Mathias Damour
> [[User:Astirmays]]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l>
> Public archives at 
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/UHX6EVQUI233NCUHK2HE54HDOYOSSCUB/
>  
> <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/UHX6EVQUI233NCUHK2HE54HDOYOSSCUB/>
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org>
> 
> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- 
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, 
> guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l> Public archives at 
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/KF426ALI77IUT6X7F6INLSAIBSD66Z2D/
>  
> <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/KF426ALI77IUT6X7F6INLSAIBSD66Z2D/>
>  To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org>
>  
>  
> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>  
> Virus-free. www.avg.com 
> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l>
> Public archives at 
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/EA3EYC5GAEPNRIHXUHLQYEDXJILKWS5D/
>  
> <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/EA3EYC5GAEPNRIHXUHLQYEDXJILKWS5D/>
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/UOPMB4DBZNFGAEMAJ5SYALK5QNKDMHWH/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

Reply via email to