Talk:Wikikids/2005 - 2009

the name

I'd prefer a name like "Wikipedia for children" or "Children Wikipedia". First, the brand Wikipedia is strong and second introducing new names requires much efforts. --TomK32 WR Internet 10:32, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think, the name isn´t the first problem to solve, Wikikids just is an idea to fix the Proposal. In my opinion we need a name as short as Wikipedia so we can start on domains like Wikikids.com, Wikikids.de ... Maybe "Wikipedia for children" can be a statement below the name but as a name it is too long. -- Necrophorus 10:37, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• • The problem lies in the fact that this will essentially be a wikiPEDIA for kids instead of an entire meta-wiki project aimed at children. Therefore if we follow naming conventions, WikiKids should probably be the overarchign concept for Children's Wiki projects and Wikipedia for Kids or some such thing should be the Wikipedia name. I agree that we need a short and catchy name though. How about WiKIDSpedia? :) CunningLinguist 01:52, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

the concept as such

I love the idea of providing a Wikipedia version made by kids. However, I am afraid it will prve difficult to actually get it going. Here are some concerns.

supervision

Who is going to supervise the work of these youngsters? They will require a lot of assistance over an indefinite period of time. Teachers such as myself might be able to provide for that for a short period of time. In the end, nobody has that much time...

Teacher might introduce their student to such a wiki, but most adults havn't been taught how to use wikipedia, and children are told to be sometime more adaptative to that kind of stuff... Astirmays 22:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Several adults will be on the wiki including Astrimays and me to supervise the work. Of course, the adults would most likely have to be admins. Teachers could do it if a school would like to contribute to Wikikids too. We'll just let them learn...as they learn if they need any help they can ask someone more seniorty who's there. T®eebark 03:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

copyrights

Children do not tend to understand that they must not copy materials from elsewhere. They just do it (no matter how often you tell them not to), which means that everything posted by children needs to be checked and re-checked.

Usual tools of wikipedia such as pages beeing watched by other users, etc, should be used. And with users of various ages, some of them would check for such things just as they do on wikipedia. They might be children that don't want to understand something, thay might be as well other ones (older or not) that after having undertood such an issue, would be the best checker of copyright or other questions for the pages. Astirmays 22:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure older ones such as 16 may have already learned about copyright. T®eebark 04:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

language gaps

You would need a separate version for each language.

A german wiki has already been set up in the form of Wikikids. T®eebark 04:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

target group

A target group of children from 8 through 16 is just too diversified. No 16 year old (nor 13 year old for that matter) wants to be treated like a child. So anything written by/for an eight-year-old won't appeal. Which basically means, you would require several articles on one subject just differenciated by its level.

We discussed this point on a similar project on the french wikipédia (fr:Projet:Wikipédia Junior) and we did choosed the ages between 8 and 13. I think that it can be a good choice. It meets the discussion below, stating that near 16 kids can roughly read wikipedia itself, and wouldn't want to be assigned to a child encyclopedia. By the way, this would be the reader target group, I don't see the interest of having any limitation on the writers target. (in the reader age, teenager or adults) The french project was or is to this day a wiki for children written by wikipedia users, so mainly adults. Astirmays 22:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

motivation

While eight-year-olds might be thrilled to write something for other kids, teenagers prefer their own peers.

I'm sure that some (if not many) teenager might be interested in reading usual wikipedia, not editing it yet, but to make a good work for younger readers. Astirmays 22:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

managing our resources

The way I see things, there is still a lot of work to be done on the "professional" versions of Wikipedia. If we spend our resources on creating more Wikipedias, the "good old one" will suffer from it in the end.

Wikipédia expand at a sufficient speed I beleive. I don't personaly worry about that. Anyway, if a wikikids would be a good thing when acomplished, it may have as much, if not more interest as a draft, somewhere not only to have information but to built it. Astirmays 22:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

alternatives

Personally, I think it is important to lead high school students to employing scientific methods, which include gaining information from an encyclopedia as a first step. Thus, getting them to use Wikipedia as a tool and maybe even contributing to it is what we should strife for. Yet, I do believe it to be important to make sure that the abstracts of the articles are always comprehended by teenagers or people of poor education alike. This is something which is worth a combined effort of those who wish to make Wikipedia more accessible.

