Hi Ziko,
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com wrote:
In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple German came up.
This would be useful.
As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia.
To be more precise: the language committee was tasked with determining when to start new language projects. It was never asked to consider other sorts of new projects. So either "simple German" is a new language, or it's out of the current scope of the committee.
Overall, we've never decided whether a "simple" or "children's encyclopedia" should be a separate project with its own root domain, or another set of 'languages' that show up as an interlanguage link or as FOO.wikipedia.org .
The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it had been created before that policy of 2006.
Simple English is quite useful, and used for groups developing their literacy skills at all ages, including many communities learning English as a Second Language. Presumably the same could be true of any other language.
There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online encyclopedias in "simple language", in and outside the Wikimedia world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support such encyclopedias than we are?
+1
My thoughts: * I would love to see similar projects in at least German, French, Spanish, and Dutch -- languages in which there are already communities working on encyclopedic knowledge in simplified language. * We should have a new process for requesting a simple-language version of a project. * We should resolve standard practice for naming them, and decide if this should be a new top-level Project (like wikikids) or a variation on the normal language code.
Considering the historical role of the children's encyclopedia, we might consider rescoping "simple" as "for children" -- this could help to increase participation and use, and clarify the role of these projects.
SJ