On 2/22/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: Simple English wikipedia makes fantastic sense as a resource for people who do not speak English as a primary language.... and it isn't quite as adrift as Brion made it sound, at least last I checked there was a proposed vocabulary. I think the most important counter is the argument "How can we expect to make a usable Simple English, when the English Wikipedia still lacks sold coverage of so many fairly basic subjects you would expect to find in an encyclopedia?". If you accept that argument it would follow that it makes sense to shut down simple English until English moves on to the next stage of it's existence.... better tasking what little resources are currently going into simple English. But it's not that simple... At least on English Wikipedia we've been almost completely unable to agree on what is important and focus our resources on those tasks. For some reason (perhaps inexperience?) most people seem to believe that 'volunteer' means completely disorganized... and as a result, even though we have an unimaginable amount of man-hours of work being put into the project, many basic things which are considered important are being left to rot because we're afraid of telling people what to work on. I've even seen it argued that we must permit and even encourage various unprofessional looking content on userpages in order to attract volunteers. ... I wonder if the people making these arguments have ever been a volunteer at a off-internet organization? Using volunteer labor means simple that, it doesn't mean abandoning professional standards, accountability, or proven practices for reaching goals. But this has been lost on English Wikipedia. Under this current model, the impact of keeping around a bit-rotting and infrequently edited simple English Wikipedia is no different than the impact of the multitude of elementary school stubs which are created and then forgotten on En. Harmless by itself, and there no compelling reason to discourage it since we would be unable to effectively focus any recovered resources. Brion, would turning off simple english recover much of *your* time? If so I could see a case for removing it, ... but that isn't the argument you seemed to be making.

MHart wrote: Acronyms are jargon, and should mostly not be a part of simple English. Ec

I've often thought that the 'simple English' was the right product aimed at the wrong market. Instead of targetting it at people how have English as a second language (who, quite rightly, want to learn English "properly"; long words and all) why not consider it as targetted at that other group who *need* simple English ... Children. Simple English is, I would have thought, perfect for pre-schoolers and under-12s generally as it sets out to explain concepts in simpler language and as that means a reduced vocabulary then let us target it at those who already daily use that reduced vocabulary. Alison

Alison Wheeler wrote: There are also books in simplified language for people with various kinds of reading/understanding handicap, so that is also a possible audience. But either way, it ruins the wiki concept that the readers are the writers. You cannot make a useful childrens encyclopedia by letting 10 year olds publish their school papers on dinosaurs. Rather, you need pretty good authors, possibly with teacher training, who don't only know the subject, but who also know what to cut away to make it useful for children. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I think it could be hard to achieve. "Your parents and teachers can edit this page now." -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

Ray Saintonge wrote: Eight to twelve year olds are hardly pre-schoolers. Yes, they are beginning readers, and to be honest, when I was learning a second language by actually living in the country where it was spoken natively, one of the best sources of learning basic grammar and understanding the language (once I made the initial breakthrough to decode the vocabulary mentally in the first place) was to sit down with a group of elementary school students and go through their language primers. Content that is oriented toward an eight year old is also understandable (generally) to a foriegner who is just picking up the langauge. Generally a lot more thought goes into those kind of primers as well compared to say a Berlitz grammar guide, and they are paced toward an audience with a very short attention span (children). The only problem with trying to learn a language this way is 1) obtaining the materials in the first place (getting to know a large family with lots of kids does help to do this) and 2) some adults are not prepared to try and learn out of the same lesson books that children are using because of personal pride or honor of some sort. ESL and Early Childhood Education are usually seperated on most university campii by seperate colleges, ESL in a Humanities or Foriegn Language college and Early Childhood Education usually in a completely seperate college of Education. My contention here is that they do essentially the same thing from two different viewpoints, but because of pure political reasons that have nothing to do with the students themselves but instead quests for academic power, these discliplines are rarely coordinated or merged. There is no reason to continue such a struggle within Wikimedia projects. -- Robert Scott Horning