Anyway, that's my two cents. --Martin, Eichendorffschule

On the french wikipedia did arose the issue of very big articles, often featured ones. Or too difficult one on specials subject, for a reader that just want an overview on it. Some did express the need of a shorter article. The Simple version only exist in english. I wonder if wikikids could fit this need, without changing it's original target. As an adult, if you are very ignorant in physic sciences, you may appreciate to find basic information on electromagnetism on the kid page, wouldn't you ? Astirmays 22:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

First welcome on Meta and thanks for your "two cents".

As an answer: Wikikids will be a project with the same starting problems as any other Wikiproject too. It will be a test or experiment first (Wikipedia was one too) and maybe it will lead to be a bad experience. I think we have to try it before we can say that it failed.

The supervision should be made of adults in the starting phase as I lined out und later on by the administration of children and teenagers experienced with the Wiki. There are lots of young guys working in the Wikipedia aged from 13 to 16 like de:Benutzer:LeonWeber, de:Benutzer:Louie, de:Benutzer:Jcornelius, de:Benutzer:Mbimmler (I only know those in the german WP) working on a high quality level and I think there are enough teenagers who could be motivated to work in such a system too.

The copyrights are a problem in all projects, we have them in the original Wikipedia too and I don´t think that they will increase in Wikikids under the supervision of trilled administration.

language gaps: What is the problem with it? Yes, we will need one version for every language.

target group: Maybe the target group will be levelled lower than 13 years and all older teenagers will join Wikipedia, in my opinion there´s no problem with it.

managing our resources: I would see the potential in getting new interested teenagers for the good old one, including school projects and other working groups too. Maybe some people will work and invest in Wikikids and will use their ressources in here ore devide them to two projects, there will be much more teenagers who will come to Wikipedia if Wikikids works the way I would like to see it working.

alternatives: It would be great if everybody is able to read all stuff in the Wikipedia without higher education but it does not work. For example, I am not able to understand an article like de:Binomial Heap and I think I have a higher education. How will my 8-year-old son will be able to understand the Wikipedia encyclopaedia. Another problem: Children and teenagers often are interested in topics most adults don´t want to have in their Encyclopedia, it´s the good old "war" between inclusionists and deleters. For children it is interesting to have an article on Pokémon characters like Pikachu, other toons or teenage bands that will be deleted in Wikipedia. In Wikikids there will be enough place to have an article on every single Pokémon, every computergame and popstar in a language nobody in Wikipedia will tolerate. The vision is that the children and teenagers will have full control on the content like de:Herbert Grönemeyer once said: "Kinder an die Macht" (Power to the children). Greetings from Berlin -- Necrophorus 14:52, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Will the content of Wikikids be a fork of existing projects? Will the articles only be ones written from scratch by children, or will they be able to take content from Wikipedia? The existing Simple English Wikipedia has not been very successful, so I'm doubtful that another project also aiming at some sort of simplified language would be. Could simple: be expanded to include content by children rather than starting a new project? Angela 20:16, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hello Angela, I hope you arrived at home from Berlin well.

I think, simple is in some ideas not far away from Wikikids (if I really understand it). It is constructed to get articles in a way that people with a lower education can understand them by using a small number of words but it had the same ranges of an adult encyclopedia as Wikipedia has. Wikikids should not be limited in Words and the rules of what and how content will be allowed is made by a children and teenager community. I think we can use simple as a base for the english Wikikids version as the articles seem to be understandable. But I think, the reason why the project failed is that of being a Wikipedia version limited by words and most people did not want to limit their language and wrote into the original en-WP.

I don´t see any kind of fork in this project, but I think, that many articles from Wikipedia can be taken and transformed in a childrens language, so many Wikipedia articles may have two alternative growing histories. For the german Wikipedia, I see (for example) the article of de:Krokodile (crocodiles) where I am working at. It is a very important article for children too, but they really don´t need that blown up information stuff, they normally are only interested in the basics for example shown in the en:Crocodile. So for the english Wikikids the article Crocodile can be taken and filled with interesting stuff for children and the Wikipedia article can grow similar to the german one, both linked to each other.

