Requests for comment/The state of Simple English Wikipedia

The following request for comments is closed. Closing this as invalid – RfC isn't a substitute for proposals for closing projects. SophiaJustice59 even if this wasn't directed to be a proposal to close simplewiki, there are other ways to express your grievances with a project than to resort to invalid RfCs and policy violations. //shb (t • c) 22:48, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

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Based on my observations of the state of Simple English Wikipedia (SWP), I believe there is a need to seek Meta community input. For clarity, I would keep my points as simple as possible.

1. SWP appears to have served as a playground for vandals and long-term abusers, many of whom have been banned from other projects, and continue the same conduct there, or rack up a large number of insignificant edits as "evidence" of themselves being able to contribute constructively in order to make unblock requests on where they have been banned from.

2. Most of the SWP articles are forks from English Wikipedia (ENWP) simplified for the sake of being simplified. Not only are they often unable to provide accurate descriptions of their article subjects, but also they are too poorly written to be readable for its targeted audience. If one can easily get an overview of their interested subject with Google AI/ChatGPT, or by going straight to ENWP for details, what purposes does SWP serve by hosting a large stock of poor forks?

3. Take the SWP article YHWH as an example. It has been sitting around since 2008, littered with maintenance templates, while its main body looks like a random selection of wordy bullet points that does not really explain the subject. On its Talk, one can notice that there is a unanimous consensus that none of the active contributors is able to rewrite the article to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. This is not an isolated case but the tip of an iceberg. It is easy to figure out when you look up random pages on SWP. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of SWP articles are probably lying in disrepair like the article as mentioned.

4. If I were a non-native English speaker from half a globe away, say Czechia, and Google the keywords of something I wish to know, it would be highly likely that the algorithm shows me pages from Czech Wikipedia (or ENWP) rather than SWP. SWP articles, indeed, rarely show up on Google search, while the overall quality of SWP articles adds to the problem. SWP had a U4C case three months ago. Though declined, it somehow showed concerning evidence of mismanagement. Comparing the annual site views of SWP, ENWP, German Wikipedia and French Wikipedia, the SWP viewership curve lies flatly on the horizontal axis, lending credence to point 5. As the project consumes WMF resources, it does not look reasonable to think that there is no need to seek Meta community input on this problem, so I am starting this RfC. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by SophiaJustice59 (talk) 01:45, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

There are some people who might not understand a lot of specific terms found in ENWP articles. So, to make it simple for first-time English language learners, Simple WP was created to provide clear understanding of what the articles provided. If Simple WP wasn't well maintained, this would be put up for closure debate in the future. Ahri Boy (talk) 18:50, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Against any action. English Wikipedia has for a long time recommended that vandals prove themselves on Simple Wikipedia, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:BlackJack#c-CoffeeCrumbs-20250512164900-BlackJack-20250512163200 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Moops#c-Randy_Kryn-20230309114000-Schminnte-20230309113300 . This lead to Simple Wikipedia creating a specific rule for them, simple:Wikipedia:ONESTRIKE. English Wikipedia simply should stop redirecting people to other projects, recommending another wiki instead off simple Wikipedia is not a viable solution. Snævar (talk) 20:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

While some articles may need improvement, that’s normal for any growing project. It’s unfair to judge the whole site based on a few bad examples or to say it’s full of vandals. Many volunteers work hard to improve SWP.Plutus ^{💬 🎃} — Fall. Rise. Repeat.

 Comment This is a two- or maybe even three-tiered issue. First, there is the mediocre quality and modest compass of its content. This can't be a reason to close down the project, since that would require us to do away with the vast majority of our Wikipedias. This point is already made above. On the other hand, Simple English is not a language. Unlike wikis in lesser-used or mainly-spoken languages (which I am hellbent on preserving), this is a Wikipedia in the very same language as another Wikipedia, only with some restraints on the language. While wikis in minority languages may play a role in their preservation and emancipation, this can't be the case for Simple English.

