Kidswiki

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.

Kidswiki
Status of the proposal
Status	rejected
Reason	no support. Pecopteris (talk) 05:21, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
Details of the proposal
Project description	Kidswiki is a wiki specially designed for the uses of children
Is it a multilingual wiki?	No maximum amount of versions in other languages
Potential number of languages	Many (English,Spanish,French etc.)
Proposed tagline	The wiki for kids
Proposed URL	https://meta.kidswiki.org
Technical requirements
New features to require	A much simpler wiki syntax
Interested participants
Fcbbminiestadi, JManthe675, Educator57 (talk) 04:28, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Kidswiki's goal is to create a perfectly appropriate wiki for kids. It hopes to attract many "kid editors" although, adults are welcome to collaborate as much as they can. We encourage all children to edit this wiki...when it exists...if it exists.

Relations to other wikis

Kidswiki will have a link to the w:Wikipedia article of every article created.

Proposed by

• User:Fcbbminiestadi

Alternative names

• Kids Wikipedia
• Wikichildren

Related projects/proposals

• Wikijunior
• Simple English Wikipedia-the major difference is that Simple English Wikipedia can have inappropriate language on it
• No swearing allowed
• Kid writing tone for articles only

Domain names

• https://kids.wikipedia.org
• https://meta.kidswiki.org
• https://en.wikichildren.org

Five Pillars of the Kids Wikipedia

Kidswiki's pillars are

• 1. Do not, under any circumstances, add content inappropriate for children to the wiki.
• 2. Remain calm when solving disputes, as you could violate Pillar 1 by adding content such as rude words, and you could hurt our younger editors and drive them off the wiki.
• 3. Be bold, try out your new ideas. If rules stop you, BREAK them.
• 4. Don't laze around. If there is a mistake, don't just leave a message on the talk page, make yourself useful and fix it.
• 5. This is a wiki. If you see a mistake, reader, don't waste time, just FIX it.

Response to other "kidpedias"

There has been a number of proposals for Children's Wikipedias. Some, like Vikidia are successful. We hope our site is successful, but we also support all other Wikimedia projects with a similar ideology. If our proposal gets rejected, we will simply move on to Vikidia or Wikimini or, the seeming-successful-but-still-in-discussion Wikikids.

Why should it exist?

Because it would allow everything appropriate for the age group who is just entering the Web (ages 3–5) and children unaware of dangers lying in the Web (ages 6–11). For example, an article on the Holocaust would include the fact that a ginormous amount of people were killed, but it would not say that in a way that would be to gruesome for ages 3–6, to show its care for younger readers.

Who will edit it?

Anybody. This is a wiki. As stated above, Kidswiki is hoping to attract an age group of ages 3–11, but adults are free to edit. It hopes to bring an entirely new age group on the wiki, consisting of 4-year-old children taking their first steps on the Internet going up to 11 year old "tweens" who go to Wikipedia or any other website every day. However, that does not mean that Kidswiki is ageist, it DOES allow adults. In fact, Kidswiki hopes that there are more adults detecting spelling and/or grammar mistakes. Adults can also decide whether any content is inappropriate and remove it.

How can it benefit Wikimedia?

By creating a perfectly kid-appropriate, easy-to-understand wiki! Kidswiki will be written in Simple English, and, if one editor considerably reduces the amount of inappropriate content, they could be awarded a position of patrolling inappropriate content. But they will have to state their age...if they are below nine years old, they will not be part of the "Inappropriate Content Patrol" due to discovering certain inappropriate content in the process.

Removal of content

Kidswiki hopes to recruit a team of editors to detect vandalism, which in this case is:

The Five Pillars of Vandalism

• 1. Adding inappropriate content to the wiki.
• 2. Behaving rudely on talk pages, which would also be a form of Pillar 1.
• 3. Putting hoaxes on the wiki, which could heavily shock younger readers when sharing info after told that it is incorrect, and it could cause controversy due to various sources repeating it.
• 4. Being a lazy prat and just posting messages on talk pages, which could start being très ennuyant and could result in a 2-3 month block.
• 5. Creating a sockpuppet account "just for fun".
• 6. Deploying typos, and adding gibberish, for example:

Not vandalism:

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia hosted by the Wikimedia Foundatuon and has over 40 million articles in diffrent languages.

-

Definitely vandalism:

Wikipedia is an eeeeentcyclopaedeeyih? hosted by the Wikimedia Foundatuon haand has over 40 mellieon articles in diffrent languages.

Wiki syntax

It could be hard for kids to remember the code for referencing. So, on talk pages, kids could just state the URL for the website they want to link to, and an adult user who does know the code for referencing will come along to fix it.

