Thanks for your very useful thoughts, Samuel. They lead us to these two key questions:

- Create new Wikipedias, or a new project: What would make sense? If they were new Wikipedias, we would potentially double the list with interwiki links ("in other languages"). I prefer a new project.

- Scope and name: Maybe it would practically make no big difference whether the project is called "simple" or "for kids". Poor readers and adult beginning readers (natives or not) tend to read texts that are meant for children anyway. It could make a difference in promoting, though. A scope question can also be whether certain kinds of explicit images are allowed.

Before beginning such a project, it may be good to have a more elaborate concept than there has been when the Wikipedias started. But even before that, the Foundation should tell whether such a project has any chance to be accepted, or will be banned for being essentially Wikipedia in already existing languages.

Hey, I just googled and found that there is already a proposal at Meta. :-)

Kind regards Ziko

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Wikikids

2010/6/24 Samuel J Klein sj@wikimedia.org:

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

---

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On 24 June 2010 15:52, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:

What about wikipediajr.org ?

And so we would have en.wikipediajr.org, fr.wikipediajr.org etc.

Or even just a modifier -

jr.en.wikipedia.org jr.de.wikipedia.org

...to which we could also alias "simple", "kinder", etc etc.

This helps emphasise the distinction between languages and subsets-of-languages, and also means we can be more fluid about the "simple"/"for children" presentation on a project-by-project basis.

2010/6/24 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com

When you are going to consider simple Wikipedias for all languages, please also consider how we will deal with different orthographies.. A child of 10 speaking Portuguese will have considerably more problems reading either the South American or the European variant.

Is it a tested fact? I don't think that children are so picky about orthographies. It is quite likely that they will notice the differences, but will it actually interfere with their understanding of the text?

You're welcome to prove me wrong, of course.

-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

On 24 June 2010 15:04, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com wrote:

• Scope and name: Maybe it would practically make no big difference

whether the project is called "simple" or "for kids". Poor readers and adult beginning readers (natives or not) tend to read texts that are meant for children anyway. It could make a difference in promoting, though. A scope question can also be whether certain kinds of explicit images are allowed.

I strongly disagree. There is a big difference between simple language and simple concepts. Children need simple concepts (basically, you can't assume as much prior knowledge because they haven't had time to learn things that adults consider to be common knowledge). Adults that are just learning a language need simple language because they haven't learnt complicated vocabulary yet.

However, in either case I'm not sure a new project is a good idea.

The great thing about an online encyclopaedia is that you don't need to assume prior knowledge, you can just link to the article that provides that knowledge and let people decide for themselves whether they need to click it.

As for people learning a language, the main way of learning vocabulary is to see it used in context. There are lots of online bilingual dictionaries (we have one ourselves) that people can look unfamiliar words up in, so it's better just to use the words and help people learn them.

Disclaimer: I used to be an admin on the Simple English Wikipedia, however my opinions of its worth have changed since then.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:

On 24 June 2010 15:04, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com wrote:

...

• Scope and name: Maybe it would practically make no big difference

whether the project is called "simple" or "for kids". Poor readers and adult beginning readers (natives or not) tend to read texts that are meant for children anyway. It could make a difference in promoting, though. A scope question can also be whether certain kinds of explicit images are allowed.

I strongly disagree. There is a big difference between simple language and simple concepts. Children need simple concepts (basically, you can't assume as much prior knowledge because they haven't had time to learn things that adults consider to be common knowledge). Adults that are just learning a language need simple language because they haven't learnt complicated vocabulary yet.

Said what I was going to say. One problem I've noticed with the Simple English Wikipedia is that they seem not to have truly decided whether they're for children or for ESL adults. There are irreconcilable differences between these two groups in terms of background and conceptual understanding, as you said, which bleed into issues of what content is acceptable for a given age group: far beyond explicit pictures, you need to decide how to cover topics like sex, religion, death, war, and rape--if they should be covered at all for that age group.

I think a single project devoted to "children" would fail unless it was well-segmented: material designed for a 6-year-old should be very different from material designed for a 12-year-old (in terms of what we expect them to know, what we expect them to be able to grasp, and what content is acceptable).

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

If you don't have a strong background in a field then drinking from the fire hose of full-complexity concepts is hard no matter if you are a child or not. If you do have a reasonable background a simplified article will be patronizing and, worse, not especially useful.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making assumptions about what a person of a given age is likely/expected to know: school curricula are based upon such assumptions, after all. Children who find "kiddie books" patronizing and useless can choose to access the "grownup" versions instead. It has been ever thus with precocious youth. But I certainly agree with you that we shouldn't expect kids to know/be able to grasp less about everything; we should expect kids to know more about things that kids tend to know more about.

I hope the study that the Board is commissioning consults with educators who teach at any age levels we might think about creating new projects for.

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:00 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

...

