Ray Saintonge wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
As for Wikijunior, well, I find it hard to see
how that's not a book,
but that's a completely different discussion.
The discussions for Wikiversity and Wikijunior have been going on for
some time already. Whatever one thinks of them, I don't think that
their issues are the kind that would be solved in a seed project.
The purpose of a seed project would be primarily to see if there is
enough interest to sustain an otherwise acceptable project. The
problems connected with Wikiversity and Wikijunior are different; I
have no doubt that if started both could easily meet the
participation critera.. Neither project should be a part of this
discussion.
The problem with Wikiversity and Wikijunior is that they should have
been new proposed Wikimedia projects instead of something different.
Wikijunior, IMHO, was "forced" upon Wikibooks, and with the plan to
turn Wikijunior more into a kids version of Wikipedia, the connection
with Wikibooks is far less than what it could have been in the past.
Wikijunior is precisely what the seed wiki would be about... to get a
community going on a concept and see if there will be some viability
for keeping that community going. Many Wikicities projects only last
a few weeks or months before they die out, and it would be a good idea
to see if that would happen before something gets the status of a full
Wikimedia sister project. This seed wiki can provide that objective
view about some project idea.
Why Wikijunior in particular is a part of this discussion is because
it is an objective example of what kind of project could be started on
the seed wiki. It should have started on a seed wiki rather than on
Wikibooks, especially with the Beck Foundation grant and other issues
that still have yet to be explained fully within the Wikijunior
community, and some significant policy differences between Wikijunior
and Wikibooks. I also have my doubts as to if Wikijunior could in
fact get the necessary participation criteria, but I'm willing to wait
and see.
As long as Wikijunior was only for producing age-appropriate textbooks
for children it was probably fine in Wikibooks. Something, however,
which specifically seeks the participation of children is something
else. I think that the participation level may be easy to attain. A
far more worrisome problem would be what kind of people are involved.
If parents start to see it as a haven for predators the damage could be
severe. Security standards need to be much higher than in the other
projects.
Ec