For another thing, its purpose and scope are a bit fuzzy. Even early on (say 2005), there was major disagreement as to what "Simple English" meant. Was it for children? For English learners? Some resorted to "baby talk", others mainly avoided long words. And last but not least, shouldn't there be Simple German or Simple Spanish Wikipedias? A proposal for a Wikipedia in Simple German was rejected. Now a rejection of a proposal does not imply that existing projects must be closed down. What I do want to know however is: what plans do its editors have? What way is it going? Is it fulfilling its goals? Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 21:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

SophiaJustice59, it would first be appreciated if you had let our community know about this rather than relying on our own editors (thank you Plutus) to spot this and inform us. The fact you went to meta as a first port of call and didn't even tell us about this is honestly quite disrespectful to the volunteers who contribute to our wiki. It is really disappointing to see baseless closure proposal after baseless closure proposal for our wiki, mainly based on vandalism, an issue that all wikis have. That being said, it is at least appreciated to see more justification in your reasoning, and the comment from Steinbach is welcome, so I want to try and address all of it, as I have not yet had the opportunity to in previous closure requests - so apologies in advance for the lengthy comment!

Firstly, in the nomination statement, your point about vandals/LTAs and those banned from other projects is twofold – I know some people might not think it but there is very much a distinction between vandals/LTAs who come here to mess about vs those banned from other projects for behavioural issues, GHBH sockpuppetry etc. So as far as vandals go, they are blocked very quickly. We have an active and growing admin team – currently standing at 23 administrators, with 8 of those being elected this year and 14 meeting the definition of active (at least 50 changes within the last calendar month) on simple:Wikipedia:Administrators#List of administrators. Additionally, we have had a private IRC channel for many years and while this hasn't really been disclosed on-wiki, I've recently started a private Discord channel, both of which allow participating admins to act on vandalism very quickly. With those people who move here after being blocked on another wiki, there are a perhaps surprising amount of users who actually manage to integrate successfully into the community and then get unblocked at en, while staying active on simple. I'm not going to go out and name those users, they can identify themselves if they'd like, but speaking from my five years of editing experience I have already seen many, and they are certainly not insignificant - I find that a very sweeping conclusion for someone who has not even contributed to our project once. For those who cause issues, as Plutus already pointed out, they get blocked with less warning under the one-strike rule. I think we could have a discussion about whether we could use that one-strike rule more or maybe even less in some cases, but I certainly don't think the concerns about it are major enough to warrant closing down the whole project as most edits are not made by users under one-strike.

Secondly, I want to address the concerns from Sophia in the nom statement and also Steinbach in what our project is for and what our standard actually is. The Simple English Wikipedia uses the well-defined wordlist of Basic English created by Charles Kay Ogden, where simple:Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist is generally accepted as a maximum. That being said, we could always do with a helping hand, and I have just started (before even seeing this discussion) phase VI of "Total Backlog Annihilation", a WikiProject where we work together on certain backlogs - this one is to try and address all tagged complex pages on our wiki. I'm not saying this will address all of our issues with complex articles overnight (not all complex articles are necessarily tagged, this phase will now likely take many months to complete etc) but it's unfair to make out as though many of our articles are in disrepair and that we aren't doing anything about it. Many of our contributors feel very passionately about our project but we are all volunteers and so like all Wikipedias you cannot expect perfection. I am not massively impressed with the YHWH article either, but note many of the issues originate from a seemingly AI-generated addition in 2024 and the maintenance templates were only added in December of last year. I have reverted back and will try to investigate the issue more as time allows, but most of the issues you raise are already fixed.

This is a similar point to the first one but I completely reject the idea of mismanagement of our wiki. The U4C case was declined for a reason, that is a single content dispute between two users. I also completely reject the idea that our project is now useless due to AI and I encourage those who say that to try and make an article with AI and see how far it gets you with the reference hallucinations, and often the inability to effectively use BE 850/1500.

Finally on your nomination statement, you compare simplewiki page views to some larger projects. Like of course we are not going to be anywhere near enwiki for views, and we are significantly smaller than frwiki and dewiki as well. You're not comparing apples with apples.

I also just want to try and address other points bought up in previous closure requests that might end up being bought up here also:

• "simplewiki is a bad use of volunteer time and it'd be more effective if they worked elsewhere!" That works on the assumption that I and other volunteers would entertain the idea that we would just work whereever you want us to. With all due respect, we are volunteers and we will work where we like, and if you want to control how we spend our time, I just won't spend my time on Wikimedia and I imagine others would have the same attitude.
• "We don't have Simple German/Simple French etc, so why have Simple English?" There isn't really the same defined wordlist though I still love the ideas. Regular language articles very quickly get very complex to the point only experts in certain fields can understand them so there will always be a group of people who benefit from a simpler article.
• "simplewiki is duplicative" It's not, because we have a clearly defined vocab list. Sometimes, people copy articles from English Wikipedia and they are mostly quickly deleted. This is again a content issue that you can help us with.