If you don't have a strong background in a field then drinking from the fire hose of full-complexity concepts is hard no matter if you are a child or not. If you do have a reasonable background a simplified article will be patronizing and, worse, not especially useful.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making assumptions about what a person of a given age is likely/expected to know: school curricula are based upon such assumptions, after all.  Children who find "kiddie books" patronizing and useless can choose to access the "grownup" versions instead.  It has been ever thus with precocious youth.  But I certainly agree with you that we shouldn't expect kids to know/be able to grasp less about everything; we should expect kids to know more about things that kids tend to know more about.

I hope the study that the Board is commissioning consults with educators who teach at any age levels we might think about creating new projects for.

Why frame a plan around stereotyping and prejudice, even though those things may be accurate on average, when the simple mechanism of addressing the _need_ exists?

By stating that the goal is "children" you've not even stated a goal at all, except by reference. Every participant will have different, and often legitimate, ideas of what those needs are.  Simultaneously, other similar needs by people who are not children which could be easily included would be excluded (e.g. the 2/3rd of _adult_ Americans who can't correctly extract a couple of simple facts out of the middle of an article which is only moderately complex: http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/sample_question.asp?NextItem=0&AutoR=2 )

Greg, Benjamin is right. It is fairly predictable that ~80% of children of age 10 would have some capabilities and not some other.

Our civilization has a problem because it is not able to personalize many things. Those are problems from the Industrial age. However, for example and speaking statistically, puberty in the most of the world will start at age of 10-12 in strong majority of cases. I know for opposing examples from my childhood, but it doesn't mean that the theory doesn't fit to the majority.

There are some cognitive differences between children at age 8-10 and adults. (Sorry for not giving examples, as I would have to find my faculty book in cognitive development.) Let's say that children are not capable to understand the theory of relativity in that age (although it is just an imaginary example). If it is so, it is a clever decision not to try to present theory of relativity to the children of that age.

However, there is one thing which we *can* do, unlike regular educational systems. If we create a good Wikijunior project, we don't need to fix its courses blindly to some theory. We could make levels and tests for passing some level: if a child of 7 is able to understand something which is considered as knowledge for 15 years old, that child should be able to participate in that course.

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Ilario Valdelli valdelli@gmail.com wrote:

In Italian Wikipedia, for example, we have had long time ago a project with the aim to create a structure of any article of physics with a section for "easy readers".

The project has failed because the most difficult point for a physician is to explain a complicated concept with easy concepts (and not necessary with easy words).

Explaining without technical terms inside of the introduction is good idea, but it is not good idea to explain all aspects in simple language. For example, I see nothing problematic in the article Photosynthesis on en.wp [1] or with the Second law of thermodynamics [2], although I am not a biologist nor physicist.

In the first case, it is hard to me to follow the article from the section "Light reactions". In the second case, it is hard to me to follow the article from the section "Available useful work". But, the fact that my knowledge about those phenomena is not so good doesn't mean that those articles should be dumb enough to explain to me all of the things. If I want to understand photosynthesis and the second law of thermodynamics, I should spend enough time in understanding other concepts. Wikipedia in English has everything needed for understanding those two concepts.

So if someone is willing to understand photosynthesis or the second law of thermodynamics, he or she has choice: (1) to be content with introduction or (2) to learn everything needed to understand both of them.

*Some* professions have ordinary language-like registers. Law is one of them. But, there should be an encyclopedic article (or more of them or book...) which describes that registry.

Explaining not obvious phenomena is not possible without learning in layers. The fact that there are very complex and hard to understand science fields means exactly that: there are complex and hard to understand science fields. Some people doesn't like that fact, but it is the problem of that person, not the problem of scientists.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

I may suggest two easy ways how it may be solved technically: * Introduction of a special namespace on a "larger" Wikipedia. * Introduction of s subdomain (e.g. simple.de.wikipedia.org) with shared admins (that should be simple with SUL). I believe there is no need for seperate set of admins for such project. Also note that such projects have tendency to become POV forks and community of both main and simple version have to control NPOV issues on the smaller project.

--vvv

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:59 PM, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:

*Earth* (or *the Earth*) is the third planet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet from the Sun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun, the fifth-largest and the densest of the eight planets in the Solar System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_planet. It is sometimes referred to as the World, the Blue Planet,^[note 7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth#cite_note-blue_planet-21 or by its Latin name, /Terra http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Terra/.^[note 8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth#cite_note-Terra-22

This is the start of the article Earth on en-wp. I don't think that a primary school child can really comprehend what is said here.

As Piaget says something different for 10+ years old children, I would like to get some relevant scientific research to start to trust to your claim.

The fact that 10 years old child probably doesn't know what density means, doesn't mean that she or he can't read about that on encyclopedia.

Encyclopedia is not symbolist poetry or satire. It has (or should have) clear style without metaphors.

And if you want to create something useful for 6 years old child, you should know that that child probably don't know to read. Or if he or she knows to read, it is about very simple terms and without possibility to connect terms without images or movies. In other words, for children below ~8, different form is needed. Spoken encyclopedia -- yes. Pictures of particular concepts -- yes. Written encyclopedia -- which is the main goal behind simple Wikipedia projects -- no.