Greetings -- Necrophorus 20:50, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

very closed wikipedia

My idea would be to open only a few articles and motivate children to work only on those. We will have less problems with vandals and if we could have user-groups, school classes could have their own open space with their teacher watching over them. I know, it's far from the freedom of wikipedia, but after there was much discussion about pädophiles on the mailing-list that might be one solution. --TomK32 WR Internet 21:47, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Mmh, it´s far away from the idea of Wikikids as I proposed. It´s a full controlled system without freedom to do what the kids want to do. Sorry, but I really don´t like this idea -- Necrophorus 10:35, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I do agree, that project may be efficient with the only usual control system of Wikipédia, or few adaptations.

being an admin for this would require more work, but depending on the age i think they understand this and as far as the chil privacy act or whatever, just edit the login/register page with a notice ect. and as for supervision, they have a point, if i was eight years old i wouldn't use it nor would i if eight year olds did, now teen agers such as myself i can see, perhaps a name change to wikiteens or something????--207.224.115.125 07:21, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we should block all IP's so you can all be registered to edit on Wikikids? T®eebark 04:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Limitations/How far can we go?

Someone noted "sex fundamentals", to which someone else (excuse my unspecificness) responded "how about not?". This raises a major point for me: how far can we go? What kind of information is suitable for wikikids, and what kind of information isn't? It's not only a question of complexicity, but also one of responsibility. Kids are (that is, I hope they still are) kids, and they shouldn't be exposed to every dirty or shocking little detail of this world. (nazgjunk on en:wp, too lazy to register) 81.70.14.207 22:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

vs. Wikipedia Simple English

How does this compare with Wikipedia in Simple English? Is Simple English just dumbed-down and not exactly aimed towards children? If we changed the name from Simple English to Wikikids would anyone doubt it was aimed towards children instead? LockeShocke 23:22, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don´t know anything about Simple english, please read my answer to Angelas question above. I think, theres a way to use simple english as a base for english Wikikids as I lined out, but it seems to be not the same. And simple english is just one language, my personal interest is not the english language, it´s the german one where I will help starting Wikikids and there is no simple german (or any other simple language) Wikipedia right now. Greetings, -- Necrophorus 23:50, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have been making a few edits on the simple.wiki an in fact I am not allowed to edit the en.wiki because of my (flagrant expression we'll say) views on how it should be restrained in some ways, particularly ways in which a wiki for kids, therefore I appreciate the simple.wiki very much being guidelined for kids and guidelined for easy reading etc. Only thing is, it doesnt get the rush of contributors that other projects have. A kids.wiki would certainly get such a rush but in the meantime I would suggest that members of this project should be already contributing to the simple.wiki as this is exactly what simple.wiki is for and it is greatly underdeveloped. Anything you make there could be a template for a kids.wiki and although I have not been a kid for some time myself, simple.wiki seems to be populated mostly by teenagers (perhaps needing guidance :D), so, even if you are not approved for this project, please start your work on the simple.wiki, now! G Luck RTG 22:42, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

The Simple wikipedia is not for kids due to the content issue. 69.120.135.108 22:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not mainly about the adult content issue because, browsing through specific categories, it's an easy challenge to delete such entries as soon as the fork Simple ---> Wikikids is created.

No! the main problem is about those too many articles actually accessible inside Simple not improving when an exotic robot was allowed in January 2013 to create so many French communes ; my suggestion is to start with only the 1000 most viewed Simple entries focusing on the ultimate goal of 2000 which has been already achieved in the first ever wikipedia junior project. ONaNcle (talk) 06:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Onancle why do you insist on attacking simple.wiki. No bot was created in January 2013 to create articles on french communes. What was discussed in January was deleting all of them. That being said don't see a heck of a lot of difference in this project from simple.wiki which is already aimed at children. -Djsasso (talk) 18:31, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

@Djsasso, If ONaNcle is the one I know on the french Wikipedia, you shouldn't mind too much about him.