If anyone has any questions, I'm more than happy to answer them, but on the whole I encourage those who are skeptical of our wiki to come in and help out and engage with our community instead of trying to shut us down every few years. If those who made so many judgemental comments from the outside came and worked on our project, I don't think they'd be making the comments they've made, and with more editors, we wouldn't have as many of the issues those wanting our project to close often point out. --Ferien (talk) 12:35, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

The fact you went to meta as a first port of call and didn't even tell us about this is honestly quite disrespectful to the volunteers who contribute to our wiki.

This is an assumption of bad faith. It is not respectful to talk to Meta users this way. Their lack of participation in a project does not disqualify them from commenting about it on Meta. No projects are free from criticism. I phrased my RfC in a very civil manner, expressing valid concerns as a third-party observer, so I do not understand how it is reasonable for me to spoken to this way. If one sincerely wants the best for a project, they should be open to criticism instead of showing defensiveness. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 17:38, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

SophiaJustice59, yes, you have made criticisms of our project and set a tone to argue it needs severe reform or closure and you didn't even think to notify us. There is no-one who better knows the issues and goings on of the wiki than the contributors themselves. It is not an assumption of bad faith to state the fact you didn't notify our community of this RfC for weeks about "the state" of the project we contribute to before one of us found it. And yes, it's quite hurtful and people will get defensive, like I did, but it's perfectly civil as is your original statement. However, I have not given you the chance to address as why you went straight to meta rather than trying to seek change from the inside out. So while you didn't need an invitation to say so, you're more than welcome to counter what I said, it is your nomination after all. --Ferien (talk) 19:38, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

And I also agree with what Lee says below. If you wanted to have major changes on policy or standard practice, we're more than happy to talk about it on simple:Wikipedia:Simple talk where more active contributors will see it and chime in based on their experiences. But the fact you went here just suggests you want to close us down because reform proposals should be made locally. --Ferien (talk) 19:45, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Would you like to respond to this comment? SophiaJustice59 (talk) 15:35, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

SophiaJustice59, I don't know which comment you're talking about as the link you've made is broken. --Ferien (talk) 18:04, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

To be honest, the above reads as a "I don't understand this, and I don't like it". Saying that SimpleWiki is in disrepair, or somehow doesn't have enough activity is cutting down the hundreds of smaller language Projects that we have.

I too don't understand why you would not at least post to the target wiki, but also haven't actually written this RfC with a question to be responded too. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:00, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Every now and then someone starts a discussion on meta about closing simplewiki. We've been here many times before and history has shown that simplewiki won't get closed. It's true that we are the only "simple" language version of Wikipedia but this is not for lack if trying by the other languages. There has been a lot of interest in creating, for example, a simple French Wikipedia but the current rules for creating a new Wikipedia is that there must exist an ISO language code for it. No such codes exist for simple language versions. We were started before this became a rule and so have been grandfathered in. Simple English Wikipedia has been the subject of multiple university research projects and mass-media articles to overall good reviews. To suggest closure of a project with over 275,000 articles is a bit of a slap to the many thousands of editors that have contributed to it over the years. As for LTAs and vandals coming from other projects you'll find we are not a soft touch and any abuse gets shutdown very quickly indeed. I do agree with Ferien that the simplewiki community should have been informed directly about this RFC: it would have been the polite way to do things. fr33kman 23:44, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Simple English Wikipedia has been the subject of multiple university research projects and mass-media articles to overall good reviews.

I would be happy to see any concrete evidence for this claim. Based on what I saw from one of the previous closure proposals made by a sociology professor, this does not appear to be the case:

An overview of scholarly literature on SEW, again, does not show any indication that the project is useful to its target audience, the few academic papers that discuss it do so generally from the computer science/linguistics perspective, using its simplified word data set for some lingustica/cs analysis like: 6. This suggests that the only real world group that finds some moderate use of this projects are a few lingustic/computer science scholars who have a new dataset to play with. While as a scholar myself I appreciate new data sets, I don't think a project whose only effective use is allowing few scholar to publish some obscure research is what we should be supporting.

I did a quick search on Google Scholar. The professor's view appears to remain true. I would ping @Piotrus in in case I am wrong.

Furthermore, I am not saying that the project should be closed, but a serious review should be conducted to facilitate major improvements, if the project really has thousands of active contributors, given that the project has been around for pretty much as long as English Wikipedia. If a community is not open to criticism, this is not possible.