Projects in other languages

Kidswiki hopes to make projects in numerous languages, but the ones that they are targeting are French, Spanish, German, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic. However, it will have to be an exact translation, so that no new vandalism is added and that the content would remain simple for kids from non-English speaking countries to understand. But if an editor believes that their addition can be VERY helpful, they could discuss original content on the talk page.

Discussion

hello. i love your project proposal. but no offense, a kids wiki is a famous proposal on the chart. consider adding something less famous. SamadheeDsilva (talk) 05:56, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi SamadheeDsilva,

I think that you are proposing this wiki is just being created to start a wiki. That is not it's purpose. It is being created to meet the needs of people who wikipedia doesn't currently meet. Also, if it is so famous, doesn't that mean it has popularity and that people agree this is a wiki that wikimedia needs but doesn't yet have. So this means that you are saying, YES, it should be done no matter what as many like the idea!! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by JManthe675 (talk) 10/05/18 2:04pm (AEST) (UTC)

@JManthe675:

No..

What @SamadheeDsilva: said was that people have thought of this before. Like a time machine. A time machine is a great idea. But maybe try building a potato peeler before you try building a time machine. Alexis Jazz (talk) 13:14, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Simpler syntax: everyone wants that, not just kids. If anything, kids would have less trouble learning difficult wiki codes. Pillars four and five are the same so you only have four. Pillar 3 may result in some vandalism, you should word it more carefully. Softening up the holocaust doesn't sound so brilliant either. I think there are more problems with this.

1. Copyright: do kids understand they are sharing what they write? Granted, many kids don't even understand copyright so likely won't have any problems giving it up either. Still, give it some thought.
2. Spelling/grammer/etc: how much useful input are you really expecting from the age group <7? And the 8-11 group isn't going to fix all the toddler screwups.
3. How different is it, really, from the simple English Wikipedia? If this is just to allow more languages, a simple German Wikipedia and simple Spanish Wikipedia would serve the same purpose.
4. "Remain calm when solving disputes, as you could violate Pillar 1 by adding content such as rude words" you want to censor harsh words from children? Fuck that. They will pick them up sooner or later anyway and a dispute on regular Wikipedia that is nothing but flaming isn't okay either.

Putting this aside, there may be some point in having a Wikipedia for kids. Unlike simple English, I could imagine explaining subjects in ways that children can more easily relate to. I could also imagine covering subjects that fail notability requirements on the regular Wikipedia but are very interesting for children. However, the latter is probably pretty well covered by Wikia and not as interesting for Wikimedia because there will be tons of copyright infringement or loads of fair use content. The former, explaining subjects in ways children can relate to more easily is probably mostly interesting for the age group 6-9. Kids learn to read at the age of 6 (w:Learning_to_read) so below that there's no point really. But this means pretty much all content needs to be written by adults. W3ird N3rd (talk) 12:44, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

(in reply to simpler syntax)

I agree there are problems, but this would be a valuable resource and I think it should be given due consideration. Thing such as sofetning up the holocaust-I agree that this is a bad idea. We should omit violent details until later life but still tell approriate truths and give a truthfull overview. This shouldn't mean to omit vioelnce in the world form the articles-no, but we shouldn't show the magnitude of the problem until they are the correct age, when they can read normal wikipedia articles. Kids can be displayed facts but not gruesome descriptions.

(in reply to profanity)

Yes, children will learn these words evantually, but kids have a tendancy to follows older role models, therefore they are likely to be apprehensive using these words if adults tried to keep these hiden as the kids will regard them as wrong. Also, the difference between the Simple English Wikipedia and this is that the Simple English Wiki can still have inappropriate words-this cannot.

(reply in general)

Hi W3ird N3rd, I believe that this will be simple enough that any Primary-School aged children can read it. Also, not all content must be writen by adults-teens can help and this will give teens a good idea of the scholarly jobs in our modern workforce and how information is stored online. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by JManthe675 (talk) 10/05/18 11:25am (AEST) (UTC)

@JManthe675: in your edit summary you said "veto everything! we need a child appropriate wiki". You can't veto, I just took your veto rights. Have you actually looked at the Holocaust articles on Wikipedia and simple Wikipedia? On Wikipedia, the article is probably too complicated for kids to read anyway. On Simple, I don't see any gruesome details that will prevent me from sleeping tonight. (nothing graphical or very descriptive) They may still need an adult to explain to them what it all means, but no kidswiki will solve that.

Profanity: you don't understand how profanity works.

General: for the purpose of this discussion, I would consider teens to be adults. Also, I think few teens will be interested in contributing to a kidswiki. Alexis Jazz (talk) 13:14, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

 Oppose. See Wikijunior. --Hérisson grognon (talk) 12:21, 14 May 2021 (UTC)