Hi,
Robert Horning a écrit :
mathias.damour wrote:
Another point is that Wikijunior "only" aims to produce and offer content for children whereas Wikikids.nl and Vikidia want children to be involved in building this content. We want to let them be active with knowledge for pedagogical interest. See this article : http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Writing-to-learn
I have serious doubts about the ability of children to get involved in this process, other than to the extent that they already are involved with Wikimedia projects. There are minors (including some that have administrator access... as discussed in some earlier threads) who are involved with Wikipedia content (and a few I suspected on Wikibooks as well), but these tend to be kids that are exceptionally motivated. And they participate on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects as peers to everybody else who is a contributor, with no special distinction. While the idea of having kids write for kids sounds appealing on paper, a bunch of 4th graders write like... well... a bunch of 4th graders. They are still trying to learn the basic mechanics of writing, and ought to be learning how to write from those who have already mastered the skill, not from those who are still apprentices in the subject. I digress if you think some contributors on Wikipedia don't know how to write, but that more or less proves my point as well.
It would be nice to have a feed-back from those who are involved in the Wikikids.nl project on this point. I would say a few things : - We choosed not to make special distinction related to age on Vikidia (no more than on Wikipedia). It is just asked that if you tell your age on your user page, you shouldn't cheat about it, just as you shouldn't cheat about your Diploma/academic degree on Wikipedia. (It's written in the disclaimer that a user could be blocked if he cheat about his age, but that you shouldn't assumed that it has been checked.) - 8-13 years is the readers target age. They are welcomed to edit, but adults so as - say - 13-18 years are welcomed too. We could guess that quite a lot of these (teenagers) could be willing to edit in a wiki, but don't feel able to do it on Wikipedia. They can be pleased to do it for younger people. That's what happen on Vikidia, where teenage editors are quite importants. - it seems that children are not able to write as much as older people, but they could do a quite good job on one subject. Anyway, it's a wiki so their articles are to be bettered by others (which can be formative to them). They can aslo get involved in maintenance task (internal links...) which make them become active readers rather than only content recipient. Participation of children is nevertheless something like a pillar for these wikis.
What I'm trying to point out is that those who are involved with Wikijunior were not even contacted about this idea in the first place when the idea was originally brought up on Meta, and suggestions on Meta to look at the Wikijunior project as perhaps something to work with were met with incredible hostility by those suggesting this Wikikids project. This doesn't have to be an either-or situation, as I believe the sum is healthier than the individual parts alone.
I'm not sure I understand well ; "This doesn't have to be an either-or situation" do you mean that they can be book for children AND adults on Wikibooks, or that they can be wikibooks AND an encyclopedia for children. That's what I would say.
I am presuming that you are writing about this because you want to seek input from the Wikimedia community, and would like to enlist support for those who might want to get involved with a project of this nature. I'm merely suggesting here that there are individuals who may want to join in this sort of project, and you should try to join with these efforts. There have been some attempts in the past to move Wikijunior to a completely separate project and domain name, including forming Wikijunior as a completely independent Wikimedia sister project. One of these proposals, and not rejected by the Wikijunior community, was to move to a more Wikipedia-like format of articles rather than the themed collections organized into books such as currently exist on Wikibooks. Please ask those involved with the development of Wikijunior to at least comment on your ideas. For English Wikijunior, the best place is at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:Wikijunior
What all this concept is lacking is a very motivated leader who is willing to take the next step and demonstrate that there is a large concensus among those want to go this route. And unlike the problems that existed with Wikiversity on Wikibooks, there is virtually nobody who wants to see Wikijunior "kicked off" of Wikibooks. Wikijunior enjoys a nearly independent existence without having to worry about the project overhead of maintaining a separate group of admins, and a strongly symbiotic relationship exists as well between Wikibooks and Wikijunior to bring new users and contributors to both projects. I think that Wikijunior would struggle with a great many issues if it had an independent existence at the moment that it doesn't have to worry about right now.
I had a look to the wikijunior pages in english and french. On the english talk page, the topic on a separated website is about either a read-only website for safe reading for children, or a separate wikibooks. I can understand that if wikijunior should still aim to writes books, there is no determining utility to make a separate wiki for it. But the wikikids idea is quite different, since it has a "Wikipedia-like format" as you say, and for it aims to let children write on it.
I don't know if wikijunior could (and would like) to move to that, and anyway "This doesn't have to be an either-or situation" ;-)
Mathias Damour