And this thread is not about sexually explicit content, but about encyclopedia and other educational material for children.

<POV> I am really sick of tries for making Family Friendly Wikipedia with various excuses. This reminds me on switching from "Creationism" to "Intelligent Design" by religious fundamentalists in US. </POV>

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

Yes. We should definitely lay the groundwork well, as Ziko says. But there are good projects underway today and doing this, in spanish, french, and dutch. Some of the organizers of those projects have contributed to the Wikikids proposal on meta. We can start by directing energies there, finding out what Vikidia has learned running projects in French and Spanish, what their standards for project-creation are, and how we can help them.

If we want to go this way, our task will be complex. I don't think that we should be afraid of it, but I think that the most of participants are underestimating its complexity.

There are a number of important questions to be answered before start of such project: * Do we have a consistent pedagogical platform for creating such project? * How can we be sure that we will have enough relevant pedagogues per project? Would we pay them? Or would we create projects with other organizations to have them payed? * Who will be the main editors of the project? Children of any age? Or parents? If parents, I am deeply concerned which social and ideological groups we would attract. * Is it possible to have such Wikipedia-like project, where communities are doing self-regulation? My assumption, based on 6.5 years of Wikimedian work, is that it is not possible. (To be more precise: Project per se could be successful in gathering editors, but it will end as Simple English Wikipedia or as Conservapedia.) * Would it be better to find volunteers or hire someone to create a project similar to the printed edition of German Wikipedia? First to create "illustrated Wikipedia for children", then to create Wikipedias for every age of cognitive development. * Do we have any clue how crowd sourcing will work with ages between 8 and 15? Even though it would be regulated by pedagogues. * How group dynamics would look like inside of the project with 8 years old and 15 years old? * How many pedagogues are able to drive this kind of project? In our civilization, pedagogues are product of Industrial Age education and they are doing Industrial Age teaching, which is in collision with open culture. I think that the right time for relatively open, mass collaboration project will be when those born in 1995, generation grown up on Wikipedia and open culture, become pedagogues. Around 2020. (I am not saying that there are no pedagogues able to do this. However, we don't need a couple of pedagogues, we need strong pedagogical basis to have possibility to create such kind of project.) * etc.

We are all amateurs in cognitive development. My two exams in this field makes me an expert on this list. And we don't need just professionals, but extraordinary professionals. And those professionals have to be introduced well in Wikimedia culture.

But the teachers there also asked for a simpler-language project in Spanish, and a simple project in English to help students with language learning.

In Serbian we say "you are mixing grandmothers and frogs" :)

I would add one more important implementation of simple-like project: Controlled language [1] project. It would allow much easier translation between languages.

But, those are three different implementations. We would need "Wikimedia for children", "Wikimedia for learning languages" and "Wikimedia for machine translation".

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_natural_language

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:37 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

...

Yes.  We should definitely lay the groundwork well, as Ziko says.  But there are good projects underway today and doing this, in spanish, french, and dutch.  Some of the organizers of those projects have contributed to the Wikikids proposal on meta.  We can start by directing energies there, finding out what Vikidia has learned running projects in French and Spanish, what their standards for project-creation are, and how we can help them.

If we want to go this way, our task will be complex. I don't think that we should be afraid of it, but I think that the most of participants are underestimating its complexity.

There are a number of important questions to be answered before start of such project:

• Do we have a consistent pedagogical platform for creating such project?
• How can we be sure that we will have enough relevant pedagogues per

project? Would we pay them? Or would we create projects with other organizations to have them payed?

• Who will be the main editors of the project? Children of any age? Or

parents? If parents, I am deeply concerned which social and ideological groups we would attract.

• Is it possible to have such Wikipedia-like project, where

communities are doing self-regulation? My assumption, based on 6.5 years of Wikimedian work, is that it is not possible. (To be more precise: Project per se could be successful in gathering editors, but it will end as Simple English Wikipedia or as Conservapedia.)

• Would it be better to find volunteers or hire someone to create a

project similar to the printed edition of German Wikipedia? First to create "illustrated Wikipedia for children", then to create Wikipedias for every age of cognitive development.

• Do we have any clue how crowd sourcing will work with ages between 8

and 15? Even though it would be regulated by pedagogues.

• How group dynamics would look like inside of the project with 8

years old and 15 years old?

• How many pedagogues are able to drive this kind of project? In our

civilization, pedagogues are product of Industrial Age education and they are doing Industrial Age teaching, which is in collision with open culture. I think that the right time for relatively open, mass collaboration project will be when those born in 1995, generation grown up on Wikipedia and open culture, become pedagogues. Around 2020. (I am not saying that there are no pedagogues able to do this. However, we don't need a couple of pedagogues, we need strong pedagogical basis to have possibility to create such kind of project.)

• etc.