In addition, the insinuation that Meta users have no right to comment on a project without prior contributions is a logical fallacy, if not a form of passive-aggression. The manner in which some of the project's admins engage with disinterested critics is unsatisfactory, which further lends credence to my view that the project does not appear to have a prospect of refinement. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 17:15, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

@SophiaJustice59 Thank you for the ping. I still stand by what I wrote above: this was a nice idea that failed to become successful, and is increasingly obsolete in the age of AI. See my elaboration below. TL;DR it should be closed because any editor who is contrubing there is deluding themselves they are doing useful stuff. Instead, they could do useful stuff. Time to close this sandbox. Piotrus (talk) 02:35, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Simple was an intriguing idea that failed to become useful and is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the age of AI (you want a simplified version of article XYZ from Wikipedia? Ask AI. Also, folks use AI and can figure it out - next to nobody even knows simple exist). This project is, IMHO, a net negative, as it drew away some constructive editors from proper Wikipedia, who have wasted countless hours, working in good faith to produce content nobody uses (its only use, realistically, is to teach AI how to simplify content, I guess). We should retire it, redirecting editors' focus to the project that is actually useful. Instead, WMF should work on developing user interface and tools (like an AI) that would produce simplified content for editors who want it (first, there needs to be a big button "simplify this article", and second, this needs to work, which realitically means using AIs, since simple is far from complete, and anyway, simplification is simple enough AI can do it, we4 don't need to use human brainpower). Anyway, I've supported closing simple before and will do it again, due to the primary reason being: nobody reads it and it sips away editorpower from constructive things elsewhere. If it never existed, nobody would notice, but instead we would have thousands more decent proper Wikipedia articles. Piotrus (talk) 02:33, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree. You hit the nail on the head. What they call "providing non-native speakers a simplified version of stuff" can be addressed by simplifying articles on ENWP to make them more reader-friendly to an international audience, which is what Britannica, a higher-quality encyclopedia written by subject-matter experts, managed to do. ENWP has no shortage of volunteers to do so. When this is readily possible, holding on to a huge stock of poor forks adds no value to the Wikimedia movement. To call a spade a spade, it is a false premise for SWP defenders to assume that a "simple" version has to exist for a WP project of a widely spoken language. Atop this, I cannot find any sensible arguments from them to justify their resistance to reforms of SWP, which has faltered for two decades. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 17:19, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

 Comment - Hello all, it is nice to see yet another approach at trying to close down Simple Engilsh Wikipedia. There have been such attempts in the past.

