Wikikids/Relation to Simple English Wikipedia

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Simple English Wikipedia is intended for people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties, and people who are trying to learn English.

No equivalent of Simple English Wikipedia has been created in any other language.

Whereas children are included as a part of the Simple English Wikipedia public, repeated discussions[1] show that this project has generally been quite ambiguous about being designed for children. It has indeed content that better serve children than the standard English Wikipedia does, but is not put forward as an encyclopedia for children.

Search engine and the most used one clearly reflect this uncertainty. The query Google:Encyclopedia for children gets kids.britannica.com, some paper encyclopedia on amazon.com and some mirror sites of the standard english Wikipedia displayed as "for children", but SEWP doesn't show up.

A Wikikids in English would be similar to Simple, which require to think how one would deal with another.

Options[edit]

At first glance, options/alternative for an English Wikikids would be either to start from scratch, to reuse a certain part of the simple content, or to re-scope "simple" as "for children".

  1. Starting from scratch is certainly a pity, take much time and be a poor use of a great work already done and of constituted resources it is,
  2. to re-scope SEWP as "for children" would certainly be like a labour of Hercules, since it would mean to make a whole community quietly change their mind about what they are doing[2].
  3. to reuse a certain part of the SEWP could be the way, though it could be consider like a fork.
  4. Another option, proposed on Talk:Wikikids would be to combine Simple English Wikipedia into this proposal, nonetheless without changing its scope. Furthermore each language in which a wiki of this family would be created could choose to define it as "for children" or "in a simple language".

While discussing the Wikikids model, it arouse that some people thinks that they should be separate workspaces for adults and children. We actually never discussed that and felt the need to do so on Vikidia. Nevertheless, they could be an arrangement in which SEWP would be a forge, workplace and source of content for a Wikikids, either as a transitional or a permanent feature. That would mean to import selected content (nevertheless possibly on a large-scale basis) from SEWP to a Wikikids in English. That would look like the 3rd way.

Reuse[edit]

If the 3rd option : "reuse" in choosen, we will have to establish how it will be operated.

The fact is that a great part of the content of SEWP would certainly fit to a Wikikids (to which extent is however hard to know in advance). However, been not in a way labeled "for children", a reasonable option may be to check it before. Given the large number of articles, this would certainly have to be done by users, with a technical tool to facilitate and homogenize their work. This tool may be similar to a Interwiki-Link-Checker, and would offer to validate or rate an article of SEWP, possibly on several criterias. After being reviewed that way, if appropriate the articles would be imported by a bot.

Notes[edit]