We are all amateurs in cognitive development. My two exams in this field makes me an expert on this list. And we don't need just professionals, but extraordinary professionals. And those professionals have to be introduced well in Wikimedia culture.

...

But the teachers there also asked for a simpler-language project in Spanish, and a simple project in English to help students with language learning.

In Serbian we say "you are mixing grandmothers and frogs" :)

I would add one more important implementation of simple-like project: Controlled language [1] project. It would allow much easier translation between languages.

But, those are three different implementations. We would need "Wikimedia for children", "Wikimedia for learning languages" and "Wikimedia for machine translation".

Milos, I think these are all good and valuable questions to ask; any new project should be put through such rigorous analysis, especially if it is to succeed. As Birgette says, it's hard to build a wiki and harder still to build a successful one.

But, to be fair, do we ask such questions of our other projects? I do not recall being asked if I was a trained encyclopedia writer or a trained journalist when I joined Wikimedia :) Perhaps we should ask these kinds of hard questions of a new project, but also realize that we may not be able to predict all of the answers ahead of time.

All of our projects have taken as their primary model some standard type of work: the encyclopedia, the book of quotations, the dictionary -- and then we have gone above and beyond any previous example of the genre with each of our projects, through our technological and social abilities. There is, similarly, lots of precedent in the world for children's encyclopedias and reference works for children -- the need and the model are both clearly present in the world -- and I think we can fairly consider taking that type of work as a model for a new type of wikimedia project, while expecting that we would similarly be able to go above and beyond previous examples.

-- phoebe

--- On Fri, 6/25/10, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, June 25, 2010, 1:07 PM On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 7:11 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

...

But, to be fair, do we ask such questions of our other

projects? I do

...

not recall being asked if I was a trained encyclopedia

writer or a

...

trained journalist when I joined Wikimedia :) Perhaps

we should ask

...

these kinds of hard questions of a new project, but

also realize that

...

we may not be able to predict all of the answers ahead

of time.

My first answer is that Wikipedia is good enough for children and that we do not need a Wikipedia fork with dumb language. If you think differently, please find or make relevant research which would prove your position.

This type of project is original research per se. (Making an image, movie or educational game is OR. Making rules for language usage is POV and OR. Saying that Wikipedia is not good for children is POV and OR.) And we have to be extremely careful with any kind of original research. We have two opposing projects in way of handling OR: Wikinews, which handles it very well and Wikiversity, which doesn't. And if we are not able to drive well project with educational courses for adults, I can say that Wikijunior would be a disaster after just a couple of months of independent life.

The problem with such projects is that they are usually a field for self-proclaimed experts to promote their ideological agenda. As it is about child education, it will be full of very stupid explanations, like that children are not able to understand this or that or that children mustn't hear something because it would kill them.

Such strong labeling of the goals and make-up of this group wishing to work on a Medical Encyclopedia for Children really needs to be supported by some evidence. Especially as I don't believe they are participating in this conversation and therefore unable to clarify. I am afraid I don't speak German, but I would like to see what I can gather from machine translation if you would please direct me to the proper links.

Birgitte SB

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 8:59 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:

...

Such strong labeling of the goals and make-up of this group wishing to work on a Medical Encyclopedia for Children really needs to be supported by some evidence. Especially as I don't believe they are participating in this conversation and therefore unable to clarify. I am afraid I don't speak German, but I would like to see what I can gather from machine translation if you would please direct me to the proper links.

A number of times I said that I don't have anything against professional-driven efforts. If it is so, it would mean that they are able make a valid scientific elaborate about their project, too.

One more point: It is not about me to prove that potential project doesn't have relevant scientific basis, but it is about project proposers to prove that they have.

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:

I am not asking you to prove anything about this project.  I just want to know where you got the idea that this proposal can be accurately summarized as a " Wikipedia fork with dumb language"  and that the proto-contributors are biased adults with an ideological agenda. I don’t recall ever seeing a link to the actual proposal in this thread and I am wondering where you have read discussion and ideas of these Germans who are interested in contributing to a Medical Encyclopedia for Children.

I can't help but wonder if you have an accurate understanding of what is being proposed. I would like to read their ideas for myself rather than accepting your characterization at face value.

I am only asking for links to the discussion of this proposal.  Not links that prove/disprove the scientific basis of anything.

Actually, it is not about strong claims, but more about aggressive attitude, which Ziko mentioned. So, yes, I am more aggressive than I should be. In brief, I am very irritated by something which I see as amateurish attempt, as well as by parallels with events a month ago. But, it is true that I should work on being less aggressive in emails.

Two issues formed my position toward the particular project proposal because of the consequences of such approach:

1. They tried to make "article for children" besides regular article about some term at German Wikipedia. 2. They asked for Simple German Wikipedia.

Related to the first issue, I've already explained what does mean "article for children" in previous emails. My position toward such aim can be summarized in the second sentence of my first email from this thread [1]. This is aggressive position, but I really think that. I don't say that those persons are dumb, but that their intention is dumb, ageist and discriminatory.