Then you may be right that a great part of SEWP fits to children. However, it is not labeled "for children", there is really no consensus it should be labelled so, and one example of what it carries along is that when you look for "encyclopedia for children" on Google, you won't find SEWP whereas when you look for "encyclopedie pour enfants" you do find Vikidia first.

Still a great part of the content of SEWP would fit to a Wikikids (which part I can't say precisely) and it would be a pity to write it again. Astirmays (talk) 23:09, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Objectives and Trouble

Hi Angela, hi Achim, I hope you don't mind my (hopefully constructive) criticism on this matter. By the way, sorry for me using headlines earlier on. Only now it no longer seems to be such a good idea to use those in a discussion.
Anyway, back to our discussion. First off, it should be noted that I do not deal with children that young. The youngest I ever taught were fifth graders (eleven-year-olds). And not being a father myself, I cannot be sure of the relevance of my statements.
Keeping that in mind, Achim, you are definitely right when you state that many of the problems quoted by me already exist with any other version of Wikipedia and there have been ways to deal with them. Yet, the main issues I see are 1. our objectives, 2. is it worth all the trouble? Angela pointed out that the simple: project didn't work well, which actually doesn't surprise me that much. Faced with the choice, I would always rather dedicate my time to help out on the "prime" version of Wikipedia rather than an offspring that might never reach popularity. Not because I wouldn't want to give a small project a chance (h*ll, I have never even used any mainstream computer operating system for one thing), but it's like there is still so much work to do on Wikipedia. If you look up "Turtles" i.e. de:Schildkröten there are far too many red links which will take ages for one person to fill. Ireland de:Irland isn't well covered, either. So I don't know where to start especially since my time is quite limited.
Being a teacher, what are my objectives concerning Wikipedia? For one thing, I'd like my students to use it. We did that quite recently in my 7th grade History class. Alexander the Great was the topic. The students printed the Wikipedia pages de:Alexander der Große and I had them copied to a transparency in order to teach them how to read (more difficult that one might suspect) and in this process to mark important passages. It took me two periods (2x 45 mins) and it was totally worth it. ;-) Now, this is just a start. It'll take a long way from here to get them to use Wikipedia regarlarly, to teach them to gather information from it (not just copy articles), and in a final step to contribute to it. That's where we need to get them.
Achim, you point out that many regular Wikipedia articles are far too complicated for children to understand. Actually, this is something I would like to change generally. Many abstracts need to be re-written to make them comprehensible to anybody. In fact, I think it is the basic characteristic of a good abstract that anyone will get a vague idea of what the article is about. Maybe we ought to gather a group of people who might be willing to edit several abstract, not stripping them from any information, but rather adding easily understandable basic facts. This might not be necessary for articles dealing with purely scientific topics (after all, what are the chances of a thirteen-year-old looking up Binomial Heap?).
I am somewhat concerned with the exclusion of popular arts from Wikipedia. Maybe that strategy ought to be re-thought. I see no reason why fictional children's books or manga characters should not be included in Wikipedia. They are, nevertheless, part of our culture. And if Wikipedia is to accumulate all the knowledge of the present day world, it can hardly do without them. -- Martin, Eichendorff Highschool Wolfsburg/Germany 23:59, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Wikibooks

Rather than go with such a broad aim of creating an encyclopedia, perhaps the project would be best trialled on a smaller scale by creating content on a more specific topic. This might make it suitable for Wikibooks rather than it needing to be a separate project. Angela

O.k., I understood. Wikikids is a project noone really wants in the foundation and so it has to be specified to fit in any other stuff, but a Wikibook is not the same and it will not work. I´m talking about a Wikipedia version understandable and writable for kids and in the last two days there were 3 or 4 people in the german Wikipedia and the german MailingLIst asking for such a project where there children can join. So what, delete this page and forget this stuff. -- Necrophorus 08:52, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh just stop your "no body likes me" tantrum. The reason there's criticism is because we want to iron out the project before it happens. No ever sad they didn't want it in this discussion. They simply said that you need to step back and look at the bigger picture. I can't blame you for your passion, I get that way over Wikijunior, which I didn't even create. Look. Either create a Wikicities project, or find me a registered Wikipedia under the age of 12. -- user:zanimum

Not sure

8 to 16? Thats impossible. 16 year olds are capable of using Wikipedia, or they have a problem.