• I would expect that the reason for closing down SEWP would specifically apply to SEWP, since the goal of the exercise is to close SEWP. When I look at the reasons given, thats not the case:
  1. SWP appears to have served as a playground for vandals and long-term abusers, many of whom have been banned from other projects.. - This applies to pretty much any Wikipedia; a vandal or LTA who gets banned is likely to move to another project. The main difference between a vandal and an LTA is that LTAs target several wikis at the same time, and they likely derive satisfaction for wreaking havoc on several Wikis at once. Like with other wikis, technical and non-technical measures are in place to combat vandalism and LTAs. So this is not specific to SEWP, and we therefore should not consider it a reason to close down SEWP.
  2. Most of the SWP articles are forks from English Wikipedia (ENWP) simplified for the sake of being simplified. Not only are they often unable to provide accurate descriptions of their article subjects, but also they are too poorly written to be readable for its targeted audience. If one can easily get an overview of their interested subject with Google AI/ChatGPT, or by going straight to ENWP for details, what purposes does SWP serve by hosting a large stock of poor forks - Here we see two different issues: First, many Wikipedias will share a common set of articles, or a corpus. What would remain of English Wikipedia, if we took away all aricles that we also find in Spanish, French or German Wikipedia? - Yes, likely the articles in one Wikipedia was "forked" from one of the others, and likely you'll find many ideas of a French Wikipedia article on a subject also in the English Wikipedia article on the same subject. The second idea there shows a basic misunderstanding of AI tools: Yes, AI can generate texts, and it can summarize articles. What people don't get told is that the result and the quality of this sumaryis highly dependent on the parameters (called a prompt) used; it is also non-deterministic: using the same prompt with the same AI tool / dataset at two different instants in time does not guarantee you the same result. I will not go into the details of the other problems the current AI tools (likely Large Language Models, LLMs) have, as people interested can read up on these on their own. A suggestion of closing down SEWP because AI can be used to summarize likely amounts to a request of closing down the whole Wikipedia, and of using AI generated knowledge bases instead; what might be interesting there is that if you asked where the AI has the information from, it will not always be able to give an accurate, verifiable and stable result. This alone disqualifies an AI generated knowledge collection from being used in a scientific context. - but again, this is not specific to Simple English Wikipedia.
  3. (Example of an article with problems which hasn't been touched for many years) The people who edit SEWP have their interests, and if no one finds it intersting to fix an article on a given subject, that article will not get fixed. I am sure, such articles exist in all wikipedias. It is related to what I wrote above, and what is a policy: See simple:Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer and simple:Wikipedia:General disclaimer. Or otherwise put: there is no way to make sure that what is in a Wikipedia article is correct or accurate. - Again, not specific to SEWP.
  4. (Comment on the way SEWP is shown in Google) - Sorry, I have no influence on how Google ranks pages in a search. This is also dependent on who is searching, and where they search. We cannot take the ranking in Google (or any search engine) as a reason for closing down a project, as this is a factor that is external to Wikipedia.
  5. (Page view comparison; project consuming resources) -Again, not specific to SEWP; using that argument you likely can close down many small Wikipedias: Latin, Alemannic German, Niederdeutsch/Platttdeutsch (same language), Lingua Franca Nova, Gothic, Northern Sami...
• SEWP editors are volunteers; if they like to spend their time editing SEWP articles, who are we to tell them?
• In the future: I think it would be good practice / common courtesy that the editor posting a request for closure post a notice on the main discussion page of the respective project; in our case, this has not been done.
• As to Simple French, and Simple German: There were attempts to create Simple French, but in my understanding, it would have fueled itself mostly from using "creole" or "pidgins", mostly from Africa; these ideas are closely linked to colonialism, which likely is one of the main reasons it did ont get created (apart from not having an ISO code). In the case of Simple German, the situation was even more entrenched, as there were few German colonies in the world (and likely few dialects that could be used as a base for the language; also many of these languages were mostly spoken, meaning that if there are few speakers left, the language effectively disappears. You can have a look at this with the Saami languags: the last counting I am aware of are from the 1990s/2000s, at that time, there were an estimated 30.000 speakers, of 12 different varities. As far as I know only 3-4 of these varieties have a viable number of speakers left (again, I don't know from when the numbers are).

In short, the request above is not specific to Simple English, and likely could be used to close down many smaller wikipedias. Likely, it also does not meet a minimum set of requirements (most notably: informing the target group, and seeking their input, by the opening editor). In view of this, I think the request to close down Simple English Wikipedia should be denied, and the project be left running in its current form. Eptalon (talk) 18:33, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Over 1,000,000 views a day isn't no-one, Piotrus. It is actually more than a lot of projects. It suffers from lack of visibility and we have tried to engage with English Wikipedia as well, so the idea that we don't care about our project is really just your opinion.

Like AI-generated articles don't meet the standards for inclusion on English Wikipedia, they do not meet the standards for inclusion on Simple English Wikipedia either, so AI is no realistic alternative for content creation. It's worth noting that "Simple summaries" were rejected by the English Wikipedia only a few months ago, so this has already been firmly rejected by the community. While I know you don't appreciate the work that goes into our wiki, it'd also be appreciated if you didn't plainly tell new editors to use AI to create content on our site - that'd be appalling behaviour on enwiki and it's just as appalling on simple, as we do have editors who get blocked for AI-generated content. --Ferien (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Piotrus, that's an astonishingly rude and disrespectful comment (although I expect SEWP's editors are used to it). 2 million daily views is not nothing, it's the same number as the Hungarian, Thai, and Hebrew wikis (10x as much as Swahili wiki). The Polish wiki only gets 9 million. Like with all accessibility features, there'll be a very small cohort who need it. Do SNOW closes exist on wikimedia? Kowal2701 (talk) 00:10, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

PS. In the past I also enterained the idea that simple could be made useful without AI, simply by making it more visible on en. But nobody seemed to care about this. Well, if even editors from simple don't want their project to be actually visible and useful, WMF doesn't care, en wiki doesn't care - that's another indicator this project is just a sadly useless toy that benefits nobody (except, again, having some use for AI training...). --Piotrus (talk) 02:44, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Yet another new user here to unconstructively kvetch at us. Can we please have Requests for comment/Require RfC filers to be autoconfirmed on Meta already so we don't have to respond to these rants? * Pppery * _{it has begun} 18:50, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I do not see how personal attacks could foster improvements of a poorly run project. The manner in which some SWP defenders respond to external criticism is one of the main reasons I do not see a prospect in that project. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 19:02, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Piotrus is not a new user either. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 19:02, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm hardly a "SWP defender". I rarely even edit there. I'm merely bemoaning that the meta RfC process has turned into a place for people to rant at each other where nothing gets done. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 20:09, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