I've already asked a number of questions related to making *one* "article for children". What does mean "children"? What is scientific basis for their original research? Etc. When someone tries to make *one* article for all ages of minors, I can just say that such person is amateur in pedagogical sense.

Related to the second issue, they've clearly shown that their intention is to make Simple Wikipedia in German. Simple-like projects can have their own purposes. However, Simple English Wikipedia is proof that they don't fulfill any of those purposes [which could be discussed further]. Making such proposal, instead of, for example, trying to make their own wiki project, says that they are amateurs in tech sense. Trying to make it on a wiki project says that they are amateurs in social sense [which could be discussed further]. Trying to do that on one Wikipedia without reading documentation says that they are amateurs in full sense.

To conclude about proposers: Starting a project without a clear idea how the project should be materialized is amateurish. And we don't need amateurs to stay behind a Wikimedia project which intends to teach children.

The third issue, which irritated me the most, has been initiation of talk about Wikimedia project for children in the context of family friendly Wikipedia. This doesn't have anything with the original proposers, but with worrying climate inside of the core of Wikimedians.

It also should be noted that I was talking in general terms: Why creating a project for children is bad if not well articulated.

[1] - Writing dumb articles because of thinking that children are dumb is dumb. And not just dumb, but deeply ageist and discriminatory.

Phoebe, in my humble opinion, this project is a bit different. I think when we are talking about child development and creating a project for children, there's no room to screw around or create some amateurish product. This is something that, if done wrong, could potentially have a bigger negative impact than if, say, we'd screwed up on Wikinews.

-m.

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 10:11 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:37 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

...

Yes.  We should definitely lay the groundwork well, as Ziko says.  But there are good projects underway today and doing this, in spanish, french, and dutch.  Some of the organizers of those projects have contributed to the Wikikids proposal on meta.  We can start by directing energies there, finding out what Vikidia has learned running projects in French and Spanish, what their standards for project-creation are, and how we can help them.

If we want to go this way, our task will be complex. I don't think that we should be afraid of it, but I think that the most of participants are underestimating its complexity.

There are a number of important questions to be answered before start of such project:

• Do we have a consistent pedagogical platform for creating such project?
• How can we be sure that we will have enough relevant pedagogues per

project? Would we pay them? Or would we create projects with other organizations to have them payed?

• Who will be the main editors of the project? Children of any age? Or

parents? If parents, I am deeply concerned which social and ideological groups we would attract.

• Is it possible to have such Wikipedia-like project, where

communities are doing self-regulation? My assumption, based on 6.5 years of Wikimedian work, is that it is not possible. (To be more precise: Project per se could be successful in gathering editors, but it will end as Simple English Wikipedia or as Conservapedia.)

• Would it be better to find volunteers or hire someone to create a

project similar to the printed edition of German Wikipedia? First to create "illustrated Wikipedia for children", then to create Wikipedias for every age of cognitive development.

• Do we have any clue how crowd sourcing will work with ages between 8

and 15? Even though it would be regulated by pedagogues.

• How group dynamics would look like inside of the project with 8

years old and 15 years old?

• How many pedagogues are able to drive this kind of project? In our

civilization, pedagogues are product of Industrial Age education and they are doing Industrial Age teaching, which is in collision with open culture. I think that the right time for relatively open, mass collaboration project will be when those born in 1995, generation grown up on Wikipedia and open culture, become pedagogues. Around 2020. (I am not saying that there are no pedagogues able to do this. However, we don't need a couple of pedagogues, we need strong pedagogical basis to have possibility to create such kind of project.)

• etc.

We are all amateurs in cognitive development. My two exams in this field makes me an expert on this list. And we don't need just professionals, but extraordinary professionals. And those professionals have to be introduced well in Wikimedia culture.

...

But the teachers there also asked for a simpler-language project in Spanish, and a simple project in English to help students with language learning.

In Serbian we say "you are mixing grandmothers and frogs" :)

I would add one more important implementation of simple-like project: Controlled language [1] project. It would allow much easier translation between languages.

But, those are three different implementations. We would need "Wikimedia for children", "Wikimedia for learning languages" and "Wikimedia for machine translation".

Milos, I think these are all good and valuable questions to ask; any new project should be put through such rigorous analysis, especially if it is to succeed. As Birgette says, it's hard to build a wiki and harder still to build a successful one.

But, to be fair, do we ask such questions of our other projects? I do not recall being asked if I was a trained encyclopedia writer or a trained journalist when I joined Wikimedia :) Perhaps we should ask these kinds of hard questions of a new project, but also realize that we may not be able to predict all of the answers ahead of time.

All of our projects have taken as their primary model some standard type of work: the encyclopedia, the book of quotations, the dictionary -- and then we have gone above and beyond any previous example of the genre with each of our projects, through our technological and social abilities. There is, similarly, lots of precedent in the world for children's encyclopedias and reference works for children -- the need and the model are both clearly present in the world -- and I think we can fairly consider taking that type of work as a model for a new type of wikimedia project, while expecting that we would similarly be able to go above and beyond previous examples.

