When I had a look to the most viewed articles (not
exactly recently) I had the impression that it actually reach one of its goal that is to
be a resource for non native english speaker (that moreover don't have a well
developped Wikipedia in their native language, such as indians of a minority language).
Yet it wasn't children interest or school curriculum subjects that were much viewed
but rather adult topics.
We could fix that by dedicating time to subjects children would learn in school. We don’t
need a separate wiki.
However, regular users have in mind that the age told
by any user isn't verified.
One of the findings of fact in
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Protecting_children's_privacy>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Protecting_children%27s_privacy
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Protecting_children's_privacy>
is that:
Self-identified children may be children, adult
predators, trolls <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)>(→)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)?action=edit>, adult privacy-watchers
testing our policies, or law enforcement personnel.
So they might be children, child abusers, adults lying because they think it’s funny,
people looking to bring down the reputation of websites that don’t respect the privacy of
children, or a police officer that can arrest someone in real life. All of these bring up
different issues as to the safety of children and the reputation of the adults that want
to help them. This is why the arbitration committee decided this was the best option for
editors who might actually be children:
Users who appear to be children editing in good faith
who disclose identifying personal information may be appropriately counseled. Deletion and
oversight may be used in appropriate cases to remove the information.
In other words, kids aren’t allowed to disclose their age. Of course, people editing in
bad faith would be blocked, anyways. Are you saying that kids are allowed to disclose age
on Wikikids?
We disable the e-mail function from one's user
account to another, so there is no private message unless one editor would have displayed
his e-mail adress or on account on another social media.
That’s going to add an obstacle to writing to oversight and the emergency team that
intervenes when someone threatens suicide or homicide, along with a few other teams that
have a “role account” that takes advantage of the “email this user” feature.
I mean that if by chance someone or an organisation
would want to developp a free documentary resource for children and would be eager to
invest in it, there would be a way to do it: there is allready a base of articles in some
Vikidia versions like the english one and an organisation that proved to be sustainable
(actually very closed to the one of Wikipedia), then some funds would allow to catch up
the time of "organic growth" that some wiki encyclopedia for children had. I
guess it would be promotion, communication, and possibly paid translation to get the most
interesting, best quality, most usefull articles from several wikis for children and from
Simple English Wikipedia (with some data analysis/study to identify and select them), to
get a core of say 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 articles in one language. It would be quite a
big operation, but it may be worth the investment. Getting a quality free encyclopedia for
children in a matter of months.
Are you saying you want money from the WMF? Or someone affiliated with the WMF?
From,
I dream of horses
She/her
> On Jun 24, 2022, at 2:06 PM, Mathias Damour <mathias.damour(a)gmx.fr> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>>
>> I think that SEWP was created like it is, partly by fear of creating a project
openly directed to children, and I'm afraid it precisely make it not so compelling for
them.
>> How is Simple English Wikipedia not compelling for kids? Define “not
compelling.”
>
> Well, I didn't closely study SEWP, so I may be unfair, that's rather my
impressions :
> The main rule is the simple language rather than explain a subject in a accessible
way, so you can have long and not so accessible articles in simple language.
When I had a look to the most viewed articles (not
exactly recently) I had the impression that it actually reach one of its goal that is to
be a resource for non native english speaker (that moreover don't have a well
developped Wikipedia in their native language, such as indians of a minority language).
Yet it wasn't children interest or school curriculum subjects that were much viewed
but rather adult topics.
>
>>
>> I took a look at Vikidia, thought I could do something for them, signed up with
an account, read what I could find of the guidance, and created an article on Underwater
diving, following the rules as I understood them, using properly attributed CC-by-sa
content from Simple English Wikipedia as a basic framework, and was busy expanding it when
it was deleted without discussion by user Ajeje_Brazorf with the edit summary (Please
don't copy from simple wikipedia}, and no explanation why not. If I had done that on
English Wikipedia I would risk losing my admin bit. If that is how new users are routinely
treated there that encyclopedia is doomed. I will not be back to waste my time there.
>
> By the way, sorry for that, I guess it is not specific to Vikidia in english to
experiment such diagreement with newcomers, there is a discussion on this wiki about what
happened.
>
>>
>> On top of that, it would seem that you were able to sign up easily without
verifying your age; both verifying age and not can be problematic.
>>
>> Verifying age makes things safer in terms of everyone knowing that if someone
says they’re a kid, they’re a kid, and if they’re an adult, they’re an adult. Part of
online grooming and police sting operations is people saying “I’m a kid, let’s meet
offline." It can be problematic due to reasons of privacy. It’s not like you want
everyone knowing the age of a child who’s online. That can mostly but entirely alleviated
by only having the administration know everyones’ birthdate, and forcing admins to have
strict account security.
>
> We don't ask nor verify the editors ages on Vikidia. There is no status attached
to the user's age (with some few exception like check-user...), so few reason to lie
about our age if we tell it. However, regular users have in mind that the age told by any
user isn't verified. We disable the e-mail function from one's user account to
another, so there is no private message unless one editor would have displayed his e-mail
adress or on account on another social media. And we suppress identifying information that
a child would write on his user page.
> To be complete, we noticed that the UK Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006
appears to mandate some verifications for some status like admins on a wiki for children
(someone that would become administrator of Vikidia in english if he is more than 16 and
lives in the UK would have to provide his identity and proof that he has passed the
british vetting process). See
https://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Legal_matters#UK_Safeguarding_Vulnerabl…
>
>>
>> Actually, Vikidia in english does exist, with 4,035 articles !
>>
>> Oh, okay, so it’s going to be mostly out of whole cloth, not entirely. I’m not
sure how many articles English Wikipedia has, but I know it’s in the millions.
>>
>> They may be a way to promote a existing (or to be launched) wiki encyclopedia for
children, to "use the momentum of Wikipedia to make it easier to discover”
>> I believe I’ve stated more or less stated that you can’t use our momentum since
we need for the projects we have.
>
> That's a constant pattern, your favorite wiki may have 500 or 5 millions
articles, 2 or 20,000 active users, you allway feel you lack content and editors ! ;-)
>
I mean that if by chance someone or an organisation
would want to developp a free documentary resource for children and would be eager to
invest in it, there would be a way to do it: there is allready a base of articles in some
Vikidia versions like the english one and an organisation that proved to be sustainable
(actually very closed to the one of Wikipedia), then some funds would allow to catch up
the time of "organic growth" that some wiki encyclopedia for children had. I
guess it would be promotion, communication, and possibly paid translation to get the most
interesting, best quality, most usefull articles from several wikis for children and from
Simple English Wikipedia (with some data analysis/study to identify and select them), to
get a core of say 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 articles in one language. It would be quite a
big operation, but it may be worth the investment. Getting a quality free encyclopedia for
children in a matter of months.
>
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