SophiaJustice59, it's almost like we've done this before, four times – 1 2 3 4 – with the same arguments bought up each and every time! Every person proposing an opposing argument here seems to be personally attacking you according to yourself, when we have bought up counterarguments in a perfectly civil way, while also accepting criticisms of our project. Just because we don't agree with you doesn't mean we're not being civil or working to improve. It feels like a lot of the time when counterarguments have been bought up you just call them uncivil and walk away, as you have already done with me. I'm not scared of being called uncivil here as I know all of my comments have been perfectly civil and evidence-based, but that actually discourages those who are less confident in RfCs to take part in the fear they might be baselessly accused of personal attacks themselves and I don't think that's right.

Piotrus already started a proposal request of his own in the form of closure proposal no3 and the community and LangCom firmly rejected it. He didn't start this RfC - and why would he when he already made one that was so clearly rejected? This was your RfC and we shouldn't act or treat it as though it isn't. We are still awaiting any meaningful proposal from yourself here - this is a request for comment but it is so broad in scope and it is not clear what you actually want, hence why it is just being called a rant. A 5th proposal for closing the site would belong at Proposals for closing projects/Simple English Wikipedia (5) and that is where closing project proposals strictly belong, so I am not sure why this has remained open for so long without clarification. --Ferien (talk) 20:09, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

When one repeatedly insinuates that Meta community members have no right to comment on a project unless they have contributed to it, while dismissing valid concerns as a "rant", then it is a form of personal attack, because it creates the perception that most of us are not qualified to comment unless we are on a hypothetical "equal footing" with you. Bear in mind that SWP is hosted in WMF servers, using WMF software for operation. No SWP admins have absolute ownership over the project, so Meta community members are fully entitled to point out any noticeable problems. There are no correlations between the validity of our points and our level of activity. Thank you again for validating my concerns about the project. I explained my views, so did Piotrus, so I would leave it here to let other community members weigh in. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Writing from bitter experience, ONESTRIKE is a troll’s charter - a troll can create a sockpuppet to harass an editor who is trying to re-establish themselves and both get blocked. When this happened to me, the appeal process was a joke. Therefore, I propose that in order that Simple English Wikipedia complies with UCoC code of conduct on harassment, it be ordered to amend the ONESTRIKE so that if one party is a sock-puppet, the other party will automatically be unaffected. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Martinvl (talk) 21:34, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I've never said that, but I find it really bizarre how you're able to make such sweeping statements about a whole wiki while never actually contributing to it even once. That is why a few of the things you're saying are just factually incorrect. I actually welcome other users' views on it, groupthink is a very real thing, and we want to improve. That is part of why I am engaging with this so much, because I would personally like to do what I can to help us improve. Snævar's and Steinbach's comments for instance are really helpful, but I am yet to see any substance or aim with any of your comments. Based on your comments, it's very much like you want to start a closure proposal but you're cutting just short of that so this doesn't get immediately closed - and again, please correct me with what you do want to do if I'm reading you wrong, but you haven't done that yet, even when asked. So we are just stuck in this limbo of our community being talked about as a whole again (for the 5th time, and 2nd in the last 2 years!) but no-one knows where we're actually going with this. --Ferien (talk) 22:05, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I may also note the fact that the fact you pinged Piotrus here was blatant canvassing having known he started the third closure proposal request for simplewiki. The fact you pinged him and couldn't be bothered to notify the wiki itself says quite a lot really. --Ferien (talk) 22:15, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

He was pinged because he was one of the proposers of closure in 2018. There is nothing wrong with asking for his input when he was deeply involved in the process. The accusation of canvassing is unfair, sounding more like an arbitrary use of rules try ending legitimate discussions of a project in which you serve as a bureaucrat. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 16:20, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Keep. If the community at Simple think they have a problem with the sort of people we are referring to them from EN wiki then please come to us and talk. If there are people who think that we should instead be simplifying our language at EN wiki please come and talk to us. Maybe there are simplifications that would get consensus on EN Wiki, but I'd rather you came to us and suggested that before trying to close another project on the assumption that EN wiki would change in response to that closure. As the proposer of this RFC states much at Simple is "simplified for the sake of being simplified". That's actually a reason for keeping the project, simplification is a worthy objective, especially in a project where that is the main purpose. All that said, maybe in a few years we will be in a position to conflate and reorganise some projects with simple English and child appropriate views amongst several views available of EN wiki. I'd actually start with American English, Indian English and English views of Wikipedia. Oh and by including Simple in searches within EN wiki. Most of my edits to WikiVoyage, WikiBooks, Wiktionary and WikiSource come from the way they all come up in search, but Simple doesn't. So instead of starting with closing a project, we should think in terms of how our projects should appear to our readers. WereSpielChequers (talk) 14:58, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