-- phoebe

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The difference was that Wikipedia was not made for young people.

If I run a social group for adults and there are issues with children who visit, I can blame it on their parents and say they should control them better. If I run a social group for children, I'm now a childcare provider and have a greater degree of responsibility.

My point is that it should either be done very carefully, by experts (or at least with their help) and with careful research, or not at all. I'm not for doing this only halfway.

-m.

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 4:40 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

...

Phoebe, in my humble opinion, this project is a bit different. I think when we are talking about child development and creating a project for children, there's no room to screw around or create some amateurish product. This is something that, if done wrong, could potentially have a bigger negative impact than if, say, we'd screwed up on Wikinews.

-m.

Wait, weren't you the one arguing just upthread that wikipedia was just fine and dandy for you as an adolescent? Not just wikipedia, but wikipedia of 7 years ago, which was far less complete and stable -- far more amateurish -- than it is today.

I see your argument, but I don't buy it -- lots of kids are autodidacts just the same as many adults, and lots of stuff designed for kids is crap (including "professional teaching materials"). I don't necessarily know that we could do better, but I don't see why it's not worth a shot. Are you concerned about controversial material? Does your concern go away if the project isn't framed for kids, but rather as a simple language version (simple english, german, etc)?

-- phoebe

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Hello Milos,

reading your mail below I am wondering why your reaction on my first mail was so aggressive. It looks to me as if your consideration is not that far away from mine. Especially I wrote in my suggestion that first of all the project must have a very clearly defined scope and audiance, second that it should have a more rigid editorial and anti-vandal mechanism and third that we need more research.

Greetings Ting

Milos Rancic wrote:

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

...

The difference was that Wikipedia was not made for young people.

If I run a social group for adults and there are issues with children who visit, I can blame it on their parents and say they should control them better. If I run a social group for children, I'm now a childcare provider and have a greater degree of responsibility.

It is not [just] about blaming each other. It is about underestimating child capacities and playing with their trust.

Child is perfectly able to recognize what is "for adults" and what is "for children": everything not marked ("marked" in various ways) as "for children" is for adults. And they are able to treat differently those two types of phenomena. "For adults" is not safe, while "for children" is safe. Depending on circumstances, "for children" phenomena could be also boring to them, but safe.

And if we want to make a project in which children will trust as safe, we have much higher responsibility than we have for creating any other project not marked as a "project for children".

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Hi Ziko,

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com wrote:

It seems to me doubtless that there is a substantial number of active Wikimedians who see the need in a simple or children-encyclopedia and would like to invest some of their own sweat, blood and tears.

Yes. This is happening already, on simple and external sites like Vikidia.

The main question remains: Would WMF accept such a project,

Yes.

or would it reject it for being just another Wikipedia in already existing languages.

I know of no such Foundation-wide policy. Please help contribute to guidelines you would like to see for when a new project can be created in an existing language.

The original fear is that a linguistic group is split

I should think that in this case the idea would be to attract new editors. We have a general problem of 'old' projects not being so friendly to newbies, so trying to centralize all effort in old projects may not be the best way to grow, in any case.

SJ

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Just my 2c thoughts exploring the idea.

I don't know if wikipedia should have a chapter specific to children because it would be culturally biased by our views about education. I think it would be better to aim for a specific psychological profile and skills, ie: - - for the non-semantic persons (who don't rely much on words), more direct images (or photos) and animations (or videos). For example explaining the size of the sun and of planets showing their relative size works better than sheer numbers for most of people, or at least is a necessary intermediate step for understanding the numbers. - - for people not fluent with vocabulary, use only the 500 (200? 1000?) most common english words (a bot could signal rare words) - - for people with few abstracting skills, use concrete objects and familiar analogies to explain (like explaining the curve of 3d space with a sheet of paper) - - replace complex equations with qualitative explanations - - Etc.

Also, for illiterate persons, it would be great to include a "play" button that would automatically read the article out loud. It should be included so that illiterate persons don't have to install their own text-to-speech software.

What would really be interesting would be to study people with internet access who *don't* use wikipedia because they feel uneasy or find it unadapted or too difficult. Find the main psychological categories of these people and understand how to interact with them and transmit them information, and define the kind of chapter that they'd need. Eventually, check if several of those special chapter could be merged (for example, visual.wikipedia with analogous.wikipedia).

Then check if there are voluntaries for this work and the sum of work required.

On 28/06/2010 20:40, Ting Chen wrote:

Hello Ziko,

speaking for myself. I am for such an approach. But I would also like to see such a project, because it is so important, to be prepared carefully. The suggestions is not made the first time, and last time when the suggetion was on meta, it was discussed until no one can give it a chance anymore.

I also don't see such a project really as a compititor to the "adult" Wikipedia. I think both projects can benefit from each other alot.