You've either got to make Wikikids (8-12), or Wikiteens (13-16), or both. At the end of the day, Wikikids is better, but less people want to write for young children. Hedley 15:10, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You've struck the nail perfectly on its head, Hedley, with "That's impossible". An article in Wikimedia Quarto and publicity where ever I can put it, Wikijunior (an actual approved project for 8-to-11-year-olds) is increasingly stale in adult activity. We'd never make a instant "go" of such a project, solely on kid editing, and adults won't be motivated to do something they don't enjoy or benefit from, for free. -- user:zanimum

Wikikids in Dutch

We just started a wikikids in the Netherlands so it is possible look at http://www.wikikids.nl

Wikikids/alternative proposal

for this project, that I will drop here to be checked before replacing the project page. Astirmays 21:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Would anybody be kind to correct my english ? Astirmays 21:58, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Doing a bit. T®eebark 17:27, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, well I already pasted the alternative proposal (after 2 days) on the main page of the project, so... Astirmays 18:19, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Original comments

• I think this would be a good idea. Our projects for children can be Wikipedia Junior, Wikinews Junior, Wikijunior and Simple English Wiktionary. On junior versions, we can do things we wouldn't want to do with Simple English Wikipedia and Wikinews, such as:
• Use a more colourful skin and layout.
• Write at an intermediate (5th or 6th grade?) level of English.
• Link to Wikijunior.
• Censor sexual content so that the site can be uncontroversially white-listed for filtering software. (This is particularly an issue for elementary and middle schools and public libraries.)
• Ensure that external links are also uncontroversially suitable for children.
• Select content of particular interest to children. (This is especially an issue with Wikinews.) This may include some facts that are more entertaining than encyclopedic -- after all, learning should be fun.
• Create a separate reference desk. (At my local library, we have a children's ref desk that goes up to grade 6, plus an adult reference desk.)However, I do not think junior forks of the following projects would be useful: Wiktionary (unless Simple English Wiktionary is closed down), Wikiquote, Wikisource, Meta, Commons. Seahen 19:37, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• This I find would be useful as it should focus on topics that interest children. The other forks of Wikimedia do nothing but reword the articles- articles which many may not choose to read. And they would be better focused in one place. It would also likely be used by schools if there is censorship. Simple English is not helpful for learning (we should not just be able to understand but be able to slowly increase our skills, like learning a complex word once in a while.) We could have hard terms in it, but have the definition next to it. That would make it a truly educational environment. 211.28.125.161 21:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of wikikids but I hate the name. --Sir James Paul 02:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Great Idea

This is such a great idea. We need a kid/teen friendly wikipedia that does not talk about drugs, Sex. etc. We need this because wikipedia simple english is not kid friendly and wikipedia is not either. I love the idea. It's great.--Sir James Paul 16:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Is that so in your family? Well I guess they miss out. We need an English one and we've got about 20 supports, I don't see what's holding everything up from starting one and I'm going to find out what is. T®eebark 00:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Opening

of http://fr.vikidia.org/ , so in french. Have a look, it's just beginning, we have no logo yet. "fr" means of course that there could be a en.vikidia.org, pl.vikidia.org or es.vikidia.org etc... Astirmays 19:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

SYSOP

Why don't we hold the election for sysop's now. I think that would be the most logical thing to do.--Sir James Paul 23:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

For what? T®eebark 17:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

A working prototype

For the project to move forward, I think a working prototype of Wikikids in English is needed. Putting ideas into practise will bring the Wikikids project forward. I am currently setting up a Wiki to showcase features such as:

• A colourful and easy to use UI (would someone be interestedd in creating one)
• Content filtering
• Different accounts for adults and children
• Other Wikimedia junior content accessible from one project
  • Wikijunior
  • Wikinews Junior

Leave a comment on my talk page if you are interested (talk).