People have been complaining that English Wikipedia is unreadable for decades, but it only gets worse every year. Ironically, this might actually improve due to so many people using LLMs to write content (at the expense of having accurate articles). Nosferattus (talk) 08:25, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

I absolutely am against its closure. I was originally gonna write about how bad it is and how it actually should be closed, but now that I'm thinking about it, it's really not that big of a deal. Many non-english Wikipedias aren't that great, and simple is no exception. But it can be improved. I definitely do, however, think that there needs to be some revitilization of that community considering how inactive the wiki is at times. Gaismagorm (talk) 00:06, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Keep for now. It is quite concerning that SophiaJustice59 is "jumping" to Meta before discussing the situation on the simple en-wiki itself. The OP claimed that she is not doing it in bad faith, but I have to disagree with that. If you have concerns about a specific project, you should be talking to the people that are handling it first before going to places where there are fewer people who understands about the project the best. The goal of any editors - if they have good faith - should be to improve the projects, not finding reasons to close them down. Editors from en-wiki, de-wiki, or any wiki is less qualified to talk about the Simple English wiki than the editors of Simple English wiki themselves. A person that have 50,000+ edits on en-wiki is less qualified than someone who only got 5,000+ edits on Simple English. The point is that Simple English community should be engaged first before the wider Meta community is engaged. Another important point is that editors should attempt to "fix" the issues first before closing up shop and call it quits. I do have to state that simple English have issues, but attempts should be made to fix before removing the whole thing. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 01:04, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

If simple english wiki editors are just wasting their time, I suggest we cut their pay in half immediately. That should take care of the problem. Rutebega (talk) 03:00, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

 Comment I support closing SWP for all the reasons mentioned. It's full of vandals and trolls that have been banned from English Wikipedia; the quality of the content is terrible; and the few good faith editors that work there could be helping English Wikipedia be easier to read instead (which is a huge problem that pretty much no one works on). Overall, I think it's a waste of resources that could be better spent elsewhere. Nosferattus (talk) 08:36, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

If this was actually the case and supported with lots of examples and if possible data/statistics and/or academic research then this may be a good idea.

That articles are often too long and/or too complicated is one of the main issues of Wikipedia. People don't use simple Wikipedia however.

For example, it's not easily seeable if one is available and only a small fraction of articles have a SW equivalent which means it's not a good idea to search the Web for search terms simplewiki instead of search terms wiki.

An idea I had would be to display a button to toggle between the normal lead and the simple wiki lead at the top or to expand it beneath the usual lead. There are further ways to address this so this is just one of them. This would also make more Wikipedia editors see and improve the simple Wikipedia lead.

However, it would not lead to far more simplewiki nonlead sections being read, checked and improved and maybe the better idea would be to e.g. deprecate simple Wiki and import things into English Wikipedia somehow where there are simple versions of the lead and subsections. That may be better as things get checked, watched, and improved by more editors and as it would probably need to be integrated into ENWP via the described toggle/expand button if simple wiki is to be truly useful and used much. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:23, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I am glad to know that you have noticed the same problems. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 16:34, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Firstly, the fact that you notified the regular English Wikipedia, but not the simple English one (you know, the one this RfC is actually about), is concerning.