Now one step back. Encyclopedia for kids is not new. A lot of classic encyclopedia has their kid version. This shows that a kid encyclopedia is not just an encyclopedia in "dumn" language. Contrarily, I think a kid encyclopedia is far more challenging to write, because you need more pedagogic skills. And building up such skills by our contributors can again benefit Wikipedia. There are also other online kid encyclopedia from which we can learn from their experiences. I definitively would like to see what Robert would find out in this respect and how his research can encourage us or help us in this new endeavor.

Greetings Ting

Ziko van Dijk wrote:

...

Hello,

It seems to me doubtless that there is a substantial number of active Wikimedians who see the need in a simple or children-encyclopedia and would like to invest some of their own sweat, blood and tears. Others, who disagree, may stand on the side line and comment if they like.

There are a lot of single questions when defining the exact scope etc., but the main question remains: Would WMF accept such a project, or would it reject it for being just another Wikipedia in already existing languages. So, how different the new project must be from Wikipedia. The original fear is that a linguistic group is split into two communities whereas the forces usually should be concentrated in one Wikipedia. A Wikipedia in "simple English", we were told, is essentially a Wikipedia in English.

But if a project, for example, directs itself to a relativeley limited group of readers (children), with consequences for the content (limited length of articles, no explicit images), usage of language (no hard words), wouldn't it be different enough from a "usual" Wikipedia?

Kind regards Ziko

2010/6/27 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de:

...

Hello Milos,

reading your mail below I am wondering why your reaction on my first mail was so aggressive. It looks to me as if your consideration is not that far away from mine. Especially I wrote in my suggestion that first of all the project must have a very clearly defined scope and audiance, second that it should have a more rigid editorial and anti-vandal mechanism and third that we need more research.

Greetings Ting

Milos Rancic wrote:

...

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

...

The difference was that Wikipedia was not made for young people.

If I run a social group for adults and there are issues with children who visit, I can blame it on their parents and say they should control them better. If I run a social group for children, I'm now a childcare provider and have a greater degree of responsibility.

It is not [just] about blaming each other. It is about underestimating child capacities and playing with their trust.

Child is perfectly able to recognize what is "for adults" and what is "for children": everything not marked ("marked" in various ways) as "for children" is for adults. And they are able to treat differently those two types of phenomena. "For adults" is not safe, while "for children" is safe. Depending on circumstances, "for children" phenomena could be also boring to them, but safe.

And if we want to make a project in which children will trust as safe, we have much higher responsibility than we have for creating any other project not marked as a "project for children".

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-- Ting

Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/

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Noein wrote:

I don't know if wikipedia should have a chapter specific to children because it would be culturally biased by our views about education.

It will be biased on the common sense of the culture, in which language that version is written, on how education should be. As well as every Wikipedia version has some sort of cultural bias in those cultures, in which that language is used and spoken. And that is just fine.

I think it would be better to aim for a specific psychological profile and skills, ie:

• • for the non-semantic persons (who don't rely much on words), more

direct images (or photos) and animations (or videos). For example explaining the size of the sun and of planets showing their relative size works better than sheer numbers for most of people, or at least is a necessary intermediate step for understanding the numbers.

• • for people not fluent with vocabulary, use only the 500 (200? 1000?)

most common english words (a bot could signal rare words)

• • for people with few abstracting skills, use concrete objects and

familiar analogies to explain (like explaining the curve of 3d space with a sheet of paper)

• • replace complex equations with qualitative explanations
• • Etc.

These are all interesting possible projects. And I am totally fine with them, as far as there are enough volunteers who would build up a lasting community which would dedicate on those projects. And that's the basic thrashold that a new project should master.

Also, for illiterate persons, it would be great to include a "play" button that would automatically read the article out loud. It should be included so that illiterate persons don't have to install their own text-to-speech software.

Since Wikipedia is a web application and not a rich client application at least the browser must provide support for such features.

Greetings Ting

Hi Milos,

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

Writing dumb articles because of thinking that children are dumb is dumb. And not just dumb, but deeply ageist and discriminatory.

I don't think that either simplified or children's projects should be "dumbed down". Ottava's essays on Kubla Khan and Intimations of Immortaility recently noted on this list are examples of quite detailed and intelligent essays written in (somewhat) simplified language.

Considering, for example, Piaget's [1] theory, timeline of cognitive development is:

• The earliest usual learning of writing is around 5.
• At around 8 children are able to read without problems.
• At around 10 children cognitive system is almost the same as adult.
• Between 13 and 15... there are young adults.

And we can all look to our own personal development for anecdotes.

I think it would be appropriate to serve a few audiences, say 5 to 15, but welcoming readers of all ages: - younger children learning to read (compare Britannica's Young Children's Encyclopedia, 16 volumes with images and short descriptions, intended to introduce reading) - older children and adults looking for a clear, concise illustration of topics[1] (compare Encarta and World Book, which targeted high school students, but had features for children of 7 and 8). - children and others looking for interesting new topics, trivia, and projects to try. this might work best for a project that combines material from wikiversity, wikibooks, wikipedia, wikiquote, and other projects. (Compare Arthur Mee's 20-volume Book of Knowledge, which is probably described well as a "mix of all Wikimedia projects, with songs and games, written for children" and despite its quaint language is still recommended by various homeschooling groups as easy to use in everyday learning.[2])

Milosh writes:

finding relevant pedagogues who would lead child contributors.