A name idea: Wikidpedia which comes from the words wicked and kid. Although I like the name Wikikids more.

William.lethal 21:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

There already is a Wikikids in English. What are you talking about? T®eebark 00:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Original Comments

1. why not, i'm a kid myself so I can put myself in to the mindframe of my age group... –127.0.0.1 (talk)
2. Necrophorus (German)
3. TomK32 WR Internet (German)
4. Leon (German)
5. FutureCrash (German)
6. Ryan524 (English, and i would be willing to run the english version.)
7. Scott Gall (English and Maori)
8. Brisvegas ("A Simple English Wikipedia that is censored for minors. Good for projects, innocent learning etc.")
9. "Sir James Paul( I want to be an sysop there.)
10. Michael Billington (English)
11. William Leith

Anyone can be a sysop at WikiKids

Becoming an admin is wide open for anyone at WikiKids. Automatic granting of powers until there are 25 sysops in the books. Crazy policy, but true. Check it out: http://editthis.info/wikikidsen/Wikikidsen:Requests_for_adminship 199.77.130.14 04:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

And even worse is that sysops are also checkusers, that's a terrible violation of privacy if they are promoting the first 25 people to show up. Also, the creator (also sysop, b-crat, and checkuser) is a banned sockpuppet/puppeteer on Wikipedia! He's running the place as if he owned it. | AndonicO 21:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, that's interesting. --Majorly 21:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It looks like this project has been shutdown, most of the pages were deleted today and there is an announcement on the main page. -Versageek 00:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I looked at it earlier today and I didn't think much of it. Good riddance I say. --Majorly 00:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I concur. | AndonicO 01:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess that the existence of simple english wikipedia doesn't make it easy to create a wiki for kids in english. French and dutch ones are doing quite well, with 800 articles each. (Both are independents). Dutch and french project are quite similar in their aims and rules, but the dutch project was openned by a group of teacher, with the support of Kennisnet, while I openned the french one as a "private" wikipedian (but it was discussed on fr.wikipedia, and quite a few wikipedians were and are willing to see it openned and to work on it). I don't really want to keep it so. I think that if it get bigger and better known, and I hope so, it would hardly fit as a private kept site. It could either came "back" as a Wikimedia project, or merge with the dutch project (with who we keep in touch). I hope that in a way or another, we can welcome and help sister projects in other language. I still think that it would be better again as an international project. Astirmays 23:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The project didn't turn out that good, especially after it was sort of like a debate team with the user Seven of nine annoying people. We weren't creating articles that much and there were too many active vandals. T®eebark 20:02, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Treebark, the only person I think Seven of Nine annoyed at wikikids was you. --James, La gloria è a dio 02:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

(rude comment deleted)I'm terribly sorry, it seems the "Seven of Nine" person you've been talking about shares an IP with me. :-( 71.185.49.209 18:55, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Demo

The demo for wikikids failed misrable. I am having doubts on wether or not this idea can work. I think it is a great idea but it really does not work. If someone will make a demo of it and it works I will change my mind but as of now I am against this becoming a project. Peace:) --La gloria è a dio 19:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

French and dutch project don't fail ; see :

• english explanation about Wikikids.nl (wiki in dutch, for kids & teachers, via Kennisnet - 8 - 12 years old)
• english explanation about Vikidia.org (an encyclopedia for 8-13 years old kids, in french)

I don't know very well about the german project : Grundschulwiki, a wiki by and for primary school children. It looks smaller. Astirmays 20:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

New English Demo

There is a new english demo at http://editthis.info/enwikikids/Main_Page. Peace.--James, La gloria è a dio 16:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The earlier incarnation of this attempt was removed becuase editthis allows ANY admin to see the IP of ANY user - a serious threat for a wiki attracting kids. Has this problem been solved?