Secondly, while simplewiki definitely has its issues, none of the issues you have raised here are exclusive to it. If those issues are grounds to close simplewiki, the same could be said for the vast majority of Wikimedia projects. Rosaece ♡ talk ♡ contribs 14:04, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

I think this is the straw that has broken the camel's back for me, Sophia has been really disrespectful to our community and completely ignored expectations for discussions of this scope, to the point this RfC is almost definitely invalid. I've requested admin action at RFH. --Ferien (talk) 16:13, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Instead of acknowledging legitimate concerns from Meta community members and discussing with them, you appear to have resorted to casting aspersions and using the process to try closing a legitimate RfC by fixating on minute procedural details of which most users would not be aware unless they have been around for years to be sufficiently familiar with the rules. Even if your claim that I must have notified of your community was true, it would not impact on the validity of our concerns. I find it difficult agreeing that "criticism of SWP is welcome" when this is how disinterested critics are treated. My RfC statement was phrased in a civil manner, backed by data, examples, and points from supporters of previous closure proposals. Just because you feel unsettled by someone doubting SWP in which you serve as a bureaucrat, it does not make them bad-faith actors. I would like to say that I expected a constructive dialogue out of my RfC, but we appear to have a huge disconnect, which makes our dialogue unlikely to proceed. I mean no offense to your community, but I am simply voicing legitimate concerns a Meta community member. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 16:55, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

• Comment So much bitching about Simple English Wikipedia not being notified and not a single person who has raised the issue has actually bothered to post a notice at Simple Talk for others to participate. Which raises suspicions that the argument is being raised for the sake of it, or to shut down discussion, rather than out of genuine concern that the community is being kept in the dark about its disbandment. If you can fix something, fix it. You are welcome, by the way.

SophiaJustice59, I'll be blunt - I don't think you technically have to notify them but even if it's true it's just an asshole attitude to keep them in the dark about an issue so important as disbandment of the whole community. There may not formally be due process on Wikipedia but have the goddamn common courtesy.

• Also, while I'm at it, close it. Encyclopedia articles should be accessible to an average reader and I think SWP can help make this true on en.wiki. There is no point in making the same thing two times in the same language when one often does that in a way that requires a person of average intelligence to make some more research and the other can't do it properly in part because of the constrained vocabulary (or, alternatively, using full vocabulary but then it's fully duplicative) and in part because there's already a lack of volunteers to properly maintain the sprawling English Wikipedia. I just can't imagine a good explanation of most chemistry topics - the area which I understand best - using Basic English only. Maybe w:Simplified Technical English but this is not mentioned as the project's goal. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:42, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for pointing it out. I am not familiar with the rules as I am relatively new. I apologize for failing to inform the SWP community. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 17:49, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  FYI - It was posted by a Simple editor to the Simple Talk page at w:simple:Wikipedia:Simple_talk#RFC on November 5. CountryANDWestern (talk) 18:04, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  Still doesn't explain why people are still grilling OP for not notifying Simple. I mean, yes, they are wrong but consider a simple "If you post RfCs about us, you have to notify us, here's the linked rule. I've done this for you, remember not to forget next time". And that's it - the most polite and frictionless way of going about it. People are aware, procedural issue solved. No need for stoking more drama.

  Of course, if this happens routinely then just report the user. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:23, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  I have been indefinitely blocked from the English Wikipedia (and I am sure that there are others like me) and told to make a good number of edits to the Simple English Wikipedia after which I can apply for my sanction/s to be lifted, so please don't shut down the Simple English Wikipedia. I have some 300 edits on the Simple English Wikipedia now but I will need a lot more to appeal for my sanctions to be lifted.-Baangla (talk) 18:56, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  I understand that en.wiki informally made simple.wiki a halfway house but keeping Simple English Wikipedia for that purpose only is ridiculous and a giant waste of user resources. That's what mentorship was meant for you to be - which in your case, judging by en.wiki talk page history, was imposed by analogy of real-life w:probation and yet you violated that probation, hence your indefinite block.

  This treatment of Simple English Wikipedia is also unfair towards users who don't speak English well. I don't think there are a lot of them but there definitely are quite a few. If they have an issue on their native language wiki and get sanctioned, they don't have the fallback to simple.wiki.

  I think there can be an alternate arrangement for people who were told to edit on simple to rehabilitate themselves. For example, people who have made substantive constructive contributions to simple can be unblocked to edit in talk, user, usertalk and draft namespaces only so that they can submit edit requests for each edit they want to make, or new articles they want to create. This would happen under the supervision of a mentor. If the pattern indicates rehabilitation, they can be unblocked with some sort of enhanced monitoring so that recidivism is caught quickly. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:59, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  This is a good suggestion. I hope that any ENWP admins watching this post can consider. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 22:18, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  This is the first ever RfC I have made. I am not familiar with the rules. All I want is to ask for Meta community input given that SWP is hosted in WMF servers and consuming WMF resources, which necessitate Meta community input when there are long-term problems. SophiaJustice59 (talk) 19:26, 12 November 2025 (UTC)