Hi,
De: "Neurodivergent Netizen" <idoh.idreamofhorses@gmail.com>
I think a particular hurdle for a standalone WMF-affiliated kidipedia project is the COPPA, and other similar laws both in the US and elsewhere that could potentially increase civil liability. Another hurdle is that America is very aware, perhaps overly aware, of the potential safety risks when children are involved in websites. Then you add in the fact that kids are likely to continue editing Wikipedia instead of Kidipedia, and it’s not worth the extra effort. This effort would include hiring/reassigning staff so you can have a team of people for just Kidipedia, along with the background checks and identity verification needed. None of that are obstacles that aren’t in the way of kids editing the existing projects.
I predict a WMF-affiliated kidipedia would largely be abandoned quite quickly.
You are probably right. I would say COPPA may not be the biggest hurdle, yet the british "UK Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006" is another one, and moreover the fact that "America is very aware, perhaps overly aware, of the potential safety risks when children are involved in websites" (and I would also say that "America" weight more the right of parents to control what is taught to their children and less the right of the children to inform themselves - the latter being upheld by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the US didn't ratificate - compared to other countries).
We reviewed it on https://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Legal_matters
That wouldn't be a wise choice that WMF host such a wiki if it brings the risk of being legaly attacked on that ground, even for bad reasons and unsuccessfully, whereas it never happened to Vikidia in 15 years (and very few kind of bad buzz like "look what they teach to the children").
You tell about "hiring/reassigning staff so you can have a team of people for just Kidipedia", well, that's quite exactly the point I adressed on this blog post :
Vikidia, l’anti-professionnalisation
https://www.wikimedia.fr/vikidia-lanti-professionnalisation/
...to tell that the vision of children needing to be only alongside their closed family and professionals workers - and that it should be the same if a wiki for children is set (that we would need professionnal educators either to write the articles, to design the project or to manage the community or all that together) - did cause much delay to the wiki encyclopedias for children, and how we do otherwise on Vikidia.
Reminder, the Wikikids project was developped on this page and subpages :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids
Envoyé: mercredi 22 juin 2022 à 12:37
De: "Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga" <galder158@hotmail.com>
À: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Objet: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Small joy of the day: Txikipedia
From our experience, is just the opposite: Wikipedia is not asking any extra step nor age confirmation, and legally you can have an account even if you are underage. Children are consulting Wikipedia without limits, and they can find adult content easily. We don't have any advice about that, nor filters at Commons, where you can find even porn using words that were not intended for that. The place is open, and we have massive visits from children, so providing them a better place, thought for them (as our strategic direction says) is better that not providing at all.
I can only agree!
Mathias Damour
[[User:Astirmays]]