OBVIOUSLY we're not using editthis! --Seven of Nine 18:52, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Translation

Hello. I will give a ripuarian and a german translation, just so you know.--213.168.118.215 17:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Some ideas

Groups and Ergonomy: en.teens.wikipedia.org

I would split the wikipedia for children into kids (8-12) and teens (13-18). An even finer distinction could be introduced with subpages in the respective encyclopedias. A 12 year old child may not want to read an article written for an 8 year old child and a high school student may not want to read an article written for a junior high school student. The main article could be written as an abstract and refer to sub-pages written for different ages. Teenagers also often want to be distinguished from kids so using "kids" in the domain name may be unpopular with teenagers anyway.

Names that are quicker to type with domain name completion are: en.teens.wikipedia.org and en.kids.wikipedia.org ("en.t" and "en.k" are sufficient while en.wikikids.org requires "en.wikik" to be different from en.wikipedia.org). The domain name is also bound to be available.

Interwiki links in the wikipedia sidebar could be added to same language kids and teens articles only, when available. --Fasten 14:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

In the German version one could add English and French translations of the lemma, to help children with bilingual instruction to build their vocabulary. Starting with articles for older kids (10-12) short abstracts in English and French and with references to articles in these languages could be folded or unfolded depending on user settings, which would be a better motivation to change the language than having to look up a potential link in the interwiki sidebar. For children one could also use larger and more images as decoration (e.g.), to make articles more interesting. If every article had an {{abstract|...}} header the abstracts from the languages used for bilingual education in a language area could be automatically copied into the corresponding articles. --Fasten 13:31, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Article submission for children and teenagers

Children and teenagers may want to submit their content to an editor instead of changing the article themselves so the articles could have a submission queue based on LiquidThreads. --Fasten 14:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Identifying children

A child or teenager could, of course, become a regular editor but a child or teenager wanting to use a special account for children or teenagers could be identified as a student if there was a database of school wikis and school wikis had a protocol to identify their participants as students. For a student it may be a much more natural way to register in an educational wiki as a student of his own school (possibly with its own wiki page for the school in en.teens.wikipedia.org).

That may not be a short-term plan because school wikis with that protocol would initially be few but it may be interesting as a medium-term plan. The OLPC project could also become interested in building a database of schools similar to http://www.etwinning.net/ (e.g. for E-mentoring or School partnerships) --Fasten 14:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

School district wikis

The Wikimedia Foundation could also consider under what conditions school district wikis could be hosted by the foundation. Not because there was any noteworthy advantage over having one hosted by local ISPs but because the foundation could help to invent and document new ideas for wiki usage in school. The foundation could, for example, accept one application per country from districts that had a well-considered program for a school district wiki. --Fasten 15:57, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

See also: Parent education courses

Wiki E-mentoring

Wiki E-mentoring could match mentors with children between 10 and 16 and allow the mentors to send between three to seven e-mails per week referring to interesting wiki articles appropriate for the age-group of the audience. The articles could be send with a personalized abstract/introduction similar to an "Article of the Day" that would allow the audience to feel personally addressed (e.g.). The children could have a group wiki(-page) to ask questions about the articles or general questions. --Fasten 11:17, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

A mentor could also write articles for Wikikids on request by his group of protégés. A mentor should, of course, aim to address the needs and interests of his protégés. The regular distribution of articles would perpetuate the protégés' interest in Wikipedia and provide an initial motivation for the protégés to form a small community and to communicate with their mentor. A young child or teenager cannot be expected to find suitable and interesting articles in Wikipedia him - or herself and to maintain curiosity over a longer time, at least not reliably. A mentor could also post the questions of his protégés to a per-article FAQ page. This would allow the article authors to address the questions of the children and would provide feedback what articles were interesting for children but unintelligible. --Fasten 15:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

See ATP mentor training (Wikiversity), Wiki E-mentoring (Mentoring Handbook)

See also: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/E-mentoring#Promoting_teacher_education

Wikikids.Org

I think wikikids.org wants to become a Wikimedia-Wiki as well, so, let's just use that one.--195.14.205.152 12:12, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

A Wikikids in spanish

Hi there,

I'd like to tell about a discussion on a Wikikids in spanish here : Wiki para chicos. I hope you'll join the group if it his your language. Astirmays 22:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Private Setup

To setup a mediawiki costs about $50.00 / year from Arvixe.com. I don't know how quickly the use would increase to require more dollars (donations). If somebody else can take care of the legal side of things: setting up a corporation to accept donations (even on PayPal), I can take care of the code. It is just a simple install, and I have already played around with MediaWiki.