That's a fine idea. Also finding active middle- and high-school students interested in leading such a project. There are some examples already, from the Grundschul wiki to the Children's Encyclopedia of Women, of specific groups of students starting a project intended to be a global space to collaborate.

SJ

[1] This addresses Ting's point that some articles aren't so clear in their introductions. That's not a question of age, but of what you expect the first few sentences to tell you.

[2] http://www.hstreasures.com/bookofknowledge.html

Miloš,

I am inclined to agree with you. As someone who is not so far removed from his own adolescence, I can attest that I've always found "Children's writing" to be incredibly condescending and even demeaning. Perhaps I was not a typical child, but ever since about 7 years of age I really hated those books that talked down to children as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an expert) from many people the idea that you will get what you give, meaning that if you treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they will often become a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children as dumber versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to be just that. (again, I'm not an expert)

-m.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com wrote:

...

Hello,

Recently there has been a controversy on Wikipedia in German about extra articles in simple language. Authors of its medical group wanted to create sub pages suitable for children, believing in an urgent need. [1]

In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple German came up.

As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia. The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it had been created before that policy of 2006.

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?

Wait!

Writing dumb articles because of thinking that children are dumb is dumb. And not just dumb, but deeply ageist and discriminatory.

Considering, for example, Piaget's [1] theory, timeline of cognitive development is:

• The earliest usual learning of writing is around 5.
• At around 8 children are able to read without problems.
• At around 10 children cognitive system is almost the same as adult.
• Between 13 and 15, depending on climate, life conditions and

culture, and not counting extremes, cognitively there are no children anymore, there are young adults. Cognitively, the only difference between them and 10-20 years older humans is in experience and knowledge.

That means that the target for writing "simple" Wikipedia is for children between 8 and 10.

So, I would like to see scientific background *before* mentioning "simple" or "junior" or whatever project: For which age should be, let's say, Junior Wikipedia? For all minors? For primary school minors? One article for those old 7 and 15 years? Considering Simple English Wikipedia, this is purely pseudoscientific attempt. Wishful thinking of creating family friendly project with dumb language.

But, I am not trying to say that WikiMedia Junior won't be useful. Yes, it will be very useful if it would be driven well. However, I am deeply skeptical about crowd sourcing of such thing. It will finish as Simple Wikipedia, which main purpose is having fun by reading random articles on parties -- at the best. At the worst, it will finish like Conservapedia with dumb language. Actually, with many dumb languages.

If we really want to go this way, the only relevant approach is by finding relevant pedagogues who would lead child contributors. Such project has to be very well structured, with year or two of relevant work before going online. However, I see this as very unrealistic at this moment.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

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On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an expert) from many people the idea that you will get what you give, meaning that if you treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they will often become a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children as dumber versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to be just that. (again, I'm not an expert)

A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults are creating dumb articles because they think that their children are dumb, which in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;)

Birgitte, what I am discussing is whether or no t I see any merit in this idea at all. Thanks.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 5:25 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:

--- On Thu, 6/24/10, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

...

From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia" To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 6:06 PM On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

...

as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an

expert) from many

...

people the idea that you will get what you give,

meaning that if you

...

treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they

will often become

...

a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children

as dumber

...

versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to

be just that.

...

(again, I'm not an expert)

A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults are creating dumb articles because they think that their children are dumb, which in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;)

I think you all are getting rather sidetracked over the details of content of some proposed project that I do not believe you are actually interested in joining.  Surely any detailed decisions as exactly how to approach writing medical articles for children would be an internal conclusion. The real issue here is what merits the creation of a new wiki versus some specific project being setup as subset of an existing wiki.

I have come the conclusion the biggest factor leading to success of a new wiki is a large enough community with a strong sense of a separate mission.  If all you have is a small group of hard core content editors you will be more successful as subset of an existing wiki, if one is so kind enough to make room for you.  One thing that happens in a small wiki is all the happy energy which was geared towards the content must be siphoned off into seemingly endless administration tasks. It takes a while for the community to grow enough to overcome that deficit.  I would not recommend anyone to be in a hurry to make their own new space.  The longer you can use an existing wiki to experiment with the your project the stronger you can grow your community, and maybe you can find a way to permanently fit within the existing scope while meeting the needs of your specific mission.  If you can it do that it will greatly improve your ability to work on content. I would  advise this group that as exciting as having their own Wikipedia must sound, they might be more successful as a project within de.WP or de.WB And even if they are dead-set on an independent wiki, they will benefit from starting within an existing structure to grow a good sized proof of concept.

Birgitte SB

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