Plus if we are part of a private non-profit corporation that is not part of wikipedia, we can setup our own rules, we can add our own code for children's accounts, and we setup our own domains.

en:User:zzmonty

Hi, I would say that the main issue isn't to setup mediawiki, neither to get money. It is to build a Community for this wiki.

See :

• wikicities:c:help:Advice:Will Wikis Work?
• wikicities:c:help:Help:Attracting contributors
• wikicities:c:help:Advice:Building a Community
• wikicities:c:help:Help:Improving your Wikia

Do you have an idea on how you would address these issues ? Astirmays 16:33, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments from Proposals for new projects

• Differences between wikikids and wikichildren proposal: wikichildren offer to create different account for adults and children, the last having less privileges.
• I would like to make a comment. I am a kid, and Simple English Wikipedia is simple enough for kids in my estimation. We also have wikijunior. To me, I also don't see it as good for the children's accounts to have less priveliges (sp?) because kids have the ability to do the same things adults do, like run their own wiki (that is mine). The encyclopædia should have no one below, no one above. Ionas68224 06:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

  Hi, Simple english WP only exists in english (yes !) They were no other simple language wikipedia opened after it. On the "demo" site in french, children don't have less privileges, the younger just are less likely to become sysop, that's all. Astirmays 18:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

  Simple English wikipedia is not necessarily for children, but for none native speakers of English. Redrocketboy 15:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

  There is/was a simple French wikipedia I believe. The Flying Spaghetti Monster 22:19, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

• There is a need for a kids version of Wikipedia. The main problem is that there are articles on the main version that are not appropriate for kids. This is also true on the simple version. Even if the English is fine, the content is not fine. By having a separate namespace or domain name, it makes it easier for external filtering programs to filter out the main material while allowing access to the age appropriate material. I think that by having one wiki with different namespaces, the needs of the different groups could be satisfied. I also think that there is a need for 3 different groups: Lower Elementary (preschool - 4th grade -- lots of pictures and sound with little text); 4th grade - 8th grade (more story format); 9th grade - 12th grade (standard encylopedia in simple English, but with moderated content. I don't think that kids wikipedia needs to have separate privs than adults. The SOP of the site should be a set of standards with an editing board (adults that are in charge, not children) who decide what is and what is not appropriate content wise for the site. Then just let external filtering programs take care of the rest. If the content is marked with some standards, filtering should be an easy task.
• Comments about the target ages. I think that the high school students should be encouraged to be the editors. If they can explain a topic to somebody else, it means that they truly understand that topic. 69.120.135.108 23:07, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

  Agreed. I don't think this project is necessary. I would support more Simple (language) on the Wikipedia namespace. Gosox5555 13:13, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Management team

Since MediaWiki has no interest in this project due to their "Freedom of Speech" issues, we, as a community, should seriously consider starting our own website that is not part of the MediaWiki corporation. Buying domain space that we can add code can cost as little as $50/year from Arvixe.com. That is a company that I have personally been a customer of, so I know their lowest cost for a development site (low bandwidth restrictions). I can handle the software part. Is there anybody else that can handle the business side in terms of setting up a non-profit corporation to accept donations? If you are interested in helping with the management side, please sign below with an indication of what skills you can offer.

• Software Engineering Side (installation and modification of MediaWiki code)
  • en:User:zzmonty
• Business side (donation, taxes, non-profit status, etc.)
• Educators, validation of content, age appropriateness of content
• Editors (Need an editorial board on a children's site)
• Administrators (Main policy makers and administrator of the site)
• Graphic designers (design logo, color scheme, graphics, etc.

Why don't you guys start this Paedia in Wikia? You seem to have some momentum, Wikia wikis pay themselves by advertisement, and you may define your own rules, AFAIK. Check that option. Lwyx 04:54, 6 January 2009 (UTC)